The comedian Kate Berlant doesn’t tell jokes. Instead, what she does is improvise a flirty, deadpan, clownish one-way conversation with the audience, dipping quickly into academic theory (“I’m very interested in the social topography of space”) before showing off her psychic powers (“I’m seeing… an injury?”), all the time playing on the voluptuous hugeness of a comedian’s ego. It means the experience of watching her perform can feel alternately disorienting and enlightening, while also very, very funny.
We’re meeting today because Berlant is having a moment. Or, more accurately, another moment, one more in a career that has seen a series of startling and hilarious moments, including as an actor (most recently in Don’t Worry Darling), comedian (in video shorts with longtime collaborator John Early) and wellness podcaster, with Poog (a play on Goop). She used to joke with Early that her greatest fear was a documentary in which very famous people talked about how influential she is. But after years of being reverentially damned as a “cult comic”, Berlant is finally breaking out into real stardom. She’s ready.
