1. Sam’s life-changing strategies for (reluctantly) interacting with humans. 2. How we use humor to hide the lava of rage churning beneath our surface. 3. Sam’s friendship theory and why she doesn’t need a deep soul connection with every “lowercase f friend.” 4. Sam’s embrace of JOMO (Joy of Missing Out)–and why she genuinely believes no one else is having a better time (except maybe Abby). 5. The behind-the-scenes story of the “Fat Babe Pool Party” Shrill show–and why that episode was one of the most important things she’s ever written. About Samantha: Samantha Irby writes the "Bitches Gotta Eat" blog, and is the author of WOW, NO THANK YOU; WE ARE NEVER MEETING IN REAL LIFE; and MEATY. She has been a writer and/or co-producer for TV shows including And Just Like That, Work in Progress, Shrill, and Tuca & Bertie. IG: @bitchesgottaeat To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Samantha Irby and what is her background?
Hello, sweet world. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. I think today we'll call this We Can Do Funny Things because we have one of the funniest people in the universe here. The three of us love to high heavens. Yeah. So first of all, I'll just tell you, we have Sam Irby here.
I know. Laugh out loud, author.
All right. Samantha Irby writes the Bitches Gotta Eat blog and is the author of Wow, No Thank You, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, and Needy. She has been a writer and or co-producer for TV shows including And Just Like That, Work in Progress, Shrill, and Tuca and Bertie. Sam Irby. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.
Thank you for having me on your incredible show. I am very intimidated. I'm going to do my best to sound like cool and relaxed, but...
Okay, so let's get the cool out of the way right away because what I want to start with, Sam, is our friendship origin story, which is my favorite story in the world. Okay, so Sam and I did an event together recently. At the end of the event, I loved her so much. I sent her my phone number and email. Months and months later, lo so many months later, I am sitting in France at the World Cup. Okay.
As you do.
As you do. Right. I'm at the soccer as per usual. But it's a big soccer. Okay. Like the biggest soccer. It's the biggest soccer. Like the Super Bowl of soccer. The Oscars of soccer, if you will. Yes. Yes. The Grammys.
I mean, also, it's just the World Cup. The Grammys of the soccer. The World Cup is, it's a standalone event. This is what everything else compares itself to.
So like the Tonys. Like the Tonys of soccer. Oh my God, just go with the story. And I get a text, okay? And it says something like the following. Hello, Glennon. I'm sorry to escalate our friendship on text in this way, but I'm an emergency. I'm sitting in a room full of people. And I may have told the people that I'm very good friends with you.
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Chapter 2: How did Samantha and Glennon become friends?
Ich bin Theresa und meine Empfehlung an alle Entrepreneure, startet mit Shopify erfolgreich durch. Ich verwende Shopify schon seit dem ersten Tag und die Plattform macht mir nie Probleme. Ich habe viele Probleme, aber die Plattform ist nie eins davon. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass Shopify ihre Plattform kontinuierlich optimiert. Alles ist super einfach, integrier- und verlinkbar.
Und die Zeit und das Geld, das ich dadurch spare, kann ich anderweitig investieren. Vor allem in Wachstum.
Speaking of helpful, you are the mastermind behind one of the most revolutionary, groundbreaking portrayals of big women on screen ever. And I'm obviously talking about the Fat Babe Pool Party episode of Shrill, which became just instant classics. So important to so many people. Can you tell us why you wrote that and what that whole process was like for you?
Yeah. So Shrill is based on Lindy West's memoir of the same name. And Lindy and I are very close friends. TV writing is so weird. It was my first TV job and we're in the room and we wanted to take the character from this place of being kind of meek and putting up with a bad dude and putting up with a job that sucked to this point where she was like, bold, not all the way bold.
You know, we wanted to do more than one season. So a little bit more bold and vocal. Sticking up for herself. And so we were brainstorming ideas for like a big, pivotal experience she could have that would change her. Now, everybody knows like in real life, it takes time.
years and years and years and years of looking at tumblers of fat bodies, looking at... It's not just an overnight kind of thing, but Hulu wasn't going to give us 700 episodes for the first season, so we had to figure out a transformative experience she could have. And so Lindy and I were talking about All of the different things we had been to that sort of changed our ideas about fatness.
And I talked about there used to be this dance party for fat girls in Chicago that would meet like once a month. And I would go to that. Clothing swaps. like lots of different like websites and stuff, but there's no way to show that on TV. And Lindy had gone to one of, I think Essie Golden started this party called the Chunky Dunk.
It may not have been, Essie Golden had a pool party and there were other pool parties and Lindy had gone to a bunch of them. And it was like, let's do that. We have to do that. We want to see that. Showing women who look like us that they are beautiful and making this thing. So we landed on a pool party and we figured out what was going to be in the other episodes.
And then when it got to the time of like assigning, the showrunner assigned me the pool party episode and I was like, okay, all right. You know, like I was like... So excited. And so I, when I was writing it, I was just like, I want to see almost like a real life Candyland, like just beautiful, bright.
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