Sierra Katow - Funny as Funt

We’ve inter­viewed some very smart comics. We’ve even inter­viewed an Ivy (Le if you’re inter­est­ed in check­ing it out). But our guest Sier­ra Katow checks off anoth­er box in our Com­e­dy Wham Firsts list — Ivy League com­ic. While Har­vard can boast of Conan O’Brien, B.J. Novak, and Jon Vit­ti (trust us, you’re going to want to look that one up) as alums who made sig­nif­i­cant impacts to Amer­i­can com­e­dy, who knew that a young, aspir­ing com­ic from L.A. would seek to fol­low in their foot­steps, even serv­ing on the well-regard­ed Har­vard Lam­poon, an under­grad­u­ate humor mag­a­zine that launched in 1876.

The his­to­ry of the Lam­poon is in and of itself a wor­thy worm­hole to explore, but let’s redi­rect our atten­tion to a young aspir­ing com­ic at the ripe age of 16 ask­ing her par­ents to dri­ve her to her first of many open mics in the sub­urbs of Los Ange­les. Being dot­ing, sup­port­ive par­ents who were used to trans­port­ing Katow to her extra-cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties and flights of fan­cy (think bas­ket­ball for our diminu­tive Katow), they thought noth­ing of her lat­est hob­by, stand up comedy.

You can find videos of Katow per­form­ing standup in those ear­ly years, which is tru­ly adorable under any cir­cum­stance. The fact that Katow keeps these videos post­ed (along with some very long-ago record­ed com­put­er sci­ence tuto­ri­als that require a Har­vard Comp-Sci degree to deci­pher) tell you a grander sto­ry that I want­ed to explore.

The grander sto­ry comes through in her recent appear­ance in the PBS series Roots of Com­e­dy with Jesus Tre­jo. A fourth gen­er­a­tion Chi­nese- and Japan­ese Amer­i­can, Katow is proud of her cul­tur­al back­ground and has a deep appre­ci­a­tion for her roots. When I watched her episode, I was moved to tears about her retelling of the expe­ri­ences of her grand­fa­ther, him­self a com­ic illus­tra­tor. Katow start­ed doo­dling with wild aban­don at an ear­ly age which grad­u­al­ly evolved to writ­ing, and even­tu­al­ly standup.

Her pride in her cul­tur­al back­ground makes her appre­ci­ate the cul­tures of oth­ers as well. At Har­vard, she specif­i­cal­ly sought out a his­to­ry minor because ​“that would edu­cate me a bit on the world”. Aftar all, she posits, ​“I’m from one city, I’m from a sub­urb in Los Ange­les. I don’t know any­thing about any­body, and I had­n’t lived any­where else my whole life.” Katow rec­og­nized the world was a big­ger place, ​“So I think just going to meet a lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple, learn dif­fer­ent points of view and know­ing that if I did want to go into com­e­dy, I did­n’t want to be igno­rant and just be like, mak­ing hor­ri­ble jokes that were gonna, hurt a bunch of peo­ple and be bad for society.”

The edu­ca­tion paid off. Not only was she able to take her new­ly mint­ed com­put­er sci­ence degree into free­lance work to help off­set the ear­ly days of standup income (or lack there­of), she returned to the home she grew up in to keep her expens­es low. But, she was also in L.A: the land of standup, film, and, cru­cial­ly, writing.

It was­n’t long before a writ­ing assis­tant job came her way, fol­lowed by more standup book­ings, fol­lowed by more writ­ing jobs, act­ing, all paced at a tem­po that Katow could live with. Of the most recent years’ uptick in activ­i­ty, Katow pro­fess­es that things are filmed then come out months lat­er and it just appears to all be hit­ting at once, but she’s known about her projects for a while, so she can absorb, and take delight in them. Among her recent projects are a recur­ring act­ing role in HBO Max’s Sex Lives of Col­lege Girls, the afore­men­tioned docuseries Roots of Com­e­dy with Jesus Tre­jo, writ­ing cred­its on the recent­ly released Net­flix series Explod­ing Kit­tens (yes, it’s now an ani­mat­ed series), and the all-impor­tant, debut standup spe­cial, Funt.

Funt is a play on words of one of her favorite roles, the Fun aUNT. And here again, I’m struck by her roots, by her com­ing back to the sub­ject of her fam­i­ly and, her role in the fam­i­ly. The spe­cial kicks off with the dichoto­my of being a Har­vard edu­cat­ed com­put­er sci­en­tist who decid­ed to pur­sue standup com­e­dy, and in under 2 min­utes, makes a shoutout to the sup­port of her par­ents. But, make no mis­take, as she says in the Roots of Com­e­dy with Jesus Tre­jo, ​“I’m not going for the aaaaaw, I’m going for the laughs.” It’s a debut spe­cial that makes you feel like you’re watch­ing a Net­flix spe­cial with it’s rapid pace of laughs and high pro­duc­tion value.

It’s de rigueur for comics to have a pod­cast and nat­u­ral­ly, Katow is no excep­tion. For sev­er­al years, she host­ed Stay Pod­si­tive whose run end­ed in 2022. She’s upped the stakes by launch­ing TV Chef Fan­ta­sy League in March 2024 with fel­low comics Mike Cabel­lon and Ify Nwadi­we. The Max­i­mum Fun net­work pod­cast uses fan­ta­sy sports rules to argue and rank real­i­ty TV chefs.

Katow recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed 10 years as a standup com­ic. Giv­en all that she’s accom­plished in that time, we’re going to be hear­ing and see­ing more of Katow on stage and screen. Lucky for us, we won’t need an Ivy League degree to keep up with her.

Fol­low Sierra

• Web­site — sier​raka​tow​.com
• Link­tree — link​tr​.ee/​s​i​e​r​r​a​katow
• Insta­gram — @sierrakatow
• Tik­Tok — @sierrakatow
• Youtube — youtube​.com/​@​S​i​e​r​r​a​Katow
• Face­book — face​book​.com/​s​i​e​r​r​a​katow
• Twit­ter — @sierrakatow

Sier­ra can be seen and heard:

• Funt — Debut Spe­cial released April 2024 (Ama­zon, Itunes)
• TV Chef Fan­ta­sy League pod­cast — max​i​mum​fun​.org/​t​v​-​c​h​e​f​-​f​a​n​t​a​s​y​-​l​eague
• Stay Pod­si­tive Podcast
• Stars in HBO Max’s Sex Lives of Col­lege Girls
• PBS Roots of Com­e­dy with Jesus Trejo