That Was Painful and Unrewarding Can I Do It Again Johnny Bravo

"Hey. Crazy time right? Lot going on," her mail service began in June of 2020. The pandemic was raging, as was the Black Lives Matter move, but Amy Schumer hit pause on parenting and protesting to praise the many women who had come up forward with stories of misconduct at the hands of comedians in particular. Earlier that week, Chris D'Elia had become the latest to trend on social media, with several women alleging sexual impropriety, which the comic denied.

"There are great men out at that place," she wrote to 11 meg on Instagram and a few 1000000 more than on Twitter. "And there are men who humiliate and corruption women and girls because of a power dynamic or, because when they were that age, girls wouldn't talk to them."

Schumer offered a warning to those men — "we are watching you and we are all together now" — and an open call to their victims: She was there to listen. A telephone number from an app that allows anyone to transport her texts sat prominently in her profile. Soon, Schumer'south inbox was and so flooded with #MeToo tales that she began reaching out to other famous women about trying to set upward some sort of a help line. When that plan didn't pan out, she started gathering victims — four from this guy; three from that ane — and passing them forth to lawyers, counselors and even the press.

"Information technology's all been really deplorable and disappointing," she says now, sprawled out on a couch on the other side of a Manhattan hotel room in early Feb. "And I don't retrieve that the coercion and the taking advantage and the masturbating in front of people is cool, and I don't think that those guys should exist allowed to come back."

Schumer, who exploded into the public consciousness with a few filthy minutes at Comedy Central's roast of Charlie Sheen in 2011 and an aptly titled Generally Sexual practice Stuff special the following twelvemonth, is keenly aware of the opportunity that she has to make a difference, and she doesn't want to squander it. It propelled her conclusion to stump for Hillary Clinton, to get arrested for protesting Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation and to blast former President Donald Trump as a "sexual-assaulting monster." It likewise inspired the now 40-year-old to get existent about a series of recent medical procedures, including a hysterectomy, IVF and, yes, liposuction, on her social media. Merely she'd be lying if she said her item blend of flippant confidence and unflinching feminism hasn't come at a price.

In contempo years, Schumer has watched her venues shrink from 15,000-person arenas to v,000-seat theaters and has been pilloried from all corners of the internet. "And the male comics are mad at you lot and mean to yous and it doesn't feel good when those were your friends," she acknowledges, "but also fuck them." Schumer didn't suspension her way into a boys' lodge to permit information technology continue on unchanged, and as the first and but female comic ever to headline Madison Square Garden — which, for the record, she sold out — she feels she'south earned the right to speak her mind. And now, after a prolonged period of hibernation (at least past her standards), she's reemerging with a securely personal Hulu series, Life & Beth, that she's written, directed and stars in, dropping March 18, and the Oscars, which she's been tapped to co-host, a week subsequently. She has no intention of quieting downwardly.

"She'due south really, really, ridiculously honest, and she's fearless," says her friend and mentor Chris Stone. "She's also as funny as any person walking the earth."

Rock, who hosted the Academy Awards every bit recently as 2016, has been one of many industry veterans advising Schumer on what, she admits, can be a thankless gig. And while another vet, Judd Apatow, who directed Schumer's 2022 smash hit, Trainwreck, has suggested to her that this isn't the right climate for a roast, Rock's encouraged Schumer to be unabashedly herself, even if it terrifies the Academy and its host network, ABC. Equally he sees it, they had two options in selecting an emcee: They could hire a tram or a roller coaster, and with Schumer, who'll be joined by Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall for the three-hour telecast, they very clearly chose a roller coaster.

"And yous go a piddling scared on roller coasters, they brand yous throw upward sometimes, simply when it's all over, you're like, 'Human being, I can't wait to do that once again,' " says Rock, committing to the flake. "It's the ride on which we advertise the whole entertainment park. They don't say, 'Come up to Six Flags, get on the bumper cars'; they say, 'Get on fucking Rolling Thunder.' And then, yeah, there are lovely trams out at that place that can host the show, really lovely trams, but Amy Schumer is a fucking roller coaster."

