- 4 hours ago
Jill Kargman, creator and breakout star of Bravoâs hit scripted series âOdd Mom Outâ has built a career in comedy writing around the familiar feelings we all have about not fitting in. With season three just picked up, Jill talks honestly about all the subsequent surprises that come from that very unique and hilarious outsider perspective. Happy holidays and happy New Year! We'll see you back here on 1/9 for a conversation with Rachel Comey on being truly self-made.
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00:01Welcome to Unstyled. I'm your host, Christine Barbrick, co-founder and global editor-in-chief
00:06of Refinery29. Each week, I invite a notable person to come in and talk with us as we explore
00:12the funny, inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking tales of life, work, and love, as told through
00:19the things that we wear. Full disclosure, Jill Kargman, creator and star of Bravo's hit scripted
00:31series, Odd Mom Out, and I don't have a ton in common. She's a mom of three. I'm not. She
00:39grew
00:39up and has been raising her family in the schmancy Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. I lived
00:43there only briefly as a very, very single girl. She adores skulls and tattoos. Me, not so much.
00:50But there is one thing that Jill and I do have in common, and it's the very thing that made
00:54me want
00:54to get her into the studio today, badly, to talk about. That is, the familiar feelings we all have
01:01from time to time about not fitting in. Unlike other television series, movies, and memoirs that
01:07recount and almost romanticize the sad, often devastating miseries of feeling exiled or like
01:12a complete outsider in your own life, Jill's depiction of not fitting in reads like major
01:17life goals. Between her character's enduring affection for her sweet husband, her ten calls
01:22a day devotion to her BFF, her underwear dance parties with her kids, and her daily battles to
01:27live her truth out on the mean streets of New York where zombie moms, posers, and aristocratic
01:32drones seem to be lurking around every corner, Jill Kargman is happy to give them all the middle
01:37finger. With a smile, of course.
01:44Jill Kargman, creator and writer of Odd Mom Out. It's so nice to have you here.
01:48Thank you so much for having me.
01:50I'm a ginormous fan. And one of the big reasons I was so excited about having you on the show
01:55was because I loved this theme that you talk about where this feeling of not fitting in and
02:01just being in this daily struggle to kind of fight for your independence and your individuality from
02:08all of these ridiculous, stereotypical sort of tropes of a life like yours. And obviously one of
02:17those big themes is parenting and what parenting is like today, especially in a place like New York
02:23City, especially in a place like the Upper East Side. I would love for you to talk a little bit
02:27about
02:27just that feeling of not fitting in.
02:29I think, you know, as you said, a lot of people are responding to it who are not moms. And
02:34I think
02:34that's really the proof that it has nothing to do with parenting. I mean, we have so many gay male
02:40viewers. We have so many teenage girl viewers. And I feel like it has nothing to do with moms. It
02:47is
02:47just about keeping up and fitting in. And anyone who's ever felt like marginalia, I think, will relate.
02:53Right. Sometimes you're forced into this milieu because you happen to spread your legs and you
02:59shout out kids at the same year. And so you have to be friends with these people and see them
03:03and
03:03have mom's coffees. And you're kind of stuck in this high school, you know, redux where there's like
03:10a pecking order and the people have four kids and it's your first kid. And they're like, just wait,
03:14wait till you see what happens next. There's all kinds of like mom hierarchies.
03:20So I think like wherever you are and the yardstick may change what is important. Like I know in New
03:25York, schools are important to people, but there's a metric that shifts from community to community
03:30that moms will try to one up each other. Because I do think in the absence of a professional career,
03:37if you choose to stay at home, sometimes not every stay at home mom, but sometimes people start
03:43obsessing about little things and get caught up in gossip or, you know, when you don't have a
03:48promotion at work or a business card with a new fancy title, I think people create echelons to
03:54ascend so that they can feel superior to other people. And when I was a new mom, I felt like
04:00I
04:00was constantly falling short. Like the people who nursed, because I didn't nurse, someone had said,
04:06shame on you. And, you know, I was like, I probably had postpartum because I was crying during like a
04:12Volvo commercial. But the littlest thing where some bitch at the playground would be like,
04:17oh, I would never give that jar of baby food. I, it's really easy. You just go to the farmer's
04:22market and you boil down the butternut squash and then you puree it and your Vitamix is much,
04:26it's really easy. And it's so much better than that, you know? And I just wanted to be like,
04:30fuck off. But I wasn't, now I'm 42, like I would say fuck off.
04:35And you were 28 then.
