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[0:00] Alan Seales: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales. That's me, Alan. And your guest today is an absolute powerhouse in comedy, music, and activism. She's a trailblazer who shattered barriers as the first openly gay comic on TV, paving the way for people like Ellen DeGeneres and so many others. She was the unforgettable Big Boo in Orange Is the New Black and has been on the Broadway stage many times in roles like POTUS, The Rocky Horror Show. Did I mention she's also an incredible jazz singer? Seriously. So there's a lot we get into that I'm sure you didn't know about Lea. So in this episode, she opens up about her fearless journey from groundbreaking comedy to her love of jazz and theater and creating spaces for the queer community and the arts.

And we talk about how her rage sometimes will just fuel her creativity. She'll go on stage sometimes and do a stand-up set without anything planned. She just talks about whatever is on her mind. And being who she is, it comes across incredibly hilarious. So whether you're listening now to just figure out what the hell she's going to say next, or her trailblazing story, or just to hear some good old-fashioned inspiration, I know you're going to love this episode. But before we dive in, make sure to follow me on social media. Check out my Patreon for the video version of this episode if you aren't already watching on Spotify. And everyone, now please enjoy this episode with Lea DeLaria. Here you go. One, two, three.

[1:30] Alan Seales: This episode's guest is a multiple award-winning comedian, actress, and jazz singer. And she was the first openly gay comic to appear on a late-night talk show, making her debut on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1993, and may be best known as her role as Carrie Big Boo Black on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, a performance that earned her critical acclaim and multiple SAG awards. Her Broadway credits include roles in the 1998 production of On the Town, The Rocky Horror Show, 2022's POTUS, and even played Mama Morton in a national tour of Chicago. Additional TV and film credits include The Blacklist, Shameless, Broad City, Cars 3, First Wives Club. It goes on and on and on. We don't have enough time.

We don't have enough time. She's a jazz singer. She's released albums. She's an LGBTQ+ rights activist. She's a trailblazer, I'm summarizing. Now she's got this new series called Brunch Is Gay, a limited series of performances now happening at 54 Below. Okay, let's start talking. Lea DeLaria, welcome to The Theatre Podcast.

[2:26] Lea DeLaria: Thank you so very much. You've done a lot of shit. I get tired when people do that. People at podcasts and various television shows and et cetera, if we're talking, they start to go down my list and I'm like, stop. I'm feeling really tired right now.

[2:43] Alan Seales: Well, you want to talk about the Liberty winning the WNBA title?

[2:49] Lea DeLaria: Fuck yeah. Is that what we're going to talk about?

[2:54] Alan Seales: Yeah, let's start with WNBA. Hell to the yes on that.

[2:58] Lea DeLaria: So I know you are a fan. I'm a Liberty fan. I had season tickets when they were at Madison Square Garden when they first came out. When you could get season tickets for like 300 bucks. Yes, women's sports and inequities. But the WNBA as well as the Women's Tennis Association are doing a lot to change that and I want 100% back that.

[3:21] Alan Seales: That's cool.

[3:22] Lea DeLaria: Yeah. Unfortunately, my job that we discussed takes up a lot of time. I didn't get to see a fucking single game this year, only on television. I couldn't get to the stadium. Then when the Yankees were playing and they were playing and the Mets were playing, I have a local sports bar and all the games were happening at the same time. So we're all in the Fort Tryon pub and just screaming. I'm screaming at them. Unfortunately, the Liberty lost that one. The Yankees won and the Mets won. So you're looking at different corners.

[4:00] Alan Seales: Two-thirds of me was happy.

[4:01] Lea DeLaria: Looking at different corners of the bar and having different emotions conflicting simultaneously. And screaming.

[4:05] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[4:06] Lea DeLaria: And screaming like a maniac.

[4:07] Alan Seales: Oh, I love Fort Tryon. Actually, I used to live in Washington Heights when I knew Nathan Bennett. That was my jam.

[4:13] Lea DeLaria: Yeah. I routinely go up to the cloisters and just walk around.

[4:18] Alan Seales: It's pretty.

[4:19] Lea DeLaria: I know it sounds odd, but there's a little goth in me and I do enjoy it. Last time I was up there, I saw Ron Perlman walking around, random of all people.

[4:29] Alan Seales: That's hilarious. I did a television show with Ron.

[4:32] Lea DeLaria: Did you?

[4:33] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reprisal. It's on Lulu.

[4:36] Lea DeLaria: Well, maybe he's up there still. Who knows?

[4:38] Alan Seales: I play a really interesting character. By night, she's the queen of the burlesque.

[4:44] Lea DeLaria: Yeah.

[4:44] Alan Seales: So I'm a girl. And I wish I could just put pictures of me up as a girl. You would just die.

[4:50] Lea DeLaria: Send them over. I'll throw them in.

[4:52] Alan Seales: Kind of based on the girl behind me, Divine.

[4:54] Lea DeLaria: Divine.

[4:56] Alan Seales: By night, I look like me. I look like me, and I talk like me, and I wore suits, and I drove a rat rod and killed people.

[5:08] Lea DeLaria: I got to beat someone to death with a frying pan. Most fun I've ever had on set.

[5:12] Alan Seales: Is that a rubber frying pan? I've always wondered.

[5:14] Lea DeLaria: It's a rubber frying pan, and you're actually hitting a pillow or something that isn't a human.

[5:21] Alan Seales: I hope.

[5:21] Lea DeLaria: And right next to that is a guy who squirts blood on you.

[5:26] Alan Seales: That's the blood squirting guy?

[5:29] Lea DeLaria: I'm like, every time I whack, blood would splatter across my face or across my body or something. Again, I have a great video of me covered in blood saying that I just stopped my period. That I put on Instagram.

[5:45] Lea DeLaria: Years ago, they were talking like two decades ago, I did something where I got shot, and this was a very low budget indie thing, and it was a brand new special effects guy. And he had rigged up this thing where he was supposed to like take a bicycle pump and just get this big giant pump and this gush of blood squirt out. And there was one shot to do it, and because, I don't know, he just didn't build two. And he did this, and it went like, it just like dribbled down my chest. And it was the biggest, like, it was the biggest letdown, but.