"I'm excited and I know I'll arrive some trouble," Schumer says of hosting the Oscars. Victoria Beckham glaze, Levi's T-shirt and jeans. Photographed by Heather Hazzan

***

Early, when Schumer was just a immature comedian trying to go noticed in a homo'due south business organisation, talking graphically about sex, often in heels and tight vesture, became every bit much a tactic as it was a crutch. Information technology was her way of sneaking in, and information technology was successful — particularly in those open up-mic days, when the crowds were packed with male comics, who, in her estimation, were "then ready for the daughter non to be funny."

Schumer shudders now at the lengths she went to fit in with the guys; but she needed to surprise them into laughing, and she knew how. Still, labeling her a "sex comic" didn't give her nearly enough credit. It was also, arguably, sexist. "I experience like a guy could get upward here and literally pull his dick out and everyone would be like, 'He's a thinker!' " she would joke of the gender double standard, a common theme in her comedy even then. Past the time she rolled out her Comedy Fundamental sketch evidence, Within Amy Schumer, in 2013, those feminist letters had become and so explicit that the series and its viral sendups — including a pitch-perfect parody of 12 Angry Men, featuring a panel of famous jurors trying to determine if Schumer was "hot plenty" for Telly — earned both an Emmy and a Peabody.

Had Trump not been elected president, leaving an increasingly in-demand Schumer "totally depressed and without anything helpful to say" with her sketch show, she insists she would've connected with its already-ordered fifth season. Instead, One-act Central's and then-head, Kent Alterman, offered his prized talent the kind of arrangement Larry David had on Curb Your Enthusiasm: "Nosotros told her, 'Any time you lot want to come up dorsum, nosotros're here,' " he says. (And though Alterman himself became a casualty of consolidation, his successors reapproached Schumer when launching Paramount+ and asked if she'd revive the series with five stand-alone specials. Back in the writers room now, with much of Inside Amy's original staff, she's hopeful they'll allow her to do more.)

Rock had yet to see her sketch show, much less her stand-upwardly, when Schumer asked him to direct her first HBO special. Before he said yes, he went downstairs at the Comedy Cellar in New York to check out her gear up, and and so dwelling to sentry everything else she had done upwardly until that point. "I kept beingness like, 'Shit, she's really good, and she hits hard,' " he says. So he agreed, and spent the next several months on the road with Schumer for a 2022 special that he's so wildly proud of, he counts it as one of his own. In the years since, Stone says the ii talk all the time. "In this new landscape, I'll call Amy just to walk me through shit, like, 'OK, what the fuck should I be doing right at present? What the fuck can't I say?' "

Jerry Seinfeld has become a close friend likewise. Though he credits his wife, Jessica, whom he calls "the socially functioning member of the Seinfeld team," for initiating the human relationship with Schumer, the two comics regularly workshop textile and vacation together with their spouses. Earlier he met Schumer, he'd already heard the hype around her. "Other comedians merely kept telling me about this woman who really seemed to take figured herself out," says Seinfeld. "And that's what comedians accept to do; we have to figure ourselves out. It's, 'OK, who am I? What do I talk about? How do I talk about information technology?' And when someone succeeds at that, which is rare, people talk near it because it'due south exciting."

The gigs kept growing — clubs became theaters, theaters became arenas, and before Schumer knew it, she was making eight figures for a Netflix hour. With her 2022 hit Trainwreck, which she wrote and starred in, she became a bona fide film star, and, with her Girl With a Lower Back Tattoo essay drove the side by side twelvemonth, a acknowledged author. Along the manner, she hosted Saturday Night Live and the MTV Picture Awards, and graced every major mag cover, from GQ to Vogue. There were Emmy nominations and Grammy ones, even a Tony nom for her leading role in Steve Martin's Meteor Shower. She was, admittedly, everywhere, and an activist, also, lobbying for stricter gun command laws with Sen. Chuck Schumer, her second cousin once removed, afterward 2 women were tragically killed at a screening of her film in Lafayette, Louisiana. Then came the backlash: accusations of joke stealing, which she maintains she'd "never fucking exercise," and cultural appropriation, forth with pile-ons and death threats. At ane point, she says, "the entire internet hated me."

