Natasha Leggero
When Natasha Leggero answered the phone — “Hey, this is Natasha!” — I almost started laughing. On Another Period, the Comedy Central show she created with co-star Riki Lindhome, Leggero plays a spoiled, fame-hungry narcissist living lavishly in early-20th-century Newport, R.I. And while the show features some of the funniest names in modern comedy — Michael Ian Black, David Wain, Beth Dover and Brian Huskey among them — Leggero’s performance is especially delightful.
With a pseudo-sophisticated rich-girl voice — think a younger, meaner Mrs. Howell — Leggero expertly delivers deadpan one-liners. After two seasons of watching her shallowly attempt to get rich and famous in the early 1900s, I’m basically programmed to laugh the instant I hear her speak. Thankfully, I held it together long enough to chat with her about the Gilded Age, the history of rich people evading taxes, Donald Trump and abortion — you know, just normal topics for 2017.
With as many projects as you have going on, I was surprised that stand-up is still something you’re able to make time for. Is that important to you, to keep doing stand-up and testing out new material?
Yeah, it is really important, and it’s important to always have new material, ’cause you do get sick of your jokes. You get asked to do it a lot, and if you don’t have new material, you start to feel bad about yourself. So you really can try stuff and riff a little bit more with the crowd. It’s four long sets by yourself — you won’t really get that kind of stage time in L.A.
Do you ever take stand-up material that does well and put it into a script for Another Period?
Well, Another Period and stand-up are written very differently. ... We have like 13 main characters and an amazing writer’s room and history to draw from. So much of our stuff is coming from history.
And you probably can’t fit in your latest Trump jokes. Although the rich-family thing works in very well.
It’s funny you say that — it’s interesting how history just sort of repeats itself. In the Gilded Age, the reason why people were living how they were 100 years ago in America is because they weren’t paying taxes. And the rich people were allowing themselves to get so rich, and the poor people were living like 20 people to a bedroom in New York. People have now, 100 years later, figured out a way to not pay taxes legally. We’re kind of in the same zone. The gulf is getting bigger and bigger between the rich and the poor. And actually, this year in Another Period, Frederick — played by Jason Ritter — is going to become president. And as you know, he is the stupidest character we have. There are some similarities there as well.
Was that something you were planning to do before Trump was elected?
No, we were actually almost done with the entire season, and in fact, we had story lines based on the first woman president and what that would mean. Because obviously we were all just so sure that Hillary Clinton was gonna become the president. When Donald Trump got in office, it was just a week of everyone crying and being depressed, and then we all pulled ourselves out of it and started rewriting some things. Is [Tennessee] a red state?
Tennessee is a red state, but Nashville is like a little blue dot in the middle of the big red ocean.
It is? Well that’s good. I can get an abortion if I need to?
You can. You don’t have to drive three states over. Not yet anyway.
I don’t like to travel to cities that don’t have a museum of modern art or the ability to get an abortion.
We have a pretty good art museum, too. We have the Parthenon replica. We have a Planned Parenthood. It’s very exciting down here.
The Parthenon is pretty cool. I mean, it’s kind of hilarious.
Are you a history buff?
I never really was into history, but I also think it’s weird to get 13-year-olds into history. Now I’m totally interested in history. It’s definitely inspiring to me now. If you ever get a chance to go to a place like Newport, R.I., it’s really one of a kind. There’s no other place in the country where you can see how these people lived. The mansions are still standing. Basically, the Gilded Age is the time from 1900 to 1912, before they introduced income tax. People were living like rappers — they were so over-the-top. They had 30 indoor servants, 45 outdoor servants. They would have a bathtub with a nozzle for saltwater from the ocean, because they live right on the ocean, and a nozzle for regular water. ... Then when they introduced income tax, people couldn’t live like that anymore. A lot of these places got demolished. Some of these [mansions] survived in Newport, and they’re still preserved by the preservation society there. You get to walk through these tours and listen to those eccentric lives of these families. It’s really fascinating.
That sounds like something like you see in the pictures of Trump now, standing in his all-gold penthouse.
It is very relative to Trump too. Downton Abbey was what was happening in England — those people came from generations of royalty. It was a whole class thing. Whereas in America, our Gilded Age, our version of what was happening during the Downton Abbey time with the rich people, these are people whose parents would be, like, fur trappers. They’re really new money and scrappy. It’s a totally different world than it was in England. The more I learn about that time period, I’m so fascinated, because no one really talks about it. Everyone talks about the ’20s; all the TV shows are about the ’20s. People like the hairstyles and the guns and the alcohol. There are so many shows done about that time period, where the time 20 years before is fascinating to me.
I love that it’s a comedy, too, instead of a period drama. To spin that time period as a comedy, and have this satirical element.
Well, it’s not that hard of a stretch. Even if you watch Downton Abbey, the mother goes to bed, and while she’s talking just lifts up her arms and someone comes and puts a robe on her. That’s not normal! It’s very easy to make that stuff funny.
When you get done filming, do you ever get home and are still in that mode, expecting everybody to wait on you hand and foot?
[Laughs] I’m usually pretty happy to get out of the corset.