[6:17] Alan Seales: Yeah, I'm sorry about that.

[6:18] Lea DeLaria: And that's why my career never took off as an actor.

[6:21] Alan Seales: That's exactly right.

[6:22] Lea DeLaria: I never actually have been shot, but I've shot many, many, many a human.

[6:29] Alan Seales: You have, you have.

[6:30] Lea DeLaria: Well, before we get to, well, I guess, let's get to how you got on film, because we back it all up. We talked about '93, you're doing stand-up on Arsenio, but that didn't just happen.

[6:40] Lea DeLaria: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We have to go back to '82.

[6:44] Alan Seales: Let's go to '82.

[6:44] Lea DeLaria: When I started as a stand-up comic in San Francisco in 1982, they were doing this show called Gay Comedy Open Mic. Now, in the '80s, San Francisco was just the heyday of, it's the place where stand-up comics lived and worked. I mean, thanks mostly to Robin Williams at the time. And there was a style of comedy that's associated with San Francisco that I kind of call comedy without a net. When you come and see me, I don't meticulously write material like other comics. I just walk out on stage and start talking about what's, you know, bothering me. If I have a really great one that I say, you know, I try to take a note and remember it, but mostly I'm very off the cuff. So, they were doing this open mic for gay comics.

And I have tried it at regular open mics and wasn't really able to deal with a lot of talking. It was dealing with a lot of halfling from the audience because I was an obvious lesbian. And it was fine because nobody scares me. I'm not afraid of anybody. In fact, I'm one of the few comics now that nobody says nothing to me on stage because they're terrified of me. Without that, they didn't know who I was. And they would say something and I'd be like, is that all you got? Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And just rip their face off. But that wasn't really what I was looking for. So, I heard of this thing. I went to it. And to say that there weren't a lot of comics, there were some dykes with acoustic guitars.

I think that's the title of this episode. There was dykes with acoustic guitars. It's a no brainer title for any film. Oh, my favorite. There was a mime. I was like, why did a mime show up at a place where people wear t-shirts that say silence equals death? So, I'm like, I went to it. I went, yeah, I'm going to try this year. So, I went out the next week. And you're going to die. It was on April 20th. I kid you not. It was 420. And that was the first time I really walked out on stage as a stand-up comic. And I walked out. You're supposed to do, they wouldn't let you do more than five minutes. I was on for like 20 minutes. They wouldn't take me off the stage.

[9:10] Alan Seales: Wow.

[9:10] Lea DeLaria: The audience was just screaming. I killed. And I talked to my peers, like the comics that are like my age and have been known since the early '90s, like me. And they all like, that's a fucking lie. There's no way. And I went, I fucking killed. I mean, people don't generally kill the first time they go on. They usually walk hard. So, but I think it had a lot to do with the fact that it was kind of an audience that was already geared to like me. It was a queer audience for queer comics. And also because I was very outrageous and saying things that people had been thinking, but nobody would say them out loud.

[9:49] Alan Seales: Right.

[9:50] Lea DeLaria: So, that's always been kind of what I do anyway. So, yeah, I went, I just killed. That was, like I said, April 20, 1982. And by September of that year, I quit my job and started supporting myself solely as this openly gay stand-up comic performing all over San Francisco and California and, you know, the surrounding areas.

[10:17] Alan Seales: Wow.

[10:18] Lea DeLaria: My day job was a construction worker, by the way.

[10:20] Alan Seales: I was about to ask.

[10:22] Lea DeLaria: Construction.

[10:23] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[10:25] Lea DeLaria: Of course. I'm not even going to comment on that.

[10:28] Alan Seales: The jokes are on themselves.

[10:28] Lea DeLaria: You don't have to. I think this comments. What was your specialty?

[10:34] Lea DeLaria: I used to like, I used to renovate old Victorians. And I remember one time we were doing one in the Haight-Ashbury and at the end of work, I was like, hey, Mods is just around the corner. I'm going to go. And I like thought I was God. I walked in covered in construction dirt with a tool belt over my shoulder, took my tool belt down on the bar. I was like, my hard hats over here. I thought I was God's fucking gift to women. I thought I was God's gift.

[11:06] Alan Seales: You still are.

[11:10] Lea DeLaria: You still are. That's amazing.

[11:11] Alan Seales: My fiance might disagree with you.

[11:14] Lea DeLaria: You know, yeah, I'm sure she'll say she's a lot of fucking work.

[11:20] Alan Seales: Well, so then back up even farther then, because I know that jazz runs in your family and you are a jazz singer.

[11:27] Lea DeLaria: Okay, so it all comes together. So I did that. I started doing that. And during the course of doing that in the beginning, I realized that my comedy is very loud, very vulgar, very in your face, like boom, boom, boom, boom. And a lot of raw language, just screaming. I mean, my head was shaved. I had a bald head. I wore a Bundeswehr T-shirt, big stomping boots. You know, I called myself the fucking dyke. I didn't even perform as Lea DeLaria for about a year and a half. They would just go, please welcome to stage that fucking dyke and out I'd come. And after a time, people would be like, tires you out to laugh that often, that hard, that long. So I started incorporating jazz into my set, right?

I would have live musicians and I would do whatever stand up I was doing and then I would sing. And it would lull the audience into sort of a false sense of security. And then I just start screaming, fucking dyke and cunt at them again. But that's, so that's what happened. And it worked so well that I've never changed that format. I have never changed that format. The only thing that has changed is as after my first Broadway show, when people realized what a singer I was, I started adding more music. It used to be, I would say 60% comedy, 70% comedy, 30% music. Now it's probably 60% music, 60% to 70% music, 30% to 40% comedy. Even right now when there's so much I suspect is on your mind?

[13:13] Alan Seales: I talk about it and then I sing. Like I said, it's a format that has never failed me. So only that, and I'll be very honest. I just did my brunch show on Sunday with Isaac Mizrahi. And we talked about secession, which was kind of fun. We might as well just, you know, secede from the union. Let's take California, New York, Illinois, you know, the Northeast. And we'll, you know, that can be America. And then the rest of it can be Jesus land or whatever they want to fucking call it. Because, yeah, I just think that, you know, we're the ones that make all the money. That all those states live off the taxes that we fucking pay. And now they're trying to take away my rights. So rather than, you know, scream and yell, fuck it. Let's just all meet in Times Square with an automatic weapon and secede from the union.

