Ilana Glazer on The Messiness of Motherhood and Friendship

Hey, bright Side, Besties, Hello Sunshine.

Today on the bright Side, comedian and actor Alana Glazer is here with us. We talk about her latest movie, Babes, where she gives us the real real on pregnancy in motherhood and we dive into how friendship changes with motherhood. It's Friday, May thirty. First, I'm Danielle Robe and.

I'm Simone Boyce and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine. She's an award winning comedian, actor and producer and fun fact, a voice in the Lego Batman movie. Today we're talking with Elana Glazer. Y'all major Danielle. Of course, we know her from Broad City, which she created with her real life bestie Abbi Jacobson. It's one of my top five favorite shows, and to me, it's a show that truly defines a generation.

You know, Alana and Abby's comedy and perspective was so fresh, and it really captured the essence of trying to make it in your twenties.

They were in New York, they were fumbling around.

Literally fumbling, yes, navigating the ups and downs, but at the heart of the show was their friendship.

Their friendship and so many laughs. You know, on the bright side. We're always looking for ways to honor women who when they're told they don't have a seat at the table, they just decide to build their own table and thinking of women like Courtney Quinn, Jacquelinn Novac and Alana Glazer is one of those women for me, and I'll tell you why. So the story of how Broad City came to be is so inspiring to me, and I'm not sure a lot of people know the details.

I think what drew people, particularly women to Broad City was that they were real and there is a lot of sort of like fancy or false depictions of what it means to be a woman or a twenty something year old woman on television, and Broad City got real for a young generation.

I remember watching that show and just finding it so relatable. They would always find the absurdity in the mundane in living that life in New York City, like living that grind when you're in your twenties, and as someone who is also grinding away in New York City in my twenties, it felt like Broad City gave women permission to be messy in pursuit of their dreams and to be goofy and to be silly and to just be real.

That's what Alana does with all of her work because now she's in a different phase of life.

She's married, she's the mother of a two year old. She's still living in New York, but in the.

Last few years she's had a ton of life changes and her goal is still to depict events in women's lives in a real way. And in line with that mission, she's out with a new movie that she co wrote and stars in, and it's still about friendship. It's called Babes, and it follows two best friends, Eden and Don, played by Alana and her real life friend Michelle Buteaux, who was absolutely hilarious, and together they're navigating pregnancy and motherhood

Okay, I'm having a baby.

Okay, yes, dog, Yeah, it just feels like Destiny and this is Destiny's child.

Can you believe that? Did you hear that? Destiny's child?

Oh?

Jumpin, jumpin' whoa, Okay, it's on Eden.

Are you sure about this?

That scene had to have been improvised. There's no way that was all written down right.

Destiny's Child. I feel like it was improvides had to have been. It's so good.

I could watch her do anything. Oh, she's such a riot. I'm so excited to ask her about this next era that she's in. And she's offering us another hilarious perspective on adulting, just a different phase.

Yes, totally, And I mean this film has been generating a lot of buzz and some really really bold headlines. Major publications have called this movie gross and raunchy, which I even shudder to say, because what it's really doing is depicting real pregnancy. But I'm very curious to see what Alana thinks about that. I'm going to ask her. After the break, Alana joins us to talk about her new movie, her stand up tour, and a whole lot more.

We'll be right back. We're back, y'all, and we're here with the Elana Glazer to talk about all things motherhood, friendship, pregnancy, and of course, her new movie, Babes. Alana, it gives me great joy to say this. Welcome to the bright Side. Hello.

Thank you for having me, Danielle Simon. I appreciate it so much.

You're such a babe.

Thank you, babe.

There's so much doing, there's.

A lot doing.

Let's get into Babes. Okay, first of all, as a woman, as a mother, thank you for making a movie by about and for real ass women. I felt so seen throughout this movie. And I also laughed so much, and I cried, went through the full range of emotions. But this was so fascinating to me. You wrote Babes while you were pregnant, and then you started filming it when your daughter was one year old. So talk about discovering yourself, I mean, stepping into this whole new identity between the

Thank you for picking up what we were putting down. I really appreciate it. It is spiritual for me to make stories and characters that feel real for people.

I really appreciate it. Thank you.

I'm going to just give the little log line. Babes' is an outrageous comedy with a lot of heart about two women, lifelong friends who are in different places in their lives. Don played by Michel Buteu, has a husband played by Hassaman Hajj and two kiddos, and she just has her second kid when the movie starts. And my character Eden is a free spirit, spontaneous character who gets pregnant by one night sand and decides to keep the baby, and it tests their lifelong best friendship.

