Jill Kargman Episode Transcript

Note: Badass Jews is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Aarron Berg [00:00:01] I'm Aaron Berg, I'm many things. A son, a husband, an immigrant, a dad. I'm also a Jew, and I fought every stereotype there is about us. I was a bodybuilder, a male stripper, I worked in the sex trade, I became a stand up comedian, and I realized that to be Jewish is to be bad ass. Join me and celebrate all the bad ass Jews out there and let me tell you there are a ton. Business moguls, game changers, assassins. They come from every walk of life. This is bad ass Jews and I'm your host, Aaron Berg.

Aarron Berg [00:00:45] My guest today is an author, a writer, an actress. She's written a plethora of bestselling books. She created and starred in the hit Bravo series Odd Mom Out. She is an Upper East Side legend. She is a bad ass Jew. She is Jill Kargman. Jill, welcome to Bad Ass Jews.

Jill Kargman [00:01:10] Thank you so much. I absolutely love that intro, I'll take it.

Aarron Berg [00:01:13] I go. I go. There's so much cool shit about Jill and there's so much New York stuff about you. You are this like, not a performance artist necessarily, but an artist of the ilk of anywhere between the 60s and 90s, you're a cornerstone of New York performance. Something like the closest thing of a male parallel you would have would be a Bogosian, but he was too faux artsy. There's something about you that shuns all that bullshit and there's something so real. And the closest parallel we could draw is like she's right up there with the Joan Rivers, you know, she's...

Jill Kargman [00:01:54] Uh I love you!

Aarron Berg [00:01:55] Take no bullshit doesn't care. And and we're gonna get into it because you're a diehard New Yorker. You're married, but you very clearly want to bang Andrew Cuomo. There's no...

Jill Kargman [00:02:05] A hundred percent. I think I would even have permish from the husband.

Aarron Berg [00:02:10] Would that be the one?

Jill Kargman [00:02:13] Well, the one like changes moment to moment. Usually I do like older guy, I never like younger guys I think they're cheesy.

Aarron Berg [00:02:20] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:02:21] I always like older guys, like Jeremy Irons is hot.

Aarron Berg [00:02:25] Okay, and younger guys all have HPV.

Jill Kargman [00:02:28] Yeah. And there's just like that cheese factor that I don't go for. I always have always gone for older guys, all my college professors I was obsessed with. I never bung them I just like them. But yeah it's just not my thing. I also just maybe it's just because I know a lot of them are dumb dumbs.

Aarron Berg [00:02:45] You're doing this incredibly topical character right now on Instagram, which I love. You don't let show business die, it's in your veins. So during the heart of an awful pandemic, you come up with a character. How would you pronounce her name?

Jill Kargman [00:03:00] Dzanielle.

Aarron Berg [00:03:01] Where's the where's the Z? Cause it's not silent when you say it.

Jill Kargman [00:03:03] The Z is right after the D. It's right after the D.

Aarron Berg [00:03:06] Dzanielle.

Jill Kargman [00:03:07] It forces anyone who says the name to instantly be from Great Neck. Dzanielle. Dzanielle is a character who a lot of us know. There is many of them and she's having a hard time during the quar.

Aarron Berg [00:03:22] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:03:22] The funny thing is I've now created a monster because now it's like Teen Wolf where people want me to do Dzanielle all the time and I'm like, wait, but I'm Michael J. Fox.

Aarron Berg [00:03:32] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:03:32] It's a but I do feel like the reason that it kind of came out of me during this weird ass time is that five weeks before Rona hit the States, I was standing in...

Aarron Berg [00:03:46] I love how you shorten everything. The quar, the Rona.

Jill Kargman [00:03:50] We are rocking the quar. Five weeks before the first death in the US I was standing in Anne Frank's bedroom with my children and it's because I was too cheap to go to Turks and Caicos. We were all like trying to last minute, like week after Thanksgiving, scrambling to make a plan for New Year's. And, you know, I'm like Googling St. Bart's and it's a thousand dollars a night. And finally I'm like, you guys, it's kind of like weirdly free to go to Holland right now. And so people said, like, the Dzanielle types, like, where are you going? You know, they're all wheels up to the Bahamas.

Aarron Berg [00:04:25] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:04:26] And everyone just assumes you're traveling. Where are you going? And I said oh we're going to Amsterdam. And they're like, what'd you throw a dart? You know like, what the fuck are you going to Amsterdam for? It's like thirty five degrees and hailing. And I was like, I don't know we haven't been in a while. My kids have never been. So it turned out to be the greatest coincidence because my kids have not bitched once about the quarantine because they were in her three hundred and fifty foot attic where eight people slept and there is no fucking Netflix and Seamless and all that stuff. So they have not complained once. But a lot of people that I've talked to are bitching and moaning and I know they're having a hard time, but I'm like, bitch, like, keep some perspective here. And...

Aarron Berg [00:05:09] So you're saying it'd be a great idea if before this hit we all went to Iraq for maybe eight weeks or something and then came back and realized how, how good we had.

Jill Kargman [00:05:17] Or even even eight hours. I mean, it doesn't take long for you to get in someone's shoes and see what they're suffering through. And yeah, this is hard for people and especially the people who have lost jobs or have worse, who have buried loved ones. But I mean, when you see what people went through in different times and even as you bring up New York, the pandemic of 1918 where there were three waves and people were quarantined and wore masks. You know, Broadway will come back, restaurants will come back, all the things that you love that make New York, New York for you will come back. And I actually think we're going to appreciate them even more and it'll be like fuckin raves. It'll be roaring 20s, people are gonna go shit house. Once the vaccine's everywhere and you can have like a big ass dance party.