[14:19] Lea DeLaria: Yeah, so yeah, there's a lot of rage going on, and the rage is the comedy, so that comes out. But there's also a lot of pain, a lot of pain. There are people out there who are hurting badly, and music soothes their soul. That's just the way I feel about music. Music is my first love. I love doing all of it, don't get me wrong, but music is what I fell in love with. Music is how I fell in love with performing, and I think music really goes deep into people's soul and helps them heal. I agree, because music, you can kind of open the door or climb in through the window with music, and then when you're in there, you make them laugh and cheer them up. Isaac and I did the happy duet, Barbara Streisand, Judy Garland, with me being Judy and him doing the Barbara part, and it really, really touched people.

And then at the end of the show, I always do two duets with my guests, one in the middle of the show, one at the end of the show, the guest does a couple solos, that's the way it works. And then me talking, me and the guest talking. Isaac and I are just hilarious on stage together. But then we did the duet from Blizzard Buddies, and it's all stuff, and people died, people were screaming with laughter. It was just perfect. That's the sort of thing that I think people really needed on Sunday. I mean, I was in South Florida performing on Saturday night, I was in Fort Lauderdale, and I had to fly directly and hit that stage on Sunday on five hours sleep and a lot of rage. So it was a really fun show. People really enjoyed that show.

[16:10] Alan Seales: Yeah, I can imagine. Don't go anywhere, we'll be right back after this break. Welcome back to the episode. So is Isaac always your guest or do you rotate through?

[16:17] Lea DeLaria: Oh no, no. So what happens at our brunch shows is that I do a, they're interesting, I do a different show every month with a different guest, different music, and a lot of times we're singing things we've never sung before. Isaac had never done Blizzard Buddies, I have, but he had never done it. And he was like, so you're going to be the Arthur part, and I'm going to be the Lucy part. And I said, well, I think I would just say I'm going to be the Arthur part, and you're going to be the Angela Lansbury part, but okay, we can say Lucy if you want. So, and we were laughing. So the guests, we figure out what the duets are going to be, and the audience knows this, often the theme makes me sing a song that I don't have in my repertoire, so we just get the chart, we get a chart out for it.

You know, I have the lyrics in front of me, we have the lyrics for the guests in, you know, that are out there. Fuck ups happen, but that's part of the show, and the audience expects it, and it's always hilarious. Because there's two professionals on stage, it's not like we're going to freak out when a mistake gets made. You know, we're going to laugh. I had Lily, I had Lily Cooper, and we did a, back in, it was September, and, or was it August? It might have been August. And we did a show called 52 Girls, so it was just all songs that had women's names. It was September, all songs that had women's names in it. And we did Mambo, Mambo number five, a little bit of Monica. So, I was doing that, I was doing the kind of rap guy, and doing that.

And let's just say my ability to speak in rhythm, right out the window. And Lily Cooper, you know, jump up and down, put your hands on the ground, that thing, Lily Cooper was supposed to do what I was saying, but I wasn't saying it right. So, we were just like, Lily was just like, looking at me, just like, you are so white. She just kept saying, you are so white, we would laugh so hard. So, it was really fun. So, people are used to that. I mean, when I had, I did a Halloween show in October, and Jackie Hoffman was the guest.

[18:30] Alan Seales: Oh, you have good friends.

[18:33] Lea DeLaria: These are guests, you know what I mean? We're not, we're not fucking around here. I've had Janis Segel, who, Janis Segel has nine, you know, Grammys. And she's, for people who are ignorant of who Janis Segel is, she is from the Manhattan Transfer. And like I said, has nine Grammys. And many of them are not from the Manhattan Transfer. Some of them are. Some of them are for producing records. And of course, she won a lot for the Boy from New York City, which was a big hit. So, I mean, that's what I'm having. I, you know, what can I say? It's an idea. I'm having fun with it. The guests are having fun. The audience is loving it.

[19:11] Alan Seales: That sounds so much fun. Where do you get your, I guess, I was gonna say, where do you get your love for improvisation? But I'm sort of the same way, is that when I have to prepare, I get more anxiety about forgetting what I should do, instead of just going out and winging it.

[19:26] Lea DeLaria: Honey, I've been doing it for so long.

[19:28] Alan Seales: But where did it start? Just with the jazz stuff?

[19:29] Lea DeLaria: I've just been doing it for so long. It's very, very unusual for me to be nervous.

[19:36] Alan Seales: At all?

[19:37] Lea DeLaria: I am more nervous when I'm acting in front of a camera than when I walk out on stage.

[19:44] Alan Seales: Really?

[19:45] Lea DeLaria: Yeah, because I feel like that's the worst thing I do.

[19:50] Alan Seales: That's gonna sound weird. I think film and television acting is like not, I finally got it, is kind of what I'm saying, because of Orange. I finally figured it out, how to be less.

[20:05] Alan Seales: Right, right, right.

[20:06] Lea DeLaria: And that is more, you know, when I look at my early film work, I laugh at myself. I'm like, oh, my God, that was so big. Of course, back then, you could be a little bigger in front of camera. It was sort of a desired look for some things. But the minimal aspect of acting has really, really clicked in right now. You know what I mean? You laugh at a Hallmark movie. One of the reasons you're laughing at it is because it's so overacted. And of course, the Hallmark Christmas movies. And of course, we know exactly what the plot is going to be. And it's always campy. And sometimes my fiance and I just sit down on the couch, and we just go from Hallmark Christmas movie to Hallmark Christmas movie and laugh our asses off.

[20:50] Alan Seales: And how high are you during these watch parties?

[20:52] Lea DeLaria: Oh, high as a kite.

[20:54] Alan Seales: I'm like, you can't watch them anyway.

[20:55] Lea DeLaria: I have a great weed store right around the corner on Dykeman. I love that I live off the Dykeman stop. That makes me very happy.

[21:05] Alan Seales: That Dyke off of the Dykeman stop.

[21:08] Lea DeLaria: Yeah.

