Live from the Netflix Is a Joke Fest in Los Angeles, comedian Mae Martin returns to The Last Laugh podcast to share stories about making out with Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein on stage, making Jon Stewart laugh on John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA, and the exhilarating feeling when a new stand-up bit kills for the first time.
Martin also looks back on the surreal experience of watching their autobiographical show Feel Good take off on Netflix at the very start of the pandemic and teases their new narrative series for which they are strongly considering becoming a brunette. And make sure to stick around until the end of the show to hear a very special acoustic performance by Claud.
As Martin and I sit down for our live conversation at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood last week, they are just coming off of a three-night run around the corner of their show “Mae Martin and Brett Goldstein Make Love to One Another Live on Stage,” which was received rapturously by Netflix festival-goers who may or may not have thought they would see something truly scandalous unfold.
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“Basically this show was sort of an inside joke that has escalated and got really out of hand,” Martin jokes. The pair of comedians wanted to do a “new material night” when they were both living in London and impulsively chose that title just because it made them laugh. But then, “It sold out really quickly and we felt this pressure to have full intercourse on stage.”
That pressure has manifested into a stage show that is thick with sexual tension between the two friends, as evidenced by the performance I attended a few nights before chatting with Martin. That Sunday night at the Avalon nightclub, in addition to trying out some very funny new jokes, Martin and Goldstein repeatedly found opportunities to make out in front of the live audience before dramatically acting out the rain-soaked kiss between Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams from The Notebook. The crowd couldn’t get enough.
“We’re both like, why have we been trying to write comedy all these years?” Martin asks, noting that a video of the pair kissing on stage has been viewed on Twitter more than any of the professional work they have produced (Ted Lasso perhaps excepted). “All these comments are like, why is Simon Cowell kissing Ellen DeGeneres?!”
But while Martin likes to downplay their notoriety, their star has certainly been on the rise since moving to L.A. a couple of years ago, following the success of their autobiographical show Feel Good on Netflix and then last year’s stand-up special SAP that exposed them to a global audience. “Suddenly people are like, ‘You’ve got to go to Brazil, you’ve got a huge audience in Brazil,’” Martin, who has never performed in Brazil, marvels.
Feel Good, meanwhile, may have helped pave the way for the massive impact that Martin’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe friend Richard Gadd has achieved with his recent Netflix sensation Baby Reindeer. “It’s been amazing watching him blow up,” Martin says of Gadd. “But I think whenever something like that happens to a friend, you feel protective of them. And also, having made something personal before and put it out in the world, you lose control over it. But yeah, what a show. Fuck, it’s good.”
Mae Martin on ‘John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA’
NetflixMartin is still adjusting to life in Hollywood, which has included numerous nights out as Goldstein’s “plus one” to events like Vanity Fair’s Oscar party. “I’m like a kid in a candy store,” they say. “I like famous people. I like to look at their faces. You look over and Larry David is arguing with like, Kathy Hilton, and you’re like, what is happening? It was crazy. I think I got COVID, but it was worth it.”
At one point, Martin found themself on the red carpet between Goldstein and Christina Aguilera.
“I felt like I was in a fever dream,” they say. “It was like Moses had parted the sea, where all the cameras were pointed at Christina and Brett, and I was like, do I still pose?”
And then there is their public romance with Survivor Season 16 winner and The Traitors star Parvati Shallow, which has turned Martin into enough of a celebrity to occasionally show up in tabloid headlines. “I did pop up in the tabloids,” Martin remarks, alluding to the false rumors that they were dating good friend and fellow Canadian Elliot Page. “That was crazy.”
Next up for Martin is another scripted series—this one a thriller centered on troubled teens—for Netflix in which they will be co-starring and serving as co-showrunner. The show was originally announced with the title Tall Pines, but Martin reveals that it’s likely going to change because “it sounds too much like Twin Peaks.”
“I think it’s funny, but it’s definitely a thriller,” Martin says of the show, which will film near their hometown of Toronto for four months this summer. “It’s about two teenage girls who get sent to a rehab facility in the States, those schools where you get kidnapped in the night.” Martin plays “somebody in the surrounding small town trying to figure out what’s going on, and maybe rescue these teens, maybe not.”
“I get to, like, kill people,” Martin adds with delight, noting that they “have a real imposter syndrome as an actor, so this will be a real test.”
Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
