As a middle-aged mother of three from Tennessee, Leanne Morgan breaks all the stereotypes of what it takes to succeed in comedy. Yet, after two decades of homing her distinct style of "clean comedy," Leanne's down-to-earth, relatable humor has catapulted her into the spotlight, with the help of a viral video and support from stars like Reese Witherspoon.
Today on the show the "Mrs. Maisel of Appalachia" shares her unlikely journey from growing up in a farming family to selling out the Grand Ole Opry, how she never gave up on her Hollywood dream, and why her audience hasn't feel "seen" until now.
Hello Sunshine, Hey bestie is today on the bright Side. We're joined by comedian and author Leanne Morgan. She's here to talk about her Appalachian roots, how investing in herself finally paid off, and how she talks to her kids about following their own dreams. Her new memoir What in the World is out now. It's Tuesday, October fifteenth.
I'm Simone Boyce, I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to share women's stories, laugh, learn, and brighten your day. Our guest today has been touted as the Missus masl of Appalachia. Leanne Morgan is a stand up comedian and author who hails from rural Tennessee. Her relatable humor, her anecdotes about aging and family life, and honestly her southern charm has won the hearts of so many people, including me and Simone.
Oh yes, my husband and I watched her debut Netflix special I'm every Woman, which came out last year, and we were just rolling laughing. She's such a hoot. What's really inspiring about Leanne too, is she really started from the bottom, y'all. I mean, she built a career most comedians can only dream of. So before her comedy career really took off, she was going door to door selling jewelry and testing out comedic material on her customers. And some of her first ever quote unquote shows were actually just Leanne making women laugh on their couches. It wasn't until Leanne was in her thirties and had three young children that she started performing stand up in comedy clubs.
That is such a hard career path. Those comedy clubs are not easy places, especially for women, and look at her now. In her new memoir, Leanne talks about how unseen she felt by the comedy industry for decades and how grateful she is to have the success that she does today. I personally, simone, I know you feel the same way. We're just so excited to see her win. I cannot wait to dive into this episode.
She's someone who is so easy to root for. And Leanne is actually on her just getting started tour right now, so she's making stops all across the country. We're talking to Indiana, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and so many others. Danielle, I'm thinking maybe we should book an airbnb and go see one of these shows, thinking.
Let's start doing Okay, well enough from us, let's bring her in.
Leanne, welcome to the bright side.
Thank you for having me, Samo, you do all. I'm tickled a bit here.
Well, we are such big Leanne Morgan fangirls over here. And I know there are millions of others out there because your career is just exploding. I mean, you released a stand up special last year on Netflix. You've been cast in an upcoming movie with Will Ferrell, he Reese Witherspoon. You're starring in a scripted series for Netflix. You've got a new book, a memoir, officially out in the world, the world. You are killing it right now. Lynn, congratulations.
Oh you don't thank you. I'm so thankful. But yes, I've been doing all this stand up cony for over twenty five years and then it blew up in the last few years.
So is that surreal because I'm sure you never could have predicted all of this.
I had television deals through the years, and then there were times I couldn't get booked.
Nobody cared, but I was in Knoxville, Tennessee.
I had three baby stories, and so I'd be so disappointed when a television show didn't make it, and it'd be with major networks like ABC and Warner Brothers and that kind of thing, and it wouldn't make it, and then I would be devastated, but I would still think, Oh, it's gonna come.
It's gonna come.
But I had it in my head that I would be younger and thinner, and I had it in my head.
I thought I'll be in my.
Forties, and then in my fifties early fifties, it was going so badly.
That I thought I'm gonna bow out.
I know I'm gonna be a grand mama soon, and being from the country, we take a big part in our grandchildren's lives. And I thought, I'll just start cooking pinto beans and I'll wear a house dress, and I'll let this little baby come up in the yard and stay with me. And then it blew up. And there were some things that happened that I'm very thankful I did. I had done a little special with dry Bar, which was a clean comedy online platform.
I didn't even know how it worked.