04:36Yeah. And I felt much more, and I'm not an insecure person. I've always been very confident. I was
04:41never depressed, not as a teenager, nothing. And somehow I had Sadie and I felt so insecure,
04:49so depressed, like so off kilter and not myself. And it took a while to like crystallize back that
04:58I could still be me and that my entire identity wasn't subsumed in offspring now.
05:04I think one of the big cornerstones of your series is that you give equal weight to your
05:09relationship with your husband and your best friend, Vanessa. And I think that that's
05:14such an important visual to see because I think a lot of young women today feel like you have to
05:21choose. I mean, I remember when, you know, I was younger in my twenties and early thirties and people
05:26started pairing off and getting married. And that experience of being left behind is really painful.
05:32I felt that it was very important to me that Vanessa stayed a central relationship because
05:40that was always what the show was. When I originally pitched it to Bravo, it was like,
05:44you know, we were the two men in the Muppet show in the balcony, seeing the world the same way,
05:49even though we had different backgrounds. And I have a real best friend named Vanessa.
05:54My parents' marriage, they've been married for 45 years. They're really happily married,
05:59but they do have traditional roles. And my mom was super domestic and an amazing cook. And my dad
06:05was the breadwinner. And in their marriage, it was that typical TV marriage where she didn't have
06:12like the best friend to run to. And then when I got married, and I love my husband, we have
06:16a very
06:16good relationship, but we've had ups and downs. And I think part of it was because I came to it
06:20with
06:20this bubble that I grew up in, like happily ever after. And you have to be my everything and you're
06:25the
06:26one and you're going to be my whole world. And that totally fucked me up. Because then I realized
06:31like no one person can be your everything. Or if it was in the past, great, but that's not
06:36modern. And I needed my friends as a life raft to vent about marriage even, to vent about my kids,
06:44to vent about things. And I had kind of the opposite of you where I felt like I was not
06:50left behind per
06:51se. But like, you're out on your own, I was on my own. They were all dancing on tables at
06:55bungalow
06:55eight and like blowing hot bartenders. And I was sitting there, you know, in this little tiny
07:03fifth floor walk up with this baby that wouldn't stop crying. And I know that I wanted it. But I
07:08remember thinking, God, 3am is the loneliest hour in the world. And I'm sitting here trying to feed this
07:14baby. But my friends were like out and banging people and having fun. And I didn't feel like I
07:21was missing out on that because I'm really not a bar party girl type. But then when I was in
07:25the
07:25mommy world, I felt like I didn't belong there. So I was kind of just solo.
07:32There is a great episode in season two about this friend date. You have a new friend. She's also a
07:38mom.
07:39And you're really excited. It's going to be like this new sort of like double date you're going to
07:43go on and it's going to be fun. You're going to, you know, she seems like a cool one. She's
07:46not like
07:46these other zombie moms. And it turns into the dreaded dinner party.
07:51I can't stand group dinners because I'm funding their alcoholism. And it takes three times as long
07:57because they're trying to get 14 orders and 14 appetizers cleared. And it's a shit show. And I,
08:03well, you know, I used to say like, I'm sorry, I have to be in bed by Jon Stewart.
08:06Throw cash on the table and just right. But then you can't do that sometimes because of credit card
08:11roulette with the hedge fund guys. Explain for, for the listeners out there who didn't see the
08:15episode. It's basically a, like a gambling thing that these, you know, guys swinging their dick
08:21around will say, okay, there's eight couples. So all the men are going to put in their credit card
08:26and then have the waitress pick one out and they pay for the whole dinner. And so you're kind of
08:31shamed into it. So Harry, the first time, you know, someone's like credit card roulette and all
08:35these guys are slamming down like Amex black cards. And we had the one sad green one. And I was
08:41shitting. Yeah, me too. And my, my husband sort of looked at me, I was totally shitting because we,
08:47we were like still cobbling our rent every month. And luckily we did it maybe three different times
08:53and they never picked us, but people do that and get off on it. I read in an interview that
08:59you did,
08:59you talked about how you remembered growing up in the Upper East Side and you went to private school,
09:06but you remembered that there were people that were really wealthy that you went to school with that
09:10were embarrassed. They were more, there was an embarrassment of riches. And there were girls
09:14in my class whose dads were legit Gordon Gekko types. And they would ask to be dropped off three
09:19blocks from school and walk because they were mortified. And you don't see that now at all.
09:24It's like everyone tricks out their car and they do selfies on their private jet. It is the opposite of
09:30what it was actually in the eighties. Even though people think of that as so flashy and full of
09:34conspicuous consumption, it's so much worse now.
