Amena Brown:
Everybody, welcome back to HER with Amena Brown. I feel like every time I welcome you all back, I'm always excited because I'm just excited to be talking to you all, but I have like additional reasons to be extra excited because there is a guest in our HER living room. Imagine in our HER living room, there is no pandemic, so we can all like sit on the couch together. We don't have to worry about droplets and it's super great. I am excited to welcome comedian and writer and amazing human, Sabrina Jalees is in the HER building. Sabrina, what's up?
Sabrina Jalees:
Oh, my gosh, it's so nice to be in this living room. I love eating these peanut M&M's from the stranger's hand, dropping them in my mouth. Got a couple other strangers knocking on my toes which is honestly, it's a starting with a bang. I might lay down boundaries eventually, but just to be in this non-pandemic space with all of these hot strangers that are attracted to me.
Amena Brown:
We love to see it. I feel like Sabrina has given some extra layers to our living room experience now. You're just rounding out the descriptions.
Sabrina Jalees:
I know. I don't know why I'm so horny right off the top. People sucking on my toes.
Amena Brown:
I was like, "Wow. Yeah."
Sabrina Jalees:
You started it out. You could have been Katie Couric. By the way, catch up, if you haven't caught up on Amena and I's background, we did a gig together where we also hung out with Katie Couric. I know Katie Couric when I see one and you started out very journalistic. I just want to say I moved it into toes and mouth within 30 seconds.
Amena Brown:
Because I actually forgot until I started looking back through my posts from 2020 and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, we were at this same event in February of 2020." That felt like it was two years ago. Even when you brought up the M&M's in the living room and me just thinking, "Wow, the time of being in a green room with a communal bowl of snacks. When is that ..." Sometimes you'd be in the green room and there's not even a spoon for the peanuts or a spoon for the M&M's. They're just out there for fingertips.
Sabrina Jalees:
Oh, my gosh. No. I was working on a sitcom, the year leading ... I guess that's 2019 and early 2020 and the craft services was just like, you grab like chunks of cake with your hand. That's probably not what people should have been doing or what I ever did, full end of story. It was crazy in a way. Anyways, maybe we gave each other COVID. Who knows? I know I don't have antibodies and we don't need to stay ... I feel like COVID is going to be this, when we're let out loose to talk to each other, it's just going to be this pit that you fall in that. If someone mentions COVID, it's just going to be this swirling thing and then the masks came and-
Amena Brown:
We've talked about how my grandma always saved ... I come from Southern country people, right? She always saved the tinfoil. She felt like, "Okay, we use this. We need to rinse this out. We need to fold it and we use it again." As a kid, maybe I'm, "Why would you reuse that? You're supposed to use it and just throw it away. I don't get it." I'm like, "Wow, that's going to be us, like you when outside, "Where's your mask? Nobody in this house owns a mask." I'm like, "What are the things that we're going to be retaining from this period of time? It's wild."
Sabrina Jalees:
What is a tinfoil to this?
Amena Brown:
Also, I have to tell you all-
Sabrina Jalees:
It might be tinfoil.
Amena Brown:
Yes.
Sabrina Jalees:
It might come full circle back around where our thing is going to be like, "We can't go out to the grocery stores to get more tinfoil."
Amena Brown:
That's it. I'm like, "This is going to be a wild time." Sabrina and I met as a part of an event that is no longer, although I cross my fingers and hope it comes back, we used to do an event called Together Live which was cofounded by Jennifer Walsh and Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach. It's like a renegade tour of all these mostly badass women. Well, no, let me say that differently. All of the women were badass. It wasn't all women, but it was mostly women, but all the women were badass. [crosstalk 00:04:46] women were badass.
Sabrina Jalees:
I was going to say, I was like, "What is your gossip?"
Amena Brown:
But Sabrina and I didn't actually get to do the tour together, but Jennifer Walsh put together a crew of a few of us for Makers Conference which was in LA in 2020 and I have to say that was the fanciest hotel room that I probably have ever stayed in in my whole entire life. I think I actually still have video of recording inside of the room. That's how fancy I felt. I was like, "This is happening."
Sabrina Jalees:
I'm loving nice hotel.
Amena Brown:
"I'm going places." Sabrina and I met there and we all, the cadre of us, opened Makers last year. We were putting all our standup poetry songs. It was like each of us went, but we were all on stage together all the time which was the vibe of Together Live. Sabrina, I'm glad that we did that before everything just closed up and went real wild because then I got to meet you and actually see you doing standup live which was dope.
Sabrina Jalees:
Thank you so much. I also treasure that memory. The taste of performing live, it truly is ... You were saying when we were gearing up to do this that you're going to be so extra when we get to perform again. I think that's like, you know? Yeah, Together Live was so great and it was ... Can we say that we're recording this the day after The Capitol was stormed by the [crosstalk 00:06:18]?
Amena Brown:
Yeah, we should talk about that. It's important. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Sabrina Jalees:
I remember just going to cities with Together Live like Arkansas or ... Is Arkansas a city or state?
Amena Brown:
It is.
Sabrina Jalees:
I didn't grow up in America. Is it a state?
Amena Brown:
It is a state.
Sabrina Jalees:
Did I catch myself?
Amena Brown:
I feel-
Sabrina Jalees:
Oh, no.
Amena Brown:
I feel like a lot of these cities could have similar vibe. All, Arkansas [crosstalk 00:06:46]-
Sabrina Jalees:
I am a green card holder and I haven't taken the test of knowing and I've also traveled to all these places, but you know what? Geography is not my forte.
Amena Brown:
Same.