Aarron Berg [00:06:03] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:06:03] You know I'm kind of old, I'm a little old for da clubs, but like, I can't wait to go and party somewhere. In fact we, my son's bar mitzvah I had to cancel. It's now gonna be like a Quinceañera basically in two years. But I don't want to have a party and have people like I don't want to get plague from you and feel weird and everyone's wearing masks. I'd rather just delay it and he's going to have like the Zoom-mitzvah.

Aarron Berg [00:06:28] OK.

Jill Kargman [00:06:28] Socially distanced with like instead of the monogram kippot, we're gonna have like monogrammed masks.

Aarron Berg [00:06:35] This is very brave of you. Evan's Bar Mitzvah.

Jill Kargman [00:06:39] Yeah.

Aarron Berg [00:06:39] I don't know if his name is Evan or not.

Jill Kargman [00:06:40] It's Fletch.

Aarron Berg [00:06:41] Fletch is a beautiful name. I gotta talk about your work and then your work is such an essential part of who you are right? You have this great balance in your life. You're a mom, you're a wife. But then prolific in terms of the shit you churn out. At last count, and by the way I'm reading Momzilla right now, I'm on Chapter 13. I tried to read the whole book, but then my wife caught wind of it. So she's like, I want to read it with you. So now I have to wait for her to catch up.

Jill Kargman [00:07:08] Oh, that's so nice! Oh I love that.

Aarron Berg [00:07:10] Yeah. And then you write this book, Momzillas is the one that blows up, right?

Jill Kargman [00:07:17] Yeah.

Aarron Berg [00:07:17] This is the quintessential you, in satirical form, would be Momzilla.

Jill Kargman [00:07:23] You know what? Actually, I've sort of changed my mind. Yes, it used to be. But now that I've been writing essays Momzillas is my like the novel. If I had to pick a novel that was me, it would be that. But I really feel like I was hiding in retrospect behind the character and I feel much more myself in my nonfiction work. I have two essay collections that are memoirs, one is called Sprinkle Glitter on My Grave. And that's kind of about how my family is like the real Addams Family or Munsters, because we're so fucking morbid and my parents towards cemeteries, the way normal people to our colleges.

Aarron Berg [00:08:00] Your family hid in France during the Holocaust, right?

Jill Kargman [00:08:05] Yeah, my mom's side.

Aarron Berg [00:08:05] So there is this backstory, which is...

Jill Kargman [00:08:07] Totally.

Aarron Berg [00:08:08] Ironic that right around the same time you decide to go to Amsterdam to share the beauty that is Anne Frank's attic pre pandemic you've got this history. So this must infiltrate your world, but doesn't necessarily flow over into your work. Your work is not preachy Jewy stuff. It's not Jewy for the sake of Jewy.

Jill Kargman [00:08:31] I mean, I weave a lot of Jewy stuff in. I was amazed how subversive like I got away with a lot with on Mom Out, my show, on Bravo. And they suddenly said in season one like maybe tone down some of the Jewy stuff, but I mean we had an episode about Yom Kippur called Fasting and Furious. And where the Rabbi morphs, they take out the Torah and it morphs into a turkey because I'm so hungry, I'm hallucinating on Yom Kippur and like, I can't believe I got away with that shit. Of course, like, the Hasidic people went totally shit house, but I don't care about them.

Aarron Berg [00:09:05] Yeah, they were they were busy organizing by the dozens in the streets.

Jill Kargman [00:09:11] Yeah. They're they're busy at a two thousand person funeral with no masks during a pandemic.

Aarron Berg [00:09:16] I don't understand, I don't understand.

Jill Kargman [00:09:16] So I don't give a shit.

Aarron Berg [00:09:17] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:09:17] But I felt like they gave me a lot of freedom. I mean, the thing about Bravo is they mostly do reality shows. So to do a scripted comedy with them was like the Wild, Wild West. I had no checks and balances. I got I felt like while nobody was looking I got to make a show for three years. And I put in all this Jewy stuff that that no, it wasn't preachy, but it was definitely like an inside joke for our tribe, which felt really fun and it didn't alienate the Gentiles. So I don't know, I feel like I, I don't know anyone else that would have let me do that, but Bravo is used to putting random people on the air. Whereas I think I was thirty nine at the time. No one else is giving a 39 year old woman a show.

Aarron Berg [00:10:02] So you write the book. The book turns into a TV show. A lot of the times this happens and people are like ah fuck, this isn't the show I wanted to make. But you just said I just felt like I got three years carte blanche making this show. So that was exactly how you wanted that show. And I watched some, and it's a good fucking show.

Jill Kargman [00:10:21] It is but there was.

Aarron Berg [00:10:22] And I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass. It's a good...

Jill Kargman [00:10:25] Thank you.

Aarron Berg [00:10:26] You watch it and you at your first take is like oh this, there's there's hints of Sex in the City, but it doesn't have to go as tawdry. It's more elevated. Sex in the City would be like Mr. Big is so rich la de da. But you had this every day quality to the wealth where it didn't have to be, it was just commonplace. You know what I mean? So it, the show held up and I watched it with Christine and she's my wife and a standup as well, and right away she she just wanted to keep watching more. Because she's a mom, she's married to a Jewish guy, she's a comic. So she goes through all this stuff and to find this notion of balance that you have that you do. I don't know if you feel like you have it all together, but you look like you have it all together.

