She’s the toast of Off-Broadway now but nothing about the early work of LA clown Natalie Palamides screamed mainstream darling. In her debut show Laid, a maternal-anxiety antic that won her best newcomer at the Edinburgh comedy awards, she gave birth to eggs then broke them on stage. In her second, Nate, she cross-dressed as a beer-chugging douchebag to workshop sexual assault and consent with her astonished audience. Who foresaw that this loose cannon would soon be Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s clown coach, in the series Gutsy? Who then saw an extended New York City run beckoning, thronged with celebrity attendees?
“Drew Barrymore came, Kevin Bacon came,” says Palamides, on a video call. “Sabrina Carpenter came: that was nuts. Dua Lipa, Nathan Fielder, Neil Patrick Harris.” The show was Weer, and the run (until shortly before Christmas) was at “the birthplace of Off-Broadway”, the Cherry Lane theatre, recently relaunched by hip movie studio A24. When we speak, Palamides, 36, is laid low with flu, her body’s revenge for that marathon three-month run. “I thought a month would be the longest I’d ever do it,” she croaks. “It takes a lot of physical endurance to make it through the show.”
