I started “Laurel’s Little Show” in May of 2020 in an excruciatingly small Manhattan apartment with questionable dust, mold, and definitely no dishwasher. It was eight weeks into the First Wave of Coronavirus, we were still hoarding toilet paper, disinfecting our mail, and watching the First Wave of Tiger King. People were dying by the thousands every day. The economy was dropping faster than Coach Monica dropped Lexi when she was caught with “illegal stuff”– even though she was Navarro’s top tumbler!! I hadn’t seen a human face since March 10th, and was experiencing clap anxiety clap (to clarify, I was not experiencing “the clap,” just the usual anxiety and depression but amplified by a lot. Oh, and I think there were murder hornets?
I missed doing stand up comedy around New York and I missed having a reason to take a shower. I’m not a banana bread person, and I was finished with Cheer. My job also involved overseeing social creative for Snapped on Oxygen, so my dreams were three act nightmares of women who SNAPPED! So I figured maybe I’d reach out to comics and other creatives I found interesting to have a little chat. The name “Little Show” comes from how annoying I found it the 6,5000 times people (usually men) minimized whatever creative project I was doing. “How’s your little stand up show, Free Puppies?” “How’s your little book coming?” “How’s your little teeny not real very small girl art pretend game?” The name “Laurel” comes from it’s my name.
Pre-pandemic I was the creative lead for Bravo TV’s social creative, which meant I oversaw a very talented team of editors, designers, writers, and animators in the pitching and execution of over 400 pieces of Bravo content a month and sometimes directed “little” talent shoots at 30 Rock, playing Real Housewife fashion police with the Project Runway contestants or getting side-eyed by Below Deck’s Kate Chastain (I’m sure I had it coming). ANYWAY, my TEAM knew all about editing video, I did not. So each of the videos took me 6+ hours to edit, most of which was done from 5am-10am before work. Not saying it’s good, just saying it was hard.
Since then “Laurel’s Little Show” has had traffic of 42,000+, and the guests have absolutely EXPLODED! Sarah Cooper signed with CAA, starred in her own Netflix special, and sold a CBS show. Mark Normand had a Netflix special on The Stand Ups Season 3. Mary Beth Barone now has a show in Comedy Central. Usama Siddiquee’s in Inventing Anna. Maddy Smith is back on MTV. And just this week, it was announced Rosebud Baker is the newest SNL writer.
I couldn’t be prouder to know all these talented superstars and I’m looking forward to starting things back up again with even more. I got a better camera. I got a dishwasher and a new address. Covid’s still happening but that’s out of my hands. If you’d like to like and subscribe to the YouTube channel “Laurel’s Little Show” and newsletter that would be pretty cool. New episodes a-comin’ this spring. Please bare with me as a stumble through the tech. I’m really just a writer who likes to talk to comedians and other people I find interesting and peppering the captions with little jokes. Hope you like it too!