North Shore Towers Courier n n June 2015 3 40 NORT H S HORE TO WERS • 40TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ISSUE • BY STEPHEN VRATTOS To watch Susie Essman perform, one would never think the Bronx-born standup comedian had anything else in mind as she was growing up. “I never really wanted to be a standup comic when I was a kid. It wasn’t on my radar,” reveals Essman. “I wanted to be a comedic actress from the age of, I don’t know, 5, a Broadway musical comedy actress.” It’s natural to think someone who makes there living being funny came from a funny family, but on paper—as the saying goes—with a father who was an internist and a mother who taught Russian language, frivolity would seem to be wanting in Essman’s childhood setting. “It was a family with a good sense of humor. Let’s put it that way,” she says. “My Father was not funny, but he thought he was. When I was 5, I remember my parents bought home the 2000-year-old man album. I used to play that over and over again. They had all the Elaine May and Mike Nichols records and I used to listen to those all the time. They always took me to see Broadway Shows and things like that. It wasn’t a funny family per se, but there was a sense of humor there. “My maternal Grandmother was really funny,” the comedian continues. “As a matter of fact, the thing that I always found so touching about her… At the end of her life, when she ended up in a nursing home with complete dementia, and she didn’t know who anybody was or what anything was, I would go visit her and the nurses would say she kept them laughing all day long. Here was this woman; she had a hard life; she was an immigrant; she never really got an education; worked her whole life in a factory— the typical immigrant sort of life—lost everything, her dignity and her sense of self, and she kept her sense of humor. That was the one thing she held onto. I always found it to be the one thing so poignant about her. She was funny; she was really funny. And she was my favorite person in the world.” By high school, Essman focused her acting itch toward being more of a comedic sketch artist in the Carol Burnett mode, “but I never did anything about it,” she confesses. Despite her desires, Essman wasn’t a theater major in college. She attended Suny Purchase and in her own words was “intimidated by theater majors.” After graduation, she moved into Manhattan and finally followed her dream, taking acting classes. “That didn’t feel right to me either,” she explains. “I was just kind of lost—waitressing—lost; in a bad relationship, depressed.” It was several years before the comedian even set foot in a comedy club and that was through the urging of her workmates. The year was 1983 at a place called Mostly Magic on Carmine Street in The Village. “When I was 28-years-old, everybody that I worked with at the restaurant talked me into getting up at an open mic… and I did. But it still never occurred to me to be a comic.” Fortunately, the thought did occur to a couple of comedy club impresarios who were in attendance that fateful evening. “There were these two guys there, Paul Herzik and Burt Levitz; they were opening up this comedy club in The Village called Comedy U on University and 13th Street,” Essman says. “They said, ‘We really like you; will you come work at our club.’ I never thought anything about it. Three months later, they called me. ‘The club is open; do you want to come down here and work; come down and do ten minutes.’ Like an idiot, I said ‘Yeah, sure.’ I didn’t realize how difficult it was to do ten minutes at the time,” she says, laughing. Those ten minutes turned into many performances. The young owners loved Essman and she became a staple of the club. “They had this Women’s Night on Thursdays and I met all these other female comics; there was a lot of camaraderie. For the first six months, I only worked there, but it was only after three that I thought, ‘All right this is what I was born to do.’ But it was more happenstance than anything else. I was 28-years-old already. And 32 years later I’ve been working ever since.” According to the comedian, her forthright approach was not discovered as much as being a part of her personality from a young age. “I was always the kid in class that would say what everyone else was afraid to say. I was always a Big Mouth. And I was never taught, so much, to respect authority,” she confesses with a laugh. “My Father was always kind of a rebellious guy. I picked that up from him. I was always the truth teller. Kids would always come over to me and be like, ‘see if we can get this done today from the teacher.’ I was not afraid to say anything. I think more than being funny as a kid, I was more of a big mouth.” Ironically, the fearless persona Essman developed in her standup routine resulted from sheer unbridled terror. “When you start doing standup, you need to develop your persona. For me, it was probably defensiveness, because it’s really scary up there when you don’t know what you’re doing. And in the beginning, you DON’T know what you’re doing. The only way to do standup is to do it in front of strangers. You can’t do it in front of the mirror in your bathroom. You can’t really do it in front of a class. You have to get up in front of strangers and learn your craft. That’s what so terrifying about it. “I don’t know if it was a conscious decision; it’s probably something that just developed; not the profanity so much, but the gut truth-telling. My favorite comic when I was coming up— who I admired the most—was Richard Prior. To me, he was so accessible and vulnerable and real. He wasn’t out there telling jokes; he was telling stories and ripping his gut open on stage. That was always what I wanted to try to do. That’s what interested me. Some comedians are more craftsman, not that one is better than the other, it’s just different styles. That was never my style; my style is to go up on stage and bare all; reveal all. That’s what interested me creatively to do; somehow define the humor in that and making that funny. This take-no-prisoners attack mode served Essman well as Susie Green, the profanity-laced character she played for 8 seasons on Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO. But it has had a weird side effect off-screen, when Essman meets fans who expect her to scream profanity at them. “I see sometimes that they’re visibly disappointed when I’m gracious and nice,” she reveals. “It’s hilarious! That’s not me; it’s an acting job that I do; I play that character on TV. I see them get visibly disappointed—their face drops… ‘Sorry…’” Essman has kept busy since the show went of the air in 2011. Lately, she’s guest-starred on an episode of “Law and Order: SVU,” “Broad City” on Comedy Central and a new show called “Weird Loners” on FOX. And throughout, she’s continued to perform standup. Her book, “What Would Susie Say?,” recently went into paperback. When asked her favorite source material, she laughs. “My kids… and my mother. I would say she’s number one; she’s been there since day 1. She never disappoints.” The TV star comedian and North Shore Towers 40th Anniversary headliner opens up about becoming a comic and her craft n 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION 3 Susie Says Susie Essman
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