I did a special form. They pay me a couple of thousand dollars. I thought, I'll never see it again. Well, they put it online. It blew up and I got a little money from that, not a lot of money, but enough money that I thought, Nate burg Gate's in, Jim Gaffkin, all these people I admire. They have social media people, and I don't know how to do social media. I'm gonna hire these It was two brothers out of Plano, Texas. I hired these boys and I thought, I'll do it three months and if nothing happens, that'll be a sign I'll just bow out of this thing. And the first video they put out went viral and it was about old people going to concerts. I really wasn't performing. I shot at one time and I just happen to get it, and they thought it was funny.
They put it on.
People started watching that then saying, well who is that? It was just like it happened overnight. I'm not kidding out.
It was like a month before.
Clubs were turning me down, saying we like her, she's sweet, she doesn't get drunk in the parking lot, but she can't sell tickets. And the next month I was selling out all over the United States.
All because you invested in yourself.
And then COVID hit and I had the biggest tour announcement, I mean, the biggest thing ever happened to me.
One hundred city tour and everything shut down.
But in the middle of that, what a blessing it was because I would do videos and I would just be sitting on the bake porch and they'll make a bone during COVID saying I fixed my little mama Castro, got to have purad foods, or this is what I did today.
I think I got the most following during that.
And what I think it is is that I'm in a lane by myself, and I have got all this experience of being a mama, a grandmama, being a fifty eight year old woman, gone through men of pause, you know, been married to a man for over thirty years. All that knowledge and the stuff that I talk about has come out at the same time.
All these other women have gone through the same thing I've gone through. They relate to it, and there's nobody else in my lane.
Tell me more about this community of women that you have collected through this experience. Who is your audience.
I know this sounds crazy because I feel like I'm not here, but when I see in the theater, it'll be a twenty five year old girl with her fifty year old mama, with their grandmama. So it's three generations of women. But it's also like ninety year old man. I'm a clean comedian. It's not hokey clean. I think it's very and there's any window it's clean enough you can take your grandmama and your daughter. It's like a family experience. People say to me all the time, my granddaddy loves you. He's ninety and he's come to a comedy club and never been to a comedy club before, you know.
And the comedy club people would say to me, we've never seen this before.
I loved reading about your early days when you were selling jewelry and using tupperware parties as an opportunity to develop that style of clean comedy that you have. How did that time in your life shape your comedic voice.
I was in the foothills of the Appalachia Mountains. There was no comedy club. I bet there wasn't one one hundred miles from there, but I knew I had it in my heart. I want to be a stand up but I want to stay home and breastfait. Charlie, my oldest, and I started selling jewelry and I would go around to women's houses and sell that jewelry and eat brownies with them in chips, and I developed a stick. I was supposed to be talking about jewelry and like how to put a clip earring on a pump and change the look of your ship. I was instead talking about breastfeeding and hemorrhoids and how Chuck didn't hear the baby crying the night. So I had this whole baby shtick because I was pregnant through the whole thing. I look back on it, it was like having my own little comedy club with my own demographic. But I know that somebody truly urinated on a couch while I was doing my stick.
She peed from laughter.
She peed from laughter, Carman. Her name is Carmen.
I've always thanked her every time I see her, because I'll see her around town. I go, Carmen, when you peed on that counch at Jane Williams house. That gave me the confidence to think I can make it in Hollywood. Honest to goodness, they were blotting the couch and everybody was dying, and I thought, in my heart, I thought, okay, all right, I got it.
I got it.
If I made Carmen peel on that couch, I've got something. I ain't try to make it. Being a mama was the number one thing for me, But in my mind I was always thinking, I'm going to Hollywood. I don't know how. I don't know when this gives me courage, I'm gonna try and open mic.
Okay, I have to ask what Chuck Morgan thought about all of this, because your husband, he must be such a good sport, because you joke about your relationship all the time and it's hilarious. What was his reaction whenever you were like, Okay, I got this lady to be on a couch. I'm pretty funny. I think I'm gonna give this a shot, babe.
I did say too.