Amy Schumer Photographed by Heather Hazzan

Though Schumer's inner circle suggests she is more sensitive than she lets on, non caring what others think is office and parcel of her persona. She tries to see any mud is slung her way through the prism of a compliment. "It's like, who gets the about hate? LeBron James? Tom Brady? It's people at the height of their game," she says, acknowledging that comparison herself to either athlete will only infuriate her haters more. As well, she reserves the harshest criticism for herself, and there'southward enough in her past that makes her cringe. "I'grand disgusted with some of my old material," she says, citing one joke in detail near Blackness people not beingness able to swim. Information technology was later reading Isabel Wilkerson's Caste that she meliorate understood its racist roots. She has "so much undoing to practice," she admits, and she's been decorated educating herself to be a better ally — a process that entailed participating in Black Lives Matter vigils and workshops every day for half-dozen months post-obit the murder of George Floyd.

Even so, when life under a microscope started feeling like too much, Schumer did what enough in her position would do and retreated from the spotlight. She studied with the chair of the graduate directing program at New York University and threw herself into activism. She likewise roughshod in love, got married, shot a special for HBO Max and later a cooking show for the Food Network, and had a kid. In that time, she besides wrote Life & Beth, her nearly intimate projection to engagement; and then she returned to Hollywood, where she convinced a squad of executives to let her get in her way.

"Amy's raw honesty is the evidence'south superpower," Hulu boss Craig Erwich says of Life & Beth, which stars Schumer and Michael Cera (left). Courtesy of Marcus Price/Hulu

***

"I'm improve behaved now," she says as the conversation turns to Hollywood, "a niggling more than housebroken."

Though her longtime collaborator Kevin Kane says Schumer has e'er operated with a "this is the last matter they're going to let me do" mentality, she insists she'south genuinely surprised that she's lasted as long as she has in the industry. For starters, she's remained in her native New York, which she wears as a badge of honor (on this day, quite literally, with a "New York or Nowhere" sweatshirt). And dissimilar with stand-upwards, TV and moviemaking require multiple layers of executives, most of whom have opinions that Schumer hasn't historically been interested in hearing, much less incorporating into her work. In contempo years, Schumer says she's gotten better at maxim "I'll recall nearly that, thank you lot" when an executive gives her a note — a marked departure from her one-time reply, which was oftentimes some variation on "That doesn't make any sense and it doesn't work for the story." Her bigger issue, however, is that she wasn't interested in existence role of Hollywood'south formula.

On the heels of Trainwreck, which earned $140 million and adoring reviews, Schumer was deluged with offers. (And she took a few, also: Snatched, a 2022 romp with Goldie Hawn, which critics panned, and 2018'due south I Feel Pretty, which they flat-out savaged.) Schumer had become part of a frighteningly modest contingent of women who could get movies fabricated — though, she'd soon learn, not necessarily the way she wanted to brand them. The most eye-opening example came in tardily 2016, when she was tapped to star in Sony's live-activity Barbie and, with her sister and frequent writing partner Kim Caramele, took a pass at the script. Information technology was described at the time as a fish-out-of-h2o tale about a woman (played past Schumer) who gets kicked out of Barbieland for non being perfect enough.

4 months later, Schumer appear she was dropping out, citing "scheduling conflicts." The truth was more complicated. "They definitely didn't want to practice it the mode I wanted to do it, theonly way I was interested in doing it," she says now. Only how far apart their visions of imperfection were — Schumer had written Barbie as an ambitious inventor; the studio asked that her invention be a high heel fabricated of Jell-O — should have been apparent when she was sent a pair of Manolo Blahniks to celebrate. "The idea that that'south just what every woman must desire, right in that location, I should have gone, 'You've got the incorrect gal.' " Greta Gerwig is now writing and directing the movie, and Margot Robbie is set to star.

Past 2018, with Schumer feeling her career "getting a piddling stagnant," she parted ways with her longtime representatives at UTA. "I loved those guys, but I but didn't feel support for, similar, 'This is who Amy is and she's not going to be this other thing,' " she says. "I felt like I was disappointing my team by not existence Barbie." She signed with Sharon Jackson, then a partner at WME, who was equally every bit intimidating every bit she was, and Schumer went to work on cleaning upward her reputation among Hollywood execs. (That reputation doesn't trail her in stand-up, says Elizabeth Furiati, GM at the Comedy Cellar, where Schumer is dear, and not just because she's donated tens of thousands to the club'due south workers, all of whom she once invited to the Trainwreck premiere.)

