What do you do when life doesn't go according to plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one, or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this is now What a podcast about pivotal moments as told by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down with a guest to talk about the times they were knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question. Now, what are either of your son's performers?
Uh?
Yeah?
Are they very different?
Oh my gosh, completely different, but they have the same interest in that they're both very into to sports baseball, basketball, football, soccer. But then our son Max is into musicals, but only if there's an orphan involved, and so that's we hear a lot of musicals coming from his room that are you know, what is it?
Oliver and Annie and.
Oliver Annie and probably Newsy's has a there's an orphan Newsy's.
Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yes, yeah, all about orphans.
And Stephanie always says if Max went in for an audition, he would book every role.
He's just so comfortable with himself.
My guest today is the hilarious Tig Nataro Take as a comedian, an actor, a podcaster, a writer, a wife, and a loving mother to twin boys. I'm a huge fan of her many stand up specials, her Amazon series One Mississippi, and her gut wrenching documentary Take, which chronicles a number of life altering events, including her twenty twelve cancer diagnosis. To an outsider, Tigs now, what moments seem insurmountable, yet she's here encouraging us to be vulnerable and making
us laugh. I'm so pleased that she agreed to speak with me, and I think that her courage in the face of adversity is something that we could all emulate. So, without further ado, here is Tig Nataro. I just want to say thank you so much for taking your time to spend a little time with me. I'm a huge fan, and I wanted to thank you for not only doing the show, but for all the wonderfully sweet things that
you and Cheryl Hines said about my documentary. Yeah, and as you know, you are a symbol of we admire in the documentary as well, Well.
Yeah, I was stunned to see myself pop up. I was with my childhood friend and we were watching it, and uh and my face popped up, and she's like, did.
You know that was gonna happen?
No, No, in fact, I thought I hallucinated that.
Well, I appreciate it and thank you for watching it. And I absolutely loved your documentary.
Oh, thank you.
I just I think that you your type of comedy is my favorite favorite place to be. It's so perfect, and I just I'm so thank you. You do what you do well.
I appreciate that.
And I I guess you saw in the documentary.
I know your husband. I love your husband.
I had I had that memory of telling him to tell you that I loved your book. I mean it was so, so, so great. And then anyway, anyway, I just went tell you to your face how great that book was.
Thank you very much. Tell me a little bit about I mean, it's so much of it is in your documentary. But for people don't know, what was your world like when you were a little kid.
When I was little growing up, I mean I would say I probably had a lot of similarity to your except for being a model and an actor. But my mother was kind of unpredictable and like to party, and my stepfather was very he was an attorney, he was in the military. So I had these two very different parents raising me. And so my mother encouraged the artist and me and the athlete and me and kind of
everything that I was. And my stepfather didn't get it and wasn't terribly supportive, but he provided I did structure, and and then he'd go out of town. And then there was absolutely no structure with my mother. But you know,
we we did cool things. And I'm originally from Mississippi, and we'd go hang out with our family out there, who are very fun and open loving, not perfect people, but you know, had some, i would say, really fun crazy times as a kid, water skiing and swamps, you know, as a little girl does.
As one does. In your book, you talk a lot about your mom, and there's some similarities. And she was she drank as well, yes.
Yeah, and she's she would stop and she'd start, and she would stop and she'd start, and and there's that whole roller coaster of she was so fun and funny and beautiful and and and then just like would nose dive in the world of alcohol and kind of be a little reckless. And like, I can't even imagine doing what my mother, like she would put us to sleep and then go out. I can't even imagine with our kids, you know, we're so yeah, I just I cannot even imagine doing half the stuff my mother didn't.
I was basically an only child of an alcoholic mom. I mean, my parents were separated but when I was very very young, and I did have that duality too with my father's very structured life. But I definitely had to grow up, probably more quickly than many of my friends did, and sort of learn how to fend for myself. What do you think having that kind of a mother did for you?
I mean, I feel like I grew up a lot faster, you know, and I think I had it forced me to be more aware and careful of just my surroundings. My mother, my mother, definitely, yeah. I mean, you you know how how.
It is where there's just there's both of those.
Sides of somebody, and the extraordinary and incredible is through the roof, and the unpredictable, terrible stuff is through the roof.
And when and when.