This is like me and Simone, really no, but it's something I would do.

And she has two kids and she's married.

Yes, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And Daniel, you're no.

Kiddos, no no kids yet, but hopefully one day.

Okay.

It is.

I mean, it is like, you guys, that is so cut.

Yeah, that's so cute, and so yes. I started writing this when I was pregnant. I wrote with Joshubinowitz and his wife was pregnant at the same time, and we were approached by our manager who we share Susie Fox.

We've been with her for.

A long time and she had this flash of a vision in the shower of me getting knocked up. And my best friend has two kids already, so Susie at the time had a one in three year old. She's in the trenches of parenting, like what have I done?

Lol?

And Josh and I are like, well, we're pregnant.

We're so naive, Like my character even is at the beginning, we're like thrilled, you know, and you just don't know how hard it is and how deep you have to reach, and that you have to dig deeper so that you can reach deeper.

My daughter's a month shy of three, and it's just like, what a ride we're in for.

So Susie tells us this idea. We're both pregnant, and we're like, this is hysterical. And we've put together a list of the funniest, most surprising things that were happening, the like spontaneous sort of animalistic horniness of being pregnant.

Oh my god, that is so real. Never heard about it either.

We had all these funny things hilarious. But the thing that kept pulling us.

Through a full movie to what am I going to watch a whole ass movie for?

Is how friendships change.

And how uncertain it is and how scary it is, and how that loss is for real and never going back, you know, maybe when your kids leave eventually in twenty years, but like it's real loss, you know, And it was pulling us through.

I have a question about that because I've seen my friendships change so much. As I don't have children, and my friends do. Some of them are on their second third child. You mentioned Eden and Don are sort of navigating this new friendship moment in their lives.

Was it autobiograph for you? I was definitely pulling from real stuff, like your friendship's changed.

Yes.

And I grew up on Long Island and I live in Brooklyn, so I have a lot of my oldest friends around, and two of my oldest best friends have kids, and definitely see my friendships change and you know, I continue to be surprised.

At how they're still changing.

I think with a baby, there's so much newness for everyone, and it's so much newness for me that I'm not sensing all that loss that is happening. But yeah, and it's upsetting, and it's what growing up is like. So much of growing up is about accepting loss. Both when you're a teenager and you're like, damn, I'm not a kid anymore, and you're in college and you're like, wow, high school was actually safer and more sheltered than I realized.

And then out of.

College the free world or the unfree, you know, and you're like, wow, college was a structure I was inside of, you know, And like having babies, it's like new and exciting. But then there's this settling in and my kids three now, and I'm like like, wow, these these things are changing.

Most of the pregnancy that I've seen on screen are the birthing moments is really about one woman screaming for one or two minutes, and then all of a sudden you see a baby come out. And you really don't see pregnancy through women's eyes very often on screen. You did this totally differently in Babes. Here are some of

I feel different things at once about it. So my first reaction is defensive, where I'm like, oh, you think it's gross. The way that you got here from the stars, you think it's gross. The way that your mother made you out of almost nothing, that's gross. Maybe you need to check yourself and think about how under exposed you are to reality, to the reality of who you are and where you come from.

So I'm pissed. Okay, Remember, like.

The phrase vadge and puss were like a thing when we were teenagers. Yes, it has taken me decades to unlearn the violent culture around my body, where if it wasn't being manipulated and I was owning it, I was gross.

So I get angry because I find it violent.

I have to tell you really quickly, it took me dating a man from a totally different culture to use words that I appreciated about my vagina, like we do it so wrong in America.

I also have to say, Alana, when I see these reactions in people calling some of the scenes in Babes gross, I'm like, oh, really, you think that's gross, Wait until you see what motherhood is actually like. There's just such a detachment from reality, Like this isn't gross, this is my life.

And Danielle, props to that man, and props to like all the partners. It's hard to be a woman in this world, and it's hard to find yourself so hot and sexy and gorgeous and pretty, and becoming parent has really helped me in that process. And I'm also like, Okay, you may say it's gross privately, but you published that in the headline. You don't realize how violent and ignorant it is. However, however, that is a defensive reaction. On

I also think that great art and artists really focus our attention. And you're doing that because they're writing headlines they've never written before.

It means that they're seeing something new.

Yeah, you're innovating.

Thank you.

So you mentioned earlier about like missing days past, the nostalgia for high school, for college, et cetera.

I'm thirty three.

I've recently been very nostalgic for my twenties. I feel like I did them wrong. I should have been a bad girl. Then now I'm being a bad girl.

I just I did it wrong.