And we had three babies, and he was moving up in the company and doing really well. In no sin, I think I've got something. I think we need to sell everything we own. I'll cook on a hot plate. Let's move to LA And he said, we need health insurance and you've lost your run, and let me ting on that Chuck Morgan is just a very introverty quanet overachiever.
Chuck Morgan did everything perfect, so in love with me.
He's been supported through the whole time, Like he goes, I've got the kids, you go. He has really been supportive because he's just so quiet and not Hollywood kind of very just stable, like he's been saving for our retirement since he was twenty seven years old, so to be a risk taker and to be a dreamer.
He's not a dreamer.
Yeah, I'm the dreamer, but he's never squelched that dream. And then now, I mean he's just in shock over things that's happened every day. I think he says, what in the world?
And I think it took him a long time to figure out because he's not out on the beout and seeing my crowds and the audiences.
So because he doesn't travel with me or anything, because he's got a big jaw. So when he sees things coming through or a movie with Rhys Witherspoon and all that, I mean, everybody, my kids, everybody's just like what. And I try to prepare him like it's a big deal. It's a big deal. Big things are happening.
My mom calls it the rock in the butterfly. She says that one person has to be the stable rock and the other person could be the butterfly and they go together. But you can't have two butterflies.
Right or somebody's not going to pay the bill in a car and gets reposed.
Exactly Okay, is I'm going to use that.
Tell your little mama, I've got to use that it That is exactly what it's been.
Hey, is the wrong hold?
On bright side?
Besties, We'll be right back. Stick with us, and we're back with comedian and author Leanne Morgan.
Leanne, I want to talk a little bit about your experience as an Appalachian woman in comedy and also an Appalachian woman at your age and comedy like you truly, like you said, you are carving out your own lane. And in an interview with NPR, you told them that you think that Hollywood forgets us. What did you mean by that?
Women in Hollywood are I mean young, and they don't just have much about women going through menopols, midlife, if you've gotten a divorce, if you're trying to make a living for you and your children. But they realize now that my demographic are the people who make decisions about a show can buy the tickets, yes, have got the money, buy every product in their house for their family.
They're the consumer. They make decisions about that.
And I think they stereotype people in Appalachia or in the country in the South too, where they think, you know, we don't know what we're doing, and we're pitiful, and everybody doesn't have shoes, and we don't know who the president is, and I just feel like we feel unseen.
They flatten you to this one dimensional kind of stereotype.
M h.
And it's just not true. Yeah, it's just not true. There's so many layers to everyone. I mean, that's the beauty of humanity. Did anyone ever pressure you to lose your accent to kind of mainstream you? And if so, how did you handle that?
My first husband, I was married really young, and I talk about it in the book, and it was very painful. It was a bad marriage and I got divorced at twenty three. My first husband said, everybody's making fun of you.
You need diction lessons.
People think you're stupid, and y'all, I got to tell you, this is one of those moments where I'm pat myself on the back, and I don't know how I felt that way, but because other things he said stuck with me. But I remember thinking, no, I'm fine, don't worry about me. I'm fine. But I tell y'all, I'm proud of where I came from. I'm informing people on both sides generation's back, and they're good people, and they're smart, and they're decent people. And I just was never ashamed of where I came from, and I'm not ashamed of my accent. Plus now I'm getting to an age where I think I'm too tired to change things. I sound like my mama and she's a doll of seal and y'all would squeeze her in two and people through the years would say, is that really your accent? And people on social media go, she's faking it, And I'm like whatever, I feel like I'm authentic.
This is who I am. And I think that's why these women out here feel close to me.
Speaking of your mama, you sold out the grand Old Opry. I can't even imagine what that feels like. But your mom came on stage, and I know you've referenced her as the funniest person that you know, So can you take me through that moment and what that meant to you.
Okay, my low Cel is eighty years old now and she had a stroke five years ago and it was a bad one and she's been handicapped ever since. But she is so darling and such a sunshine kind of person and has never complained and has been the best mama in the world. Always would tell me you're going Hollywood, Yes you are, and she would let me, honeystay out of school.