They're happening, they are fully those things glorious in that moment. But yeah, I think it just I think that really made me grow up a lot faster too. And I think it also there's this kind of famous moment from my childhood of my principle saying to me, what if your mother knew what you were up to? And I said to my principal, what if you knew what my mother was up to? And so I kind of had this side of me where it was a vibe and I still have it, if you can go to hell.
And my mother kind.
Of instilled that in me because she really had my back in ways in life, and she would just be like, if anyone's got a problem, you tell them to go to hell. But I think also having a parent like that kind of gave me this vibe of.
You can go to hell. You know, you don't even know what I'm dealing with.
I can identify with that. I mean, you know, my mom was always like she used other choice words to say the same thing, but she you know, she always had this I was born into the world alone. I'll leave the world alone and everybody can just go, you know, And it's funny because there's a false bravado in that, you know. And I find the complexity of loving somebody like that so deeply fascinating because people seem to want it to be one way or the other. And I
find that you really have to acknowledge both sides. Because part of my mother her fabulousness, her terry terrific, which is what she nicknamed herself. But my mom also had this brilliant sense of humor. And I got so much of my sense of humor. Did your mom have a sense of humor?
Oh my gosh.
My mother was the funniest person in the room. And I remember after she had died, her best friend had come to see me do stand up and came up and she said, you know where you got that? That's not all that's not you, that's not all you. You know where you got that? And I'm like, yeah, I do. I'm very aware, very aware. I mean I always tell people that there's no world where somebody would ever say to me, yeah, I think I met your mother. It would be like, oh I met your mother, Oh yeah, I've met her.
Yeah. She was very funny, very wild, very amusing person.
What kind of mothering from her. Do you retain for your children?
I think just the side of me that's very much like you be exactly who you are, you'd be exactly who you want to be. Our job is to build a safety fence around the huge pasture, and then that's hopefully what we'll keep them safe, and then within that area go nuts and figure stuff out.
And you talked about always wanting children when you were a little kid.
Yeah, And it's so funny because it was clearly before I knew I was gay. And if you look at pictures of me through my whole life, it's a mystery that I didn't know I was gay. But I always pictured myself solo with a child, and I didn't know how that child was going to get there. I always pictured putting the baby in a basket and just riding my bicycle around. That was just the vision of my life that I imagined.
I always wanted children, and I always thought that i'd be a single mom, don't I thought I'd be in there, huh, I have the kid like strapped to me somewhere, and I'd be just going about and with like my fun friends and going to theater and just having the baby, and just like I, you know, I tell Chris sometimes that's still my still my vision. I know.
It's so weird to look up in my life and see that I have a stable life and family and spouse and in laws like I don't even I can't even believe. I thought I would be working a minimum wage job, have my baby and my bicycle basket, and that would be the extent of my life and I'd have just rotating girlfriends, you know, my whole life.
At what point do you think that you started to craft the life that you have now? Because what you described takes work, and maybe it's something you couldn't have arrived at much earlier.
I for sure couldn't have arrived where I am any earlier. And I think that when I got really sick in twenty twelve and had these three potentially deadly illnesses at the same time. And it's funny because after I came through being so sick, I would get asked all the time.
You know, most.
People that have this that they say, oh, I really needed that wake up call, And at the time when I had first gotten better, I thought, oh, oh no, you know, I never needed a wake up call, or oh no. I think if you talk to any of my friends, they would say takes out the type of person that needs a wake up call. And it's not that I think that it happened as that I needed a wake up call. But it took me years after I was so sick to realize how it actually was
a wake up call in a huge disguise. And I think that I just was floating through life, and after being so ill, I realized where I was on just cruise control in life and I wasn't That's why I think I was. I mean not that if you're having a bunch of different girlfriends or dating a lot, that you need a wake up call. I just wasn't really connecting on a deeper level. And I wasn't very focused
in my job, and I wasn't. I just I just I think that the way I arrived where I am now is truly oddly thanks to when I was so sick in twenty twelve.
For people that are not fully aware of those years or that year starting in twenty twelve, it was just a four month span of time that you were hospitalized, you had an intestinal disease seediff, you were diagnosed SEED if.
I had pneumonia, I had seedediff, and I also had invasive cancer, all simultaneously.
Well, the whole thing. And then on top of that, your mother passes away.
