Alice Wetterlund is a comedian, a proud cat-mother and a human. Her first stand-up special, “My Mama Is a Human and So Am I,” debuts on Amazon Prime Video on August 23. And you might want to buckle up.
“I think you’ll be surprised by my special because you might be thinking, ‘Oh, she’s a feminist, she’s probably really funny, she’s probably the life of the party.’ But there’s actually some serious stuff in my special,” she told TheWrap in an interview, which you can watch above.
“I read the unredacted muller report. Really quickly, like so fast. It goes by like this [snaps fingers], but you get a lot of the information. And yeah, I give out nuclear codes. So just read it, I mean watch it. Also read it, read a transcript.”
Okay, so there aren’t actually nuclear codes in it. But “there are some easter eggs,” she says. So do with that what you will.
Wetterlund says she got started in comedy by doing improv, and had no idea just how long she’d end up doing open mics for.
“I started doing improv, and then quickly met somebody in improv classes that did standup. And I was like, ‘What do you do? You do open mics?’ I thought it was a joke, I thought there was some other system. And he was like, ‘No, yeah, we do open mics.’ And I was like, ‘I probably won’t have to do that for very long, because like, I’m really funny and I’m super pretty, so. And I’m cool.’”
Yet, ten years later, she’s still doing open mics.
“I was doing open mics for so long. And I got to love it — I like to watch open mics. I love watching people get into comedy. The thing when they walk on stage and they think they’ve got their new joke, and they’re so excited, and then it bombs so hard, and watching somebody be like [pretends to wait for joke to land]… you know? It’s great.”
But all jokes aside, she actually gave some really candid advice for aspiring comedians.
“My advice for women is the same as my advice to men. Just do comedy. There’s a lot of different approaches, but in my opinion, the best approach to becoming a good standup, if you wanna be good — if you wanna be famous that’s a different story — just lay low as long as possible,” she says.
“Don’t be too ambitious about trying to get exposure right away. I started when I was 28, and there was a lot of fire under my butt to become noticed and become successful in whatever way so I could start paying bills and everything. But if I could do anything, it would be to have more time under, not being seen by anybody, to find your voice. Because the more your voice is solidified, the more you’re bullet proof when you actually have that chance to be out there and show the world who you are as a standup. It takes a long time to do that. It takes a really long time.”
“I would advise you revel in those days. I mean honestly, If I could go back to any time in my life, it would be coming up doing standup and being anonymous, it was so much fun.”
“My Mama Is a Human and So Am I” premieres August 23 on Amazon Prime Video.