Sabrina Jalees:
What is my forte? Joining Together Live, stepping on a stage with all different people, different walks of life, people in the great city of Arkansas, in the audience, but just connecting with each other. It actually doesn't strip away the names of the places that we live in and just it's all feelings and that show, that tour was so special for that. I think it seems like that chicken soup that could heal The Capitol stormers' soul, but who knows those people seem. They're wearing a lot of fur and a lot of masks and a lot. There's a lot going on.
Amena Brown:
It's wild times here, you all. I was telling Sabrina that yesterday was a massive day for various reasons. We found out that Georgia went blue. Both of the Democratic senators, Warnock and Ossoff, won their seats. I spent the earlier half of the day like, "Yes, thank you to my home state for being 0.000001 less racist. Thank you. Yes. Okay." Then two hours later, I actually ran an errand and came home and I turned on the news like, "What is going on? What?" Life is wild, you all. As Sabrina and I are recording, I feel like a lot of us are still recovering from even seeing that. I can't even imagine being there.
Sabrina Jalees:
Although plotlines in our lives, it's just it is truly, truly so many ... There's the pandemic plotline to that we had seen some people outside that got a false positive from a quick test.
Amena Brown:
Whoa.
Sabrina Jalees:
The day before yesterday, so yesterday started with me getting my COVID test back saying we're negative and then Georgia and then The Capitol. It really feels like we're in an Aaron Sorkin, fucking Jordan Peele, fucking add all the brilliant drama twists and turns and that's what we're up to here, but then we keep on talking and connecting.
Amena Brown:
Here we are. That's the plus of podcasting. I'm so happy about that. You all, this will not be the last time you will get to hear from a woman of color comedian on this podcast because I love talking to comedians and-
Sabrina Jalees:
Imagine it was. Imagine it was. It's like, "That bitch just wouldn't shut up about The Capitol. We're trying to talk about comedy and she's talking about this. Yeah, we get it. They were fur."
Amena Brown:
There's a lot of layers to what makes comedy. There's a lot of layers to that and some of it is real like crazy things like this that happen. We have to get in all the layers of that. We got to get in all the layers of that. I want to start with, if you can think about, what was the first time you knew that you could be funny?
Sabrina Jalees:
I feel like being funny and humor and getting laughs has just been a part of my language with the world. It would be like remembering my first word because my first word was so funny. Is that an obnoxious answer? I don't care.
Amena Brown:
I'm here for it.
Sabrina Jalees:
I'm in control. I'm the captain. I grew up with a big Pakistani family. My dad was the eldest of eight and his whole family immigrated to America. First stop was North America. First stop was our basement in Canada, in Toronto. I grew up with this huge audience really and I think, as we were just talking about the state of the world and comedy, it really is some of the deepest laughs. Maybe the deepest laughs are this burst of tension, building tension and then smashing it open. That's what starting comedy was like for me for sure because it was shortly after 9/11, I was 16 years old and I lived my whole life being pretty just like not interested in talking about the fact that I was Pakistani because it was Apu is out there and that's the only representation.
Sabrina Jalees:
That was Indian too. Pakistani is even nerdier. They're not drinking. They're the terrorists, but then it was after 9/11 when it was so bold that in the news and the way people spoke and people just talking about Pakistan and terrorism and it being synonymous. It felt so tense for me that starting to do standup was this pop of that tension, like starting to talk about and then that one thing led to another. It's like talking about joking, owning the joke of you thinking that my father is a terrorist and you're the silly one for thinking that and having a mustache, I had a mustache at like 12 years old, it was like this huge secret for me that I like went to electrolysis every week and then writing jokes about it was like so empowering. It turned these things that were embarrassing things into empowering things. I did not actually technically answer your question.
Amena Brown:
You did.
Sabrina Jalees:
I ran all around the gym. I tried all the different machines. You said, "Do a lunge," and I've been on the elliptical. I've been on that peloton.
Amena Brown:
Got on that rower. You got to get that arm working there. Let me ask a follow-up question ...
Sabrina Jalees:
I got on that rower.
Amena Brown:
... because I'm curious about this and I'm always interested in talking about the comedic process because even though I'm not a comedian, as a poet, a lot of the process of how standup comics do standup informed a lot of how I learned how to do a set of work. I think there are some ways where the spoken word open mic scene can be paralleled to what comedians described to me, it is like going to do standup, that you're there in front of this crowd.
Sabrina Jalees:
I've gone to poetry open mics because those are the places you could get some stage time and also get bigger laughs because they're not expecting standup, but I actually used to write poems before writing standup. I had a book of poetry and my mom and dad, after I started writing some and they encouraged me, they would give me $1 per poem and that's when the quality of the poetry went way down. The book turned into a comedy book after that because it was just like, "$1 a poem? Well, I've got a clue. It's on my shoe, bobbidi-bibbidi-wobbidi-boo." That's a lesson on incentivizing your kids, but not letting them gouge you. I do think they're very similar. It's within a joke. The tension and then the popping the tension process would be set up in punch line and for poetry, is there a way to describe the rhythm or it's still like you are setting things up to rhyme them and to connect, you're setting up ideas to connect them.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, I think it's totally the same.
Sabrina Jalees:
Basically, I am a poet and you're a standup.
Amena Brown:
I needed this. I needed this validation right here.
Sabrina Jalees:
In the movie of us, Freaky Friday where we switch and I am poet, Amena and you are standup, Sabrina, which great names together, that movie is probably just a montage of us doing great at both things. You think it's going to be like, "How are they going to do it?" and then it's like, "No, they're good."