Suddenly she tripped and hit her head.
And you break up with your girlfriend.
Yeah time, Yeah, the whole four months was freakish. And yeah, my girlfriend and I split up in the middle of all that too.
How did you even begin to cope with all of that at once?
I really don't know.
I know that there were just the the moments that what I was relying on to give myself any sort of encouragement or strength, But it was the tiniest moments of Okay, I got up, I got out of bed, I brushed my teeth. I kept things very small and focused. I didn't socialize. I had my very tight knit group of friends. I patted myself on the back for, like
I said, getting up and brushing my teeth. I just I tried to keep everything very my world very small, so I didn't get distracted or overwhelmed by anything beyond brushing my teeth, seeing my three friends.
And I don't know how I got through it.
Sometimes when I look back, I kind of I kind of can't believe that all of that happened in four months.
I'm struck by why you didn't really sort of tell your family the extent of how sick you were.
Well.
I told my family about the cancer. It was when I had SEEDFF and pneumonia that I kept that to myself because I was so that's that wake up call. Is before I was sick, and when I was sick, I was so closed off and protective of myself that I didn't want to worry my friends or family, and I just wanted to kind of get through it. And I wasn't typically a sickly person, and so I just thought, I'll just get through this and not bother anyone with it.
And I remember also, when I had gotten out of the hospital, I ran into this comedian, Pete Holmes and he said, oh my gosh, I heard you were sick. And Sarah Silverman showed me this picture of you in the hospital, and I was said, she did, she showed you that.
I was so mortified.
This is before everybody shared everything on Instagram and whatever. And I called Sarah and I was like, you cannot show anybody, you know, and she was so sorry and she said, oh my god, I wasn't thinking. I was just thinking, Oh, if it were me, I wouldn't care. I would show anybody anything. And I was so upset
and so protective. And now after I went through all that and just the vulnerability of being so sick and needing so much help and being so deeply sad with the loss, and you just kind of you don't hold so tightly to those things anymore.
Is it really just you don't want to bother them? Or what's the fear in that? I'm just interested in, like, what why we do that?
Yeah? I am too.
I really I don't know where that comes from, but I'm you know, probably it's connected to this life that we're talking about, the childhood of you develop a protective way when you've been through a certain amount in life, I think, and you kind of have that, you have that layer of protection and you don't want anyone to think that you're down or suffering.
I just always wonder why we do that, And I do think it's upbringing for me. I don't know if do you ever find that there's a fear that somehow you won't be taken care of?
Maybe that might be part of it.
And I when I'm thinking about it, I feel if that's any part of where I was coming from before. I feel so lucky to have Stephanie because she has taken care of me like nobody's business.
You had a famous comedy set not long after your diagnosis that took your career to a new level. Listening to it feels like a type of Catharsis. Did your stand up help you process things at all or be vulnerable and contained space?
I guess so. I think that.
I've always I mean, I was raised by with humor all around me, whether it was meant to be funny or not, and I do think that it's something I have always used when I've needed any sort of out or support. That's how I've handled it is making light, and that's what I really started to do in twenty twelve when I went through all that. I opened myself up in a way on stage that I hadn't good evening.
Hello, I have cancer?
How are you?
Hi? How are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer? How are you?
Did you know you were going to do that or did it just happen?
Well?
I had this show booked at Largo in Los Angeles for quite a while, and then all those things happened, and then when I got diagnosed with cancer, I called flanagain, the owner of the venue, and said, hey, I on top of everything else that I just went through that he was aware of, I said, I just got a cancer diagnosis and I just am not going to come in.
And he said, well, why don't you just keep it on the books and if you feel like performing, the stage is here for you, and if you want to cancel a second before you walk on stage, you can do that. And so I thought, he clearly does not understand what I'm telling him. I'm really down and out. Or maybe he does, or yeah, or maybe he does, but in that moment, I was thinking, oh, he doesn't. He doesn't understand what's happening. I was just so sick and so sad. I just I was without a partner,
I was without my mother. I had invasive cancer, I had a digestive disease.
I was I was so.
Rock bottom, and I just thought, well, I guess I'll just try because I had seen how quickly health goes away and with myself, and then also watching my mother die after taking her off life support, and I just thought, well, I love stand up so much, I might as well just go on stage one last time.
