Meg Stalter Commits to the Bit

Let’s start with last night—I saw you in “Oh, Mary!” How did that show feel? Can you tell the different rhythms between performances, when it’s going well and when it is going less well?

Yes. I feel that we were amazing last night. You could feel the audience. There are definitely nights where maybe people are more . . . misbehaving. It’s not much, because people are pretty behaved when they see Broadway shows, but once in a while you’ll get someone who might say something back to you. Which isn’t really bad, but it’s more like they respond to a joke that they know they’re probably not supposed to. It’s not really a call and response.

No. It’s not “Rocky Horror.” [A waitress comes over and asks, “Anything to drink for you?”]

Can I have a Diet Coke with lime? [Stalter turns back.] Do you think that’ll make it in, that I had a Diet Coke?

Sure. Do you need to plug Diet Coke?

No, but you know how sometimes the interviews will be, like, “She came in . . .”

“She ate a Cobb salad. She was glowing from the outside!”

“She’s sweaty, and two minutes late, and she looks like she ran here.”

This is not your first time living in New York, right?

I lived in New York right before the pandemic. Before that, I’d spent, like, seven years in Chicago doing improv and standup. And then finally I got a manager here, and I was, like, “Oh, my gosh.” The plan was to move to Los Angeles, but then I was, like, “New York’s so fun, and the standup scene’s so amazing. I’ve got to try it.” At that point, I was a nanny in Chicago, so I moved without a job, but I saved up enough to get here. I was needing money. And Cole [Escola] hired me to do a podcast with them—the “National Lampoon” podcast. That was actually my first comedy job that paid enough where I didn’t have to have a day job. It was like heaven because it was so cool you got to go into an office every day. It made me feel like I was on “S.N.L.” or something.

How did you know Cole?

We became friends online. I remember just being so in love with them and their comedy and vice versa. Then we met and it felt like we knew each other forever.

How long before the pandemic did you move here?

Six or seven months. And it felt like things were picking up. I got to do shows every night if I wanted to, and I was becoming close friends with tons of comedians here. I had friends before I moved, too, like the Three Busy Debras and Cat Cohen. So I knew that when I got here I’d have a support system. I started doing Cameo videos, and then the pandemic hit. So Cameo saved me, because that’s how I made money. I did hundreds of them. I didn’t charge that much, but I had to do a lot. I was always doing it in character, and they’d be, like, five-minute-long videos because I didn’t want to charge people to have, like, a twenty-second video. It just felt so wrong. So I’d charge maybe thirty dollars for seven minutes.

I think you were charging too little! Did you always do that same character?

No, it would be custom for each person. There were a lot of weird ones, where they were going to expire, so I’d be late at night, no makeup, in the closet. The weirdest one is I did a video where they said they were getting married, and I made a joke about them cheating. And then the person was, like, “I’m never going to send this to my partner. This is awful. I would never cheat on them.” Which then made them sound like they were cheating. . . . So then I sent them one back and I was, like, “Hi, your partner’s definitely not cheating on you. No one would ever do that to you. No one’s cheating on anyone. Have a fun wedding!”

I don’t think you have to do Cameo anymore. I think you’re officially past it.