Jill Kargman [00:11:13] Well, I'll be honest with you, I did not have it all together. How old are your kids?

Aarron Berg [00:11:18] I have one, and she's two and a half. She'll be three in August.

Jill Kargman [00:11:21] OK. I did not have it together with little kids. That that was the hardest time in my life and I didn't have a pandemic going on. Now I do have it together because I have teenagers. You know, they're all old. Like they're everyone's saying, how is your life as a teacher? I said, I'm not a teacher. My kids are on Zoom class and they're teaching themselves. But I don't have the same pressure that you guys have. It was such a hard time in my life and I got through it. And I feel like if your marriage can get through it, you then you'll be together forever. But that was a huge strain on me. And I actually, even though you feel like hashtag blessed and you're always supposed to know how lucky you are, there were times where I would just like, cry in the shower because I was so fucking tired and you just get through it. I was tired for like a decade and now I sleep nine hours a night. Like you, I know you can't imagine it now but I, I mean I woke up at nine something this morning. It's just like you get your life back eventually. But I don't, I didn't have it all together then I really didn't. I would cry and sometimes be like, I'm drowning in my life. I feel like I can't, I'm always spinning a plate and if I stop for one second, they drop on the floor like it just felt overwhelming. And I it's not that I grew out of it, the kids grew out of that, you know, that taxing nonstop pawing and all that. But that's that's more reflected in the show, I think that character is me at twenty eight, not me at forty five.

Aarron Berg [00:12:50] You're ballsy and you don't have balls. It's a cool quality, that I know of. I don't know how you identify, but it's, it's a really cool thing that you work in what traditionally for years was a male dominated business. Not so much anymore. I know a lot, the last movie I did all female leads, all female producers, all female crew. So it's this thing now where there has been a change but you made some ballsy choices. I heard that you were trying to be convinced to do Desperate Housewives and you said no, not once, but at least twice.

Jill Kargman [00:13:34] Oh the Reality, Reality Housewives. Yeah.

Aarron Berg [00:13:36] Yeah, Real Housewives of New York?

Jill Kargman [00:13:40] Well, I you know, I might it's so funny. This woman had emailed me and said we had three casting directors looking for names and you were the only name on all three lists, and we just want to have lunch. That's it, just lunch. And I said with all due respect, I am not that interesting to watch on television. I would never have a camera at my khutor following my family. Like, I'm just not doing that I don't want to waste your time and she's like well it's just...

Aarron Berg [00:14:07] But Jill it's lunch. Why wouldn't you?

Jill Kargman [00:14:10] It's just lunch. And I said, I don't really even eat lunch. Like I have, I eat like tuna salad on my keyboard. I never go out to lunch.

Aarron Berg [00:14:17] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:14:17] So, I mean, even when I do like a few times a year for a friend's birthday, I feel like my whole day is ruined. Like it's all over. You know, I basically write off that day as like useless.

Aarron Berg [00:14:26] Yeah lunch does fuck your day up! That's a very good point.

Jill Kargman [00:14:29] It fucks your day! I always...

Aarron Berg [00:14:29] Fuck lunch.

Jill Kargman [00:14:30] That's what's in Momzillas is the word luncheon is lunch plus eon because it's eons.

Aarron Berg [00:14:36] Lunch fucks your day up. I do brunch.

Jill Kargman [00:14:37] It fucks your day. So yeah. So anyway I knew that I was not cut out to be doing anything reality and I said to Andy Cohen, you know, I'm a writer. Can I please drop off my books? NBC owned Momzillas at the time so I said can't you just, like, reach over and take it from NBC? It's the same parent company. And he's like, that's not exactly how this works. But Lara Spotts, his head of production, developed Odd Mom Out with me and she later became my showrunner. So it was really lucky. I couldn't of really probably sold it at any other channel. They really developed it with me from the ground up. Like, I can't take credit for saying I hatched this whole thing and pitched it everywhere and Bravo bought it. Bravo, like created it with me. So I was really, really, really lucky. But as you were saying with the male dominated world, I think that has changed but I think if you're a forty five year old, it's it's not that easy. I do feel like, not that I've experienced ageism per say, but I've definitely had conversations where I'm told like, well, our mandate is female driven but millennial. Or we're really looking for that parent child buddy comedy or whatever it is. Like everyone always wants a show that's existed in the past and they're looking for their version of it instead of just trying to do something totally new. So I don't know. I feel like the industry has no balls, like the executives have no balls. They always want to kind of copy whatever's hot.

Aarron Berg [00:16:06] The industry is almost dead to a certain extent right, do you believe that? Like, I see it in comedy a lot now where the traditional gatekeepers are falling by the wayside and they're not as important. There's still networks, but there's you you could just as easily be like I'm going to take this Dzanielle show, throw it on YouTube, get advertisers, get my numbers up, and then go go to a network and be like, here's what I'm bringing you yes or no, right? It's not the old tradition like it used to be when it was getting a show made.

