Atlanta comedian Katherine Blanford shares her unique brand of self-deprecating humor
Comedian Katherine Blanford has drawn material from her experience as a nanny, which she describes as the “true confessions of a washed-up pediatric waste management specialist.” She also tells war stories from the front lines of brunch. The Atlanta-based comedian has opened for comics, including Jeff Foxworthy, David Spade and Demetri Martin. Lanford recently made her TV debut on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” promoting her new comedy album, “Salt Daddy.” She joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom to talk about her almost accidental success in a comedy career and learning to laugh at her own strange stories.
Interview highlights:
Getting a rise out of audiences with tales from her Southern upbringing:
“Even right here in Atlanta doing a joke, say, in Midtown, ITP, versus doing a joke out in Lawrenceville or OTP, can land totally differently. Like the joke I was talking about, my parents being cousins. Down here in the South, I do it, and it’s an immediate pop. It gets a big laugh because everybody has somewhat of an experience with that … It’s just kind of a common situation that [in] small towns, there’s not a lot of people to choose from. You might have a connection down the family tree,” Blanford said.
“I’ll do that up north or somewhere, and it’s more of a gasp than a laugh because they couldn’t possibly fathom it. And it’s like, ‘Look, we’re all right. We got all our fingers and toes.'”
On Blanford’s podcast “Cheaties” with co-host Lace Larrabee:
“Lace had been doing a bit … about dating a guy and how she caught him cheating on her. She was going through his phone and found evidence, so she had to scroll, screenshot it … send herself evidence, go back, delete the pictures, go back, delete it. You get it.” Blanford continued, “Dating a guy at the time, I was a little bored, so I decided to go through his phone, a favorite pastime of mine, and found some evidence. And the next day I called her, I was like, ‘I pulled a Lace Larrabee!’ … We were cracking up, and we realized a lot of people have gone through similar situations and have come out the other side … better for it and stronger, and so we were like, ‘Let’s start a podcast.'”
“We’ve interviewed anybody from another Atlanta comedian who has since gone on to do phenomenal things, Dulcé Sloan … We have a relationship expert Jared Freid as well. We have up-and-coming comics who have come on, who have stories that were so wild, they ended up sending us news articles, linking us to the story afterward … So we have big names, and then we just have people who call us and want to stay anonymous and tell us their stories of dating a man who has three other families somewhere in Kentucky.”
On the original “Salt Daddy”:
“We were on a bachelorette trip, and we found him on Craigslist, and he took us on a boat out into the ocean,” recounted Blanford. “In the beginning, we were loving the attention we were getting from him. One of my favorite jokes is, he was pouring his drinks, playing his music and we were doing what good little white girls are supposed to do — we were twerking to Tim McGraw, and we were feeling really cute. We saw that he was taking a lot of videos.”
She went on, “And then, true story — as soon as we got out to the ocean, this other boat pulled up, and it was full of these very voluptuous, gorgeous women. And Salt Daddy got on their boat, and it was the first time we realized that we might not be as hot as we thought we were … The worst part about playing ‘kidnap’ is when your captor’s like, ‘Hey, actually, I got someone else. You’re good to go.'”
More on Katherine Blanford’s upcoming projects, podcast and live shows is available at www.katherineblanford.com.
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