Laurie Kilmartin: She Made It

When asked to describe her past in one word, Lau­rie Kil­martin chose the word ​“bor­ing”. I had to check the lat­est def­i­n­i­tion of the word, because to me, Lau­rie Kil­martin is as bor­ing as a Cost­co that gives out free sam­ples of skate­boards and tequi­la. Standup come­di­an, pub­lished author of two books (Shit­ty Mom and Dead Peo­ple Suck), joke writer for the Conan O’Brien Show, final­ist on Last Com­ic Stand­ing, and sassy pub­lic pool review­er (we’ll get there, don’t wor­ry), Kil­martin is a writ­ing machine who deserves all of our praise and maybe a wrist cast to soothe her carpal tunnel. 

Kilmartin’s com­e­dy jour­ney start­ed when she was feel­ing a bit lost in life. She was liv­ing in San Fran­cis­co and not sure where her pas­sions lay. Just for fun, she start­ed going to see standup peri­od­i­cal­ly, not yet know­ing she would soon be the per­son onstage. No audi­ence is ever thank­ful for a bad com­e­dy show, but sur­pris­ing­ly, the show that made her try standup, wasn’t good at all. ​“I saw a stand up that was bad and they were work­ing. And I’m like …‘Oh, I can be bet­ter than that per­son’”. After that, she grabbed her own joke book, enrolled in standup class­es, and began paving her way in the San Fran com­e­dy scene. Guess we can all thank that sub­par com­ic, right?

She start­ed find­ing her unique style in the clubs of San Fran­cis­co, her favorite being the Holy City Zoo, a com­e­dy club where her sweet appear­ance and con­trast­ing dark­er mate­r­i­al were wel­comed with open arms and hearty laughs from the locals. As a bud­ding new com­ic with great jokes and hunger for stage time, Kil­martin began tak­ing her act on the road, hon­ing her skills, and mak­ing standup her full time gig, trad­ing cowork­ers for comics and drink tick­ets for pay­checks. Her joke pol­ish­ing and hard work paid off when she land­ed a spot on the ​“New Faces Show­case” at the Just For Laughs Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val . This big hon­or left Kil­martin feel­ing that it was time for some big changes. She was ready to take the leap to a new com­e­dy hub. LA was too close to home, so she decid­ed it was time to leave fog­gy San Fran­cis­co and take a stab at the com­e­dy ani­mal that is New York City. To her, New York was the ulti­mate chal­lenge because if you can make it there … come on, you know the song.

Changes in lifestyle made way for changes in her mate­r­i­al as she trad­ed her sub­ur­ban road gigs for the diverse crowds New York com­e­dy clubs had to offer. She even­tu­al­ly found her foot­ing, but the tran­si­tion wasn’t seam­less. Her mate­r­i­al that worked for par­ents on date night who drove to the com­e­dy show in their mini­vans, didn’t trans­late to what these bustling New York­ers and inter­na­tion­al tourists could relate to. ​“I just can’t kill talk­ing about Tar­get in a place that does­n’t have Tar­gets, you know?“ As dri­ven and ded­i­cat­ed comics in New York do, she suc­cess­ful­ly adapt­ed, find­ing not only stage time, but paid writ­ing jobs on shows such as Tough Crowd and The Conan O’brien Show.

In addi­tion to writ­ing standup, Kil­martin began to branch out to oth­er writ­ing pur­suits, start­ing small by post­ing blog style sto­ries about her trav­els on the road and, my favorite, mean spir­it­ed reviews about pub­lic pools where she swam laps.

( From her review of The Y in Beau­mont, Texas)

Rat­ing: D+ This pool depressed me so much- I tru­ly con­sid­ered chang­ing my cit­i­zen­ship dur­ing warm up. Oh, every­one was nice all right. The aer­o­bics ladies bounced up and down to ​“Going to the Chapel,” even though most of them are at an age that puts a dif­fer­ent spin on Goin’ to a chapel. Beau­mont is one of those towns that grows ser­i­al killers and you can see why. It’s in a time warp and just sev­en hun­dred yards in this pool made me want to take out a post office. Go Home! 

This comic’s suc­cess­ful com­e­dy jour­ney is a great mod­el for new comics in the field, with Kil­martin always being so dri­ven on and off stage. Her work eth­ic, busi­ness savvy, and fer­vent joke writ­ing shows that this art­form is so much more than car­ry­ing a cock­tail onstage and chat­ting about your day. She recounts a time in her life when she was writ­ing jokes for Conan for a full day, then tak­ing her son to a Mcdon­ald’s where he played in the ball pit while she worked on a book titled Shit­ty Mom (a book that lat­er became a New York Times best­seller), know­ing that in the evening she still had to write and per­form standup much late into the night. (Hence, wrist cast for the carpal tunnel).

As for what Lau­rie is cur­rent­ly work­ing on, she writes, per­forms, and records week­ly episodes of the Jack­ie and Lau­rie Show, a pod­cast where her and fel­low come­di­an Jack­ie Kashi­an talk about life as best friends, work­ing comics, but also set aside time to show­case a female com­ic of the week. You might have cringed at the term ​“female com­ic”, but don’t wor­ry, Lau­rie and Jack­ie use their plat­form to sup­port new­er female comics while talk­ing about the ups and downs of the com­e­dy indus­try in general. 

Kil­mart­in’s newest com­e­dy spe­cial comes out lat­er this year. Though a cur­rent pop­u­lar trend of com­e­dy spe­cials seem to be about teach­ing you a les­son or address­ing deep top­ics, her new hour is just tried and true fun­ny jokes to give an audi­ence a great time. In an ever chang­ing world of com­e­dy with Insta­gram influ­encers and Tik­Tok viral sen­sa­tions, Kil­martin iden­ti­fies as a clas­sic joke writer say­ing the spe­cial is just an hour of great jokes that work in a com­e­dy club. ​“I’m a club com­ic. So when I write com­e­dy, it has to work in a club with peo­ple who don’t know who I am and who are being inter­rupt­ed by the server”.

We wrap up our con­ver­sa­tion by ask­ing what word Kil­martin would use to describe her future, and she once again throws about the word, ​“bor­ing”. As a pas­sion­ate joke writer, hilar­i­ous and dark pub­lished author and come­di­an, busy mom, pod­cast­er, and well-loved per­former, I say, we’ll see about that.

Spe­cial thanks to Bruce Smith of Omnipop Tal­ent Group

Fol­low Laurie

• Web­site — www​.kil​martin​.com
• Twit­ter — @anylaurie16
• Insta­gram — @anylaurie16
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​L​a​u​r​i​e​K​i​l​m​artin
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​l​a​u​r​i​e​k​i​l​m​artin

Lau­rie can be seen and heard:

• Spe­cial
  • New Spe­cial COM­ING SOON!
  • 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad
• Albums
  • Corset
  • 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad
  • 5 Min­utes to Myself 
• Pod­casts (avail­able on Youtube and your favorite pod­cast player)
  • The Jack­ie and Lau­rie Show
• Books
  • Dead Peo­ple Suck
  • Sh*tty Mom