Jill Kargman [00:16:36] I think you're right. But I, I don't know if it's my age or just if I'm lazy, but I'm like scared of that whole Youtube. There's something where I feel I've always been, I don't know if it's just women, but I've always felt a little hookery promoting myself for, like, guys tune in like and subscribe and do some. There's something that feels like Schilling like hat in hand about it, like I'm a vaudevillian with like passing a hat. And I, I someone had said like, why don't you really do create something and put it on YouTube. But I just I don't know if I have it in me. It might be part laziness, but there's also somehow deep down this feeling of like prostitution somehow.

Aarron Berg [00:17:18] I felt it before, mostly when I was a male prostitute for a summer. There's this notion that traditionally poetry has to dwell in struggle and poverty and you prove that wrong with your work. You know, the elite do have poetic jazzy speak to them. You know, that line that's stuck out was the cardstock of her wedding invitation was so thick I could slit my wrists with it. This beautiful, macabre privilege, yet simultaneously horror going on. And it's a great thing. And I wonder how much of that comes from your Judaism? Like is there a struggle?

Jill Kargman [00:18:00]  I think a lot of it does.

Aarron Berg [00:18:01] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:18:01] A lot of it does. It's not just that my family, you know, was hiding during the Holocaust because that was my mom's side. My dad's side is equally dark and macabre. And I think my father especially, he was a stand up comedian. He paid his way through Columbia Business School doing standup. And he just always understood the value of a dollar. And I feel like he, we never took anything for granted. And yes, I grew up on the Upper East Side and went to private school, but like we were in a rental and people had like triplex penthouses. So I know we were lucky, but I just I feel like I always had one foot in one foot out. So I was enmeshed in it geographically, but it wasn't at the same level of some of these kids who got like, you know, diamond Sweet Sixteen necklaces and all this stuff. And whenever I would comment, my parents would say, well then what do they have to look forward to, you know? And then I faced the same challenges raising my kids here because I needed to be near my parents to help me raise my kids. They really are hands on grandparents. And when my daughter Ivy was three, she said, Mommy, why are you the only mom at school without red bottoms on your shoes?

Aarron Berg [00:19:12] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:19:13] And I was like, holy fucking shit. Like, that is so scary that she just noticed that. I was also like, wow, you're very observant. But I said, like, I'm just never going to spend a thousand bucks on shoes honey, that's just not my thing. But, you know, it's it's always a challenge. I feel like you have to just keep perspective and that's always what it is. There are some people who are really wealthy who are down to earth and philanthropic and don't put their name on anything and they give anonymously. And then there are people who like, you know, are the showiest. They won't do anything unless they get like credit and feel some kind of self-worth from it. So I don't know, there's a gamut.

Aarron Berg [00:19:49] Did you ever have a time in your life when you were either ashamed or tried to hide your Judaism?

Jill Kargman [00:19:57] Never.

Aarron Berg [00:19:58] Never.

Jill Kargman [00:19:58] I think when you grow up, my husband did. I think when you grow up in New York City it's like cool to be Jewish because, like, all the funny, smart kids are Jewish. My husband's from Boston, it's very Brahman. They have school on Yom Kippur. And my best friend coincidentally in college went to grammar school with my husband. When I first told her I was dating him she started screaming in a diner and she couldn't believe what a small world it was. And both of them would just say that they were sick. The day after, they would call in sick for Yom Kippur because they were the only two Jews in the whole grade.

Aarron Berg [00:20:32] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:20:32] And they just didn't want to make a big deal of it so they just said, I'm sick today. And they both did it. It was it was the culture of Boston in the nineteen seventies. It wasn't that people were like spray painting swastikas, but it wasn't advertised. So they had a very different experience than I did. So no, I've never hid it.

Aarron Berg [00:20:52] I had the same, like I had to go to small town university back in Canada and there were no Jews there. So there was a time when people were like Berg, is that a Jewish name? I'm like I don't think so. And it was because of that that I went so the other way when I grew up. My dad had that, too. I mean, my dad there was a lot of anti-Semitism in small town Canada back in the 50s and 60s. So it's it's amazing both how far we've come, but then you'll also see now when you're like, hey, it's a thing again. You know, people...

Jill Kargman [00:21:23] It is such a thing.

Aarron Berg [00:21:24] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:21:24] And I just hope that my kids you know, there is something where I just want to keep them local. I want them to spread their wings and travel and go to school wherever they want to, but I I don't think they quite get. I think they do, you know, but they have they've never experienced it firsthand the way that my father did. When my dad worked for Procter Gamble in Cincinnati people would yell kike and leave swastika things on his door. You know, so it was it was a challenging time for him. So I think he just always wanted to protect us. But my mother's orthodox. I mean, she's not anymore, but she was raised Orthodox, like sitting upstairs and all that shit. Yeah. So there's kind of like no hiding from it if your mom's ortho.

Aarron Berg [00:22:08] Yeah. Tell me if this is true, because I heard your son Fletch was a victim of anti-Semitism in 2018. Classmate of him said he was happy the Holocaust happened and...

Jill Kargman [00:22:21] He said he said his exact words were, I am a fan of Hitler. God, God, God put God. He said, I'm a fan of Hitler. God sent Hitler down to kill the Jews because you nailed Jesus to the cross.

Aarron Berg [00:22:37] All right, look he makes a lot of good arguments here.

Jill Kargman [00:22:42] I know, nice.

Aarron Berg [00:22:42] So he comes home and tells it, how old is he at this time when this happens?

