Jena Friedman has written for David Letterman, worked as a field producer on The Daily Show, and earned an Oscar nomination as part of the writing team behind Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
But some of the most consequential moments in her career have come when she was in front of the camera on late-night TV.
Her two stand-up appearances on Conan each led to major jobs. Her first appearance with Stephen Colbert had a very different result.
Friedman’s first late-night job came in 2011, when she joined the writing staff of Late Show with David Letterman after turning around a writing packet overnight.
“That’s the job,” she says. “It’s not just being funny. It’s being funny in a time constraint.”
After a year at Late Show, Friedman moved to The Daily Show. Working for Jon Stewart, she says, taught her that “you can make anything funny” as long as it comes from a place of humanity, while the show’s rigorous fact-checking standards left a lasting impression on her.
Then came Conan. Friedman says Conan O’Brien‘s TBS show gave her unusual freedom to perform material other late-night shows might have balked at.
Her first appearance caught the attention of Roseanne Barr’s team and landed her a writing job on Roseanne. Friedman arrived for her first day just as Barr’s tweet controversy was erupting; the show was canceled while the writers were gathered at the office.
Her second Conan set mocked the true-crime boom, including the line, “True crime, it’s the only time the entertainment industry will take a chance on an unknown female lead.” AMC+ subsequently hired her to make True Crime Story: Indefensible, which brought her dark comedic sensibility to real stories about the criminal justice system.
Friedman’s experience on Colbert was considerably less career-enhancing. Appearing on The Late Show‘s live 2016 election-night special, she was still processing Donald Trump’s apparent victory in real time when she blurted out, “Get your abortions now ’cause we’re gonna be fucked.”
The remark soon circulated through right-wing media and drew death threats. Looking back, Friedman says she came to see the moment as a lesson in how an off-the-cuff reaction could be repackaged for a very different audience.
Almost exactly a decade later, politics remains part of Friedman’s stand-up, though filtered through a much more personal lens. Her new show, Motherf*cker, grew out of a particular moment in her own life, she says, while also trying to capture “this moment in American politics.”
Following a well-reviewed run in Edinburgh, Motherf*cker begins performances at The Soho Playhouse October 1.
Click the embed above to listen to Jena Friedman’s full conversation with Mark Malkoff now, or find Inside Late Night on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