[21:08] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah. Am I allowed to say Dyke as a cis white man?

[21:13] Lea DeLaria: You can say Dyke, sweetie, because I let you.

[21:15] Alan Seales: Okay, thank you.

[21:16] Lea DeLaria: You don't mean it. You don't mean it negatively.

[21:18] Alan Seales: I don't. I love you. I love everything about you. And with the interactions we've had in person on carpets, red carpets and things, it's been such a fun time when I see you coming down.

[21:28] Lea DeLaria: My friends are always like, why do they all want to talk to you? And I say, have you heard me? I'm like, everybody else is like, being a Broadway, you know, I star in Broadway. I forget.

[21:41] Alan Seales: And I'm like, and I'm out there saying exactly what I said before. Fucking dyking cunt.

[21:47] Lea DeLaria: Not here.

[21:48] Alan Seales: I forget which carpet this was. It was you and Rachel Dratch came down and you guys were just in another realm, just having fun, walking down this carpet. You're like, we're just here to talk to people.

[21:58] Lea DeLaria: That might have been cabaret.

[21:59] Alan Seales: Was it? I think you're right.

[22:02] Lea DeLaria: I don't know. It might have been because Rachel and I got there at the same time. But you know, often me and the women of POTUS will go together, all of us. And we are horrifying. We went to the opening of New York, New York, every single one of us. And we just got on the carpet in the wrong direction. We just walked right on the carpet. Everybody else was swimming this way. We were salmons and we went that way and we gave no fucks about it. We were just, you know, POTUS.

[22:40] Alan Seales: That seems like such a fun show.

[22:43] Lea DeLaria: The show itself was amazing and hilarious and I saw it multiple times. But the chemistry that all of you had together.

[22:51] Alan Seales: Oh, we loved each other.

[22:52] Lea DeLaria: It was so cool. And still do. We have a group chat, which happens when you're in a television show, a movie, a group chat happens. And often in theater, the group chat kind of goes away.

[23:08] Alan Seales: It does.

[23:09] Lea DeLaria: I've had two. One is Prometheus Bound that I did back in 2010. That group chat has stayed alive, except for Gavin, of course, which devastated all of us. And then POTUS. We talk, we chat to each other. We're always talking to each other. I'm doing this. We go support each other. We're behind each other. We're all going to try to get to London for when Vanessa opens, you know, with the Devil Wears Prada. We started the group chat and it was just POTUS. And then we got a text from Rachel one day saying, I have COVID. This is in rehearsal. And Lily goes, so do I. Right. And Susie Nakamura was already out. So we were in a rehearsal process with three of our performers. Uh-uh. With COVID. And multiple, you know, multiple understudies are, you know, I guess you would call them standbys when they don't have a part in the show and they're there to learn other parts.

They're standbys. Understudies are people that are in the show. I'm mansplaining. I don't know why I did that. But so in this chat, everyone's like, oh my God. So I changed the name of the chat to We're Having a Crunchy Morning because the chat was happening in the morning. And it stayed, it's that name now. It stayed that name forever. Nobody will change it. We all love it. It was the perfect. And Rachel, I think that's what Rachel, we'd been rehearsing for about two weeks. I think that's what Rachel and I really kind of clicked. If she was like, whoever changed this chat title, well done. I was like, that'd be me, right? That'd be me. I just wrote down the first letters of all of that. It spells Whackam. So it's your Whackam chat.

[25:05] Lea DeLaria: Oh my God. I like a Whackam chat.

[25:06] Alan Seales: There you go. We're Having a Crunchy Morning. It's the Whackam chat.

[25:10] Lea DeLaria: I love it. I fucking love that. Hilarious.

[25:12] Alan Seales: So when you were a kid, do you have siblings? Did your parents encourage you to?

[25:20] Lea DeLaria: Italian Catholics. Oh yeah.

[25:24] Alan Seales: So you had siblings.

[25:25] Lea DeLaria: Italian Catholics. Yeah. My mom had a hysterectomy when she was 30 years old and still managed to have five kids and two miscarriages. So she spent her 20s completely pregnant. So yeah, I have siblings. And my father was a jazz pianist, so he encouraged my singing a lot. I'm so mad at myself. He desperately wanted to teach me how to play piano. And I was, you know, five. He didn't want it. It's like, oh, I want to go play kickball, you know. So now I'd give anything to go back with the knowledge that I have now and say, please teach me piano, Dad.

[26:08] Alan Seales: Same.

[26:09] Lea DeLaria: And my mother was a dancer. So they met just after World War II in the USO. He was a piano player and she was a dancer with the USO, and that's how they met.

[26:19] Alan Seales: Wow.

[26:20] Lea DeLaria: So yes, we were encouraged to be artistic, to learn music, to play instruments. All that kind of stuff. But then when it came to, like, going for it, like I wanted to study drama in college and things like that, the support got a little less from my father, who was the musician, because, you know, the music dried up and he had to get a day job.

[26:44] Alan Seales: Right.

[26:45] Lea DeLaria: Right. When jazz became rock, he had to get a day job. There was just nothing out there for him. He wasn't that well known. He was a local guy, you know, who played in the local bars and clubs. And then he changed his name to Bruce Springsteen, and the rest is history.

[26:59] Alan Seales: And the rest is history.

[27:01] Lea DeLaria: But then my mother, my mother was all, she, my dad was like, why don't you learn to type? Because then you have something to fall back on. And my mom said, if you learn to type, that's what you're going to do. Just go out there and do it. So she was really very supportive.

[27:16] Alan Seales: Yeah. That's cool.

[27:18] Lea DeLaria: So I started writing plays. That's what I was doing. I was writing plays. And I started a theater company in San Francisco. And I would write and direct plays called Lesbian Terrorists. It sounds like, I'm actually.

[27:34] Alan Seales: Oh, sorry.

[27:35] Lea DeLaria: That's Lesbian Terrorists. That's right. We did it that way because it was fun. It started out being Lesbian Terrorists. Then we went to Lesbian Terrorists. Lesbian, you gotta like roll it all together. But that's how I came to the stand up comedy thing, because the plays I wrote were funny.

[27:52] Alan Seales: I was going to ask.

