Leslie Liao Was Once Destroyed By an Audience of Children
This week, we’re highlighting 24 talented writers and performers for Vulture’s annual list “The Comedians You Should and Will Know.” Our goal is to introduce a wider audience to the talent that has the comedy community and industry buzzing. (You can read more about our methodology at the link above.) We asked the comedians on the list to answer a series of questions about their work, performing, goals for the future, and more. Next up is Leslie Liao.
Tell us a story from your childhood that you think might explain why you ended up becoming a comedian.
I have an older brother who I lovingly teased, often in front of our parents. In a healthy household, one would expect the older sibling would tease the younger sibling and subsequently be punished by the parents. It was a reverse scenario in my home, where I (a young, adorable Asian girl) would call him “Mickey Mouse” (he was unusually tan and had big ears and a round head), tell him he was ugly while he was playing tennis (in public where other people could hear), and sit on him while he was playing video games so he would pay attention to me.
My parents found my antics hilarious and, instead of scolding me, would laugh. My brother has a great sense of humor and understood I was just being silly and always laughed it off. My family laughing at my behavior turned into this wacky positive reinforcement, and I suspect that I am forever chasing that happy feeling by doing stand-up for strangers.
If you were immortalized as a cartoon character, what would your outfit be?
Stylish athleisure. High-waisted sweatpants, sports bra, a cool baggy vintage jacket, sexy clean sneakers. Warm earthy neutral colors. I dress for function and comfort and pray that it looks stylish when it’s all put together. Jeans and heels make me sad, and I will only wear them when pressured by society on the weekends.
What’s your proudest moment/achievement of your comedy career so far?
The entire year of 2023. While working my corporate day job, I filmed sets for Don’t Tell Comedy, Netflix’s Verified Stand-Up, The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and landed New Faces at Just for Laughs Montreal. The stress and schedule was brutal on me, but I kept reminding myself how much I love stand-up comedy and let that guide me and avoided a very plausible mental breakdown. Instead of letting the pressure and high stakes of all these opportunities get the best of me, I kept telling myself, Leslie, you love this, you are good at this, and you have fun doing this. It’s just another set.
Which comedian’s career trajectory would you most like to follow?
Bill Burr. I want to do stand-up forever, be known for that first, and be competitive with myself and see if I can be better than I was the year before. I want everything I do outside of stand-up — writing, acting, podcasting, directing, voice-over, etc. — to align with my voice and comedic style.
Tell us everything about your worst show ever. (This can involve venue, audience, other acts on the lineup, anything!)
I recently did a show at a college, so beforehand I assumed it was for college students. When I arrived, I realized it was for a summer camp of high-school students touring this college to decide whether or not they wanted to apply. The average age of the crowd had to be 16. There were hundreds of them. They spent the entire day doing activities and were restless. All of them were on their phones and either talking to each other, shouting out questions at the comics, or trying to make each other laugh. The sound was awful. They were too young to grasp the concepts in my jokes: loneliness, isolation, agonizing over whether or not to have children, etc. They were not listening or laughing at anything I said, so I decided to interact with them and do a Q&A so they could learn about the experience of a woman in her late 30s. Questions ranged from “What’s your favorite movie?” to “Does life get worse?” to “What’s your Snapchat?” The lineup was also stacked with amazing and talented comics, and one by one we were demolished emotionally by these children. I hated it, and it was amazing.
What have you learned about your own joke-writing process that you didn’t know when you started?
Trying to be funny can backfire on me. When I first started, I naturally thought of what would make an audience laugh and worked backward in tailoring the premise to it. Now I realize if I try to be funny first, my truth will get lost. If I start with the truth first and rant about my honest feelings and experience, often the humor will materialize on its own organically.
What’s the biggest financial hurdle you’ve encountered since becoming a comedian?
I was part of the corporate/office job matrix for my entire adult life. Now that I am a full-time comedian, the inconsistency of income — the frequency and amount — is terrifying to me. I sometimes need to think about potential gigs in terms of financial needs, and I have to adjust my spending constantly. Now I am my own business, so it’s like I do my own accounting. I have to also choose whether or not to invest money in people helping me with the business side of things like travel, social media, publicity, styling, etc., and outsource so I can spend all my minimal time to focus on writing and performing.
At the end of the movie 8 Mile, Eminem’s character, B-Rabbit, starts his final battle rap by dissing himself so the person he’s battling has nothing left to attack. How would you roast yourself so the other person would have nothing to say?
Everything my roaster would say is probably something I already have said to myself: deep creepy voice, never married, only on lineups to add diversity to the show, never good enough. I am so bad at roasting; it doesn’t come naturally to me. I would probably end it with saying that I love myself and I am enough — just start spitting out affirmations so the other person feels bad for me and wants to go home.
When it comes to your comedy opinions — about material, performing, audience, trends you want to kill/revive, the industry, etc. — what hill will you die on?
Let’s experiment with earlier show times! Shows that start past 9 p.m. are a challenge to us all. Everyone is pushing their limits to be awake and be full of energy, when in reality we are all fighting the urge to doze off. Here and there at a late show, someone dozes off, and I never blame them or kick them out. They are sleepy humans that need to rest (and I’m jealous). Let me take a crack at a 4 p.m. show. We can all have a laugh, get dinner at a reasonable hour, and then tuck ourselves in by 9 p.m.
I also love the “no-phones at shows” policy. A stand-up show is not a concert; it’s a time to listen and laugh. When you are holding up your phone in front of your face and blocking other people’s views and filming our sets (we all know is a big no-no), you are neither listening or laughing.
What is the best comedy advice, and then the worst comedy advice, you’ve ever received?
Best: Once I had a bad set in front of a college crowd. They didn’t love me and didn’t hate me but were just pretty lukewarm. Before the show, I made the assumption that due to our age gap, they wouldn’t understand me or relate to me, and I let that attitude infect my set and proactively teased them for being clueless and inexperienced in life. When I recapped the set with a friend after, they said, “Comics are like walking, living, breathing documentaries; we are a window into a certain aspect of life or a fresh perspective that anyone would find interesting. Just tell your story, and let people learn and get interested.” He reminded me that when I was young, I was a fan of comics who had life experiences completely different from mine, and I was still fascinated by them. From that, I took: Don’t try to lead with being relatable. Just focus on what is true for me and hope that it connects with people.
Worst: When I had my day job at Netflix, a few comics would find out and ecstatically tell me that I was already “in” — all I had to do was get acquainted with someone on the stand-up team and pitch myself and get a special that way. I am well aware that that is a backward, awkward, and unprofessional strategy. These industry people have to come to you. If the comics approached them, there would be a line of comics in the Netflix lobby waiting to pitch themselves to creative execs every day. I still believe this and hope this to be true: Just be so good, funny, professional, and special that someone who can change your life will notice you and come to you.