These days, Schumer's yeses are fewer and farther betwixt. She says she'll continue to pop up in other people's work — as she did in the 2022 accommodation of The Humans and, later on a text from Martin, the upcoming season of Hulu'due south But Murders in the Building — merely she'due south much more focused on making her own stuff. In fact, as this story was being put to bed, she was out pitching "a big, impaired comedy well-nigh girlfriends" to the streamers. The motion picture, which she intends to direct and star in, is inspired past Schumer's ain girlfriends, a tight-knit crew that dates back to loftier school, and her love of The Bachelor franchise. "I'm always watching that show imagining, like, 'What if I was only fucking on there, but my body, in a bikini, next to the rest of the girls,' " she says. So, it's about "this shitty lawyer, me, who fights this claim for her client who was fired because of ageism and so uses that to go her and her friends on The Bachelor."

Amy Schumer Photographed by Heather Hazzan

Life & Beth, which a very pregnant Schumer pitched while "violently ill and most to crown" in 2019, is dramatically different in tone. The concept — virtually going dwelling house and dealing with the pain of your upbringing in means that you'd never accepted or confronted before — came to her equally she was refurbishing her father's old farm in upstate New York. She'd bought back the property a few years earlier, some 2-plus decades afterwards Schumer and her family unit lost it when they lost everything else. Her dad'south once-lucrative business organisation, importing high-terminate babe furniture from Europe, had gone belly-upwards when she was even so a preteen; around the same time, her dad was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and her mom, a speech communication and hearing therapist for the deaf, left him for the and so-married father of her best friend. Schumer'south never been too sure of the precise timeline because, she says, "my parents both struggle with reality."

If Trainwreck explored Schumer's tight, messy human relationship with her father, Life & Beth (the latter being Schumer'due south middle proper noun) would do something similar with the tight, messy one she has with her mother. "My mom was really subversive and did actually harmful stuff, and also I felt then special and loved growing up," Schumer says of an incongruity that's examined over the show's 10-episode commencement season. She made sure her mom got to meet every script and, after, every episode; in fact, they watched the whole thing together, even the parts that weren't easy to watch together. "And she's been really fucking absurd virtually all of it. She'south similar, 'I'm 73, I own my mistakes,' and that's the thing: My mom is insanely flawed and I also love her an insane amount."

It doesn't accept much to see how closely the beloved story at the center of the series parallels Schumer's with her now-married man, Chris Fischer, a farmer, chef and James Beard-winning cookbook author. The couple met four and a one-half years ago when she hired Fischer to melt for her family during a vacation on Martha's Vineyard. (He wasn't familiar with Schumer'due south work at the fourth dimension, he admits, simply began a deep swoop, starting with her volume, shortly after.) Schumer fought to cast Michael Cera, and not "some British lumberjack," to play her dearest involvement, a farmer who's likely on the autism spectrum, though he doesn't know it yet, merely as Fischer didn't when he and Schumer began dating. Early on in their relationship, Schumer found herself asking frequently, "Are these red flags? Am I ignoring red flags?" — which were questions that she wanted her character to enquire too.

Schumer with husband Chris Fischer. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

Fischer read several drafts of the show'due south airplane pilot, and later spent time with Cera, who studied his behaviors even if he didn't intend to mimic them, and on gear up to make sure the food and farming pieces were accurate. Many of the storylines mirrored moments that Fischer and Schumer had shared, including the time she worked his booth at the Martha's Vineyard farmers marketplace. "She loved it and she as well immediately had rivals — Amy definitely had words with the women at the alpaca berth," recalls Fischer. "But information technology was also really important to her not to make it a parody of a farmers market and this world, which were big parts of my life." Like Schumer, Fischer says he loves the thought that they will at present have this time sheathing of their dear story through the testify.

