Michelle Wolf on Fame, Media Bias and That Correspondents' Dinner Ahead of Comedy Works Shows

In Michelle Wolf's 2019 Netflix comedy special, Joke Show, she says, "I try to be a good feminist." But four years later, just before her performances at Comedy Works August 10-13, she's not sure if that's still possible.

"I don't think there is a good feminist," Wolf says. "I think the best thing you can do is try to be the best version of yourself as a human and be your authentic self. Also, just embrace being a woman, embrace the women around you and realize that there's no right way to be a woman, so you shouldn't get mad if people aren't doing it the way you're doing it."

Wolf's unconventional approaches to taboo subjects have made her one of today's most popular comedians. Her upcoming run in Denver quickly sold out several performances, prompting Comedy Works to add the Sunday show. But Wolf's road to fame was incredibly unorthodox. After graduating from William & Mary with a kinesiology degree in 2007, she entered the world of Wall Street.

"I moved to New York because I wanted to get a job that would make money, to be perfectly honest, and Wall Street seemed like the place to do that," Wolf says. "I got a job on Wall Street [at Bear Stearns], and a few months later, in 2008, the market crashed and the company imploded, which I swear I had nothing to do with. Around that same time, I had signed up for an improv class, and I really liked the class. That whole world was crazy and angry, but improv was really fun, and I just loved doing it. I was trying to do it every night after working all day. Eventually, I got an opportunity to work at this tech firm that would allow me to have a bit more free time at night, and that was when I started doing standup."

Wolf practiced "quiet quitting" before it was cool, working less and less until the company was forced to fire her so she could focus on comedy full-time. "It was slow and painful, because I really hate disappointing people," she says. "It was very hard for me to do. It was a fantastic company, but I knew if they fired me, they would give me a severance package. I took advantage of them, which I don't feel bad about; corporations take advantage of people all the time. I was able to get severance, and with my savings, I was able to live and pursue comedy in New York for a year. Within that year, almost exactly to the day, I got hired at Late Night With Seth Meyers."

She says her time working on Late Night from 2014 to 2016 as a writing superviser and performer was "a phenomenal experience." Wolf particularly enjoyed getting to work with Seth Meyers and executive producer Mike Shoemaker on the show. 

"It's a terrible first job, because they're the best bosses you'll ever have," Wolf says. "Late Night was wonderful because it's a show that happens Monday through Thursday, which forced me to write jokes every day, even when I didn't want to. It was also good because the jokes that wouldn't work for Seth's monologue I could sometimes turn into standup jokes for myself. Seth was very encouraging of me continuing to do standup as much as I could. And it was the first time I had really been on camera. Late Night just had a wonderful family atmosphere and really helped me become the comedian and performer I am today."

Wolf had the opportunity to contribute to the 2016 Oscars, which were hosted by Chris Rock, right around the time she finished her run on Late Night. Her next job was joining Trevor Noah's team as an on-air contributor and writer for The Daily Show.

"The Daily Show was interesting, because at Late Night we were starting from ground zero, but Trevor was trying to fit into a machine that was already working and trying to figure out what his version of the show was," Wolf recalls. "Seth was making his own show from the bottom up, so I got to participate in that. Then, moving over to The Daily Show, it was a show that had already existed for a very long time but with a brand-new host. I think it was a bit of a struggle but also fun, because you're trying to see what the voice of the new show is. And again, it's always a good experience to write for somebody else, because you try to write their point of view, which ultimately expands your point of view."

Noah left The Daily Show last year, and his spot was filled by guest hosts. Wolf was named as a guest host for the late-night show, which was initially scheduled to air the week of June 5 but was delayed because of the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike.

"I'm not sure Trevor actually got to do exactly what he wanted to do," Wolf admits. "If they continue and pick a new host for The Daily Show, it would be nice to see someone with a really strong point of view take over and really make the show their own. It's really hard with social media now, because The Daily Show is on at 11:30 at night, and everyone's already had a take on the news for the day. So you need someone who's going to have something surprising to say at the end of the day that you haven't heard or seen before online. I hope that they find someone who's able to do that and breathe fresh life into The Daily Show. I think it's a valuable piece of entertainment slash news. Both sides tend to be wrong and show news from a very biased perspective; I'd love to see The Daily Show continue to point that out."

Back when she was working there in 2016, Wolf had to juggle The Daily Show duties while going on tour in the wake of the sold-out debut of her hour-long standup feature Michelle Wolf: So Brave at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The tour would shape Wolf's 2017 HBO special, Nice Lady. "I wanted to do that hour 100 times before I taped it, so I spent the rest of 2016 and most of 2017 touring it. I worked at The Daily Show Monday through Thursday, and then on Thursday I'd leave to go to whatever club I was performing at that weekend," she recalls. "I'd do shows Thursday, Friday and Saturday, fly home Sunday and go back to work at The Daily Show on Monday. It was definitely a grind, but it was also my first comedy special, and I was doing it for HBO, which was such an honor, so I really wanted to do it justice. And I'm glad I did, because I'm really happy with the final product."

The standup special was filmed at the Skirball Center in New York City in mid-August 2017 and received a 2018 Primetime Emmy Award nomination for outstanding writing for a variety special. Although the acknowledgement of her work was enormous, it was not by any means her most memorable moment of the year.

That honor goes to her appearance at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner, which put Wolf in the national spotlight and subjected her to attacks from political pundits as well as mean tweets from President Donald Trump.

"When they first asked me to do it, I was a little bit hesitant because I didn't know what kind of jokes I could write for these people," she admits. "I took a couple days to see what I could come up with. After those first couple days, I was like, ‘Okay, I think I've gotten the hang of what I want to do and will be able to do something interesting and fun.’ I had a great time. I think it's easy to tell jokes about people that aren't in the room; it's hard — but ultimately very fun — to tell jokes about people who are in the room, especially when they deserve to be joked about."

She maintains that the Correspondents' Dinner was misrepresented in the media. "They said I only went after the right, which I clearly didn't," she notes. "I went after the right and the left, but most importantly, I went after the media itself, because the media is just doing a disservice to all of us and not actually providing any of us with good news. I don't mean good as in ‘happy news'; I mean accurate news. I feel like journalism doesn't really exist in the news-media environment, and everyone's just listening to what they want to hear and not what's actually happening. Everyone has a very big bias, and I really think all the media, every major outlet, is doing a huge disservice to us as a society."

Wolf's tour, It's Great to Be Here, delves further into her thoughts on other problems plaguing the nation as well as her personal life. While there are no concrete plans to film the set at this time, she says she is looking at dates near the end of the tour as possible locations to shoot a recorded version of the tour.

"I'm in Salt Lake City this week and just starting to work on the hour," Wolf says. "I talk about different parts of society where we're failing, and then a bunch of really silly stuff, too. There are some puns in there, and I know some people don't like puns, but I think they're pun-derrated. This is my favorite part of the process, where I'm just figuring out the jokes and discovering what this little baby joke will be when it grows up. That's why I like to start my tour in clubs, especially clubs that are as great as Comedy Works, because audiences will give me the space to explore. I can very confidently say, after doing my first couple shows here in Salt Lake, we're in for a very fun ride."

Michelle Wolf: It's Great To Be Here, Thursday, August 10, through Sunday, August 13, Comedy Works, 1226 15th Street. Find times, tickets and more information at michelleisawolf.com.