Jill Kargman [00:22:47] He was eleven and I got to say, I'm a really strong, I have, like, thick, thick crocodile skin. I you can say anything people have told me, like, I look like Marilyn Manson or you're Jew cunt or whatever bullshit I get on Twitter. Nothing bothers me. But when that happened, I started crying and I couldn't stop. Like, I'm not kidding I don't think I've ever cried that hard, including, like, losing loved ones. I couldn't stop crying. And I didn't realize that I had that kind of vulnerability in me until my child was crying from that.

Aarron Berg [00:23:21] Well you feel because you brought your child into the world with your religion or the religion that your family shares and it should be a beautiful thing, right? Is that where you feel the transgression? Or you feel it's because there's people that can be that capable of...

Jill Kargman [00:23:36] That.

Aarron Berg [00:23:36] That level of hatred?

Jill Kargman [00:23:37] Yeah, it's the latter.

Aarron Berg [00:23:39] Yeah

Jill Kargman [00:23:39] I just I don't hate anyone, but I hate haters. And this kid, you know I wrote this essay about it, and I got an outpouring of support from some Gentiles and all obviously all Jews. But I got major blowback from some of the people who said, like, it's just a kid for crying out loud you're like vilifying this child because I call him Rolf in the article...

Aarron Berg [00:24:02] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:24:02] As a pseudonym. I used like the Nazi from Sound of Music. And they're like it's just a kid, kids say shit. Kids don't say shit like that unless they're taught that. And you know there was definitely controversy, there were people who said like it was just a child and I vilified this child and I went too far. And so I wound up leaving the school because they didn't punish him enough. He didn't get suspended or anything he got like basically a slap on the wrist. So I pulled my child out of the school. We're now at a school where that would never even happen and if it did, you'd be like expelled or suspended and the whole school would be spoken to. But at our old school, that same kid said the N-word a year later and then he got expelled. So my question now is like, what's the difference between saying the N-word or saying, you know, that, like, Jews should die because they killed Jesus? I mean, my son was like, I didn't kill Jesus. I didn't do it, you know? So I think there's still a long way to go in terms of having that same, like, collective gasp if someone says something bad about Jews. That if you say...

Aarron Berg [00:25:08] Yeah anti-Semitism does not get the same respect as other hated minorities do we?

Jill Kargman [00:25:12] I think you should be expelled if you say the N-word. But I also think you should get expelled if you think like Jews should be in Auschwitz.

Aarron Berg [00:25:17] If you say Hitler is God's gift to Jews.

Jill Kargman [00:25:21] Yeah.

Aarron Berg [00:25:21] Yeah. So it's clearly this kid. It was it wasn't the school it was this kid and his upbringing.

Jill Kargman [00:25:27] No but it was this kid but the school didn't react until he said the N-word. They didn't expel him. I don't know if the Jew thing was like one strike and then he had the second strike but I feel like if you say the N word in school you're out, and if you say kike you're not.

Aarron Berg [00:25:43] Yeah. It's an odd thing, isn't it?

Jill Kargman [00:25:46] Yeah.

Aarron Berg [00:25:47] And then we don't want to fall into this thing where we're comparing suffering because that's a horrible thing, but it should be like hate is hate.

Jill Kargman [00:25:55] Hate is hate and I think anyone who is racist should be out of the school and anyone who's anti-Semitic should be out of a school or anti anything. I just don't think that there, there should be a zero tolerance policy. I know, ya know kids are kids, but I just I feel like parents have to have a response. They need to raise their kids with a little bit of fear that that there, there could be consequences if their kids parrot that kind of hateful rhetoric in school. And so they teach them to not say that stuff because you'll get in deep shit. Like I mean not, aside from the fact that it's just unkind, I think a lot of people like feel free to say this stuff at home not realizing their kids will repeat it.

Aarron Berg [00:26:33] Yeah. Now, is there any way that an incident like this turns into something funny on a new show that you do? Because you are, and I don't say this to a lot of people, you're fucking funny. And I and I.

Jill Kargman [00:26:51] Thank you.

Aarron Berg [00:26:51] And I, I work with and hang with the best comics in the world, several of whom are women. And I know that there's no delineation, to say women aren't funny is just a stupid thing because it's not true. But you elevate yourself, you're funny. You take your life and turn it into something funny. That's what a real comic does.

Jill Kargman [00:27:12] I don't know about the, I do agree. I love the the Woody Allen line comedy equals tragedy plus time, and I do think there are ways to make unfortunate situations funny. But I do feel like if it's, maybe it's just not enough time. To me it still feels raw because it was only a year and a half ago. But I, for me it still feels like I wouldn't really touch it just because there's probably other ways to hold a funhouse mirror up to haters, particularly when you see, like, these crazy Trump supporters in the state capital with guns.

Aarron Berg [00:27:48] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:27:48] I'm sure half of them have swastika tattoos. I mean there are other, it's like fish in a barrel because these people are so unintelligent, I feel like it's pretty easy to go after them in other ways. But I wouldn't want to rip the scabs off my son's experience or mine.

Aarron Berg [00:28:02] Yeah. You just perfectly led me into my next question by bringing up Woody Allen. And simultaneously I was going to ask, so we know this kid at this school had at least two strikes against him. But do you feel that now we live in a society where we judge people based on their worst action and as such let's bring up Woody Allen as an example. Brilliant, prolific artist. An essential New Yorker. And then, you know, Woody Allen did what Woody Allen did allegedly. Do we take moments like that and negate someone's whole body of work their whole career? We could name Roseanne Barr as well who you know, when a tweet took her down. And political leanings aside, political differences aside, do you feel something like that is justified, that someone's whole body of work, their whole career is gone because of what we deemed the worst moment in their life?

