A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I met Ilana Glazer exactly 10 years ago. Ilana and their co-star Abbi Jacobson were riding high on the success from their hilarious web series Broad City, which went on to become a hit TV show. I interviewed both of them, but I was just back from parental leave for my second kid and I have to tell you, I was so deeply exhausted at that moment.
What sticks with me from that interview to this day is Ilana's energy. Like capital "E" energy. They were just bursting at the seams with ideas and stories and potential. And I share this because the tired new mothers out there often feel sort of alone and separate from the well-rested, creatively fertile people.
So when I saw Ilana Glazer's new comedy special on Hulu, Human Magic, which is about the bonkers part of life that is early parenthood, part of me was selfishly glad that they have crossed the Rubicon and get how exhausting it all is. But then I watched Ilana's special and I saw the same "big E" energy, even though they're now the parent of a toddler, and I realized this person is just built this way.
From where I sit, it looks like Ilana Glazer's default setting is energy and enthusiasm, and I'm going to add joy to the mix because whenever I watch them perform, I come out happier than I was an hour or two before. Which is why I wanted them to join me for a game of Wild Card.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What was your form of rebelling as a teenager?
Ilana Glazer: I didn't quite rebel very much as a child or a teenager. I was very good and I was focused on achieving. And my rebellion came later. Honestly, I was not secure in rebelling against my parents until a few years ago. L-O-L. I'm 37 years old.
It was really in the process of becoming a parent that I was like, "No. I am separate from my parents."
But of course, I had some rebellion; it finally came in the form of having sex and smoking weed in my senior year of high school.
Rachel Martin: I mean, that's pretty by-the-book rebellion.
Glazer: Yeah, standard – I would honestly say patriotic. So finally it came, as well as myself.
And then I feel like, really, becoming a parent has helped me feel like "I don't care." Do you know what I mean? I don't care about being accepted. I care more about discovering who I am and what I need. I care about that more than crossing a line and being accepted back.
Martin: Wait, I need more on that. How does having a kid make you rebellious?
Glazer: Like, as long as I'm focused on fulfilling my needs and the needs of my family and child, then I can be unlikeable. I don't have to fill the supportive role I was hoping to fill before.
I have found the limits of parenting really helpful to the rest of my life. It has forced me to draw lines that I never wanted to draw before. I want to be everything for everybody. And it's so important to my health and my kid's health. And it actually serves the world at large to give it the healthiest kid I can. So it's been such a helpful reorganization.
Question 2: How comfortable are you with being alone?
Glazer: I'm going to buck the binary with this answer and I'm going to say "increasingly." Ooh — is your mind blown by all my therapy, Rachel Martin?
But that is the accurate answer — increasingly. But it's tough. I really feed off people. I love people. I love intellectual intercourse. I love connecting and engaging, but I'm increasingly comfortable alone. And also, having such a high-needs, tiny individual needing me so often — it's become more of a relief to be alone.
Martin: Yeah. Whereas before there may have been anxiety associated with that, and now it's just in such scarce supply.
Glazer: Yeah.
Martin: I am someone who craves alone time.
Glazer: Yeah. Are you tall?
I don't know. I think I'm 5'7". My husband insists that I'm 5'6" and 3/4.
Glazer: Oh, copy that. I don't know if it's changed, but in the early 2000s — I was a teenager at that time — the toxic messaging that I got was, for some reason I know, that modeling you have to be 5'7". So you're model height, babe.
Martin: [Laughs] Wait, is this just a random interstitial?
Glazer: I don't know — I just feel like craving alone time and being tall, like I'm imagining you gliding through the streets of D.C. and like popping your collar and not wanting the bottom half of your face to be seen. I'm like, "Yeah she likes to be alone." I'm like short and I'm like, [gremlin voice] "Hey everybody. Anybody want to hear a joke?" I don't know I just wanted to picture it.
Martin: I want you to always think of me that way. It's completely the opposite of how I am.
Question 3: Are you good at knowing when something should end?
Glazer: Yes, I am. With Broad City, we had signed our contract of seven seasons, and then we both came to the decision to end it after five — Abbi and I. Comedy Central was like, "Huh?" But yeah, that's something I would say is elegant about me — knowing when things are at their end.
Martin: That's an admirable quality because it's not the same for everybody. And especially if you got something good going on and there are people telling you, "It's good, just keep going," and to have something tell you that it's time to stop.
Glazer: Whew. Yeah. And like being able to trust that I am generative beyond this moment, whether it's a creative project or anything — that I am secure, that I will keep generating new layers and like, do without thinking. That was something that the experience of pregnancy was so incredible. I'm such an overthinker and a planner. Creating a person without thinking about it was, like, "I'm not even thinking about this and my body knows what to do." And when we get a scrape and, and the skin grows back. It's just trusting in my own humanity.
Martin: Is it just a gut feeling on ending things? You're just like, "I just feel we should stop?"
Glazer: Yeah. I was a drummer for many years. I miss it. I just loved percussion. For a time I was like, "I'm going to be an orchestra percussionist." Can you imagine me on a timpani, like "dun duh-duh dun duh." And I think it's like a rhythm thing. You know what I mean? It's a larger-scale rhythm thing of, "This is over," you know, and accepting the loss too.
Copyright 2024 NPR