Amena Brown:
"Everything's going to be great, yes," because I feel like my experience as a spoken word poet, why it feels similar to me, but I'm going to ask you about it too because I want to hear your thoughts on it, I feel like when you do spoken word poetry in an open mic setting where people are used to hearing poems, it's like your poems going to live or die on that stage. You're going to know that day. If it's like new stuff, you've never done it, you're going to know that day if it's working, or if it's not working. That feedback was so valuable, even when it hurt my feelings. It was so valuable to be like, "Okay, this thing I wrote in my room does work. Oh, okay. I thought this was brilliant," and apparently it's not.
Amena Brown:
What's that process like for you in the open mic setting? I hear comedians talking about bombing and the lessons you learn from bombing. What does that process do to your comedy, getting to try it out in front of those crowds?
Sabrina Jalees:
Well, it's invaluable just like it's the exact same process as you're talking about and I'm realizing it's fascinating that it really is about whether you're doing it in the form of a poem or in the form of a joke, you are putting out an idea in an attempt to connect with the audience. I was, in my mind thinking, "Well, how do you know as a poet that it's connecting," of course, the same way I know, even in the setup, when I'm talking about something, I can see people either connecting with what I'm saying or there's a disconnect or the idea is junk.
Sabrina Jalees:
The attempt is to keep on, I think, trying to get to the connection as fast as possible, unless that's a device you're using in your poem or your thing to lose the audience, but generally getting people in and staying real and connected to it because that's the balance and I feel like that's just a metaphor for everything in life, that balance between being in control and having an idea of where it is that you're going and what it is that you're saying. That is the sharpening.
Sabrina Jalees:
That's what you're doing when you're going in the mic is sharpening and sharpening and sharpening the thing, so that you know, "Okay, now this is a guarantee. I know how to achieve this connection and I know how to take people where I want to take them," but, but, but, but that fucking lesson, other side, shadow side, you get into that control seat, you're there. You're saying those words exactly the way you said them at the other show, but you forgot to actually be there with yourself in it and be there. You went on autopilot, and oopsy-daisy, that's a shitty way to fall off the cliff. Have I ever done it? Twice in my life. Just kidding.
Amena Brown:
I would never do that.
Sabrina Jalees:
I'm constantly ...
Amena Brown:
Never.
Sabrina Jalees:
... bopping back and forth. I would never fail.
Amena Brown:
Do you remember your first open mic?
Sabrina Jalees:
It's almost better. I found with stand up ... My first bomb?
Amena Brown:
I do want to get to the bomb, but I wanted to ask you first, do you remember your first open mic? Do you remember what it was that made you go, "I'm going to get up here"? Because it's one thing ... I definitely have my dad's side of the family, probably some of my mom's side too, but my dad's side of the family, I think is where my comedic brain comes from. I remember sitting in some of those family rooms and being like, "People are getting a laugh out here," and like that being different from you being like, "And I'm going to go in front of the room full of strangers and I'm going to try these funny things." Do you remember that moment for you?
Sabrina Jalees:
Yeah, I did my first open mic in January 2013. I was inspired to do it because my friends and I realized going to see standup was pretty much, I think it was cheaper actually than going to see a movie. It was this adult thing that we could do that we were going to a club. We were sitting down. We sat down in the front row, so they would make fun of us. It was like, "Well, fuck movies. Let's just be here." We would go to these shows and I remember the first show I left feeling like I could do this and there was someone handing out flyers and there was an ad for an open mic night. I was like, "Well, I was performing and stuff at school during assemblies and stuff like that," pretty much some form of standup and not really knowing it.
Sabrina Jalees:
I thought, "It's so much lower stakes to go to this club full of drunk adults and try my stuff out rather than stepping out on stage and then I bomb and like I'm seeing everyone in the halls in the high school." People talk about starting to do something young with this bravery, audacity, but it makes its practical sense that it's lower stakes to try something in front of strangers than stepping up at school. That first time that I did stand up, the owner of the club, it was at Yuk Yuk's and the owner of the club was stopping by to get some mail when I was on stage. It had been really this pent up ...
Sabrina Jalees:
I was this 16-year-old kid with braces and half a mustache and the world had kicked my identity in a way. The world had been kicking in that direction and it was like my get up and pushback and it felt triumphant. I'm sure it was clunky as hell, but it was my first time was that that achieved that connection. The crowd I'm sure saw a young person that was ... Then there's just something about me being this brown chick talking about Islam in this brash way post-9/11 that I got a lot of attention really quickly. That's all we're looking for. It's all we're logging out to these Zooms for is a little bit of attenzione.
Sabrina Jalees:
I got that real nice dose and then second time, invited my mom to come see...
Amena Brown:
Wait.
Sabrina Jalees:
... and just bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bombed.
Amena Brown:
You invited your momma. Wow.
Sabrina Jalees:
Well, I had to because I had to get into this bar. I needed her to let me in. It wasn't as sweet. I also invited this guy, Scott, that I had had a crush on, but you know how crushes go when you're like a lesbian, but you don't know it and then you're the high school president? You're like, "I want to be high school president. I want to go on a date with Scott." Anyway, it didn't happen. I invited him to the show. I just completely ... It was the epitome of walking into autopilot. I'd memorized basically the script of what I'd done the first time and lost my place and just blanked and then just went down that rabbit hole of like, "Oh, my gosh, what if I never remember? Oh, my gosh, I'm just standing here. He's looking at me. She's looking at me. They're looking at me. What am I ..."
Sabrina Jalees:
The first time I got offstage, in my mind, I was like, "I think I could probably have an HBO special by the end of the year," and then the second time was just that that like true standup rite of passage, kick in the teeth, "You have no teeth. Go home, you toothless lady."