[27:52] Lea DeLaria: Yeah, what style?

[27:53] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[27:54] Lea DeLaria: So it was like, why don't I try stand up? So I do a lot of, I punch scripts, I write scripts. I'm continuing to do that as well.

[28:05] Alan Seales: So you're hired now by other people to punch up scripts?

[28:10] Lea DeLaria: Yeah, I do that.

[28:10] Alan Seales: Oh, that's cool.

[28:11] Lea DeLaria: That's cool. I didn't know. I do that. I mean, I guess, yeah, there's a lot of ghost writing and punch ups and stuff. And I have a writing team. For example, when I hosted the Obies, before that, the person would just show up. And I came in and got very, I was very involved. It was like, look, this is the Obies. It should be run the way every award show is run. So I had a team of writers. We talked about.

[31:06] Lea DeLaria: I'm a big one. Yes, I am. And that's okay. It's okay. It's okay to be gay. I mean, look at RuPaul. Look at RuPaul. Can you look at the man has the number one dance hit in this country and he is a six foot nine inch tall black drag queen and he looks fabulous. Yes. Have you seen him? Have you? You know what I'm talking. He looks stunning. He looks sexy. It drives me crazy because when I put on a dress, I look like a man in a dress. You know what I'm saying? And there's nothing I can do. I can't do anything about it. It's the sir syndrome. I have it bad. Every day of my life, somebody calls me, sir. And the worst was at the gynecologist's office. We have the results here. Pap smear, sir.

[31:54] Lea DeLaria: So when that happened, I was inundated with agents, managers, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I signed with an agency. They took me to Just for Laughs, which was how you got television shows in those days. And that's how I got my deal with Fred Silverman. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back after this break.

[32:25] Lea DeLaria: Welcome back to the episode. I had a television deal with Fred Silverman. That's what put me on Matlock because my character was supposed to spin off Matlock. And then Viacom just decided that I was too controversial. Well, so they pulled out their support. But I did recur on Matlock for like two seasons as his character, Detective Pat Pelletti, who was a police lieutenant that really got on Matlock's nerves. And Andy, I credit Ange, he's the guy that taught me how to act for film and television. Those technical things that happen in that world that don't happen on stage. I remember distinctly the director telling me to rock it to my mark, and I had no fucking clue what that meant. And they're going shorthand like this.

And Ange just went, Leah, you see that T? And I said, yeah, on the floor. He goes, put one foot on there. That's your right foot. Now, as you talk, step into that other side of the T with your left foot, and that's rocking into your mark. Thanks. Thanks, Ange. Oh, look, we got a little thumbs up. I got a little like because I liked. I love that. And yeah, Ange, he also taught me. He thought I was funny. He was a stand-up comic. He came to television acting through stand-up comic and singing as well, which is exactly what I was doing. So he really liked me, and he thought I was very, very funny. And because, again, I didn't pull any punches. I would say something filthy, and then he would say something filthier, which I loved. He was like America's dad, Andy Griffin, and he would say the most filthy things I'd say. I would just scream. A lot of clean Canadians, yeah.

[34:21] Lea DeLaria: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So the camera's tight on me. It's my close-up, and they went, cut, moving on. And you could see that I was visibly not upset. And Ange went, what's up? And I said, I don't think I got it. And he goes, well, you got to tell them, hey, fellas, Leah doesn't come on back. Leah doesn't think she got that. So yeah, like I didn't even realize you could do that. You could ask the director, can I have another run on it? Yeah. Unless they're really behind schedule, they'll always let you have another run on it. Wow. I'm getting acting lessons here, too. This is great. Well, yeah. And I got them from him, among people. And then once again, after Arsenio, I did a lot of sitcoms in the 90s. I did a lot of film work, and it was always the lesbian who inappropriately hit on straight women at every function.

That was kind of my part, my niche. And PE teachers. That was, yeah, my niche. But I finally got sick of it and started turning those parts down. There were several movies and things that were coming out because of Lesbian Chic that they would want to hire me, but they would want to hire me for like some under five role to make their script seem better, if you know what I mean. Look, we've hired a lesbian. But they always hired straight girls to play the leads. And that's still an issue we have today. Most films about my people, about dykes, are written by non-dykes, are acted by non-dykes, and are directed by non-dykes. So we're being kind of erased from our own narrative. That doesn't happen that much to the rest of the queer alphabet, as I call it. But it still happens to us. So that's something I've been out in the industry talking about a lot.

[36:10] Alan Seales: Is that what you're writing now? Do you write a lot with queer leads and put together queer production teams?

[36:19] Lea DeLaria: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm currently pitching a reality show called Lesbo Go Go. I have a friend that needs to be on that. Yeah. But that's what... Yeah, well, basically, every episode is dedicated to a different place that lesbians go. And if you go to it, you talk to the people, and it always ends up with me performing is what is the pillage. And people love it. It's just nobody's getting a reality show made these days. The industry is interesting after the strike. So thank God I can do theater. I did theater all through the strike. And I will be going back and doing more theater. Because I love it. I love shit.

[36:57] Alan Seales: I want to give a time reference, too, because you were talking about Arsenio's was in 93. Ellen DeGeneres didn't come out until 97.

[37:05] Lea DeLaria: Yeah.

[37:06] Alan Seales: So you literally set the stage.

[37:08] Lea DeLaria: I was already in on the town and park when Ellen DeGeneres came out. Yeah. Yeah. Like you, you broke down a lot of barriers for these comedians that for lesbians to come out and really be themselves and unapologetically, in a very good way. It sounds like like when you were in the kids, right? When you were a kid, and you said 82, right? That you were creating things with queer culture at a young age at a time when that wasn't cool to do.

[37:36] Lea DeLaria: No, no, no, no. When I came out, it was illegal to be queer in every state of the union. I've spent the night in jail in both Illinois and Missouri for what they call open and notorious homosexuality.

[37:48] Alan Seales: Wow.

[37:49] Lea DeLaria: In the late 70s. I was holding a girl's hand. The first time we're just kind of holding and talking and walking down the sidewalk. And I think I kissed her and we got busted. Wow. Yeah. And the second time, let's just say I was doing a whole lot more. Yeah, in a makeout area near an all women's college. So, you know, we were both of college age. So yeah, that that happened. And also remember that I was a stand up. I was an openly queer stand up comic in San Francisco in the 1980s.

