Moms/Comedians Kaela Crawford & Selina Ringel talk to The Inside Reel about approach, identity and motherhood in regards to their new stand-up special on Prime Video: “2 Moms, 1 Mic”. [DISCLAIMER: This interview was conducted, prior to the SAG/AFTRA Strike]
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00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - Can you talk about sort of creative
00:21 sort of psychology with the two of you
00:23 because every person's journey is their own
00:26 and obviously your comedy,
00:27 and especially in this special reflects that
00:30 because you both do different things
00:32 but you also have similar elements too.
00:34 You know, raising kids, having kids,
00:37 having relationships in California,
00:39 especially LA is always tricky.
00:42 So kudos for getting through it as you do.
00:46 But can you each talk about sort of that approach
00:48 from your own individual sort of perspective?
00:51 Kayla, if you would first and then Selena.
00:54 - Yeah, of course.
00:55 So Selena and I come at motherhood
00:59 from like a different angle.
01:01 And so when I was deciding
01:02 who I wanted to do this special with,
01:04 I just knew it was gonna be her
01:05 because I am sort of like more of like a zany,
01:09 quirky comedian who just imagines
01:12 kind of like the worst in everything.
01:14 And my husband is very different from Selena's husband.
01:17 He was a lawyer and then he quit his job
01:19 and then he got into magic and then he got into writing.
01:22 And like, it just, we both have like separate
01:25 different stories to tell,
01:27 but we also compliment each other in a lot of ways.
01:30 Like we were meeting up every week on Zoom
01:33 and we would go over our material together
01:35 to make sure that we had individual sets
01:38 that wouldn't sort of overlap with each other.
01:41 My husband lives a charmed life.
01:43 He sleeps in two hours later than I do.
01:46 And I know that those are the happiest two hours
01:49 of his day, okay?
01:50 Because I'll walk into the bedroom
01:52 and the room just reeks of his farts.
01:55 It's like he let all of his anger and sadness
01:59 just seep out of his butthole.
02:01 And it's almost like I can see the farts.
02:03 It's like this plume of smoke.
02:05 It's like that fog you see over the ocean in the morning.
02:09 - Yeah, so I think, I mean,
02:10 I think one of the big things with my comedy
02:15 is that I come a little bit from this,
02:19 like I feel like everything I do
02:21 is almost like an exaggerated version of who I actually am.
02:25 And so like, you see that in my movies
02:28 and then you also see that in my standup.
02:30 And so all of it comes from a real place.
02:33 So, it's like, there are parts of me that are funny
02:38 because I am a little over the top,
02:41 and I think that I do have these parts of me
02:43 that are like, I want a baby now.
02:46 And so it's like, let's focus on that part
02:48 and see what she would look like
02:50 if she was just her own person.
02:52 And so that's a lot of where I come up with my ideas
02:55 for movies as well.
02:56 So like, I'll take certain aspects of who I am.
02:58 Like, my last movie was about a single mother
03:02 who had a baby on her own.
03:04 But then I did this series about this woman
03:06 who's like obsessed with love and just wants to find a man
03:11 and is like totally delusional.
03:15 And then this last movie I did,
03:16 it's about, well, the movie's about to come out
03:19 right now actually, but it's about this woman
03:22 who's in a relationship with her husband
03:24 and she's like really needing her own
03:28 kind of space for herself.
03:30 And she ends up becoming attracted to another woman.
03:33 - When you tell people that you want kids,
03:36 they tell you all the reasons
03:38 why it's the worst idea ever, right?
03:41 People are like, "Don't fucking do it!"
03:43 (audience laughing)
03:44 Like, "You're never gonna sleep again!"
03:46 (audience laughing)
03:47 And then I realized all those people had two kids.
03:52 (audience laughing)
03:54 - Anyway, but the point is that all of these things,
03:56 including our standup special,
03:58 is kind of like little pieces that live in me.
04:03 And I kind of explore those pieces and go,
04:05 well, what if it was all of me?
04:07 Like, what would that look like?
04:09 And how would I bring out those sides of me
04:11 to really fully express that version of who I am?
04:15 And I think that, yeah, I mean, Kayla and I,
04:19 I think complement each other really well
04:21 because we come from different places
04:23 and we have different stories.
04:25 And I work with my husband, which is a lot of therapy.
04:29 I'm joking.
04:30 But we're also an amazing team, but it's a lot.
04:35 It's like very few people can work
04:38 with their significant others and not murder each other.
04:41 (laughing)
04:42 So I think that there's a lot of comedy there too.
04:46 I wonder what I'll do with that someday.
04:48 But I think that, yeah, I'm really grateful that actually,
04:53 'cause this special was Kayla's idea.
04:55 She was the one who came up with it.
04:56 And I was checking in on her a lot when she was pregnant
04:59 and I always thought she was a really great comedian.
05:02 And so when she came up to me and said,
05:07 actually on a DM on Instagram, she was like,
05:10 what if we did a comedy special about motherhood?
05:13 I was like, oh yes, this is exactly what I wanna do.
05:17 And it actually took us a year from that message
05:20 to shooting our special, which is pretty incredible.
05:24 But we both worked really hard to get there.
05:27 And I think that's the other thing about Kayla too
05:29 that I think is really great is like,
05:30 we both really put in the work.
05:33 Like a lot of people will say, yeah, let's do it.
05:36 And then like are somehow unavailable and like,
05:38 don't show up and don't answer the phone.
05:40 You know what I mean?
05:41 Like we show up all the time and we really did the work
05:44 and I'm really proud of us, yeah.