Amena Brown:
Even though as a poetry performer, I've had the moments where I guess it would have been the equivalent of bombing. The part that I haven't experienced that comedians know so well though is I was "bombing" in a room where people weren't expecting to laugh. I feel like that makes the stakes higher because to your point, if I'm there as a poet and my little thing I tried and didn't go, it's like, "Oh, man, it didn't go," but they don't know what to expect really. They're like, "It could be depressing. It could be a breakup poem. It could be a poem about leaves. We don't know." They're just they're seeing, but when you're there in front of an audience that's like, "I paid this money. I bought these drinks because I came here to laugh." The pressure is on the person on stage to be funny. That feels like the stakes are higher to me than what I would have experienced as a poet.
Sabrina Jalees:
I think to me, I feel like this is also something that I've matured into feeling about all of it is all that we can do is bring ourselves and that pressure of how much someone paid to get into the show, it's like they did. They came for the experience, "If you're going to see me on a day where I'm shining, the risk is also that you're going to see me on a day where I'm polishing and the risk when I'm polishing is you're going to see me on a day where I have no teeth. Then that's going to be the experience for you. You're going to watch my 15-minute special on Netflix where I killed, then you're going to turn to your weird-looking boyfriend because why didn't you enjoy me the first time," I'm really going there with this person, "and you're going to say, 'I saw that bitch bombed.'"
Sabrina Jalees:
Then also the other thing is the real maturity of it, on the other side of that, is the more you do something, the more prepared you are for it. In the preparation with standup which I'm sure it's also similar with poetry, you are prepared to share the polished stuff. You're there. It's a system. For me, at least, you're sandwiching in some guaranteed laughs and you're taking some risks. I would think it's probably for an average person, it's like a job interview. What are you going to go? You're going to go in there just like not thinking about it at all before you go in? No, you're going to think, "There's going to be some questions I know they're going to ask me or that I can lead to. I've got those stories down. I know how to connect on those stories, and everything else, I got to trust that I'm in a good enough headspace to just like wing it."
Sabrina Jalees:
I think the thing with stand up and maybe it's similar with poetry, it really is about the honesty as a way of connect ... I really think an honest connection. It's really about an honest connection. I don't think there is a way to bomb-bomb if you are truly sharing, I don't know, maybe there is. I don't want to encourage people. You know what? It's a pandemic. Don't go out there. Don't go out there about open mics with your disconnected shit. No, I feel like if you're ... Even if you are a disconnected person or you're antisocial or whatever, you're not a man of the people, if you shared something, one thing that was true and then reflected on it, you'd probably have a pretty good joke.
Sabrina Jalees:
I think that's what inspired me to start was this little bit of the Islamophobia and probably also just being a fucking a girl in hoop earrings and a tube top in my brother's jeans being like, "What is the bottom part of my body look right and the top part feel like I'm a drag queen?" I think that another recipe for comedy sauce is going to be some strife and some fish out of the water, some feeling like, "Why am I the only one not normal here?"
Amena Brown:
That's powerful. That's powerful to think of that why because then it's like, if I come to stage with that as a performer, almost every human being can identify with that feeling. Almost everybody has felt that way in some way.
Sabrina Jalees:
The irony too, to talk about what makes you feel like you don't belong, being the thing that actually is the key to belonging.
Amena Brown:
I didn't know it was going to get this deep, Sabrina. I didn't know it was going to go this deep.
Sabrina Jalees:
Me neither.
Amena Brown:
That touched my soul in a place. Let me ask you about this. What is the role that writing plays in your comedic process? I know that every comedian is different, everybody has a different way. Are you a person that is putting some things in a note app or in a notepad somewhere as they come to you? Is writing a part of comedy for you as it relates to standup? Then I do want to talk about how that transition for you in a part of your career as a comedian includes standup but also for you that includes comedy writing. When you're doing standup, is writing a part of that? Do you find yourself writing down the bits, the jokes? How does that problem work for you?
Sabrina Jalees:
Yeah, I think each joke is born differently. Sometimes, I would think of a fully fleshed out joke and other times I could just think of an idea. Generally speaking, though, it's some kind of idea. It's some thought or story that feels special. It feels like it could be a seed. Then you take the seed and you work it out on stage. Now as I'm saying, it was like so sad when I just naturally move. I used to when I made standup comedy, but it is, it's just-
Amena Brown:
It was four times.
Sabrina Jalees:
Actually, this is a perfect time to say I'm so grateful that I started to write for TV because I realized I really am just someone who's drawn to sharing and connecting. The more I realized at 16 that standup could be this vessel for sharing and connecting and the power, to be honest, of being the one up there, being able to lead the discourse. Then when I wrote my first spec scripts and then got agents and then they sent it out and I got my first writing job on a sitcom in LA, it felt similar to when I had first stepped on stage. I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, there's snacks here. What we write, they've got to build a fucking set for. Actors are going to put makeup on their face and then say these lines and then that is going to make this crowd laugh and then that is all going to be taped and shipped out all over the world." That became this other rush of, "Holy shit, this is another vessel."
Sabrina Jalees:
I'm now writing two pilots. One is a CBS pilot. The other one is an ABC pilot. It's like spicy-dicey pirate water in the network seas. The grounded realness is like, "Will those become shows?" Chances are probably not, but to be able to grow those seeds and write those scripts, what an amazing thing. What an amazing cool thing that that's my job. I really am grateful that I have TV writing because it's another way that I can express in this moment where standup is not really ... I'm not really drawn to Zoom standup. I've seen people do great things. I've also seen a lot of ... I've never had straight sex, but I imagine it's like wearing so many condoms based on the standup that I've seen. Wearing a thick, thick condom.
Amena Brown:
I noticed that you-
Sabrina Jalees:
You really have to connect on what's honest for you and what's honest for me in that moment was straight sex. I was like, "If I go to straight sex with condoms, the world is my oyster, baby."
Amena Brown:
I really appreciate the potency of the metaphors here, this conversation. That's really what I need.