09:37But don't you think that social media has kind of given us this urgency about finding these sort of
09:42venues for us to be sort of seen in our best light?
09:46Yeah, that's the very pernicious side to social media that I'm trying to talk to my kids about,
09:51especially now that I'm a teenager. I think people have a curated, filtered version of themselves.
09:57So they're putting forth their kind of best self. And then people take that as fact and assume that
10:05they're living La Vida Loca. And look, she's always so perfect. And there's actually a new,
10:09my daughter actually teaches me about these apps, but there's some beauty thing that fully contours
10:14your face. I mean, it's like airbrushing what, you know, Avedon would do for a model and really
10:19modelizes you.
10:21Which is fucked up.
10:22It's so fucked up.
10:23It's really fucked up for young girls.
10:24And I try to tell Sadie, don't do these posing things where you're doing the,
10:28like you just sucked on a lemon, you know, the girls all pose like that with the pouty,
10:33like that Olsen face and what it means to try to be fabulous. Like why would you try to be
10:39fabulous? Let them all do that.
10:41Tell us about like the storyline and the arc from season one to season two.
10:46Season one, I feel like we were first establishing the world and introducing everybody to my little
10:52family, my kooky family, all the characters. But in the pilot, Lex, my brother-in-law has sold his
10:59company for 675 million. So instantly these two brothers that Abby Elliott's character and I are
11:06married to are leading very different lives, even though they're both quote privileged. As you know,
11:12in New York, you can be successful and still feel poor because everybody's doing so well.
11:16Or seems like they're doing so well.
11:18Correct. It's strange that you can be successful here and still feel middle class somehow. It's
11:25bizarre, but real estate is just crazy. And trying to apply the kids to kindergarten is the sort of
11:31through line as a C-level story, not the main thing. But the thrust is sort of, you know,
11:37how are you supposed to compete in this town? I mean, really, it's so many people who are very
11:42successful and how do you put your imprimatur on your kids to have good values when their peers
11:47are also raising them. But really, I think the comedy is in my fuck-ups and not feeling like I
11:54belong. And even when you take me out of the Upper East Side and drop me in Brooklyn, I still
11:59don't
11:59fit there either. And that was a true story too. I was flirting with moving to Park Slope and we,
12:04at the time, Brooklyn was less expensive than Manhattan, which is now not the case. But when I had small
12:10children, Brooklyn was cheaper and I could have gotten way more space out there. So I flirted with
12:17it pretty heavily. And I went to like this Tots and Tonic thing with moms and they were in a
12:22bar and
12:22they just seemed more normal. This sounds so superficial, but like they dressed like not in
12:28full, you know, Jay McLaughlin threw up on them and Tory Burch and Manoa Leblonics and blowouts. Like
12:33they looked like me. They were in t-shirts. They were in black. They just felt like my people.
12:38And then one of them was nursing her five-year-old. And another one is talking about composting.
12:45You trade in one set of problems for another. And I realized that I would rather be sort of the
12:51chill mom in an uptight world than the uptight mom in a chill world.
13:07You make a celebration of not being a joiner. And I think that it's really annoying when you don't
13:13want to sort of glom on to the SoulCycle craze or the Game of Thrones craze, although I know you
13:19wouldn't agree with that. The Hamilton episode was really, really hilarious because I too had not
13:25seen Hamilton at that point. But I think that instead of feeling alienated, as I think a lot
13:30of people do, you really make it a celebration. You make it fun to actually, it's okay to be left
13:36out and it's okay if you're not going to actually kind of buy into that whole session.
13:40That was a true story. I came into the writer's room and I said, I just got attacked a drop
13:43off
13:44because these moms were all like, you haven't seen it. You have to see it. You have to see it.
13:48You have to see it. And it was like 30 people at once and they felt bad for me. It
13:52wasn't just
13:53like Hamilton shaming me. They, they pitied me. It was like almost hilarious. I think if you can
13:59laugh about it, that's like my first defense with everything is then you can celebrate it.
14:04Your dad has been a long time executive at Chanel. I'm pretty sure Karl Lagerfeld designed your wedding
14:09dress, correct? Yes, he did. It was my wedding gift from the company, which is the best present ever.
14:16Yeah. My dad was a standup comedian and he put his way through Columbia Business School doing
14:21comedy in Atlantic City and the Borscht Belt. And he did Harris and he did Reno and Atlantic City,
14:28standup comedy. And he really wanted to go and do that. And his father basically shut it down.
