Name: The Advantage of Being a Female Comedian | Bill Burr & Carol Leifer
Uploaded: 2025-08-30T19:00:51.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Advantage of Being a Female Comedian | Bill Burr & Carol Leifer' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Advantage of Being a Female Comedian | Bill Burr & Carol Leifer' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-30. Transcript available.

I mean, at least when I started, comedians were telling you whether you would
pass the audition or not.
When I went on to Catch a Rising Star...
I missed that. So, Jerry was the one that passed you.
Yeah. He was kind of a ready... He'd only been doing it a year, but he was kind
of the king of the comic strip.
Right.
And I remember seeing people's first sets. It was great. The comics would go in
and watch.
So, you know, comedians, we have a different take, a different eye than someone
in management about who's good or not.
And what I liked about when I started, too, people were always like, oh, as a
woman, you must have really had it tough.
I really found it was a big advantage and that also the guy comics were so
supportive of me and so treated me like a sister.
And things I learned from guys, you know, because I used to find when I started,
if I saw a group of guys walk in, three or four or more guys walk in and sit at
a table, I'd be like, they're the group.
They're going to give me a problem. I know it's going to be a problem. And I
could never get over with them.
And one night a male comic came over to me and said, I see you're having
trouble with groups of guys.
I was like, yes, yes. He was like, I think I can help you. I was like, great.
And he said, when they start to heckle you, all you have to say is, so guys,
where are the dates tonight? Where are the girls?
Beautiful.
They park in the car? Where are they? And then immediately the shut up.
And I wouldn't know that unless a guy kind of kept me to that.
That's how you do all that. I mean, guys, it's all right if you're gay. You
know, you can just say that.
That will shut any straight guy back then.
Yes.
Before straight guys started painting their toenails or whatever's happening
now.
That would have totally shut them down.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, I found that when I did, they used to call them the uptown rooms or
the urban rooms.
Yeah.
Like the all black shows.
So all that really was as a white comic was your ideas in your head of what it
was going to be.
So, and it was the crowd's idea. So you would go on stage and you could feel
the crowd being like, oh God, corny white guy.
What the fuck is he doing down here? And all you had to do was get your first
laugh.
And once you got your first laugh, it was like easy because you were like the
mascot.
Like, oh my God, isn't this amazing? This white guy is making us laugh.
And then like, after you did those shows a couple of times and you got
comfortable, I would watch it and I would be watching the black comics and
there would be guys.
I'm sitting there going like, this guy's funnier than this guy's got better
material than me.
But he has to work 10 times harder because I don't know, they're just taking
him for granted.
Oh yeah, you're me or whatever. But there wasn't like, and then I would go over
to the cellar and then I would see the opposite.
Like if you were a white comic in front of a predominantly white crowd, they
didn't want to, like, it wasn't interesting after you'd seen three white comics.
And then if a black comic went up and like started beatboxing or something,
forget it.
They were like, oh my God, that is amazing.
And then you would go up there and you'd feel your own people hating you.
Right.
And it's just like, all right.
But you got to set yourself apart, however that is, whenever you go up.
Well, that's, I mean, I don't think I've ever heard anybody for your generation
say that as a female comic, you had a supportive thing.
That's a really good thing to hear.
Yeah. Yeah, totally.
And I got on more because I was a woman comic.
I mean, they wouldn't put two women on in a row.
I remember that.
That was a rule that lasted, I feel like, until about 10 years ago.
Right? A long time.
Forget about in a row.
Like, they wouldn't have, they wouldn't have two women on a show.
Yes.
On a weekend.
Right.
And then they wouldn't have two women within the same hour and 10 minutes on
like a Tuesday.
Yeah.
Like it was going to, you know, put an odor, stink up the room somehow.
But I mean, it would literally be like, we're going to have a singer, a
magician, then we'll
do the woman, then we'll have a, you know, ventriloquist, then maybe, you know.
Not Carol.
We're going to have the woman.
Yeah.
I mean, it, it, yeah, it was a, yeah, it was just, it was that time.
There was a whole, there was a whole bunch.
I remember, forget about, there was so many rules.
I remember when I started, people were like, you can't have facial hair.
People, they have to see your face.
If they can't see your face, they're not going to laugh.
You can't do an AIDS joke.
You can't be too good looking.
You can't be too in shape.
Comedy, they, people, they don't want to see a cool guy up there.
They want to see, like, the, the, the underdog and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it was just like, it was almost like they were saying there's only one kind
of music.
Right.
You know what I mean?
There's rock music and all these other genres and, uh.
And it goes back to what you were saying.
Don't listen to other people.
Just do your own thing.
Thank you.