Sabrina Jalees:
Oh, yeah, it's going to be. It's going to be a barnburner. That is a metaphor, right?
Amena Brown:
Same. It is.
Sabrina Jalees:
I just realized though that I didn't answer your question yet again. I did the row machine. Now I'm remembering the way you asked me was, "Do you write standup comedy?" Oh, yeah, I did answer that. I said sometimes, and then mostly, you're writing down the idea. For me personally, I like to improvise on stage a little bit, talk it out or basically talk it out with myself before I get on stage, then get on stage and realize the surprising areas where you are connecting along the way. That's the interesting and cool thing, is like you think you know where you're going and then you get on stage and it becomes like surfing. To me, that's the most fun. That's the thing that I missed, that moment. That's the real connection where you're informing each other. The crowd and you are moving together and it's pretty much feels like straight sex, no condom.
Amena Brown:
Oh, gosh, I'm never going to forget that metaphor. I like it. It's just going to be like ... As soon as you said, "With all the condoms," I was like, "Yo, that's mm-mm (negative). No." I was telling someone in a meeting today, I was just saying how, as a writer, I can just be stuck in my head a lot of the times. Stage is one of the few places of my life that I'm not. I don't know, it's like I get up there. If I'm in a good space inside myself, it's like I just get up there and start talking to people and I forget to be self-conscious or I forget to be stuck in my head about it which then take some of the things I thought might be funny. Then, I tried them out on stage there and was like, "Hey, I just said that thing that I didn't mean to say and that was actually funnier than the thing I had written down I was going to say."
Sabrina Jalees:
That just shows you how thirsty people are for something real. It's like the moment that you say the thing and then they're a part of the moment that you know that you said the thing and then they know their part, they're writing it with you. I remember that ... That's why we would sit in the front row at the standup show. We wanted to be a part of it.
Amena Brown:
Now when you told me that, I was like, "Sabrina."
Sabrina Jalees:
Then I would grow up to despise that kind of person, not actually. We weren't yelling at them. We were just waiting for them, to be like, "Hey, Spice Girls fans," and we're like, "We do like Spice Girls." "What are you the Spice Girl groupie squad?" "Oh, he's talking to us." I vividly remember the first show I went to, one of the comics, she kept on fiddling with her eye and she looked over ... No, she didn't look over. She was commenting on how her mascara or whatever was bothering her. As she walked offstage, she looked at me and she goes, "Hey, kid, never wear liquid liner on stage," and kept on walking. I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I'll never wear liquid liner on stage." Just feeling like, "She talked to me," a nudge to ... You look back.
Sabrina Jalees:
I think my hesitancy is I do know there is a balance with how much you can lean into science. Some people see a stop sign and be like, "Oh, my gosh, I just quit smoking yesterday." It's like you can see a sign and a lot of things, but was that a sign, Amena?
Amena Brown:
I'm going to go with yes.
Sabrina Jalees:
I'll tell you one thing. My little run there about signs completely disconnected me on this podcast and that's how you do it, folks. That's how you do it. That's how you do it.
Amena Brown:
When you were like, "My friends and I decided to sit in the front row of a comedy show," I don't have it in me, Sabrina. Whenever I go to comedy shows, I'm always like, "I got to be on that three, four rows back." Whenever I'm watching comedians talk to the people in the front row, sometimes it's like, "Oh, you guys together?" and it's like a little friendly banter, a little bit and sometimes it gets a little like, "Are they going to make those people break up?" [crosstalk 00:36:55] It's like, "Those people are not going to be together when the show is over."
Sabrina Jalees:
That's definitely some people's styles. I did have a fantasy when you said, "I don't sit in the front row." I was like, "But I bet your poetry self," when describing not being self-conscious. The fantasy that I had would be that you were sitting in the front row, someone tried to make a wise joke about you and then you stood up and you're like, "You are roasted by my poetry."
Amena Brown:
This is my dream. You know what? I'm glad you brought this up because I need to start making a list of things that I'm going to do when it's safe to go to live shows again. I think that needs to be in my top five experiences that I'm going to go and sit in the front. When the comedian tries to come for me, I'm going to be like, "You're not just about to get heckled. You're about to get poemed now. Now, look what's about to happen to you. Yeah, so I'm going to put that on my list of things to do because it's going to be wild out here." Sabrina and I were actually talking about this before we started recording. We were talking about, "What are we going to do when we can actually be back in front of an audience?"
Amena Brown:
I'm like, "I'm somewhere between I'm going to be crying and trying to hug everyone that came to the show and also trying to find," Sabrina had to give me the name for this comedian. I was like, "Who's the comedian with the watermelons and he like breaks open the watermelons, and people have to wear the plastic?" and I'm like, "I need to find whatever my thing is. I'm going to cut up a bunch of peaches and just start throwing crazy things at people. I don't know. I'm going to be so like, 'Everyone's here in person without a mask. Oh, gosh, it's going to be amazing.'"
Sabrina Jalees:
This is how thirsty you are to perform that you've been imagining different fruits to chop up on stage.
Amena Brown:
Yes. That is the level of thirst that we have reached.
Sabrina Jalees:
Honestly, I would love ... You sold me at cutting up peaches. If there was someone cutting up slices of peaches on stage and handing them out, I'd be at that [inaudible 00:39:12].
Amena Brown:
Who doesn't love a peach really? I don't know those people. Maybe some people don't. Maybe some of you all listening, you all don't, but listen, you need to work on it. Peaches are very lovable. You need to get involved.
Sabrina Jalees:
I'm both like thinking it's a great idea and then also thinking, just imagine like lugging the peaches to the show and washing them.
Amena Brown:
Do you wash them? Maybe you don't. Maybe you just take your risk out there.