I'm shaming to you all that. But when I was in kindergarten, she goes, your stunning Curt and I go in. She go, Okay, stay on.
And we would watch and we would watch Hollywood Squares and stuff. But anyway, we were raised right outside of Nashville, and my little mom and daddy had a meat processing plant in a farm, and so the people that rang the grando Omprey they would do their beef every year and they would give us tickets and we were just like what And I remember going when I was little and I would say Porter Wagner and Dolly Pardon and George Jones and being raised near Dan, I mean, we were just in all of it. In the grando Oprey, which for Tennisons. We look at that and that's the big time for us. You know, that's a big deal. It's a huge history, unbelievable, you know who's walked on that stage.
So when they booked me there, first of all Lucille.
It was close enough for her to come with me, and my sister brought her my daddy, and she was so proud of me, and it was her birthday, and so we got her a cake and all that, and I thought, we've got to take her out on stage and sing Heavy Birthday to her. We rolled her out in a whelchair and then people sang Heavy Birthday to her and she let up.
She loved it. But I think what was supposed to special.
My audience has been watching her journey from having a stroke, and when all this was going on during COVID and all that, people were praying for her. People would send me blankets for her. So I swear it was like everybody had known Lucille all their lives. It was crazy. And I watched that video and I could bowl my eyes down. I wish that she could go everywhere with me, because she would die over what I'd get to see and do.
But I always tell her everything. I mean, I make sure she knows everything everywhere I am.
I moved from Chicago to LA in twenty thirteen. I was from a suburb and I just remember feeling like I must have come from the middle of nowhere, because like everything was so shocking to me, from the way that people did business to like both good and bad. You know, Like I just was so shocked by it all. You didn't have a mentor you didn't have a track, like you just muscled all of this. And I'm wondering now if there's a piece of advice that you wish you would have heard when you first started out.
Is there something you wish you would have known.
I'm honest to goodness, I wish that I had understood.
And I know this sounds arrogant. I don't mean to it, but I think it's in I think people women need to hear it.
I didn't realize how smart I was. I didn't realize how I knew what I was doing.
I built this.
I've basically built this myself, and I look back on it now and I think I wish I could tell my seventeen year old self, you are smart, you can do this, you can you do anything you want to. Back then, I don't know what I was thinking. I thought, I've got to have a manion. I've got it, and I wanted to man and get married and all that, but I just didn't have confidence in myself. And when I say smart, I mean people smart, like I don't mean book smart.
But I understand. I think I've got a high emotional I que.
I have watched what other people have done, people that are successful, people that are not successful in this business. And I've networked and I've made relationships with people that have helped me, and I'm go, can you give me your advice? And they felt like they were kind of on this ride with me and they wanted to help me. And I tell my kids all the time, because I think their generation, they don't want to ask for help or they're embarrassed, and I say, you've got to ask people and listen to what people are saying and learn from people.
We've got to talk about the person who connected all of us, and that is Reese Witherspoon, the founder of Hello Sunshine, also the executive producer and star of the new film You're Cordially invited, and she actually asked you to play her older sister in the film. First of all, I got to hear your reaction to that. That must have been so mind blowing. And then what's your favorite memory on set with her?
Can y'all believe it? I just started to get a little tracks. And after that video went viral and my friend Hugh, who's good friends with Rees, took me to an after CMA's party with Reba McIntyre and all these big stars. Nobody knew who I was, and I was.
In an uncomfortable shoe and I fluffed up my hair and tried to act like somebody in Little Rece Witherspoon. He introduced me to her and I said, I was very intimidated. Her little big eyes looked up at me and I said, my mama was sick and mama just gotten sick.
And she goes, what what is happened?
And she held on to me and looked into my eyes, made eye contact with me and wanted to know how my mama was doing.
And I just thought that was so sweet. Then during COVID all that hit, she started following me a message of me and she would say, when you.
Tell everybody that everything's going to be all right Land, it's helping people keep doing it.
So she started encouraging.
Me doing that.
Not my heart and beat out in my body every time I opened up a message from her.