[38:29] Alan Seales: Right.

[38:30] Lea DeLaria: So a lot of that fueled my rage.

[38:33] Alan Seales: Right.

[38:34] Lea DeLaria: You know, as each of my boyfriends started were dying, and nobody was doing any fucking thing about it. That's why every time they talk about the pandemic, and they say this is the, you know, first pandemic we've had since 1918. Fuck you. 100% AIDS was a pandemic. You know, it affected people all over the fucking world and millions of people died. How dare you not say that? How dare you? So it's like all my it's like you're fucking killing all my friends over again. So I was full of rage. And this brought brought that rage to the forefront about all of it. So that is something that, yeah, I've done I you can you go back and you look at this shit. And I, I look at I was at the first Dyke march here.

I was at the very first Dyke march, right in the front row, me and Kate Clinton, you know, and all these Dykes. And they didn't let us they were making us walk on the sidewalk. And I said, This is a fucking protest march. Let's take the street. And we did we took the street. And what I said, What are they going to do? They're going to arrest all of us, they really going to stop the Dyke march because I, I kind of felt like they wouldn't. And I was right. Yeah. So the cops took, took the lead in front of us. And we took the street. So I mean, I can point to so many things like that, that I have done, I was hugely involved with ACT UP. You can you'll find articles of things that I said in front of the on the Capitol steps on, you know, when I said that I like the Clinton administration, because finally, in our country, we have a first lady you could fuck.

That got me in a whole lot of trouble. You know, they, the Congress censored me, there was all this shit and, and people on both sides of the coin were upset about it. At one show after that, I was being protested by the Baptist, the West Baptist Church on one side, right? Yeah. West Westboro Baptist Church on one side, and on the other side was a group of Dykes calling me a sexist. So I feel like if you if both extremes are mad at you, you're probably doing something right. And that's kind of the I took that to heart. So that's that kind of thing starting in 1993. That's when I said that on the Capitol steps. Yeah. And you know, I have been throughout the throughout my life. I have been called a lot of things for things that I've said.

I don't care. But where does it Where did that confidence come from? Is it confidence? Is it complete? Just, you have to ignore all of it? Or it's all going to weigh you down? Like, is it all or nothing? I don't know. Really? You know, I don't know. I know that my parents always encouraged me. And all of my siblings, we were always encouraged to speak our mind. I guess I just took it one step further. You know, I guess, but when I giving a masterclass at a university, without a doubt, I will get the question, what what can I do to make it? And the answer that question is always going to be, don't quit. If you quit, you'll never make it. Right. And but in order to not quit, you have to love yourself.

I'm sorry, you have to believe in yourself. And in order to believe in yourself, you have to love yourself. So the first step is you have to learn how to love yourself. And I just, it's just the first step. And then you just go from there. And don't take no for an answer. Just keep going. Yeah, yeah. You are in this business, honey, you're going to hear no non fucking stop. I hear no 95% of the time still. And everybody does. I mean, I'll be honest, even people like you, like Meryl Streep doesn't hear no. She does. I, you know, she does. I promise you, we all hear no. So you've got to be fixed in. And when you Meryl Streep and you have all those Academy Award nominations, you're like, whatever.

[42:54] Lea DeLaria: I'll do the next one. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter. And that's the way it's always been with me. Okay, I didn't get that part. I'll go on tour. Yeah, you've got a lot of tools. Oh, I didn't get this thing? I got that thing. It's between Some Like It Hot and POTUS. I got POTUS. You know, it's like this is what you do. You just have to believe in yourself.

[43:18] Alan Seales: Who are you auditioning for in Some Like It Hot?

[43:21] Lea DeLaria: Oh, no, no, no. I actually was attached to Some Like It Hot for about four years.

[43:25] Alan Seales: Really?

[43:26] Lea DeLaria: Yeah, Sweet Soup.

[43:27] Alan Seales: No kidding.

[43:29] Lea DeLaria: Yeah, they wrote every single one of those songs for me.

[43:31] Alan Seales: Oh, well, I think it all worked out very well.

[43:34] Lea DeLaria: Oh, I'm not mad at none of it. See, that's the thing. You've got to just go, this is life. You're not in control. If the director goes, I want to go a different route with it, even though you've been doing it for four years, it pisses every actor off. We hate it. We're giving you our time for four years, and now you're going to do this when we're this close. But that happened, and I got the call about POTUS like three days later.

[43:59] Alan Seales: Wow.

[44:01] Lea DeLaria: And POTUS was something I was always attached to as well. So there you go. And that developed like this bond, this family, this chosen family out of that.

[44:09] Alan Seales: Oh, God, yes.

[44:11] Lea DeLaria: I think that would have totally changed your life had you gone with Something Like It Hot instead of POTUS, like changed it in a totally different way.

[44:18] Alan Seales: In a completely different way.

[44:19] Lea DeLaria: Yeah. Oh, I love that. It's always interesting to look at that.

[44:21] Alan Seales: I absolutely love that. That's great. Because when On the Town went to Broadway, they wanted me to play Lucy in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. And I was like, great part. I'm perfect for it. I can sing the shit out of it. But I feel like I need to go with On the Town. And they're like, well, everybody's already seen you do that. And I was like, they haven't seen me do it on Broadway. And I just feel like after all the work that we did in the park and X, Y, Z, and I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to leave Jesse. I didn't want to leave my sweet Jesse. So I went with On the Town, rather than You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. And then I get snubbed for the Tony nomination. And Kristen wins.

[45:08] Lea DeLaria: Oh, boy.

[45:09] Alan Seales: It's life, right? Jesse, I always love to tell this story. Jesse said no to Mike Nichols for Spamalot because he'd been working on Spelling Bee so hard for all that time. No, I'm just going to do Spelling Bee. And all of us were like, you're going to say no to Mike Nichols. We couldn't believe it. And I feel that Jesse Tyler Ferguson's career has been just fine.

[45:42] Lea DeLaria: Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's been okay.