Sabrina Jalees:
Maybe you don't. Maybe everyone's vaccinated.
Amena Brown:
Talk to me about this because I'm curious about this. When you went into doing comedy writing for TV and maybe you've had various experiences, but is it more like solo writing like you're giving us something and you write it alone or is it more like you're writing with other people and was that an adjustment coming from standup where you're writing both for one, you're writing by yourself, but you're also writing for yourself, you're writing things for yourself to say? What has been your experience now being a comedy writer for TV?
Sabrina Jalees:
Well, my first job was definitely a culture shock where it's like, "Okay, everybody's wearing their shoes all day long." I definitely look back on that job and I should send just a reply all to the whole staff being like, "I'm sorry that my feet were truly naked on the table. I was just Eliza Doolittle and no one was not making me the Pygmalion." Is the Pygmalion the one that she's bad and has bad accent? We can't go down that. We do not have enough time. I am just getting word from producers, we need to back away from the Pygmalion. We're approaching a lawsuit with the playwright of that book.
Amena Brown:
It's tricky. It can be tricky.
Sabrina Jalees:
George Bernard Shaw actually was the playwright of the Pygmalion. If you get that right, tweet in for a chance to win a chat with me about the Pygmalion.
Amena Brown:
And sliced peaches as soon as we can.
Sabrina Jalees:
I was needed to be tamed in that space a little bit because it's buttoned up. My friend Jak Knight wrote on Big Mouth and he said that writing on a show is like playing polo and doing standup is like playing basketball. Specifically in network TV, but also you're working with a lot of people and so there is a bit of admin on who you are and if you are someone who goes on tangents, which is not me, but some people might be prone to lose themselves in a sentence and all of a sudden be on another exercise equipment when you've been asked to lunch. It's a little bit that practice. It's volleyball. You're bobbing sentences around and people are talking and there's a hierarchy for sure. There's the showrunner. There's executive producers. There's producers. Then it goes all the way down.
Sabrina Jalees:
Then when you enter that room, you're a low level, but then you're in your head, so everything feels so high pressure, so learning but similar to standup or to being onstage, it's again that balance of having calculated things but also being willing to participate and then knowing how far or not far to go with it. The way that it start when you write on our staff on a show, you sit in a room or a Zoom room now in the present day, but with a bunch of people and the showrunner guides you through the things that you need to do to envision the characters and then the episodes. It always starts with the characters though.
Sabrina Jalees:
You start with breaking the characters and then you start thinking about the situations you would want to see them in. If it's something like Search Party that's very serialized, you're thinking about the arc that you want to see those characters go on, ideally no matter what you are seeing the characters go on a journey throughout the season. It's basically just the showrunner guiding a roomful of people through the world of a show and then starting to break episodes. See, I have this board here.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Sabrina Jalees:
That was a whole new language that I learned. One, final draft is a program that you need to understand, and then two, breaking stories, there's an art and a math to it. That was the uphill battle for me in my first show. Now just like with standup, it's like you know where all the tools are and you know where you're going with stuff. Now with those two pilots, I'm writing them on my own which is challenging because the natural way that you elevate things is to come together with a group and hammer away at it as a group and I really like that for TV writing, especially talking it out. It's so important to talk it out. That's the thing like the open mic, talking out the beats of what the story is that you're telling out loud, always calls you to a higher level of honesty because you can get flowery in a document and then once you start saying things out loud.
Sabrina Jalees:
I find myself, right before we started talking, I got notes back and a script. I was playing with it and I found myself walking around here and talking it out, talking like the characters and stuff. My neighbors think I've fallen off the deep end in the backhouse, just yammering in different characters' voices, but I'm addressing those notes. Just while we're here on this tangent of notes, do you get notes in your life?
Amena Brown:
Like notes from other people?
Sabrina Jalees:
Yeah. As I'm talking to you about this right now, I feel like no, right? It's you. it's your world. It's just that-
Amena Brown:
No, it's just me. I will tell you, I did, for me, my first big photo and video shoot for this project I was working on with Olay. I realized at that shoot, I was working with a director. I did realize ...
Sabrina Jalees:
So that's news.
Amena Brown:
... "I've never directed or I'm self-directed," if anything, but I'm never being directed by someone where like we did a take and then she would come back and go, "Okay, for this next take, can you try to give me this kind of emotion? Because I want to get that out of you in this light." She would explain to me the things and it worked really well together. I enjoyed it, but I was also like, "Whoa, that was odd and good." It felt odd, but felt good. It felt good to be sharpened in that regard because really the only entity I've had giving me notes was really the audience. It was to be like, "Okay, well, that didn't work. Let me tell that it didn't work. Okay, we're going to try this story again. The order you did that, that doesn't work." The audience was my only notes.
Amena Brown:
To be in this other setting where there's no audience, there's just the camera to play to and the directors there and also I think in a way this element of trusting your work with someone else to give you notes, that was a humbling thing for me that she wasn't giving me notes to say, "You're not a professional. You're not what we need here. Now I'm having to give you notes to just help you." It wasn't coming from that place. It was coming from like, "Oh, yeah, I see it coming out of you. Give me more of this next time." Her being able to articulate that to me in a way that I could go, "I can do that," it was wonderful. It was wonderful to get notes. Sometimes, I'm sure I get notes and I'd be like, "You don't know what you're talking about because I'm brilliant. You don't need to tell me."
