Heather McMahan has built a career on being relatable. She first found her people via her Instagram account where she has grown a community of, mostly, Millennial women who love her no nonsense attitude and hilarious accounts of everything from living with her mother in her thirties, to body image and the IVF process.
McMahan, 37, used her early Instagram following to act out skits centring on characters such as Brenda Carlyle, (‘Mississippi's #1 Real Estate Agent’), and, in 2019, launched the Absolutely Not podcast which gives listeners the safe space to vent about the things that drive them the most crazy (unsurprisingly, it’s hugely popular). Now with almost 850,000 followers on Instagram, her fanbase is so devoted that McMahan is even hosting a cruise next spring: the Absolutely Knot cruise (get it?).
McMahan’s tagline is: ‘Doing the most, and the least, at the same damn time’, but if you consider her recent work roster, she’s actually only doing the most. Since the pandemic, Hollywood has come calling with a role in Netflix’s Christmas film Love Hard, as well as a comedy special for the streaming platform in 2023’s Son I Never Had. Her most recent special dropped on Disney+ on Friday, Breadwinner.
Those in the know have cottoned onto McMahan’s easy ability to draw for a one liner, enlisting her for arguably one of the toughest jobs on live television: hosting awards season red carpets for E!, following in the illustrious footsteps of Joan Rivers.
I catch up with McMahan after a busy 18 months of touring and filming. She’s just taken some time off with her husband Jeff Daniels (who features in much of her content) but shortly after we speak she is flying from her hometown of Atlanta to Los Angeles to host the Emmys red carpet for E!, where she interviews everyone from Reese Witherspoon to Nicholas Braun aka Cousin Greg from Succession.
Here, McMahan tells Grazia about her untraditional route to success.
GRAZIA: Thanks for chatting - it’s been a busy year for you…
HEATHER MCMAHAN: I've been touring non stop, and we shot a second special, and the first special came out. Like, everything happened in the span of, like, 18 months, and I took time off in the summer to catch my breath. And now I'm sitting at home scratching myself like a crackhead, like, I gotta get out, I gotta do something. I'm losing my mind. So we're already back to the drawing board, and it feels good.
G: Do you feel that it was social media which really helped kick off your comedy career?
HM: Oh yeah. I essentially like what I like to say is what the kids are doing on TikTok now, I was doing years ago on Instagram. I was doing characters, everybody knew me for putting on wigs and doing these outrageous things, and then I just went full speed ahead with stand up, because that was my first love. And so I was on the road, and I was touring, and I was busy, and it kind of took me away from doing social media. I mean, listen, work begets work, right? You do all these things so that you can have the other opportunities. But I was going through my wig closet the other day, I was like, I need to dust these off, strap these on and make some videos.
G: I think what really resonates with you and your comedy is that you give people space to laugh at things you don’t normally laugh at. Particularly with your Netflix special [Son I Never Had] grief, your father’s death, IVF, body image, are all covered. things that you don't often get a free pass to really just sit and laugh about.
HM: I totally agree. I mean, you know, people were like, 'Oh, where do you get your inspiration for comedy?' It's my day to day life. We're all out here. We're in fight or flight mode, our cortisol is through the roof. We're just trying to figure it out. I have to touch on those topics and talk about those things, because we're all just in this together, trying to figure it out. And I think especially being a modern day woman, where you're trying to have it all, you're trying to work, you're trying to be a good partner, do all these things. It's like we're all just kind of running around like chickens with our heads cut off, acting like we know what we're doing.
G: Particularly when it comes to egg freezing and IVF [McMahan and her husband did two rounds of IVF which yielded one embryo], that feels like it’s refreshing territory for comedy - was it refreshing to speak out about?
HM: Totally. There’s nothing off topic to me, because honestly as a comic, I process it in real time, with my audience. The only way I knew how to move through it emotionally was to discuss it. I got such an overwhelming response from other women being like, ‘I'm going through this too’, ‘I thought egg freezing was going to be easy. I have no eggs.’, or ‘I've done IVF six times. We've been trying to have a kid for 10 years.’ Like the response was so overwhelming. I was like, ‘How has nobody talked about this?’ And I'm sure people have before, but it was just people were really connecting to my experience
G: When it comes to talking about your body, I think the way you get to the point really appeals to women too. You're fed this line that you have to be really positive about yourself and sometimes you don't feel like that. You talk about your ‘emergency weight’ in your Netflix special…
HM: Oh yeah. I was relaxing this summer, I was just eating chicken tenders, and I was in Italy wolfing down carbonara. But it's about having an honest conversation with yourself. Because as women, this is such bullshit. We've been told to be one way for our entire lives. Then this body positive movement came where all of a sudden everyone's supposed to be so accepting, but you're still fighting the demons. To me, it's a conversation with yourself. It's not the conversation with people outside of you, right? All of a sudden I'm just supposed to be happy all the time, but I'm on my period and I'm bloated and nothing fits and I'm losing my mind? Listen, if the jeans don't fit, they don't fit.
G: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your red carpet interviews, because, to me, that is like, that is a really hard job. Thinking on your feet in those situations, and being clued up on everybody and everything, is tough!
HM: The first time I did the Emmys, that was the hardest job I've ever had. When I tell you they gave me an encyclopaedia of notes, because it's not just knowing about the projects that the artists are doing currently. You have to know what they're doing next, and so you basically become a historian overnight. When I take my dress off after the three hours being on air, my Spanx are soaked like, I’m like a feral cat, with this hormonal sweat that I do for three hours on television.
G: What have you learned from doing these red carpet interviews?
HM: Oh, it’s the difference between interviewing actors and musicians. So with the Emmys, the actors come up and they're stoic, and they know how to be on camera. At the Grammys, it was no holds barred. People were just like, high as a kite. Some of them were drunk. You know what I mean? If they're musicians, they don't give a shit. They're all on mushrooms, just open, just glad that they're at the party. They just came from the studio. They changed in the car.
G: I heard you say that seeing yourself on camera in that way, made you have something of a panic about how you look (which is crazy because you always look amazing)...
HM: They're all so itty bitty. As soon as I saw myself in that light, I called, like, my plastic surgeon. I've only had Botox, and I was like, how quickly can I get my neck done. I was like, everyone in Hollywood gets these minor little tweaks, you can't pinpoint it. It's good work.
G: What’s coming up - you have the cruise?
HM: We're about to add a bunch of more tour dates. Hopefully I'm coming to the UK. That's at the top of my list. I'm shooting a movie in September, fingers crossed, an indie that I don't even know the name of yet. I just want to show up and go to the craft service table, make myself a turkey sandwich and do my job.