Jill Kargman [00:28:59] I don't. I feel like this has keeps coming up because I was watching, re-watching Hannah and her Sisters recently, and my friend was like, how could you watch that? And to me, I can separate the actual work from the person and not even getting into, you know, his whole story and what happened. I just feel like I'm not going to shake the Etch a Sketch on his body of work that has kind of shaped me. And, you know, if you go into the Metropolitan Museum and you stand in front of a Rubens, I don't know if, you know, people care that he was boning a 14 year old. You know, Rembrandt, that a lot of the artists that are hanging on the walls in your favorite museums led very unseemly lives and often were child molesters.

Aarron Berg [00:29:49] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:29:49] I'm not going to not look at that painting. You know, would I necessarily, like, go to a new movie or or you know, I don't I don't know. But I definitely feel like there's a there is that cancel cancel culture where I sometimes do feel like I'm into it. Where if somebody, after all of the you know, cultural shifts, if you're still doing blackface or you're still doing something, then like fuck off, like...

Aarron Berg [00:30:19] Right.

Jill Kargman [00:30:19] Then you should be canceled.

Aarron Berg [00:30:21] Right.

Jill Kargman [00:30:21] So I do feel like it has to be. I don't know if it's one strike or two strikes or what, but like at this point, you know, for after everything everyone's been through, if Mel Gibson is going on a rant, then like, fuck him, he's dead to me. And actually, in that situation, I mean I'm not I don't know that I'm like such a Mel Gibson fan anyway, but like I don't really want to even rewatch Braveheart cause I just can't get that out of my head.

Aarron Berg [00:30:47] So this makes me think, you've got these great tie-ins because you're so New Yorkey, do you worry about the edginess and the impact your work will have on your kids? Because great lines like how your vagina ended up looking like the Holland Tunnel after the... But do you feel like the kids are going to be edgy? What are your expectations?

Jill Kargman [00:31:09] They're totally used to it. Like, it doesn't pack a punch anymore and they don't, you know, everyone's like, oh, you curse so much. How do you curse with children? I don't curse in front of my children. I mean, now I do because I have three teenagers and so I don't mind if they curse. But when they were babies, I wasn't like come here you little fuck face. They're definitely edgy kids. The funny thing is they don't, their rebellion is rebelling against a rebel. So they are my...

Aarron Berg [00:31:36] That's what I want. That's what I want for my daughter.

Jill Kargman [00:31:38] My two daughters both said, my son maybe would get tattoos I don't know. But my both my daughters said I would never get a tattoo, that's for moms.

Aarron Berg [00:31:47] Nice.

Jill Kargman [00:31:48] Yeah.

Aarron Berg [00:31:49] So the more bad shit I do, than my daughter won't want to do that right?

Jill Kargman [00:31:53] Exactly right.

Aarron Berg [00:31:54] I hypothetically purchased a low THC primarily for the CBD that I would get to help my bone spurs and my mild arthritis on my shoulder, and I were to smoke that, then she would go weed is for dads. That's loser stuff, right?

Jill Kargman [00:32:10] Maybe. I mean, I'm such a control freak so I mean, I don't know. I don't I wasn't like that adventurous with either drugs or like banging the car mechanic while he was fixing my car which my friend did.

Aarron Berg [00:32:25] That sounds like you did it by the way that you...

Jill Kargman [00:32:27] No I, I. Believe me I am so like, I'm not a germophobe, but definitely not hitting all that. But like, I had friends that did while I was, you know, I had like three kids in four years. I had kids, I mean, I got I got married at twenty seven and was pregnant like six months later. So my friends were like dancing on tables at Bungalow Eight and blowing bartenders and going shit house while I was like with a bottle at 3:00 in the morning. I mean it was I was in such a different phase of life, so I kind of lived vicariously through all my friends during that Sex and the City time. You know, I would I was like the boring one. If there was a fifth friend at those brunches who would come for ten minutes and then go back to their kids that was me.

Aarron Berg [00:33:10] You know, and you may not feel this way, but as a bad ass, first of all, where's it come from from you? I know your dad taught you a whole bunch of great lessons. Like when you had an internship he's like you be the first one to get there, you be the last one to leave. So you've got this work ethic, but is there a push inside you that makes you want to be this bad ass person? Or are you just like I'm just trying to crank out as much as I can while I'm here?

Jill Kargman [00:33:39] That's a good question. I don't know. You know I think it's like ambition is, for some people, they're marathoners and I'm more of a sprinter. I'll get like a wave of ambition where I'm super productive and churn out lots of shit and I feel like I want to, it's like clawing its way out of me. And then I have sloth periods where I just don't want to deal. And I, I just feel like kind of a brat that I just don't lift a finger for a couple weeks and, or months. I mean, I when my kids were little, I would have stretches of three months where I just couldn't do anything. I'm not saying all women have placenta brain, but I did. And I just felt like I was losing my shit. I would walk into a room and forget why I walked in there and I just was losing my marbles. And so it comes in waves. I guess there are times where I'll decide to just like kick the door down and do something, and then there are times where I just kind of surrender. And, you know, the coronavirus is, it's pretty it's a pretty uphill battle just because, as I said, we don't have the stimulation of our normal lives. So it's easy to put yourself out to pasture.