05:46 - Good people always talk about adopting,
05:49 but the problem is I'm gorgeous.
05:51 (audience laughing)
05:54 - Okay, I love you guys so much.
06:02 I just wanna say something.
06:03 I am so glad that you agree.
06:06 It seems like you agree.
06:07 No, no, no, I have had some serious issues with this joke
06:11 and I wanna tell you about it.
06:12 I did this joke one time and my husband said
06:19 that I basically had an existential crisis on stage
06:22 because a lot of people just disagreed with that comment.
06:27 Made them uncomfortable.
06:28 Like I was really, I was crossing the line, you know?
06:30 And so we started negotiating, you know?
06:33 And we landed on attractive with makeup on.
06:37 (audience laughing)
06:38 - What you were just saying, Selena,
06:39 is the aspect of identity, you know?
06:42 Who are we?
06:43 You know, it's an existential thing.
06:44 I think you mentioned that in your set, you know?
06:47 Because the thing is, is that, you know,
06:49 how do you sort of look at who am I wanting to be, you know?
06:52 'Cause comedian, mother, you know, person, just generally,
06:56 you know, 'cause the thing is you can't separate them.
06:58 It's all the same thing,
06:59 even though people try to separate them in society.
07:03 Could you talk about that, Kayla?
07:05 But also bringing it into like "You, Me, Her"
07:08 and stuff like that.
07:10 - Well, it's crazy 'cause when I started doing standup
07:12 10 years ago, I was doing all single material.
07:15 I was totally alone.
07:17 I was dating.
07:18 I was, and that's what I would talk about on stage.
07:21 And I perfected that set.
07:23 I was like, my God, this is perfect.
07:25 I never need to change it.
07:26 I'll be single forever.
07:27 This is don't, no.
07:29 I didn't want to meet anyone.
07:30 And then I met my husband in a writing class.
07:33 And then I remember saying I was single on stage
07:36 when we were actually together.
07:37 And he's like, "Oh, so you're single?"
07:39 And I was like, "Hmm, I need to start changing this."
07:43 And then I got engaged and then I had a baby.
07:46 And then the material consistently has to shift
07:50 because you no longer relate to the stuff
07:52 that you used to talk about on stage.
07:55 Even though some of those jokes,
07:56 I wish I could do something with them,
07:58 but it doesn't make any sense anymore.
08:00 But I'm not harping on it.
08:02 I'm moving forward.
08:03 And then you get into motherhood.
08:05 And I mean, my daughter and my husband
08:08 just give me ample material.
08:09 Like every single day she's growing
08:12 and something new happens and a new tooth comes in
08:14 and she falls off something and she gets into something
08:18 and she eats something.
08:19 And there's always like a new story.
08:21 If anything, having a kid has elevated my comedy
08:26 because there's just always going to be
08:28 so much new material.
08:29 My boobs have gotten bigger since being on stage.
08:32 (audience cheering)
08:35 Yeah, they're just filling up with milk.
08:37 It's just two Milky Ways just right here.
08:39 I go from like a B to a C, they're like Chia Pets.
08:44 They're just like, "Watch them grow right before your eyes."
08:48 But I leak, no one tells you that happens.
08:52 Like I leak more than a car waiting in line at Jiffy Lube.
08:56 I'm wearing like diapers in my bra right now
08:58 to just keep a flood from happening.
09:01 Like this is the splash zone.
09:02 (audience laughing)
09:05 - Well, everybody talks about the shift.
09:09 The thing is that it goes from being your lives
09:11 to their lives.
09:13 And that's again, that existential shift.
09:16 But it's a very practical thing.
09:18 It's not just something in the ether.
09:20 You see it every morning.
09:22 And I'm not one to talk as a man either
09:25 because it's a completely different journey for a woman.
09:28 I mean, I love how it said it during one part.
09:30 I can't remember who said it was,
09:31 but the fact is, oh, you're having, you had the baby.
09:35 You weren't though, I think it was you, Kayla,
09:37 that you weren't in labor.
09:38 And that's the one thing people don't say.
09:40 Like some men can't even sit in the delivery room,
09:44 much less, you know, Santa.
09:45 Could you sort of talk about that and that irony?
09:47 And that's the reason the comedy hits so true
09:50 is because of these realities,
09:52 these ironies and realities of the situation.
09:55 - Yeah, I mean, my husband was saying
09:57 we had the baby to so many people
09:59 and he was in the labor room eating an entire large pizza.
10:04 And I was eating ice cubes and I was in labor for 21 hours
10:08 and I'm not sleeping and I'm having contractions.
10:11 And he's saying things like, they're not that bad, right?
10:13 And I'm like, no, like this all counts
10:15 is the 21 hours of labor, just having contractions,
10:18 being, getting the IV, getting the epidural.
10:20 And he got a pizza and then he got a cheeseburger
10:23 and fries later.
10:24 And I'm like, what are you doing?
10:27 Like, are you testing our marriage right now?
10:29 Like what's happening?
10:31 And so then we go home with this baby
10:33 and I'm like bent over, like my stomach's on fire
10:37 'cause I ended up having an emergency C-section.
10:40 And my brother, my husband is holding the baby,
10:43 showing it to my brother.
10:44 I'm like, look at the baby we made.
10:46 And I'm like, we did not make this baby.
10:51 - You were there at the beginning, thank you, but still.
10:54 - Yeah, it was like percentage wise, it'd be 50/50.
10:57 I was like, no, it's like 10/90.
11:00 (upbeat music)
11:04 (dramatic music)
11:07 (dramatic music)
11:10 (gunshots)
11:12 [BLANK_AUDIO]