Broad City: Ilana Glazer talks Time Traveling Bong

At this point, “Abbi and Ilana” has become one of those name combos that everyone has gotten used to saying in one breath, like “Abbot and Costello” or “Key and Peele.” But Broad City stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer have their own, individual projects in the pipeline as well.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly (available on stands now), the comedians filled us in on Glazer’s upcoming project Time Traveling Bong — and how it might affect the future of their partnership.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Ilana, you’re working on a separate miniseries for Comedy Central called Time Traveling Bong. What’s it about?

GLAZER: We just shat out the first producer cuts. It cracks us up! It’s so ridiculous. On Broad City, we’re like, We dumb! It’s like so stupid, but people are like, they know what they’re doing! So they’re like, it’s smart, but we’re like, no, no, no – it’s so stupid. Time Traveling Bong is also so stupid, and we’re also like that’s smart [too], but it’s not.

JACOBSON: I think it’s smart. It’s historical references throughout. Very smart observations about history.

GLAZER: We want it to be Comedy Central’s O.J.

So where do you travel to?

GLAZER: We go the Salem Witch Trials, obvs. We meet Michael Jackson. We go to paleo times, which in real life, I’m like, I would kill it in paleo times. I would rule my tribe. And then we go to the future.

Do you think fans ready to see you guys apart?

JACOBSON: This is the first that’ll be like a TV project where Ilana is producing on her own. But we’ve both been doing individual things for a while, but they’re not “out” yet.

GLAZER: It’s scary, right?

JACOBSON: Things take so long to come to fruition. This is exciting, because it’s the first thing [after Broad City]. We work on more projects individually than we work on together, but the ones we do together are the “most successful” of ours.

GLAZER: And it is scary. It’s like, I kind of think about Abbi just in my head. Like, “She and I were talking about this.” It’s just uncertain, but it’s exciting. But we’ve always felt like whatever experiences … we always felt like any experience you have, you talk about it and you both experience it together in some way. So it feeds our partnership together.

JACOBSON: And as writers and performers, our voice together as a … “duo” is very different than when we’re acting or writing individually. Our individual voices make our collective one, but we have different things we want to explore more.

GLAZER: It both strengthens the partnership and also f—ing ruins it. [Laughs] But I don’t think audiences aren’t ready because honestly I don’t think enough people know us. I think people are like, Who? They’re not going to be like, Wait, I know her… They’re like, a brunette. A 30-year-old brunette.

A version of this story originally appeared in Entertainment Weekly issue #1408–1409, on newsstands Friday or available for purchase here.