14:34It was like an over my dead body situation. So he went into business and he was successful in business,
14:40but I still maintain that his working the rungs aside from very, very hard work was his sense of
14:48humor was a great weapon for him because it's very bonding and disarming with the clients. And he
14:53just really connects with people and he's very, very close with people. He makes everybody feel like
14:59what I hear Bill Clinton does. Like he makes you feel like you're the only person in the room and
15:04he
15:04remembers everybody and he's so warm and affectionate. And I think, you know, that was
15:09a huge asset to him in business. Do you think you got your love of comedy and your appreciation
15:14of standup comedy from him? A hundred percent. My mom is, she's French. So she's, she's a little
15:20bit more shy. She's not a ham the way that my dad and I are, but she speaks five languages.
15:24So I think
15:25I got the appreciation from my dad and the ham stuff, but my mother has the crazy ear with accents.
15:32Like that is all my mom. She is unbelievable. She was a UN translator and she's just a perfect
15:40polyglot with no, no accent. It's weird. Are you the only singer in the family? I mean, yes,
15:45but I'm sure my mom has a good voice. She's just shy about it. Have you done musical theater?
15:49Just in college, but I'm doing a show. It's going to come to the Carlisle in January.
15:54That's incredible. Yeah. It's, it's fun. It's heavy metal cabaret. So I'm doing,
15:57it's piano player, but I'm singing really, really sexist songs from my childhood,
16:02but I'm reappropriating them. Like which ones? Give us an example.
16:05Like 17 by Winger, which is an anthem to statutory rape. Girls, Girls, Girls by Motley Crue,
16:12where I list all the strip clubs in America. I came of age with those songs. So I love those
16:17songs
16:17and I didn't realize they were wrong until I was older. So I'm taking them back.
16:22That line was very blurry back in the day. Has style really played a big role in your life? And
16:28I think that as your character on Odd Mom Out, you really stand out. You wear a lot of black.
16:32You're just a really stark contrast to all the other characters. But how has style and just fashion
16:38in general, how has that helped you to sort of define your own character?
16:43It's been a very strong influence, but ironically, it's more my mom than my dad, because yes,
16:48I was exposed to Chanel and I was at fashion shows and that stuff. But my mother's sense of style
16:53is so incredible and so perfect, even if she's going to Gristides. And she can be just throwing
16:59on like black leather jeans or something, but she looks amazing. I definitely feel like it was just
17:04by osmosis growing up in a house with a super stylish mom. But I don't wear Chanel. I mean,
17:09it's still very expensive with discounts and everything. So I really don't wear Chanel. I wear some
17:14shoes sometimes. But people always think like, I mean, on Twitter, I'll still be like, oh,
17:19she wears head to toe Chanel. I'm like, none of this is Chanel. It's actually like urban outfit
17:23or skirt. And then, you know, I mix like nice things. And but I won't like normally instead
17:29of say like Prada, I'll do the junior Mimi one or something. And that's my splurge. I'm just not
17:35in a point with three kids in private school that I can ever drop that on stuff.
17:40I would love to just talk a little bit about the transition from writing books to the show.
17:46It made me so curious about your writing, just because you have such a specific sense of humor
17:50and a way of unpacking ideas.
17:53Thank you. The really the stepping stone from the books to this show was the book,
17:58Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut. And my editor at the time at HarperCollins had said, I want you to
18:03write a nonfiction. And I said, she said a memoir. That was the word she used. And I said, memoir?
18:08Memoir? Who am I to write a memoir? Don't you have to like go through shit? And I'm 34 years
18:12old.
18:13And I was sort of drowning in my life at that point, because it was really hard having three
18:18kids under five. And I started writing this essay collection only because I was diagnosed with
18:23melanoma at 34. And I kind of snapped after that. I had they took out all the lymph nodes from
18:29my
18:30vag. I have a foot long scar on my upper thigh.
18:33Where was the melanoma? If you don't mind me asking.
18:35Upper, upper thigh, like near vag. So they had to strip the lymph nodes out of there. So I have
18:39another scar like on my box. And so after that, I wrote the essay called Tumor Humor, which is about
18:45how funny and fucked up and weird it was for me.
18:48Did you see it or was it invisible?
18:49It was it was not black. I just felt it kept bleeding all the time. I would just there'd be
18:53like blood on my towel when I would dry off. And then I noticed there was like a mole up
18:58there.
18:58And it was constantly bleeding. And my dermatologist was like, yeah, I don't think I think you're being
19:03hysterical. And it's such a sexist word, really, because Uster is uterus, the root Greek root.
