YRB Magazine

by Jason Newman 

Photography by Chad Griffith

Comedy’s lovable Queen of Mean didn’t find her calling until the age of 30, and she hasn’t looked back since. 

As with most things related to raunchy comedian and Queen of the Roasts, Lisa Lampanelli, controversy has ensued. At her YRB photo shoot in Manhattan, iPods were accidentally switched and the previous sounds of Meatloaf emanating from the 48-year-old insult comic's iPod have been replaced by The Black Keys. “This can't be my iPod,” bellows Lampanelli, clad in a fashionable top and sweatpants. “This is way too cool for me.”

Whether she knows it or not, Lisa Lampanelli is, to many people, “cool.” Just ask the people of all races, ethnicities and sexual orientations that attend her sold-out shows and bought her recently released autobiography Chocolate, Please: My Adventures in Food, Fat, and Freaks. Between working on her next stand-up special, talking to producers about possible talk show and sitcom deals and planning a wedding set for October, the raunchiest person in the game found some time to share her wisdom. You may not want the kids to read this one.

YRB: So when I told my girlfriend I was interviewing you, she was worried that you were going to rip me a new one.

Lisa: NO! NO! [Laughs] That happens all the time, though. I don’t, because I'm nice. Well, I'm not overly nice – I'm not going to be all smiley and fake happy all the time because I'm always miserable like every other comic on the planet – but the only time I'll do the insulting thing offstage is when a guy will go, “Could you please call my wife and call her a cunt?” And I always do it. How could I resist that invitation? I feel honored.

YRB: How much of what we see on stage is your actual personality?

Lisa: I turn it off immediately when I get offstage. Ten percent of the time, I'll be an insulting twat offstage, but usually I'm just like any normal person on the street and not funny. I hate that guy who can never turn it off. It's like, “Can't you just go to a club and do that, douchebag? You don't have to be funny all the time.” When I used to do autographs after the show, people used to say “You fuckin' bitch” or “You cunt” just to joke around and I'll say, “Uh, all you have to say is 'Ms. Lampanelli, can I have an autograph?'”

YRB: In the beginning, would you get offended by it?

Lisa: I got pissed off by it two weeks ago! I threw a book at a guy! With my fans, 90 percent of them are great and the rest are just hillbilly retards who go, “I'm going to be funny to her.” Guess what, audience? Listen up. You're not funny. You never will be. Lick it. I'm not here to be shit on by you.

YRB: You began doing stand-up at the relatively old age of 30. What was it that sparked this desire to get on stage?

Lisa: When I hit 30, I kind of snapped. I was working at Rolling Stone and Spy and I was bored, and I kept saying, “I really want to try comedy. It seems like a good fit for me.” And year after year, you take more and more chances. I say things now I didn't think I'd say last year. I think a lot of comics start too young and it takes them a while to develop their own personality then the stage personality. With my show, I'm just being me. The audience doesn't want to see disingenuous bullshit.

YRB: Do you think things would have been different if you started out at 22?

Lisa: I would have quit immediately because I wasn't funny enough and I would have been insecure. You always want to quit anyway when you're not making any money and you're driving 21 hours and you don't have money for a hotel room. Or you have a show that's not your best and you're crying and saying, “Can I quit? Can I quit?” The next day you wake up and you don't want to quit anymore.

YRB: Was there any particular moment when you realized you could do this for a living or was it more gradual?

Lisa: You want to know what a conceited twat I am? The first time I did comedy, I called in sick the next day and quit soon after. I always said, “I bet I could be a big headliner.” I always had a headliner personality.

YRB: Are you worried about being typecast as just an “insult comic?”

Lisa: No, because look at [Don] Rickles or [Howard] Stern. You are what you are. You can't be all things to all people, so these comics that don't commit fully never really make it. You become this cruise ship guy; it's all bland and boring. I don't even get pride in saying I'm a comic. If I say I'm an “insult comic,” that I get pride in. I don't want to do any growing. I'm sick of growing.

YRB: Having done so many roasts, are they still fun for you?

Lisa: Naw, it's not fun. It's never fun. It's the worst night of my life because it's so hard. It takes me about a month to prepare correctly and then you're up the whole night before with all your writers totally stressing. I turn down roasts now that I don't think anybody's gonna watch. I knew nobody would watch the Bob Saget and Joan Rivers roasts, and I'm not going to kill myself for a month to be not seen. There's very few things I'm above, but I'm above being on Bob Saget's roast. I like him, but suck it. Also, I was roastmaster for Larry the Cable Guy so I'm not going to do some Joan Rivers cunt and take a downgrade. I'm the best at this in the business. You have to pick and choose – otherwise, you become one of those guys who that's all they're known for.

YRB: What's the process like and how many people that you've roasted have you known personally?

Lisa: Virtually none. I knew Larry and [Jeff] Foxworthy. I usually have to go last because all the guys have it in their contract that they can't follow me because they're fuckin’ pussies. I hire a bunch of people and we find out little-known facts about the people. Like you're not going to go up and do Pam Anderson boob jokes after it's all been done. Then you write, write, write for two weeks and a lot of people drop out so you have to write on the new people on the dais. Then I have to take all the stuff and compile them into a script, which is why my roasts are better than everybody else's. There has to be segues, beginnings and endings, and that's what the guys forget to do. It's all a string of jokes to them. It has to be like a story.

YRB: What's the difference between what's funny and what's over the line?

Lisa: If I can't make it funny, then it's over the line. There's nothing forbidden to say. It's not just funny to spout out crazy shit and expect people to go, “Oooh, it's edgy.” If Pam Anderson really looks hurt at a set of jokes, I'll pull back on it because I'll have some sensitivity. That's why I sell tickets. Nobody wants to see someone just be mean. You gotta like them. If you don't have likeability, they're not going to want to see you more than once.

YRB: Your book details a less-than-perfect childhood. What was comedy's role in your life growing up? 

Lisa: I went to this co-dependency rehab and they taught us this thing called the Family Atom where you analyze what role you played in the family. I was always the “mascot,” which means that you joke around and say things that under any other circumstance, one of the other kids would have gotten hit. But I had a way of defusing the situation, so you kept it light at home in moments that were really dark. So I served that role without knowing it. It definitely helped me get through little things. But I do believe that the happier and more emotionally healthy you are, the funnier you are. I don't buy that whole “comics need to stay fucked up to be funny.” It's all bullshit.