'I have laughed about the death of my dog': Chelsea Peretti uses humour to survive
The actor and comedian joins Q’s Tom Power to discuss her latest project, First Time Female Director
You may know Chelsea Peretti best as Gina Linetti on the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but her comedy career goes back to the '90s when she was doing improv, interning for Lorne Michaels and briefly guest writing for Saturday Night Live.
Peretti has just released her directorial debut, First Time Female Director, which she also wrote, stars in and co-produced with her longtime friend Amy Poehler. The film follows a writer named Sam who steps in as a first-time director to save her play after the previous director gets fired for sleeping with his students. As you can probably guess, Peretti drew on some of her own experiences and observations about Hollywood for the film's source material.
"I used to make short films once a month and do a live comedy show with some friends called Variety Shac in New York," she tells Q's Tom Power in a recent conversation. "I remember one of the gatekeepers of my day saying to us, 'Why do you ladies make these films?' But meanwhile, we were surrounded by male comedians doing similar things, and I don't think anyone ever asked them that."
Peretti wrote the screenplay for First Time Female Director before the pandemic and before reckonings like the #MeToo movement were happening in Hollywood. One thing she was thinking about was the challenge of being in a new leadership role — and how that challenge is often compounded for women in leadership roles.
"I think there is a lot of undermining of female leadership," Peretti says. "Then when you do ascend and become a leader, there's all this extra analysis of what you're doing because you are a woman … Even in a position where there is a female director, I feel like I should be rooting for her even if she sucks or even if I don't like her."
Peretti says that even in the best of circumstances, her film's main character, Sam, wouldn't be very good at her job. "Sometimes life is so messy and it doesn't fall into these clean lines that politics wants it to."
WATCH | Official trailer for First Time Female Director:
Humour as a survival mechanism
As a comedian, finding humour in serious topics is something that comes naturally to Peretti. She says she's not the right person to ask for a political soundbite.
"I have laughed about the death of my dog, who died in a horrific way," she tells Power. "I have laughed about the death of my high school boyfriend, who I was alternately weeping about. So I have 100 per cent leaned on humour and laughter as a survival mechanism through extremely challenging things. So, yes, I do think there are funny things or ironic things about the unearthing of all this abuse of power in Hollywood. Is it also upsetting? Yes, it's very upsetting."
When it comes to cancel culture, Peretti says so many people have been cancelled at this point that it's hard to keep track of everyone. But a lot of times, she says, you'll hear a story about a "difficult woman" in Hollywood and later learn the truth about what's really going on behind the scenes.
"They're not necessarily just a difficult woman in a vacuum," she explains. "They might actually [have been] stalked and abused and threatened, and so there's more to the story sometimes. I think looking at a fuller context of identity and seeing that there are so many different interlocking things — the shortcomings of white feminism being these blinders that we may have to the existence of people who have their own plight that isn't being acknowledged."
The full interview with Chelsea Peretti is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Chelsea Peretti produced by Catherine Stockhausen.
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