The comedian has often said she’s always wanted fans she’d be friends with. Indeed, Cummings has always come across as the sauciest lady in your friend group, the one who isn’t afraid to talk about how bad her current boyfriend is in bed. This is a role by which she'd defined herself for decades — until she became a mom last December. Now, there’s a whole new world of topics she’s ready to share with audiences, and if it means there’s less sex chat in the mix, that’s just fine with her.
“I’ve spent so much time talking about dating and sex, which was surprising at the time, but now that’s all you see on the internet,” Cummings says. “The most shocking thing you can be is a little wholesome and talk about things that are more simple observations. My goal is for people to sit in a theater of 200 people, and we all laugh at the same things. Comedy is supposed to be a unifying thing.”
For Cummings, adding a baby into her already busy schedule has been a leveling up of sorts. Kicking off her “Big Baby” tour at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 5, at the Majestic Theatre (for which you can win free tickets), this “new mom on the block” is ready to disseminate the slings and arrows of early motherhood in her own sarcastic style.
“I took a while to have a kid, and I’m glad it took a while,” the comedian says on the phone from her home in Los Angeles. “They called it a geriatric pregnancy, which is insane. But I think having a kid older is better; I think my brain just started functioning properly. Like, if I had a baby one year sooner, I’d probably have sold it for tickets to Taylor Swift. The way it changes you is pretty magical, and I do talk about how it changed me and how it’s changed the way I see the world. The thing is, as a comedian, you’re always looking for a way to turn something on its head to show people something they see every day and take for granted.”
This has been Cummings’ philosophy since she came on the scene over 20 years ago. Toggling between producing sitcoms such as 2 Broke Girls and Whitney, taping standup specials, touring, plus manning her podcast, Good For You, she’s built her reputation on showing what’s underneath modern relationship dynamics in the most subversively honest way possible.
But now, the comedian looks forward to shifting from joking about “nightmare Tinder dates” to exploring more universal topics, including how to age gracefully in an industry known for sidelining women over 40. Cummings says she even stopped getting Botox to better convey her emotions to her son.
“Kids hold up a mirror to your own behavior and self-awareness, so I’m very excited about all the things I’m going to learn about my own self,” says Cummings. “'Mom brain' is so liberating. I have forgotten to do pretty much everything I need to do, though I will make it to the Texas shows! I’ve always struggled with OCD and was very neurotic, but it made my comedy good. But [motherhood] is like a software update for your brain, it makes things get very clear in a time when things are so murky and chaotic, and it’s hard to know what is and isn’t true."
Cummings to Dallas
"Motherhood puts you in a strong connection to your gut and intuition, and that’s the next level of my career.”Having taken to her new role with enthusiasm, it’s not surprising to learn Cummings was always a little bit maternal despite her rather challenging upbringing. Over the years, Cummings says she has “parented” everyone from various boyfriends to a menagerie of dogs, horses and even a giraffe. Yet embracing her new official mother status means she must treat herself more generously as she figures it out, giving herself the grace to make mistakes along the way.
“It took me a long time to make sure I was breaking these ancestral cycles. If my child is born a comedian, I’ve failed,” she says with a laugh. “When you have a kid, all this stuff comes back. Like putting him in the highchair — my highchair was basically scaffolding. I drank out of the hose until I was 14. There are pictures of me in drawers as a baby. We’re all doing a little better than we think, and it’s part of a comic’s job to make people leave with a little perspective and context.
"I get that phones are bad for kids, but we played on see-saws, and it’s a miracle that any of us survived. I was trying to strap my baby in the back of the car, and I had a flashback of being in the back of a pickup truck in a lawn chair.”
As her standup changes, so do Cummings' priorities. She’s eagerly working on an animated series based on cult illustrator Lisa Frank’s technicolor legacy to appeal to kids.
The comedian has a new romance with pro skateboarder Chris Cole and a slot on the reboot of Hollywood Squares next year. However, in a time comedians are canceled for jokes that wouldn’t have made audiences pause just a few years ago, Cummings' way to navigate is to hit the boards, connecting with her audience in the best way she knows how. Getting into a room with a bunch of humans to relax and bond through laughter has always made the effort worthwhile. And now that she’s approaching her fans through the lens of a happier, more fulfilled person, getting genuine laughs is surprisingly more straightforward than ever.
“I was always worried that if I ever got happy, I’d stop being funny,” Cummings says. “I wish someone had told me sooner that that’s not how it works. [My act] was about me and my self-sabotaging behaviors, but now it’s obvious about the world I’m bringing my son into and needing to understand it a bit better. It’s a nice upgrade from an emotionally fraught, confused person to someone who is less confused and no longer emotionally fraught. As a comedian, I could stay immature forever, but I learned I can be mature and be happy and still be funny.”
