The further away comedian Laurie Kilmartin gets from writing on every season of “Conan” on TBS, the more she realizes Conan O’Brien saved her life.
“I was a single mom of a 3-year-old, and I was thinking of moving back in with my parents when I got the call,” Kilmartin said of starting on “Conan” back in 2010. “Writing on ‘Conan’ was 11 years of my life. It was huge. I learned so much about comedy, writing, how to be part of a group as opposed to a solo act. Also, I laughed a lot! If you watch Conan’s podcast, that’s exactly how he is as a boss too. Always busting balls, riffing. I laughed so much during our meetings.”
An Emmy-nominated and WGA Award-winning writer, Kilmartin teamed up with O’Brien again when he hosted The Oscars earlier this year, and currently she is working on another late night show.
“I just started and I don’t want to jinx it, so I’m keeping mum until they renew my contract,” she said. “Late night contracts are 14 weeks at a time, so I’m on my ‘audition’ contract. This is a network show – ‘Conan’ was on TBS – so I’m marveling at the hugeness of the operation.”
She said she had the same feeling at The Oscars, where they worked with an ABC/Disney budget, which was much more than they ever had working on TBS.
“I pitched an Oscar idea for an ad parody called, ‘Cinema Streams,’ and when I showed up to the taping, it was like a movie set,” she said. “Massive lighting gear, tons of cameras. Also, Martin Scorsese agreed to appear in it. Unreal. So, working for a network is a different scale. And it’s fun to learn a new system, and a new voice. Mostly, I love to write jokes on a deadline, it really gets my brain popping, and this show loves lots of jokes, on lots of deadlines. I’m so happy.”
Although her standup is all about her and the audience – while late night monologue jokes are typically topical – she says that writing on deadline, and editing jokes for TV, is great training, and has made her a better writer overall.
In addition to her work on TV, Kilmartin is also the New York Times Bestselling author of 2012’s “Sh*tty Mom: The Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us,” and 2018’s “Dead People Suck,” which she wrote following the death of her father to lung cancer.
Having live Tweeted jokes from her father’s hospice room during his final days, which led to her 2017 special “45 Jokes About My Dead Dad,” Kilmartin has become known for not shying away from dark humor. And right from the opening of her latest special, “Cis Woke Grief Slut” (now available on Amazon, Apple TV, and YouTube), she goes just as dark, detailing her mother’s death from COVID-19.
“I think I’ve always had an inclination towards dark humor, but it takes a certain amount of stage experience to pull it off,” Kilmartin said. “I prefer to get laughs not ‘ooos.’ Anyone can get an ‘ooo’ on a dark joke. I really strive for a laugh, and that comes from decades of stage time. I’d say, no matter what kind of a comedian you are, your first big death will change you, forever. After a parent dies, you look at your dating material and think, who cares? That experience will pull you to a different place, for sure.”
She doesn’t lean into the darkness just for the shock of it. As someone who has experienced grief, she knows how painful the process is, and feels that humor can play a big part in making it easier.
“I think humor was created so we could deal with death,” she said. “How else are you supposed to accept the death of someone you love? If you don’t joke about it, at some point, you will lose your mind, it’s too terrible! All the comedy about other stuff is just practice, so you can laugh at death one day.”
A working single mom, Kilmartin has been in the thick of it for 18 years now, raising her son alongside her comedy and writing career, and she can’t even describe how hard it’s been.
“I see the careers of male comics and writers who have wives at home, doing all the hard work for them, and I have to turn my brain off or I’ll start screaming,” she said. “I think I’ll have a better sense of things when my son starts college next year, and I’m off the clock. I wonder what I’ll think about when my head is not filled with motherly things.”
Women’s issues and women’s rights have long been a part of Kilmartin’s comedy, and her joke on abortion when appearing on MSNBC following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 led to her “accidentally” going viral when Fox News re-aired the clip and attacked her for it.
“We’re all just data points for these media organizations, all of them,” she said. “MSNBC created that clip and fed it to Fox, they are yin and yang. MSNBC got their clicks, then Fox got its own clicks when Sean Hannity, Lara Trump and the now Attorney General Pam Bondi spent an entire segment trashing me. To paraphrase George Carlin, it’s one big club, and we ain’t in it.”
Not one to push through that partisan divide, Kilmartin said her comedy isn’t so much about bringing differing opinions together as it is about offering a release from it all.
“I don’t know that comedy can cut through a divide,” she said. “I do know that live comedy can make you laugh for a night, forget stuff for a night, and a good belly laugh can lighten the load for a few hours. That’s my offer to you, a couple good belly laughs, and a lightened load.”
Laurie Kilmartin
Dr. Grins Comedy Club,
20 Monroe Ave. NW, Grand Rapids
June 5-7, 8 p.m.
Thursday, 7:15 and 9:45 Friday and Saturday, $11.95-$21.95, 18 and older (9:45 shows 21 and older)
Lauriekilmartin.com, thebob.com/drgrins
