Hey Rando: Abbi and Ilana Don't Want to Smoke Weed with You
EntertainmentAbbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, the QUEENS of Broad City, are the cover story of this month’s New York Magazine and in the interview (conducted by Jada Yuan) they talk about all sorts of interesting things—like pegging, TV nudity, Nicki Minaj and how they don’t want to randomly smoke weed with you.
On what “Broad City” means to them:
“Broad City is very sweaty,” says Glazer, 27. “It’s a Rube Goldberg machine of fuck-ups.” Both on the show and, to a lesser degree, off, she is the aggressive, curly-haired ball of ideas pulling the more reserved, cautious Jacobson out of her comfort zone. “You know the Yiddish term mishegoss? It kind of means ‘bullshit,'” Glazer goes on. (Actually, it’s closer to “craziness,” but the point stands.) “Broad City is mishegoss that you don’t want to be dealing with in this moment. It’s very sweaty,” she reiterates.
Discussing the season two episode where Abbi finally gets a chance to have sex with her long-time crush Jeremy and ultimately ends up pegging him and ruining his custom-made dildo, the pair want to make it clear that the extended shots of Abbi walking around in a strap-on was not the joke:
“The caring so much about materials kind of was,” says Glazer. “But, you know, people peg. It’s cool.” “I’ve never done it,” says Jacobson. “Yeah, me neither,” says Glazer. “I’m, like, dying to.”
Abbi and Ilana’s stakes on Broad City will never be that high:
“They’re broke, but they’re also, like, white upper-middle-class privileged people,” says Glazer. “It’s not real rags-to-riches. It’s fake poor. They could always move home if they needed to.”
But they will continue to get (semi)naked:
“We’re happy we have the bars. Very, very happy,” says Glazer. “Lena Dunham is awesome. She is amazing. I love seeing her body on TV. Lena is like a vessel for the message that normal bodies are so beautiful and sexy and powerful. But I don’t think we would be that brave to be that vessel, even though you still, like, get that and people are like, ‘Wow, they’re not bony!’ Even though you get that same message, it’s not as strong as Lena’s. Lena’s isn’t for a joke, you know? Ours is always for a joke. We’re very grateful for those blurs. So grateful.”
“It’s funny, with blurs we often fight with Comedy Central,” says Jacobson. “We want the blurs to be as minimal as possible because if it’s such a big blur it ruins the joke.” For a scene in which Ilana hoists her leg up to inspect her bikini line in a dressing-room mirror, they successfully lobbied against having the blur be pink. “We were like, ‘The character Ilana has pubes. She doesn’t have a shaved pussy like everybody on TV,'” says Glazer. “And Comedy Central fought for it for us. They believed in it. It’s flesh color but also a little brown. Which is great. It was just like, ‘What is this? A waxed and bald vagina? This is an adult’s vagina!'”
And sorry to burst your bubble, but they probably don’t want to get stoned with you:
“People think I want to blaze all the time with them,” says Glazer. “Which is like, I don’t. I’m obviously going to be so nervous about that right now.” She pauses. “Giving us a joint is one thing—I’m like, ‘Thank you soooo much.’ But when people want to smoke with us?” “Everyone thinks we smoke in the writers’ room,” says Jacobson. “It’s like, we would never be able to do anything high!” “We’re, like, running a business,” says Glazer. “That would be so irresponsible to get high. All these people who are giving us their time and their skill and we’re getting high? That’s crazy!”
Here’s why Nicki Minaj is musical serotonin, according to Ilana Glazer:
“I listened to her mixtapes over and over, I knew all her fucking raps. Because it felt good to, like, bark cocky shit. It stuck in my brain. You know when you smile, your brain feels you smiling and starts emitting happiness, you know, serotonin? Kind of that. I feel like I spit her shit that was pumping in my ears for so long that I was able to feel that confident.”
Also, they’re writing a (not Broad City-related) movie! Read the full interview here.
Images via New York Magazine/Bobby Doherty.
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