Page 218 - Katherine Ryan press pack

the first move. It’s only very recently that we weren’t allowed to have mortgages,

we weren’t allowed to have bank accounts. We are taught these things, whether we

know it or don’t realize it, and that’s a problem because women can be alpha too.
The world is moving so quickly now that we can barely keep up, but we’ve got to.

Stand-up comedy is not a man’s job. It’s an alpha job. To be the only person in a

room with a microphone who’s allowed to talk. And women are alpha now too,

and it’s time for people to catch up. And I know women are funny because I

bought my own house, so I don’t really care about what these guys have to say
about it.

How do you decide which parts of your life you reveal onstage and in your

recent Netflix special, In Trouble?

Everything is pretty much me up there. I’m not creative enough to invent a person

for stage. I think with stand-up comedy you’re certainly an amplification of who

you really are. And then you tell little fibs to just protect people and who they are.

So when I talk about men onstage, this guy or that guy or the other guy, sometimes

I’m talking about the same guy, and putting him into different guys to protect him.
I’ll change names and I’ll change places but everything is pretty true, but then

there’s another side to it. I think everyone is pretty multi-faceted. There are certain

sides of me that are really boring that you wouldn’t see on stage because you

wouldn’t pay to see it, like when I’m taking my daughter to school in my bathrobe.

But people feel like they know me and that’s cool. That’s the type of comedy that I

really enjoy, when I feel that the comedian has talked about politics or talked about
culture or touched on subjects that I can identify with. But also I like a comedian to

be vulnerable with me. And to feel that I’ve been let in. And I feel that’s part of

why I love watching Amy Schumer so much, because she’s got this extra-special

thing that you feel that your best friend is telling you secrets. And she’s just so

unaffected. She just seems so totally herself. People probably do know me quite

well, better than I could expect from watching the Netflix special, which is pretty
much all true.