The Reach Out: Laurie Kilmartin
She loves swimming and yoga -- and just skied for the first time -- but the stand-up comedian and CONAN writer draws the line at tracking her steps.
I first saw Laurie Kilmartin perform on The Last Comic Standing, where she was a top ten finalist. Since then, Kilmartin has experienced incredible career success, but also tremendous loss.
Kilmartin was a comedy writer on CONAN for ten years and is the author of two popular books. She is co-host of the Jackie and Laurie Show podcast and has appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Comedy Central, and CONAN.
In 2014, while caring for her ill father, Kilmartin’s tweets — a mix of humor, sadness, and reflection — allowed her followers to experience the feeling of losing a parent in real time.
Kilmartin turned her grief into a popular comedy special, 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad, and book, Dead People Suck: A Guide for Survivors of the Newly Departed.
As Kilmartin told Andy Richter this past fall, “I didn’t feel like I was a truly funny person until my dad died.”
Kilmartin’s mother passed away from COVID before her most recent album, Corset, was released this past October.
In an interview with Conan O’Brien, Kilmartin explained why humor — reflected in both Corset and her Twitter feed — helped her to cope while her mother was sick.
“Like every comic, you don't like to sit in a feeling too long….you'd like to pull yourself out of it and the best way for us to do it is write a little joke about it.”
I think Conan captured the feelings of many when he said, “A lot of people were really drawn to your very precise way of expressing pain, but also making it funny at the same time, and very human, and nobody does that quite like you.”
Kilmartin is currently performing stand-up shows across the U.S.
I spoke with her about swim workouts, hotel gyms, and how the pandemic is still part of her stand-up sets.
With your frequent travel, late nights, and hotel stays, is finding time for regular exercise a priority for you?
It’s a huge priority, so I’ve always found some sort of way to work out. When I’m not on the road, I usually swim. For me, being in the water is just a different kind of workout. Even if you're not a good swimmer, you just feel so good afterward.
When I started going out on the road in the early 90’s, most hotels didn’t have gyms but I could always find a pool at a YMCA. So I bought a YMCA membership, which allows you to work out at any Y across the country, including in a lot of smaller towns where I would be doing stand-up.
Today when I travel, I’ll use the hotel gym or do yoga in my room. I use a bunch of equipment in my swim workouts —paddles, fins, pull buoys — and that’s a bit much to lug around on the road.
What are hotel gyms like now — during pandemic times?
Oh, it’s total chaos. The hotels don't really care because they just want to get people back, which I understand, but no, I haven’t noticed any hotel hotel gym rules.
There seem to be fewer people in the hotel gyms that I’ve been in over the last few months, so sometimes I've been the only person in there.
As a former competitive swimmer, early morning workouts were probably the norm for you. What is your workout routine now?
I don't have a great routine. Sometimes I’ll plan my workout in advance, but often I plan it halfway through the day. I definitely feel much better when I work out in the morning because then I don’t have that dreaded feeling all day, like, “Oh my God, what if I skip my workout?” I try to remember this every time I finish a morning workout — “Hey, it feels great to get this done so early. I should do this again!”
On the other hand, I do like to ease into the day, so I often end up postponing my workout to the afternoon. See? I don’t really have a schedule — it’s whenever I can talk myself into doing it — but I usually leave myself a few potential windows, and it often winds up being the latest window in the day.
Do you wear a fitness app to track your steps?
No, I don't feel the urge to compete with myself on steps — that just seems appalling. There’s so many other things I want myself to do — write a novel, watch tape of my sets to improve my stand-up. Do I want to spend time comparing and charting how much walking I’ve been doing, and try to beat the previous day’s numbers? Um, no.
When you work out, do you listen to music or comedy podcasts?
When I swim, the only thing I hear is the water sloshing against my ears, which is relaxing and just really good for you.
When I'm working out on dry land, I listen to music exclusively. I need to be able to get lost in a song, and I can't get lost in a comedy voice. When I’m listening to a podcast, I often find myself getting angry, and that’s not the energy I want to have on the Elliptical.
What motivates you to keep swimming and exercising regularly?
Well, every day, I have that voice of self-hatred — “You’re lazy, you’re disgusting” — but once I do my workout, that voice gets turned off for the rest of the day. That’s another great thing about working out in the morning: that voice is turned off early — even if it does return the next morning. So mostly I exercise because it silences that voice of self-hatred for the remainder of the day.
But exercising also just feels really good. I think a lot of people don’t swim because they are self-conscious about their bodies, but if they knew how great they would feel afterward, so many more people would be swimming.
How do you think we can get kids to step away from their screens and become more active?
Well, my kid swims and is on a water polo team, so he's pretty active, but as soon as he’s finished his workout, he collapses in front of his IPad.
His dad and I both work out a lot — you wouldn't know it looking at my body that I work out every day, but I actually do! — so maybe he has just grown up thinking that exercising is what everyone does, or what they're supposed to do. Even on his off days, when he’s not swimming, he’ll sometimes go for a run on his own. So it's sort of ingrained in him.
I think that if kids see that their parents enjoy working out — and not view it as some horrible chore that they dread doing — then being active would just be programmed into their DNA.
Is there any sport or fitness trend that you think you would want to try?
I wouldn't mind trying some kind of CrossFit where I use my own body weight. I'd love to be able to do a few pull-ups, for example, although part of me is like, “Are you insane?” So I don’t know if I’ll ever reach that goal.
When I was in Vermont over New Year's, I went skiing with my son for the first time. I just went on easy runs, but it was challenging and super fun. Had I known how fun skiing was back in my twenties, maybe I would have never left the ski hill and never had a comedy career!
(Writer’s note: Many people are very glad that Laurie chose comedy over skiing)😀
You are currently doing shows across the country. How does it feel to be back on the road again after a pandemic hiatus?
The shows are really fun, but traveling is much harder — sometimes it’s twelve straight hours of wearing a mask.
How are you addressing the pandemic in your sets now?
I talk about my mom dying of COVID pretty early on — close to the top of the set — just to get it over with, and to sort of let people know that this is what you're in for. This is the kind of stuff I like to joke about.
I’m thrilled that Laurie Kilmartin is back on the road doing stand-up (I wish she would come to Toronto!) and making people laugh on Twitter.
I agree with Andy Richter: “You turned the death of your father into comedy, and then you got to do it again with your mom during COVID — on a f*cking iPad.”
When she isn’t swimming — or in a near-empty hotel gym on the Elliptical — I hope Kilmartin is working on that next book.
Thank you, @anylaurie16
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