Aarron Berg [00:34:47] You know, you're an inspiration to younger people, right? Like, there's this beautiful dichotomy that you have, and I'm not going to guess your age, although you would clearly probably tell me.

Jill Kargman [00:34:57] I'm forty-five.

Aarron Berg [00:34:58] Yeah I know you would tell, that's what I was just gonna say. You're forty five, but you have the verbiage of a twenty two year old.

Jill Kargman [00:35:06] Really? That's so nice. I'll take it.

Aarron Berg [00:35:08] Yeah. Is it? I mean I don't know if it's learned or if it's just because you're so hip because of where you live. That there was this old Lenny Bruce saying like there's nothing sadder than an old hipster, and you're proving that wrong. Like, I can't tell that you're forty five. I would know by your body of work, but talking to you, you talk the exact same as a twenty two, twenty three year old that just started at BuzzFeed would.

Jill Kargman [00:35:33] I mean, I think you'll feel this. You'll see when your daughter's a little older, the generation gap is closing. I mean, I listen to the same music as my kids. I don't you know, I'm not like, turn down that racket. There are certain chasms where, like, I don't get their tik tok dance. I don't get the doing the dance in front of the mirror. I don't get all that shit. But generally, I feel like we want to watch the same things we, my kids feel like my friends. And I'm not that mom, I'm not Amy Poehler in Mean Girls like hey guys, do you need some condoms? Alcohol? You know like I'm not trying to stay young. I'm, in fact, if you have a DeLorean and said, climb in, I'll make you twenty two again I'd say no fucking way, I'm happier at forty five. But I do think having, being a Gen Xer or with GenZ kids does keep you younger. But there are certain things that I just don't envy them. Coming of age on social media and all these girls with their tits out, I just, I wouldn't have wanted to be young now. I think it's way harder than whatever shit we had.

Aarron Berg [00:36:34] How important is it to you that your kids are, quote unquote, Jewish? How important is it to you or is it an issue at all they marry a Jew or is it just like be happy? Because I grew up and it was like, do what you want to do as long as you're happy. We don't care who you marry.

Jill Kargman [00:36:53] Interesting. OK. So we were raised like, you better fucking marry a Jewish person because life is hard and marriage is hard and if you marry a Christian and things get really bad and you get in a big, big ass hairy fight, things come up. Like I guess my dad had a friend who was married to this like, beautiful blonde newscaster, and like shit got really bad one day and she wound up calling him a dirty Jew, and then you can never take it back. Like then your marriage is ruined. So I feel like that was their biggest fear.

Aarron Berg [00:37:28] Again, I just say that's foreplay around my house.

Jill Kargman [00:37:33] Well I, it's funny, I dated exclusively Waspy guys for a long time and I had this gorgeous, gorgeous guy and I thought I was gonna marry him. And we met we went to his parents house and they were so nice, they were trying. I mean, they had a huge cross with like a bloody Jesus on it and they were lovely people. And the wife said tell Jill, they were Midwestern, tell Jill what we did last night. And the dad goes, no, you tell her. She goes no, you tell her. And he goes, no, you tell her. And I'm like, what do you do last night? And she goes, we rented Schindler's List. I was like, OK, like, they're trying.

Aarron Berg [00:38:15] They're trying to educate themselves.

Jill Kargman [00:38:16] Yeah. And then we went out to lunch in New York, they had never been to New York and they came to New York, and we got like a Mesclun Salad and they brought it to her and she's like, well this is just leaves. I can't eat this, it's leaves. It wasn't really religious lines, it was more of just like cultural. I don't know, she never had a salad that wasn't like iceberg lettuce with gloppy ranch.

Aarron Berg [00:38:36] Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:38:36] But I just I saw these differences and I don't know. I kind of felt a coziness when I met Harry, who's Jewish, because there were elements, there's like a ribbon of my soul that is Jewish. I don't know if it's seven percent or ten percent, but there is a ribbon. And then he has the same thing so when you recognize it, it feels cozy. It's like we had a parallel experience somehow. You know I feel like part of me what I say to my kids is, of course I want you to be happy, of course I'm not going to say the things that my parents said to me which made me rebel for a while. But I do feel like I don't want us to die out. I just, it's not about God because I'm actually an atheist. I just don't want us to die out and I love tradition and there's something so beautiful about Judaism and family and the humor and the fact that I can just talk to you, who I've never met, and I feel a familiarity and there's a shorthand. There's something so comforting in this big world about that.

Aarron Berg [00:39:36] Yeah, I agree. There, there is a power, and it's not necessarily religious, it's just a power of togetherness I think that Jews share. There's something, there's something that draws us together. There's so many notions of power in your life. You were offered a job with the CIA because you were multilingual.

Jill Kargman [00:40:00] Yes! How did you know that?

Aarron Berg [00:40:00] Because I work for the CIA.

Jill Kargman [00:40:03] You do your research. Yeah, I was I went to Yale where they do recruiting from the CIA and I was, I graduated in three years and they brought me in for this weird meeting. And I didn't know why I was there, I was like summoned by this dean and they had my file, which I didn't even really know they had files. But they said, you're the seventh person in the history of Yale to take three foreign languages, and we just want to talk to you about what you're doing after school and all that. So I had no idea what it was and I just laughed. And there were like these two dudes and my dean, and then afterwards I was like, I just had the weirdest experience. And they're like, yeah, you're such an idiot. That's like they they do all this recruiting here and they pull the files of people who take two languages but I took three so. I think that for a woman, you have to just like blow Arabs and stuff. I've read I read my Daniel Silva books and there's like plenty...

