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“Right now, Netflix is the cool kid in school,” comedian Christina Pazsitzky explained when we spoke on the phone last week. And she would know, since she’s sitting at the popular table: her new comedy special Christina P: Mother Inferior hit the streaming service on October 10th. Since then? “It’s been pretty bananas,” she says of the experience.
Pazsitzky, or Christina P. as she’s also known, has been a comedian for well over a decade, hitting the LA comedy clubs and touring the country, hosting podcasts (Your Mom’s House and That’s Deep, Bro), and racking up appearances on VH1, Syfy, Comedy Central, Showtime, TruTV, and E!’s Chelsea Lately. Oh, and one glance at her face might cause your teen TV-viewing habits to come rushing back, as she was also a cast member on the 1998 season of Road Rules: Down Under on MTV. But we’ll get to that.
She’s collected a loyal group of listeners through her podcasting, noting that, “A significant group of people knew the Your Mom’s House podcast, and then it was like, October 10th happened when my special dropped, and the floodgates have opened. I love it, I think it’s great. It’s been awesome, and people like you who write nice things about me, I think is awesome.” Due to the hilarity of Mother Inferior, we named Christina our Woman Crush Wednesday last month, of which she had to mention that, “My favorite part of your article is that you recognize that I was the normal one on Road Rules. That’s probably my favorite thing ever, ever written about me, so thank you.”
And it’s the damn truth! Although, some viewers haven’t made the connection that successful comedian Christina P. they know and love now was indeed the normal one from that season of the show nearly two decades ago — which is partially intentional on her part. “I’m so proud to have been a part of reality television when it was reality television, when it was real. We spent two months, two whole months, in a winnebago—legit, in a winnebago—fighting with each other and getting to know each other. The show was so innocent, and like, nothing happened. If you watch it now, the show is so boring. Nobody threw anything at each other, it was before they cast the mentally ill or severely alcoholic to be cast members, and I’m still friends with most of them. Shayne, who’s the other normal one from the cast, he and I text almost daily. So, I love it. But on the other hand, I really wanted to separate myself from it when I started doing stand-up. I didn’t just want to be like ‘Oh, there’s the girl from Road Rules trying to be famous.’ I wasn’t ashamed of Road Rules, but I definitely didn’t want to use it as the jumping point into stand-up. I probably should have. It probably would have helped my career. But for some reason I like doing things the hard way. It’s like the fun surprise, like you said, if somebody goes ‘Oh my gosh, I remember that chick,’ like oh, warm and fuzzies.”
It’s not that the warm and fuzzies don’t continue in Mother Inferior, it’s just that she’s not afraid to keep it really real, especially when it comes to the “joys” of motherhood. A recent New York Times piece recognized the trend of “mom comedy”, noting Ali Wong’s 2016 Netflix special that catapulted the comedian into the mainstream after she delivered the jokes while seven months pregnant. But is “mom comedy” really such a hip, new trend in comedy? “I think it’s because there’s so much fertile ground for women to go to still,” Pazsitzky explained. “Society has evolved so much for women, but we’re still not quite there on certain things. If it means that people like Ali Wong and I have to kind of pave the way for the next girl who can just talk about whatever and be a comedian, that’s fine, I love being that. By the way, mom comedy is not new. Phyllis Diller, I think, invented that shit, and Roseanne, so there’s this great tradition of irreverent moms. There’s a reason it’s successful and it works, it’s because it resonates and we need to keep reminding women that being a mom is not just baking and cooking. It’s a legit hard thing. And if you’re not struggling with it, I don’t know if you’re doing it right. I’m not going to tell you that it’s all roses. You read these magazines and the Kardashians are pumping out another kid and they’re thrilled. It’s like, it’s a job. It’s difficult, it’s complicated. And it still needs to be talked about.”
As do those pesky Kardashians. Mother Inferior includes several hilarious Kardashian, and Kardashian-adjacent jokes (lookin’ at you, Caitlyn Jenner), as well as a truly funny facial expression when the comedian delivers the news to the audience that Jenny McCarthy is the author of 9 (NINE) books. With a platform as broad and as exposing as Netflix, is she feeling a bit nervous about word getting back to these celebs about her jokes? “Yes! Yeah, of course,” she admits. “What can I do, you know? You just tell the joke and you hope the person has a good sense of humor about it. And from what I’ve seen of [McCarthy], I think she doesn’t take herself too seriously, so I hope she’s not upset. She’s way more successful than I am, so she’s not sweating it.”