***

By belatedly Feb, Schumer and her family are about to decamp to Los Angeles, where she'll spend the next several weeks preparing for the Oscars. This wasn't the get-go time that she was asked to host; it was but the kickoff time she said yes. After two years in a pandemic, she'due south eager to be able to gather with people and express mirth again, and she's never been one to fret most having a target on her back. Plus, the initial plan, which has since changed, was to take Schumer emcee merely the beginning hour, which meant that she could still exist home in time to put her son, Gene, to bed. For a adult female who used to crack jokes about not wanting children, bedtime with her almost-3-yr-old is now easily her favorite function of the day.

She'southward still trying to figure out how much she can and should push the envelope on Hollywood'south biggest dark — or at least its most prestigious. She'd pitched the show's producers a few ideas over Zoom a calendar month or so back, which were met with deafening silence. "I was similar, 'Can you guys hear me?' " she says, laughing about it now. Her many "pussy jokes," as she characterizes the subgenre, are unlikely to brand the cut — certainly non the raunchy bit she's written, which starts off, "My husband is going down on me, or as he calls it, Squid Game. Then, he's in my Nightmare Alley …" Instead, she says she'll probable take "a couple risks," merely stop short of annihilation that would become her sued: "I emailed my lawyer about two jokes the other solar day, and he was like, 'No!' "

Schumer hasn't been this decorated in years, which thrills and terrifies her — and only in part because she'south familiar with the life cycle of fame, particularly for a female: "People volition get sick of me, I'll go burned at the pale, then I'll disappear again," she says. The final fourth dimension she tangoed with the zeitgeist, she didn't accept a toddler and chronic pain to contend with as well. Equally anyone who follows Schumer on social media knows, the past few years have been marked by a dizzying array of health issues. It began with a ghastly case of hyperemesis gravidarum (i.east., nonstop puking) during her pregnancy, which she documented through barf bags and hospital visits for HBO Max's Expecting Amy — and volition do and then again in Arrival Stories, a forthcoming drove of essays that she edited with swain mom Christy Turlington Burns. More recently, Schumer's been open virtually her struggles with endometriosis and an unsuccessful round of IVF for a baby No. 2. Those closest to her can worry that she puts too much of herself out there, or that the stuff she does tin be misinterpreted. "She'll have these super personal things, and I'll be like, 'Amy, you don't take to give anybody that, that's yours,' " says Kane. "And she'll think near it, and then she'll go, 'Oh, fuck information technology, I'll put it on Instagram, it might make somebody feel skillful.' "

That certainly factored into a January post, where Schumer revealed she'd had liposuction and was at present weighing in confidently at 170 pounds. "Everybody on camera is doing this shit, I simply wanted to be existent about it," she says now, adding that she never imagined she'd become nether the knife — but then her "uterus didn't contract for two and a half years" and she turned 40 and she finally accustomed that she wanted to experience meliorate well-nigh her body. "Information technology'southward non about needing to be slamming, because I've never been famous for being hot, but I'd reached a place where I was tired of looking at myself in the mirror," she says, clutching an area in a higher place her C-section scar that "grilled chicken and walks" wasn't going to fix. So she underwent liposuction, and she has no regrets — not about having information technology washed, nor about telling the world.

As one might expect, Schumer intends to piece of work it all into her next stand-up set up, which she'll beginning taking out on the road later this year. She has no idea what crowd size to wait this time effectually, though she maintains she never saw her shift to smaller venues as a demotion. "I was saying what I really think, which is freeing," says Schumer. "And too, I came into this business with enough awareness to know that information technology was going to be rocky."

Still, she won't pretend that she isn't interested in getting dorsum to the world's biggest stages. "I'm not Chappelle or these comics who I guess have more integrity than me, who are like, 'I'd rather do 5 shows [in more intimate venues],' " she says. "I'm like, 'I want to get where the hockey squad plays.' " In the meantime, Schumer is going to proceed fleshing out her set at the Comedy Cellar — unless, of course, she turns up and sees on the lineup the name of a man with whom she'south no longer comfortable sharing a stage. In that example, Schumer will do as she'due south done plenty of times earlier: She'll turn around and go home.

This story kickoff appeared in the March 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/amy-schumer-interview-life-and-beth-oscars-1235106625/

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