Aarron Berg [00:41:00] What's on your chin? That's oil. Yeah.

Jill Kargman [00:41:02] Yeah, exactly.

Aarron Berg [00:41:03] So what were the three languages?

Jill Kargman [00:41:06] French, Spanish and Italian.

Aarron Berg [00:41:08] Those seem like horrible CIA language, like it makes it seem way too sexy.

Jill Kargman [00:41:11] They are but, they are but I had, it showed that I had aptitude for learning a new one so they could just like shove me right into Germany or Arabic or whatever. So like I, I don't know, I pick up languages really quickly.

Aarron Berg [00:41:23] Yeah. You hate the president. It's evident in everything we see you do, it's evident in your beliefs. Now, a lot of Jews take this stance where they're like he's our president, his stance on Israel is so strong. And I've talked to my black friends that thought, you know, George W. Bush was this horrible guy in terms of domestic policy for African-American people, but was a huge supporter of Africa. Is there this like, you don't feel torn at all when you go oh this president has this great stance on Israel. But you think it's politicized, right? Explain, and there's so many performers and so many people in show business that are anti Trump, what's what's it like? Does it feel, do you have this genuine hatred? It's not a hatred of the office. It's not a hatred of power. Is it just because you believe the leader of the free world is an idiot?

Jill Kargman [00:42:21] Yes, it's just because I think he's an idiot. I was in Israel last summer with my family and we talked to a lot of liberals and secular Jews in Tel Aviv more than Jerusalem who said, like, he's a fucking idiot. I mean he's good to Israel, but he's obviously activating a base that has a lot of hatred. And why is he so into Israel? It's not just Jewish donors. It's to satisfy these evangelicals who think that it's end of days and that we're all Christ killers anyway. Furthermore, I have two very close gay guy friends on the West Coast who are friendly with Marla Maples. And they, she told them that when Ivanka married Jared she was shocked because for years when she had been with him, he would say horrible things about Jews. It just so happens his daughter married one that was, quote unquote, presentable. He was like tall and went to Harvard and was from a billionaire family and he could somehow stomach that, but that he always said horrible things about Jews. I don't think he's a fan of Jews. And his base is certainly not because he's saying they're very good people while they're in a Nazi march. This is not a guy, I think, who is a tolerant person. I think he's a chronic sexual abuser. We heard his, you know, grab them by the pussy tape. I just think he's a really crass, anti-intellectual person who doesn't read. I don't think he has any empathy. He's never said anything that makes me feel that he's been aching for people who lost someone to the corona virus. I don't feel like we're in safe, capable hands. He doesn't care about the data. So as much as he might be good to Israel, I don't think he's good for America and I certainly don't think he's good for women or any minority. So I'm not really torn at all. I think he's an idiot and I'm voting for Biden.

Aarron Berg [00:44:13] And on the flip side, when you hear somebody be very anti-Israel, do you think that there is a line that can be divided between people that go, hey, I hate Israel, but Jewish people are OK. Do you think that those things need to be hand in hand, or that they can fly solo? Because I'm seeing it with China now, too, where some people will be very outspoken towards the country and the policies of China, but be like, but I love Chinese people. So can those...

Jill Kargman [00:44:46] Yeah I think you that you just have to be careful with the language. The delineation has to be specifically about governmental actions and not the people. And when we were in Israel, I mean, there are plenty of intellectuals in Tel Aviv who are not into Bibi, but they you know, they it's just that you can have dissent and you just can't say like the Jewish people are a monolith. Just as I would hope people around the world wouldn't say that all Americans are like gun toting psychopaths. There it's a diverse world here and there. You just have to be careful with the language. It's one thing to say, I disagree with these policies. And then, you know, it's another to have language that's inflammatory that could be, you know, creating hate and fanning the flames of anti-Semitism that's beyond the government.

Aarron Berg [00:45:40] You've got, and correct me if I'm wrong, right now 12 books out.

Jill Kargman [00:45:44] Yeah.

Aarron Berg [00:45:45] Plus a collection of essays, there's more on the way?

Jill Kargman [00:45:47] No, no those are part of the 12th.

Aarron Berg [00:45:49] OK, but we're going to we're going to be able to read more.

Jill Kargman [00:45:54] Yeah, I don't know. I feel like when I had kids your daughter's age, I felt like I was never alone. All I wanted to do was be alone. So writing books was very therapeutic for me because I could sit and kind of vent into the characters and have this catharsis. And now that they're older and I experienced a writer's room again, which I had done as a younger person at MTV, I really miss the camaraderie of television writing. I gotta say, I much prefer that at this phase in my life. So I don't know that I would really write a book, it's very lonely.

Aarron Berg [00:46:28] We look forward to seeing more work from you and you're absolutely phenomenal. And it's been such a pleasure.

Jill Kargman [00:46:33] Thank you, Aaron. You're the nicest and most supportive and I'm coming to your next stand up once this shit is open.

Aarron Berg [00:46:39] Oh my God, you're going to hate it.

Jill Kargman [00:46:40] No, I am not. I will love it.