Sabrina Jalees:
I'm realizing that it's not going to be a likable thing that I say or maybe I don't know. Who fucking cares? You know what? Who cares what it is? I don't like notes. I hate it. I hate getting notes. It means every single time whoever is giving me notes, it means I'm going to have to fucking work more. It means they didn't get it. I think talking to you right now, I'm realizing similar to your experience like we were marinated in a very insular cycle of expression. It's us with the audience, but it's our work. When you are sharpening something and you're so used to sharpening it on your own, there is an element with notes ... I love to build things with people and to go down streams that people are pointing out. I love the collaboration of TV writing, but the notes process, even when it comes back to the team, it's always just like, "Well, why don't you try harder to get it? Why don't you just read page three again?"
Sabrina Jalees:
That response, part of it can and should be natural because part of it is holding on to pieces of the expression that are necessary and the reason why you got on stage to begin with to tell the story, metaphorically speaking, and the other part of it is just a human ego lazy aspect of my mind that is like, "Well, I wanted to play with my fucking kid today instead of addressing the voiceover on page eight, okay? Maybe the actor will sell it better than you did when you read it in your head. Imagine. Imagine."
Amena Brown:
Please. Please.
Sabrina Jalees:
I am really practicing expressing to people that give me notes the opposite of that, which maybe I should marry the two people. Certainly, people that have been on notes calls with me would be shocked to hear this truth.
Amena Brown:
I think what I'm wanting to get, if I'm in a situation ... I have done some client work. It's different from stuff I write for stage, but I have done client work where we had to do that back and forth and get all the ... I guess that's a thing I get notes on in my life too, but I really feel like what I want from that experience, what my artists ego wants from that is I want to go into the meeting and give them the thing that I've written. I want them to look at it and be like, "Wow, no changes. No changes."
Sabrina Jalees:
Exactly. Exactly.
Amena Brown:
"You nailed it. Wow."
Sabrina Jalees:
I could not even imagine any part of this that could be different.
Amena Brown:
Then I can be like, "Wow, thank you," goes to get ice cream. Instead, I'm in a meeting and you're like, "Well, this really didn't hit the theme and the way we were hoping he was going to hit the theme. Maybe the rhythm here is a little." I think that's where I start turning into a monster is if I'm working with someone, and they start getting into the mechanics of poems. Then I get really like, "Oh, I'm sorry. Are you telling me about how things should rhyme?" Then I have to have that talk with myself to be like, "Yeah, no, great. Okay, I took note of all those things. I'll do that. Sure."
Sabrina Jalees:
"I'll for sure talk to the mechanic. All right."
Amena Brown:
"To get that oil changed."
Sabrina Jalees:
"Good luck with your shampoo. Anyway good luck with your shampoo."
Amena Brown:
"On that paragraph."
Sabrina Jalees:
"That shampoo that's too close to Olay, something completely different. Good luck with these frozen peas. I hope."
Amena Brown:
"I hope it goes well. Thank you."
Sabrina Jalees:
"I hope you move a lot of frozen peas this month."
Amena Brown:
Sabrina, tell the people who are listening right now what are shows they can stream that you have written or are writing on. People are streaming right now. They need to add to their list.
Sabrina Jalees:
If you are streaming, I want you to first start out on Netflix. Type in, my name is Sabrina Jalees, J-A-L-E-E-S, The Comedy Lineup. I think I'm episode six maybe and I'm wearing a cute little black onesie. That's where you're going to get a little taste. That's who Sabrina is. Then you're going to go, as a homework assignment, and this is for the master's, I actually will send you a JPEG of your Sabrina Jalees master's if you complete this, you're going to go check out season, I forget which season of Big Mouth I wrote on. The one that just came out. It's the one that just came out, the brand new season of Big Mouth. It starts out at summer camp. It's an Emmy-winning show. Go check it out.
Sabrina Jalees:
Then you're going to go to HBO Max. You're going to watch Search Party. You're going to see me on episode eight of season three because I did write that episode and I wrote on that season. Then I don't know. After that, you got to look up episodes of my podcast, The Goodie Goodie. You got a lot of ... To be honest, I'm overwhelmed for you. This is a lot and it's a lot of pressure that your family's got a lot of pressure on you and your mom's always calling, wishing that you'd called more and it's like, "I can't. I don't have anything else to say to you. I'll call you when I have something to say to you," is what you should tell your mom. Just kidding. You got to call her every day if she's a nice mom. Write to me, let me know what mom you have and I'll tell you how many days a week to call her and then also follow me on Instagram.
Sabrina Jalees:
That was simply how you answer the question, "What shows have you written on that I can watch on streaming platforms?" That's how you ... You take simply an inch on a podcast and you simply drive a mile. Will it get cut? Surely, but not from Amena's ears and it is a tough economy out there and it was worth it for me to have Amena hear it.
Amena Brown:
I enjoyed every moment of that. I enjoyed that there was a progression of like, "This is the place you begin, and after you've done this thing, you watch this, then you move on to that. Then you move on to that." The way you spun that thing, I'm in there. I'm in there.
Sabrina Jalees:
I love you.
Amena Brown:
I'm in there, Sabrina.
Sabrina Jalees:
I love you and I should have sliced in some peaches in there too, "Have a little peach, have a little bath."
Amena Brown:
There is still time. There is still time.
Sabrina Jalees:
Pour an entire bottle of wine into a small fish tank, pour yourself a bath and that's when you're going to want to pull up the archives and watch the kid's show that I hosted called In Real Life. It went for three seasons. Amazing Race, but for kids. Canadian production company, so we did insane things that, in America, you would sue people for doing with kids. They were feeding crocodiles, wrestling crocodiles, riding bulls. What were we doing with those kids and where was I on the gender spectrum? I was wearing skirts. I was wearing sports, dangly necklace, earring tiaras, but sometimes military pants and a tank top in real life. Searchable on YouTube.