One person you might be surprised to learn won’t be featured all that much in her stand-up is Pazsitzky’s toddler son Ellis (who she shares with husband comedian Tom Segura). “I don’t think it’s fair to make fun of him directly. I don’t put my kid on social media. It’s never about the kiddo. He’s living his two-year-old life, and he’s a normal kiddo. It’s me that I like to keep it at. My struggles emotionally or whatever with being a mom. Frankly, I think stories about other people’s kids are fucking boring. I’m never riveted by my friends’ tales of what their two-year-old did, so why the hell am I going to bore you with mine?” she reasoned.
Those that should watch out when within earshot of her though? Anyone in need of a grammar lesson. It’s a topic we can — and should — all get behind, as Pazsitzky runs through some of the worst offenses on Twitter, as well as during her act. “It’s so funny how that bit really took on a life of its own. Because it doesn’t get the biggest laughs in my act at all, and I just insisted on doing it because I believe in it. But people are getting behind it and I love it,” she said. As far as her method for gathering material goes, “I hear strangers in the world say stuff, and then I put it in my phone so that I can make fun of them later with my husband. But my husband and I correct each other — like, he said ‘ahead of the curb,’ and I was like, ‘What?’ But because I grew up with foreign parents, I was saying a lot of things incorrectly, too. I was saying “combatative.” I added another syllable, and he’s like, ‘Wait, what? It’s combative.’ But I grew up with foreigner parents who mispronounced everything and who got every idiom wrong. There’s no excuse, dude. If you’re a native English speaker, you should fucking know the language, you know? Let’s shame people into that.” At the top of that list? “With our president being a complete disgrace to the English language, it’s pretty great to watch him,” she offered.
It’s been much, much more fun to watch Pazsitzky in action on Mother Inferior, as many fellow Netflix subscribers have been discovering for themselves. Her give-no-fucks attitude is thoroughly on display throughout jokes about saggy boobs and macaroni and cheese, and Netflix was smart to pick up on that. “We filmed the special in late June, and then by July 4th weekend, Netflix bought it,” she shared. “So I actually filmed it without a buyer, and they saw a rough cut, and they loved it, and said, ‘We’d love to buy this.’ And since then they’ve been a dream. They’re awesome for artists to work with because they don’t tell you what to do, which is fantastic. So it’s been nothing but a joy being on their platform.”
Filmed in Seattle, she had a very specific look and feel in mind for the big fancy special, and explained, “I came up in clubs. I believe that it should be dark when you do stand-up. I like dark, dingy dens where the fucking masturbators and the weirdos are there. I wanted it to be a version of the actual stand-up club experience, but a classier one for television. It’s a little gothy because I’m a little gothy. And they said, ‘It’s a risk. Nobody likes goth,’ but it worked out.”
The way that it worked out, exactly, is that, “The guy who’s in charge of buying, his name is Robbie Praw and he actually was the booker for Montreal Comedy Festival, so he’s very versed in stand-ups. I wanted to be somewhere where they appreciate good stand-up comedy, and Netflix definitely does. What they’re doing, it’s a whole world now. We’re getting to see Polish comedians, Indian comedians, more stuff from the UK than Americans have seen. I think it’s opening up stand-up to the entire world, which is the future.”
As far as her own future goes, she shared, “I’m writing a whole new hour, and in 2018 I’m starting to tour. I’ve already got some dates up on my calendar, and then I’m going to crank out that next [special].”
So when she’s not jotting down notes on parenting or policing grammar, Pazsitzky’s indulging in of her love of reality shows, but no so much when it comes to her alma mater at MTV. “They cast these crazy people. I watch these Challenges now and it’s like, wait who’s on this? Some guy from the internet is on this show? Why is there yelling?”
However, she’s found the ones that she can get behind these days. “I find that there’s only a few great true reality shows, true in the sense of personality. For instance, I fucking love [on] Bravo, Jeff Lewis Flipping Out. That’s 100%, that’s real. The Great British Baking Show, I like that because the people are really trying and they’re just these average people trying to be great bakers. [But] I’ll watch Below Deck, and I can tell when it’s a producer line. When the person is like, ‘Am I on the ship or is the ship on me?’ You can totally tell. Or when they edit things together so that the audio goes up and down. But that’s fine. That shit happened in the ‘90s, too.”