But Broad City really ushered in this cultural shift, showing women in their twenties that they could be messy and immature and totally weird in the very best way. And with Babes, you're exploring this next decade in your thirties. What words are defining your thirties so far?

Let me just.

First say I'm giggling because I totally relate. I like knew I wanted to be a comedian when I was like seven years old.

I came to the city in college student.

Drag but knowing I was going to pursue comedy and my twenties. I'm I love Broad City. I just love it to death that these are my five children, these five seasons. But I'm manufacturing free wheel and twenties fun while I'm Shane smoking cigarettes anxiously show running and executive producing and head writing all with Abby and then getting to set and being like I wrote this for me

So it had just been this.

Thing growing and growing and growing to a more serious and higher stakes contexts. And I met my husband I was twenty five, which was very lucky. He is such a rooting figure. He roots me and grounds me. But still my acting out was so like reckless and not even pleasurable, and almost like checking a box if I did the bad thing rather than now like drinking it in. So I would say my thirties are increasingly pleasurable.

I would say they are healthy. I would say.

I'm taking great care with this decade, taking great care and just making so much love.

We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Alana Glazer.

We are back with comedian and actor Alana Glazer. Alana, you mentioned you've known what you wanted to do since you were seven years old, and I have delighted in these videos that your brother Elliot has posted of the two of you making sketches together on VHS tapes when you were kids. You were babies. How old were you three or four?

We started?

I was like three or four and then he started going through puberty and was over it when he was like thirteen about and I was lool, how much is that nine? So we have like five or six years of just increasingly obsessive sketch video making and he just put me on.

Man.

I was really his muse and his plaything that I was so delighted that he wanted to play with me, Like those videos are so cute. And my brother Elliott is wild, but he's put together and I'm down to do whatever.

Well, It's incredible to see your charisma at such a young age. You were destined for this life and you just had to share that charisma with the world.

She has the RIZ totally.

A few minutes ago, you talked about being healthy right now, and I think healthy for me looks like being integrated and integrating all the parts of myself. Yes, And I want to know when do you feel most connected to that little girl who's in those videos?

Oh I got chills.

Thank you for your kindness and generosity. I'm also reflecting on that RIZ as a desperate thirst, a deep seemingly insatiable need for approval, validation, intention that are reflecting on relatable and also like trying to balance it with rest, privacy, offlineeness, whatever. That's what health looks like to me, balancing that so that when I'm doing that thing, it actually feels healthy and uplifting and not empty and like I'm digging in

And I think of us as like tree rings, you know, like.

Each age each year, like we're built upon those younger people inside of us and we can tap into that person. And recently I was on tour. I did fifty two shows from June to May. This is part of my taking pleasure, spreading it out as a mom, only being away two nights a week and then taking the third week off.

But in February we went the whole family.

We went to LA and posted up there so I could pop to all my West Coast dates in a more consolidated fashion. And the LA show I was having like buyers Tom, hoping that somebody would want this hour and that day. I've had such a practice where I talk to myself for hours and take a walk and talk out loud so that I have one thought stream instead of my brain pop it around going nuts. So I talked to myself for like five hours before every show, and on this day in LA, I was like, I'm

This is crazy. I'm not nervous. And it reminded me of I was Maria in.

Westside Story in my Camp, my camp production when I was eight years old, and I was so nervous. The night before I was so fucking nervous, and I know myself, I know the pressure where it's like, you know, it's almost like I'm standing before God, either going to go to heaven or hell.

That's what that pressure feels like in my mind, and did when I was eight.

Years old, because I literally knew I want to do this, and I go to my dad and I wake my dad up and I was like, oh Dad.

I'm aham a little nervous.

I was like convulsing, shaking, so nervous. And the day of the performance, I got it a huge fever and I'm like poorly nervously singing, so scared I was like so funny, just like poor thing, just a poor little thing. And I was like talking to her where I was like, see, like you always knew that this was what you were supposed to do, but like you couldn't handle it then, and.

You figured out how to handle it.

And here we are having a peaceful day walking, you know, talking to myself. You know, there's all these moments like it, but that was my most like prominent recently, like holding her hand and just taking a walk.

Wow.

I still get nervous sometimes before big things. And when I was little, a dance teacher said, nerves mean that you care. And when I make that switch, I just I hold on to them. I kind of like the nerves.

Then I get nervous before everything I do.

Oh see that makes me feel better.

I have to talk to myself before everything.

I'll just be trying out new material for fifteen people in Brooklyn and I'm like, whoo, here we go.

You know, it's like you just gotta I've been doing this like practice.