[45:46] Alan Seales: He's doing just fine.

[45:47] Lea DeLaria: He's been okay. But there's an alternate reality where you were the original Glinda in Wicked. Like that path came down for you.

[45:52] Alan Seales: I cannot wait to see.

[45:59] Lea DeLaria: Oh, my God. Absolutely. I cannot wait to see it. I'm like, I know tickets are online right now. And I'm like, girl, my fiancé, as you know, young woman, get those tickets online for the very first showing. Get them, get them, get them.

[46:16] Alan Seales: I already bought my tickets. I bought my tickets for me.

[46:18] Lea DeLaria: See, everybody's already bought their tickets. I want to kill her. Girl, get the tickets.

[46:24] Lea DeLaria: I'm going Thanksgiving Day.

[46:26] Alan Seales: That's where I want to go.

[46:27] Lea DeLaria: Thanksgiving Day at 4:10 PM, right in the afternoon. Everyone's going to be eating. I'm going to be watching Wicked with my family. Fucking great.

[46:34] Alan Seales: Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay.

[46:37] Lea DeLaria: So as we wind down here to the end of the episode, I want to play a fun little game called Plot in 60 Seconds.

[46:42] Alan Seales: Okay.

[46:43] Lea DeLaria: So you're going to give me a number that corresponds to a list of popular musicals I have right in front of me. I have one through 16. You give me a number. I give you that musical. You give me the plot in 60 seconds or less.

[46:58] Lea DeLaria: Holy. Okay. Six.

[47:01] Alan Seales: All right. That is Hamilton. Go.

[47:04] Lea DeLaria: 60 seconds remaining. So there's this guy who writes a lot. He immigrates here. He's a bastard. He figures out how to make a banking system. People don't like that during the revolution. America's just not really sure about what's going on with him. Oh, he has an affair and just ruins it.

[47:20] Alan Seales: 45 seconds remaining.

[47:21] Lea DeLaria: Ruins his life because of the affair. But he ends up getting everything back. And then he snubs Aaron Burr, who is running for vice president at the time. Aaron Burr gets kicked out, and they keep writing letters back and forth.

[47:35] Alan Seales: 30 seconds remaining.

[47:36] Lea DeLaria: And then finally, Aaron Burr and him decide to meet for a duel, and Aaron Burr kills him. The end.

[47:42] Alan Seales: The end.

[47:42] Lea DeLaria: All right. I'll take it. I'll take it. Oh, and there's singing.

[47:47] Alan Seales: There's singing, a little rapping, some rap battles.

[47:51] Lea DeLaria: All right. And somebody acting like a bullet.

[47:53] Alan Seales: There's somebody portraying a bullet.

[47:55] Lea DeLaria: Always need a bullet.

[47:56] Alan Seales: All across the stage. A dancer.

[47:58] Lea DeLaria: Being a bullet.

[47:59] Alan Seales: Ariana DeBose, who has had her own wonderful career.

[48:03] Lea DeLaria: I just made a movie with her.

[48:04] Alan Seales: Did you?

[48:05] Lea DeLaria: It'll come out next year. And Octavia Spencer.

[48:08] Alan Seales: Oh, two of my favorite people.

[48:09] Lea DeLaria: And Demi Lovato.

[48:10] Alan Seales: Oh my goodness.

[48:12] Lea DeLaria: Rose Byrne.

[48:13] Alan Seales: Oh, okay. Keep going. Keep going. I'm getting very excited.

[48:15] Lea DeLaria: That's it. And then I guess I would be the next in line. Me. I'd be, I'd be in order. That's how it works. And it's called Toe. It's based on a true story. Rose Byrne is the lead and the rest of us are playing really fun parts. I play a homeless woman that's a little bit of a bully. Kind of an unredeeming character. Usually my characters have a very redeeming quality. But this one is not so much.

[48:40] Alan Seales: Even Big Boo had some redeeming qualities in her.

[48:45] Lea DeLaria: Lovely redeeming qualities. Yeah, she's great. One, smartest woman in that prison.

[48:49] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[48:49] Lea DeLaria: There's no, yeah. Smartest woman in that prison. Really warm heart. Really wants to do the right thing by people. Really wants to help people out. She's, you know, she's got all that.

[49:00] Alan Seales: Yeah. I loved how you played her.

[49:01] Lea DeLaria: Yeah. That was, that was beautifully done.

[49:03] Alan Seales: Thank you.

[49:04] Lea DeLaria: Well, again, when it's, it's like POTUS. Written for me. It's so easy. When they write the part for you, it's like they know your voice. So boom, you don't, I hardly have to act at all. And just, I'm just me. And it's, and it's a lot of fun. I love that.

[49:19] Alan Seales: All right. Can we just talk about the brunch show for five seconds?

[49:22] Lea DeLaria: Yes. Tell me more.

[49:23] Alan Seales: Okay. Second Sunday of every month. The show starts at one o'clock. The seating starts at 11:30. Get your tickets because they are, the people really love this show. If, and if you want to have a decent seat. There are no bad seats in 54th and Lowell. Let's just say that. But get your tickets. Come and get, make it a destination. If you know, New York is already a queer destination town. Come that second weekend and you can see my show. I've got Stacey Sargent in December and it's a Christmas show. In January, I've got Tony winner, Lena Hall. And that show is all David Bowie all the time, which is going to be great fun.

[50:05] Lea DeLaria: Yeah. We're going to be having a lot of fun. I have a Bowie record out. So I'm, you know, we got that and she loves Bowie. So we're all set on that. In February, the band Betty, which is what they, they are. Hugely well-known within the dyke community. And this is going to be a queer op and we're doing fuck love, which usually I do at Joe's pub, but Joe's pub asked him, would I mind not doing the show there this year? And was like, we'll do it at 54 Below. It's fine. And it's all love gone wrong songs for Valentine's Day in March is net is net is international women's month. So what I am doing is for that brunch, we're doing gals and dolls, a gender queer version. So it's trans women and, and butch dykes doing the music from Guys and Dolls.

[50:54] Alan Seales: Oh man.