Who knows what's going to happen to me.
And I don't feel like I can just do my regular material where I make jokes about in turning some weird sign I saw on a door, you know, I'm going to share what's going on in my life. And so I went on stage and did my best to make light of what I was going through. And the show that I did went viral and became the number one selling comedy album in the world for the year,
and I was nominated for a Grammy. And it changed my life because I saw the support from the people in the room, the people around the world, and I just thought, well, I guess it feels a lot better to not hold things so tightly. It really changed me. It just everything became so crazy and funny, darkly funny.
The things that were mortifying to me before, like the hospital where my mother died, where I watched her slowly die, sent me and my family, well, no, they sent my mother this, uh, this questionnaire about how her stay at the hospital was. And after, right after my mother died, I was so mad. I was gonna I was like, I am going to call this hospital.
I am.
I was so livid.
And then weeks later I was on stage, after I had had time for that to set in. I was on stage making jokes about it and answering the questionnaire alive on stage, you know, and and.
So yeah, I was just staying not good.
Not good, not good? Did not go well?
Oh god, when do you think that you you talk about being sort of in shock after When do you think you really started to process the success of it, the hype of the show, the experience itself.
Oh oh, I got it took me years because I remember my manager, who I worked with for a really long time. I remember calling him two days after the album came out, saying, when do you think this is going to die down? And he said, what do you mean? And I said, just all the like people wanting to interview me and offering me things, And when do you
think I thought it was going to last? Like a week and then I'd go back to just being this random, low key lesbian on the road telling jokes and voicy Idaho. But yeah, he was just he I remember him saying, I don't think this is going away.
Did your voice change after you were in remission.
It's from my comedic voice of what I was sharing. Yes, I think just in the way that I became more comfortable with myself off stage and that translated to on stage, which a allowed me to The comfort allowed me to talk about anything I wanted, whether it was something dark like the questionnaire that my mother got or something ridiculous like I'm doing right now in my show, which is singing Adele's Hello live on stage and I have a terrible voice and I don't know how to play the piano.
So I think that the comfort and the confidence came from that time period, and I just feel like I'm doing whatever I want to do, and it kind of brings back there. You can go to hell Vibe and me of like, I am truly only here to do what I want to do, and I hope that makes you happy.
I call the show now what Because we all have moments in our lives that just totally take us by surprise. Is there one that people might not know about you that you've experienced in your life?
Yeah, I mean, I know I have spoken about this, but I haven't really spoken to the degree that things have shifted a bit for me. Which is that I changed my diet to plant based after I was sick, and I'm so thankful for that shift in in my diet. It makes me feel better. I know some people have tried and they don't enjoy it. I'm just talking about myself and the results I've gotten and the pain that has been alleviated. I have such an interest in going
further into that world. And it's not to say that I want to abandon my career or comedy, but I want to.
I want to.
Help people that are interested. I want to take that knowledge and experience that I have and go further into that world.
And what does what does that mean? What does that look like?
I mean, I guess I've had fantasies of having some sort of wellness center. I've had an interest in providing different types of food, plant based food to people in some form. I don't know if it's through a restaurant or online.
What would you call it?
That? Brookshields is the mystery? What do I call it? It's I did during the pandemic. I got a plant based certification, nutrition certification, and I was helping people on zoom. Family members, my next door neighbor, people that were that had these little health issues where if they potentially changed their diet they could see some exciting results. And when I did that, I was calling that firmly planted with Tignataro.
Firmly planted. Yeah, I like that.
Oh that's good.
Are you able to feel proud of yourself and your comedy and your life.
Yeah. I'm somebody that is not very hard on myself. I mean, look how I showed up to your podcast. I mean, this is this is my hair? Okay, So yeah, I'm pretty good at being like, wow, wow, look how far I came. And I'm alive, and my body's healthy and strong, so far, so good, and my wife and my kids and my in laws and my friends and my family, and I kind of can't believe it. And I'm still having hard days, hard moments. All my health
is up and down over the past decade. But I'm I'm really good, and I'm very quick to acknowledge that I've come a long way.
That was the wonderful Tig Nataro. To hear more from her, go listen to her podcast. Don't ask Tig on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. That's it. For US Today, Talk to you next week. Now. What with Brooke Shields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and Boo Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Baheed Fraser.