I call stack it up, where I'm just stacking up the reality where I'm like I'm nervous. That makes sense because I care, you know, and I just stack up the reality and then like, I do need time, you know, I do need time for this work, but it's worth making that time.

So there's the Marvel cinematic universe, right, and then there's the Alana Glazer cinematic universe. Because Babes almost seems like a sequel to the adulting journey that we all went on in Broad City. So does that mean we're getting a perimenopause comedy next? Maybe a menopause comedy after that?

Thank you again for picking up what I'm putting down. I am so grateful and like, thank God. To be seen and heard as I hope is like such a privilege. Thanks for saying that. You know, I'm developing a show right now. It's not quite where it needs to be, but I'm developing a show right now about a different kind of friend group in our thirties in New York.

Oh please, we need more of these shows.

I agree.

I agree, just needs the time that it needs to get it right. Yeah, and I would say perimenopause. I'm a little too young for it because I haven't gone through it yet. But I'm really interested in friends as partners and partners as friends, you know, like the way that Michelle and I play friends, but like chosen family and soul sisters who are going to raise their kids together. You know, my character in Babes is just at the beginning of that journey. I'd like to go deeper into

They have to get a job.

So like, I think there's still some exploration for me in the child raising space, in a partnership space, and so with friends before carry menopause, which I'm that'll be funny, that'll be a funny one.

Yeah, just keep it in your back pocket, Yeah for sure.

Oh my gosh.

Yes, we talk about friendships so much on this show. Multiple episodes just unpacking friends are codependency on them? What they mean to us?

Yes?

And you know what's like interesting to me is dependency. When is it healthy to depend on someone? And perhaps a vulnerable act and an act that like you grow through.

Rather than like something that's enabling and coddling.

So there's this scene in Broad City where you're sitting outside of a pizza shop and Abby asks you these two questions that I just love. So we're going to flip them on you. What have you done this past year that you're proud of? And what are you gonna do this upcoming year?

Abby still asks me that on my birthday we got it from he does, and you know what one thing I've I've done this past year that I'm proud of is taken the most pleasure in touring continues to shock me. I'm still processing it. Something I hope to do in this next year, in this next year, starting at this moment, is ooh, can I do it?

Take August off? Can I do that? I hope to do that. I'll definitely do two weeks.

But if I can do four weeks, I think I think I'll be a new damn woman come September. Come the day after Labor Day. Oh, thank you for making me say it out loud, because I really want to do it in August. I'm going to do it, so Moan and Danielle, I'm going to do it.

I need to know what you're going to do during that time. Are you getting on an airplane and going to a visa?

No, you know what.

We're going up to the countryside for August. And it's like, yeah, I could check my email or I could not and just wait until September and do all my emails. Yeah, yeah, that's what I aim to do. Oh just another tip about like caring about your nerves. One phrase I found in my preparation practice before my shows on tour was I aim to take pleasure rather than be like, how fun, my stupid bitch, how fun? Why aren't you having fun

I love that tip so much. Alana, you are so much fun. Thank you for this interview. Thanks for being so candid.

I could talk on and on and on. I hope to see you again.

The mic is open for you any time time. Thank you for.

This September one after your August hiatus. Just come on back, rested, restored.

I may be careful what you wish for.

Please, I love it. Thanks Alana.

Alana Glazer is a comedian, actor, and activist. Her new movie Babes is in theaters. Now, that's it for today's show. On Monday, we're talking to stylist and nonprofit founder Carla Welch about her mission to provide sustainable period care for all.

Listen and follow The bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The bright Side is a production of Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts and is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon.

Production by Arcana Audio. Courtney Gilbert is our associate producer. Our producers are Steph Brown, Jessica Wank, and Olivia Briley. Our engineer is PJ. Shahamatt, and our senior producers are Izi Kein, Pania Jenis Yamocha, and Amy Padula.

Arcana's executive producers are Francis Harlowe and Abby Ruska. Arcana's head of production is Matt Schultz.

Natalie Tulluk and Maureen Polo are the executive producers for Hello Sunshine.

Julia Weaver is the supervising producer, and Ali Perry is the executive producer for iHeart Podcasts. Tim Palazzola is our showrunner. This week's episodes were recorded by Gam Gibson, Carl Catl, Jessica Crinchitch, Bahied Fraser.

Our theme song is by Anna Stump and Hamilton lighthauser.

Special thanks to Connell Byrne and Will Pearson.

I'm Simone Boyce. You can find me at Simone Boice on Instagram and TikTok.

And I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok. That's r O b A.

Y See you Monday, fam. Keep looking on the bright side.