But that little thing did that for me and wanted me to have that.
And so I was on tour and I was in Pennsylvania doing a casino that Janny Jackson had just gone. I'm a big fan of Janny Jameson, and I got a call and they said, Reese, Witherspoon and Wilfarell want you to do a table read. And I said, what's a table read? I had no idea, and so I thought, well, I don't know if I'm gonna get the part on you know what I'm saying. And then I got it, and I was like, what in the world. And then I got on that set. I had no idea what was happening. That little thing wanted to see me when everybody on that set then, but I was standing next to her, you know, a star, and I just couldn't even believe it. And then by the end of it, we would be standing next to each other and I'd say, you know, I can't poop and she said, you.
Need to up your magnesium. Lame in.
How much magnesium are you taking? I go, I'm taking two hundred and fifty milligrads. Well you've got to double it. I doubled my magnesium. I've been fine ever since. So anyway, we just all and get lay uped and giggled and had a ball, and then I got to tell y'all after.
I mean, it was the best experience I've ever had. And I had a ball.
It's time for another quick break. We'll be right back with Leanne Morgan, and we're back to our conversation with Leanne Morgan. Leanne, you're very open about aging and your material, and it's honestly, it's some of my favorite parts of your comedy, Like when you say you'd like to dance but not too hard because you don't want people to see you jiggle. What are the funniest parts of growing older?
Oh, I don't know if you'd call it funny. I'm telling you things you start happening to you and you're like, what in the world. And my girls are twenty six and twenty eight and they're my best friends and they will ride with me and they're like, mom, I don't think you can drive well anymore?
Can you say? I go no, one can't say.
And people would tell me years ago, they go, just wait till you go through menopause.
You're gonna have so much material.
And I just felt like that was four hundred years away and it was never gonna happen to me. And then I thought, oh, I'll be able to I could have fifteen kids, and I'll be able to get pregnant for the rest of my life. I always just thought of myself as Mother Earth. And then they told me I did I populate in my fifties. I got to tell ye old Land, and I was very proud of that.
Okay, Leanne, how open are you with your daughters about all of the changes? And I'm asking because my mom will call me to tell me updates on any change that's happening with her. Sometimes things I don't want to hear about, but she says to me that I have to listen because one day it's going to happen to me, and she's preparing me.
Yes, and been thankful baby, because nobody told us, nobody told us, nobody talked about it. Yes, I tell them every horrible thing and then my and my baby channel travels with me as my professional make award is.
She'll just say, and I hate to even say this in rental omis do you smell like hey? And I'm like.
Hey.
She goes, yeah, girl, you smell all like hey. And then we just bust out laughing what are you gonna do? I mean, what are you gonna do?
But we are so.
Close and travel and tour and she's with me all the time, and they're Daddy, you know, doesn't like to spend money, and he's always in my ear. I can hear him when I'm traveling and saying, eat the Continental breakfast, don't go to Panera and spend money.
And so I make her stay in the room with me.
And she's twenty six years old, and we try to get queens. Sometimes we have just won a king and then we spun.
Have a question about your girls. They have seen all of this. They were young when you started your career, and now they're all grown up. They've seen every iteration of this. How do you talk to them about following their dreams?
I tell my girls and I tell my boy, I go, you get one time on this earth, and whatever you dreamed of when you were little, whatever you loved when you were little. I believe this whatever sets you on fire and gained you that that you wanted to follow that.
I agree. I don't know what that is. Y'all got to find that. I out, but I go. Don't let people kill your dreams.
And I tell them that lately all the time you get one time around this thing, Let's give it everything we've got.
I want you to live your best life. I want you to live your best best life.
All right, Leanne, thank you so much for bringing your realness and your hilarity to the right side.
Oh my darling, thank you for having me. Y'all are both precious.
Leanne Morgan is a comedian and author. Her book What in the World is out now, and you can watch her special I'm every Woman on Netflix.
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, it's Wellness Wednesday, we're learning all about are you Ada Nutrition with plant based cook, New York Times bestselling author and podcast host Roddy devlu Keia.
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