Interview With Liz Feldman

AE: Were you more interested in writing than performing?
LF: No, I was always more interested in performing. Writing was something I would do because it came to me. It was always way more fun to perform. Writing can be really torturous, but I loved performing and coming up with crazy characters and wearing my wigs …

At the same time I also did the program at Second City, and their approach was more satirical, more current events, more what's going on right now. At the Groundlings I became good friends with Kristen Wiig [Saturday Night Live], and she and I started an all-female group, and she's just so talented and such a lovely person.

So I did these two different comedy schools at the same time, and they were both very complementary to each other. Groundlings is more about characters and situations, and Second City is more satirical and topical.

So I was really head over heels for the Groundlings, and I was in the Sunday Company for a year and a half, which is the precursor to being in the main company. And that would be the point at which they vote. And I did not get into the main company. I was truly heartbroken.

At that point I wrote a show with Pamela Ribon called Letters Never Sent, which is about saying all the things that you always wanted to say. We ended up getting to perform the show at the 2005 HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen. At the time, it was a huge deal for my career, and she's really talented and a really good writer.

Because of that I started doing episodic work on such classic shows that have since been canceled as The Mullets and It's All Relative, and that's also when I did Significant Others.

I was actually getting a lot of work as an actor, but I wasn't making any money. And it started to weigh on me, because I don't want to be a struggling anything. I just want to feel like I'm using the skills that God has given me in the best way. I knew that I needed to start writing because I thought that if I put myself out there as a writer, I should be able to make more money. It became a financial thing because I was working at a restaurant and I was not happy with myself.

So I sat down with my manager, and I have to say that I owe a lot of my career success to my manager, Christie Smith, because she is just an angel in my life. I told her I want to start writing and make money and asked her to see what's out there. And three weeks later I got a call that the show Blue Collar TV really needed to hire a female writer, because on certain shows, on certain networks, they have quotas where they have to hire women or a minority.

I really didn't know what the hell it was. I knew who Jeff Foxworthy was, but I was working at a restaurant, so that sounded great! So I submitted to Blue Collar, and I went in for the interview and I got the job. And it was literally three weeks after I had that conversation with Christie.

I ended up doing really well on the show, making some appearances on it. I did two seasons on that show, and it was a network, prime-time show, so it exactly answered the need that I had. It was like a miracle, but it showed me not to be afraid to ask for what I want. Figure out exactly what it is that you want, then don't be afraid to ask for it. But then also don't be afraid when it comes true!

Any modicum of success I've had, I owe to the fact that I said it out loud first. My mother has been a big support to me throughout my life, and she has always been the one to ask: "What is it? What do you want? Say it!" And I grew up visualizing and always picturing exactly how I wanted to feel about things at the end of the day. That's how I've achieved any success I've had.

AE: How did that lead you to working with Ellen DeGeneres?
LF: Ellen was always my hero. When I first started doing stand-up, I worshipped her. I knew every single joke she told, and I was always compared to her, even from the age of 15. I think I looked like her more then than I do now. There's a resemblance, I guess, but as soon as I started doing stand-up there was always the comparison. I never shied away from the comparison because I thought she was brilliant.

So that was one of the things I had always visualized — working with her, or knowing her or being in her circle — to the extent where for about 10 years I had a recurring dream in which I knew her. And I don't even remember most of my dreams, but I had probably 20 dreams in which we were friends or colleagues, or I knew her and Anne when they were together, or in which we ran into each other and she knew me. It was just really weird, and it was always right there on the edge of my subconscious, basically.

And so when her talk show first started, I was so thrilled for her because I had met her when I was 21. I went up to her [at that time] and I said, "You're Carol Burnett and I'm Vicki Lawrence, but you don't know that yet."