19:10And I convinced that if I were a man, they never would have said that. So another year went by
19:14with
19:15this growing tumor. It was an M&M under my skin. Finally, I went to another doctor who took it
19:21off.
19:21And it was it was upsetting. But in a weird way, it set in motion a series of events,
19:25first of which was this essay Tumor Humor, then selling the memoir book, which is all comedic
19:31essays. And that is the voice of Bob Momout. That book is called Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut.
19:35That's the voice of the show. So when I met with Andy Cohen, I said NBC bought my book Momzilla's
19:41can't you just fish it out of the red tape and make it as a show? But they really couldn't
19:45like
19:45legally. It was bought with an entity that was no longer there. So I sent him Sometimes I Feel
19:50Like a Nut. And Lara Spots, my executive, and they read both Momzilla's and
19:55sometimes I Feel Like a Nut. And they're like, this in a blender is our show. I mean, it's
20:00my voice, which is sometimes I feel like a nut, but set in the world of Upper East Side Momzilla's.
20:05So you've been married for 15 years. What do you think the I don't want to say what the secret
20:09is to a long and happy marriage, because I do think that especially when you go through things,
20:13and I'm sure having having three children and living in a fifth floor walk up hauling a hauling
20:18a stroller up and down stairs when you're young, you know, matures you. So what do you think
20:22the secret has been for you and your husband in terms of feeling in love or feeling happy and
20:27satisfied? That's such a good question. I feel like I have no answers. We had a really sort of
20:34dark moment right around the melanoma thing. I felt like I had no identity. Like I was Harry's
20:40wife and Sadie and I mean Fletch's mom. And I kept saying to him, I feel like I'm drowning in
20:44my life.
20:45And I decided to get a shrink. And so I felt almost like a failure that I felt that I
20:51asked
20:51for help. I went to her very, very faithfully every week or two until we sold the show and
20:56until I was 39. So maybe five years I saw her and she helped me a lot with marriage stuff
21:02because
21:02she said, you're in middle marriage. You have these little kids. You've got to just get through to the
21:06other side because I mean, I hate to say this because I obviously love my kids, but they put a
21:12huge
21:13strain on my marriage. And we were bickering a lot. And I felt undervalued and underappreciated
21:18because I was so exhausted, but I didn't have anything to technically like show for it at the
21:22end of the day. Like when you're a stay-at-home mom, there's no certificates. You know, they want
21:27their food or their thing cut up this way. No one's ever like, you're the best mom. They do now,
21:31actually, when they're older, they do. But when they're little, it's really hard and draining.
21:36And so like when Harry would come home and be like, did you have fun today? And I'd be like,
21:39fun? Fun? Are you fucking kidding me? I'm exhausted. And I just was like so on edge.
21:46But then I feel like the cancer thing gave me a weird reset button. Like I chopped eight inches
21:52off my hair and I got my tattoo and I got a gun license. I started shooting. I joined a
21:59Westside
21:59Pistol gun club. I started shooting every week. I just needed something that was mine. And I didn't
22:05know how to articulate it, but I kind of snapped. And my husband was sort of like, what is happening
22:10to my wife? She's freaking out. I was like, I'm sorry. I was just sawed open. My vag was ripped
22:16open. I was in a wheelchair. Then I had a cane for another two months, but it was really scary.
22:21And so I had this kind of, if you pull the elastic far enough one way, it kind of snaps
22:24in the other
22:25direction. And I just had to like decide that I was going to take some sort of power back. And
22:29then
22:29I did because when I wrote the book, it kind of crystallized that I don't want to do fiction. I
22:34want to be
22:34myself. I don't want to hide it behind characters to tell a story. I want to just tell it myself.
22:38And then that's really how the show came.
22:41Your real life is way better than fiction.
22:44Thanks.
22:45Jill Kargman, it's so nice to have you on the show.
22:48You are awesome. You're so good at this.
22:50Oh, I'm such a gigantic fan of yours. Thank you, Jill.
22:52Thank you. Really fun.
22:55I hope you're inspired after hearing Jill Kargman's story. For even more unstyled extras,
23:00check out Refinery29 or my Instagram at Christine Barbrick.
23:03You can also join the conversation using the hashtag unstyled across your social media.
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23:23week. Our show today was produced and edited by Elisa Kreisinger with production assistance from
23:29Rebecca Easley for Refinery29. Copy and research support provided by Lila Brilsen.
23:34Our theme music today is by the artist Koff.
23:37Hannes Brown produced our episode music and we recorded Unstyled with Paul Ruist.
23:42We'll see you back here for a conversation with Rachel Comey on Becoming Self-Made.