[50:55] Lea DeLaria: So that's what we've got so far. And I'll, you know, I'm starting to go to April and May and all of that. And what, when we do May, that'll be a year that we've been doing it. Do you, do you get the recordings from these? Do you have these? Cause this is a series there. This is a series in the making somewhere. All these little, these are like moments in time that you're creating because you're not doing the same show every time.

[51:16] Alan Seales: Very interesting.

[51:16] Lea DeLaria: Selene Robinson, who is someone I work with and is a showrunner, writer, comedy writer, producer has a couple of deals with Netflix came to it and said the exact same thing. She goes, this should be being filmed. So, you know, I don't know. Maybe.

[51:34] Alan Seales: Well, if you need a producer, a little assistant, assistant GoPro, let me know.

[51:40] Lea DeLaria: I'll mention that to my manager, Jeremy Katz. If you're interested in hiring me, go to thekatzcompany.com.

[51:49] Alan Seales: I love it. You are, you have no shame and it is brilliant.

[51:53] Lea DeLaria: Brilliant, brilliant. Shame is waste. Shame is a waste. No one should have shame.

[51:59] Alan Seales: I love you.

[51:59] Lea DeLaria: It's just a waste of your time. Okay. As long as you're coming from a place of love and you're not hurting anyone, fucking say what you want and love your, love your light. Oh, brilliant.

[52:07] Alan Seales: Okay. So three standard closing questions. First one just simply is what motivates you?

[52:14] Lea DeLaria: No, the need to pay my bills and pussy. One with the other, maybe. You know, you know, I got started because I wanted to change the world and get laid. Not necessarily in that order. One leads to the other.

[52:31] Alan Seales: I'll get it.

[52:31] Lea DeLaria: All right. So yeah, it does. You probably answered this already, but second question, what advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out in a similar path?

[52:40] Lea DeLaria: Exactly what I said before. You need to learn to love yourself and you need to believe in yourself and just don't quit. And don't, when I say don't listen to people, let me be clear. You want to listen to people that know. When I did my first jazz record and I had, you know, Gil Goldstein's there who wrote the horn lines for Miles Davis is a jazz legend. If he's saying to me, you might want to start out a little slower in this one, Leah, I'm going to fucking take his advice. But there are some people like in the beginning of my career that were like, you got to decide whether you want to be a singer or a standup comic. No, I don't. Nope. I can be both.

[53:22] Alan Seales: A singing standup comic is what you are.

[53:23] Lea DeLaria: And it's great. It's what I am. It is great.

[53:24] Alan Seales: Okay. Last question. Hardest one. If you can only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[53:31] Lea DeLaria: One show for the rest of my life and see it as many times as I want. I can only pick one. Six Feet Under.

[53:41] Alan Seales: Oh, I love Michael C. Hall.

[53:48] Lea DeLaria: I love all of them.

[53:49] Alan Seales: What?

[53:49] Lea DeLaria: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I love all of them. Six Feet Under and Dexter. But that's hard because there's Sucks in the City in there. There's, you know, it's like, yeah, that's really fucking what we do in the shadows. I mean, that is, that's just hard.

[54:05] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[54:06] Lea DeLaria: What we do in the shadows. Or the Great British Bake Off. I just, I just interviewed Janusz from a couple seasons ago.

[54:14] Alan Seales: No.

[54:14] Lea DeLaria: Yeah.

[54:14] Alan Seales: Janusz Damagala.

[54:16] Lea DeLaria: Oh, my God.

[54:17] Alan Seales: Damagala.

[54:17] Lea DeLaria: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[54:20] Alan Seales: Such a happy guy. I love him.

[54:21] Lea DeLaria: You should hear the way people murder my name and there aren't that many soul bulls.

[54:28] Alan Seales: All right. Well, plug your socials. Again, everyone go to 54 Below and get tickets to see Lea's brunch show.

[54:35] Lea DeLaria: Yeah. So where can we find you online?

[54:37] Lea DeLaria: Oh, everything's Lea DeLaria. LeaDeLaria.com, RealLeaDeLaria on Instagram. I don't really go to X anymore because fuck him. And yeah, yeah. And I don't really do Facebook because I'm not 110 years old. So you can find me on the TikTok, RealLeaDeLaria, the Instagram, RealLeaDeLaria and LeaDeLaria.com will tell you everything you need to know about me.

[55:04] Alan Seales: All right. I am on Threads, Instagram, TikTok. And I do post to Facebook. It's kind of a one way, though. I don't interact.

[55:10] Lea DeLaria: Theater Underscore Podcast.

[55:12] Alan Seales: You have much older, older fans. You're a Broadway guy. So you have to do the, you got to do Facebook.

[55:18] Lea DeLaria: That was my first time. My fans are all really young.

[55:22] Alan Seales: No, no, no.

[55:23] Lea DeLaria: Again, I don't know why. Like young, you're talking about like, like teenagers, early 20s and stuff?

[55:28] Alan Seales: I'm talking about between the ages of 16 and 24 female. Almost 80, 80% of my fanage. The rest of that follow me.

[55:38] Lea DeLaria: I love the rest. The rest are like 40 to 50 year old men who live in New York City.

[55:48] Alan Seales: I wonder what they are.

[55:52] Lea DeLaria: No, I was going to say when you say young, I really love that they're following somebody who is open just about who they are, who they want to be. Like I said, shameless in a good way, unapologetic in a good way. And you're leading by example and showing, especially now in what we just went through and the next four years of what, whoever this is going to lead out in our presidential administration of teaching these people at an age when they are still so impressionable, how to stand up for themselves and, and be unique individuals.

[56:23] Lea DeLaria: I, yeah, I think that's wonderful. I still have my Kamala Harris flag up and it will remain up until my fuck Trump flag gets here that I ordered online. And so it'll be Kamala until it's fuck Trump. And you know, for everyone, everyone out there, don't, do not take this line down. Do not, do not become complacent because if we do, they will steal our country.

[56:52] Alan Seales: Thank you.

[56:53] Lea DeLaria: Thank you for that.

[56:54] Alan Seales: Thank you, Lea, for everything. This has been such a fun chat and I'm kind of tired from laughing so much. Now I'm great to see you as always.

[57:01] Lea DeLaria: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. And I'll probably see you on like a red carpet in like five minutes or something.