Amena Brown:
I'm going to tell you the part of that that took me out the most was the score. I think just that work was there, as soon as I heard the score, that's really what took me to a new place, I have to say. I want to close our conversation with this question. I have to give a shout out to comedian Vanessa Fraction for inspiring this question. Many years ago went by and by, my husband and I hosted a show, a live show and we had to book comedians and poets and singers to be a part of it. I booked Vanessa Fraction, but I'm anal retentive about people being in the place they're supposed to be. I was like, "Okay, you're going to be on at 9:30. Please show up at 8:00, so I just know you're there and you're going to be there," and all that.
Amena Brown:
She wrote back to me and she said, "Hey, sis, I'm not going on until 9:30. Can I just come at 9:00? Sitting around is bad for the funny." Ever since she said it to me, I have never forgotten that. Of course after that, I'd go to some other shows and again, with the, "Have to get there early, to get there so early." I'm like, "It's 5:00 and I don't go on until 10:00. Now I got what? Five hours. This is not good for the funny."
Sabrina Jalees:
"Lose my funny."
Amena Brown:
"What am I doing?" I want to ask every woman of color comedian that I talk to, what is good for the funny? In your life, in your process, what's the stuff that is good for the funny?
Sabrina Jalees:
Well, off of Vanessa Fraction's thinking, it is true that its momentum is important. There's something about people say standup comedy in New York is the best town for it or London. It's because there's so much opportunity to be onstage, so it's practice, but I think there's also something to that momentum of going from one place to the next place. Not only that, it's fresh in your mind, but the energy that you pick up. Energy is all of it, especially since like we said at the beginning, it's like the currency is connection. If you come in with that energy of already having connected or reacting to whatever the last show was, there's something really, I think, electric about that.
Sabrina Jalees:
What's good for the funny is tension, like we said, pointing out a place that everybody's seen, but nobody's really talking about like that dirty corner. Also, for me, right now, I am thinking about these people on Capitol Hill. If I was doing a set tonight, there's something about being connected to the moment together, all of us in it together and right after something like that, having your take or your feelings and also having those feelings be connected to the despair that we feel where it's like, "Where is the bottom here?" I guess that would be categorized as tension, but just reaching around. To me, a great standup set feels like I see you, you being the crowd, and we just walk and talk together.
Sabrina Jalees:
It's like that movement of like, "This is what we're talking about and we have each other's backs and we're all here." This is obviously cut to a standup comic smashing a glass over a lady's head in the front row. It's like not everybody's style.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Sabrina Jalees:
"How long have you been together for? You both look unhappy."
Amena Brown:
"How old are you?" That's what it sounds like.
Sabrina Jalees:
What's good for the funny is connection. That was 19 different answers. Something for everyone. Something to connect with.
Amena Brown:
Listen, if you follow all 19 of those answers and you do the progressive Sabrina Jalees experience, the progressive stream, I feel like that could be close to a PhD honestly, a Sabrina Jalees PhD. You do both of those things.
Sabrina Jalees:
Honestly, you'd have a six pack for sure. You'd have a full six pack. You would be meditating like you always said. You'd be that version of yourself before the pandemic, just the hopeful version. That's who you would be if you did all that. Then you'd write me on Instagram. You DM me and say, "Tell me about those vitamins you've been selling that help your mind go good." I want to add a 20th actually, a 20th thing is honesty. I think I already hit it when we were talking about other stuff, but honesty I think is really good for the funny.
Amena Brown:
I love that too. I think it's true. You can't be lying. Well, I guess you could lie and try to be funny.
Sabrina Jalees:
I think that in the cycle of practicing it, in the cycle of polishing jokes, people can start missing what the point is of what they were trying to say and to begin with. You could see comics starting with a premise and you're like, "Do you even believe that? This joke is built on a wacky surprise," the understanding that set up in punches, this misdirect, and then woo, crazy things happening, but I think honesty will get you there more consistently on better ground.
Amena Brown:
I think that's right. I think that's right because I think there is something about, even the honesty of how you as a performer come into that moment of stage. I think you talked about that earlier too which I thought was so powerful, but I think that is a part of it. It's like how I have entered that moment if I'm fully in my skin, if I'm actually their president, I think that's a part of the honesty too. I think that's it. That was a good 20th thing. If you all do all those things, you can get your Sabrina Jalees degrees. You're going to get that, okay?
Sabrina Jalees:
That's what people are looking for in the job market.
Amena Brown:
I hope you all laughed as much as I laughed during that conversation with Sabrina. I'm so glad that she was a guest in our HER living room and she was having even more of an experience than just like the hummus and little chocolate bars we normally have in here. You can get more of Sabrina Jalees' funny on her Instagram @sabrinajalees and her website sabrinajalees.com. You can find out about all of this and more links to the different things we talked about in our conversation in the show notes on amenabrown.com/herwithamena. I hope you're following me already, but if you're not, let's be Twitter and IG friends. You can follow me @amenabee, B-E-E.
Amena Brown:
For this week's Give HER a Crown, I want to shout out singer, songwriter, Kim Hill and a big thank you to Black Twitter for making me aware of her. Kim Hill is one of the original members of The Black Eyed Peas and she shared her story of being almost famous and leaving The Black Eyed Peas in a New York Times documentary a couple of years ago. Recently, Kim had to speak on her time with The Black Eyed Peas again, as she experienced something that far too many Black women experience being erased from history. I was inspired by her story, by her choice to navigate the music industry differently out of respect for herself and in order to raise her son well.
Amena Brown:
Thank you to Kim Hill. I wanted to lift up your name and your story because you sharing your story reminded me that Black women have choices that we can choose what is best for us even in the face of working in industries that do not have concern for our wellbeing. We can choose health, we can choose peace and we can choose our joy. Kim Hill, Give HER a Crown. HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.