Comic who wouldn't let writing cramp her style - Morgan Murphy

Published on Monday 4 August 2008 09:16

Claire Prentice discovers why Morgan Murphy turned her back on lucrative TV work to do stand-up, and, below, also meets the other American comedians showcased at The GVR

MORGAN MURPHY has a CV that comedians twice her age would kill for.

She has written for and appeared on some of America's top TV comedy shows – Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central's Premium Blend and Last Call with Carson Daly – and is currently in Seattle shooting a film with Robin Williams. And she's only 26.

It is a long way from a lonely, peripatetic childhood from which she sought refuge by writing jokes.

"I don't really know how I got here," laughs Murphy, who is relaxing in her Seattle hotel room before an afternoon of filming. "But I get to hang out with some of the funniest people in the world and make a career out of it which is pretty neat."

While other comics struggle for years to get noticed, Murphy graduated from college and walked straight into a job as a writer on the hugely popular Jimmy Kimmel Live TV show. The money was good, the office banter crackled but Murphy didn't want to spend the next decade sitting in an office, writing jokes for other people.

"I did that really clichd thing: I packed up my apartment and went to London," says Murphy. "I made a pact with myself that even if I just broke even I would go and perform any gig provided it was in a place I'd never been to." It's a deal that has so far taken her to Kentucky, Louisville, Nashville, South Carolina and Vancouver. Next up is Edinburgh.

As well as cherry-picking some of the best bits of her stand-up, not seen before in the UK, Murphy is trying out some new material and has shot three short films to incorporate into her Fringe show. "I wanted to add texture to the stand-up. I haven't done anything like this before and I haven't shown them to anybody – they could bomb horribly."

The deadpan comic is also venturing out of her comfort zone with a look at her own psyche and her disastrous love life. "I'd got so used to doing dry one-liners. This is the first year I've talked about personal stuff like relationships on stage.

"My taste in men is not good. I don't choose wisely – they are too old or too drunk or have an excess of some other vice.

"But I needed to figure that out a little but myself before I could turn it into something funny." She is in Seattle filming World's Greatest Dad, written and directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait. Goldthwait wrote a part especially for Murphy – the second time she has starred in one of his films – after they met on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show. Robin Williams plays a failed writer teaching poetry at a high school. When his teenage son dies during a freak masturbation accident, he tries to cover up the embarrassment by claiming the death was a suicide.

"It sounds strange when I describe it but it is really, really funny," says Morgan. "Robin Williams has been great. It was his birthday the other night so we all went out for dinner. I was leaving after to go to a comedy club and he came along.

"It was one of the performers' 21st birthday and he got the audience all singing Happy Birthday. He's a really generous guy, he goes along to a lot of shows to support young comics."

Born in Oregon, Murphy's childhood took her to stay with different family members in towns across California and Connecticut. She was an introverted child who spent most of her free time writing jokes and comic observations in a notebook she carried with her everywhere.

She was reading it recently and, she admits with a laugh: "They are all terrible." Such as? "'My dad is a catholic and my mum is Jewish – what do they find to talk about?' I think you need a couple of years to write all your bad stuff down before you go near a stage."

Comedy writing was the only career Murphy ever considered after figuring out that people must get paid to write the jokes for her favourite TV shows such as Saturday Night Live. At 18 she spent a summer doing open-mic spots which led to gigs in laundromats, youth hostels and cafes.

"I learned a lot. This one place, Lucy's Laundromat, was tiny. If anyone in the audience needed to go to the toilet, you had to get off the 'stage'. I'd go wherever they would take me. There was barely anyone in the audience in the youth hostels that had enough English to understand your jokes."

&#149 Morgan Murphy – I Don't Know Who I Am Either, at The GRV. Until 24 Aug. 6.30pm

'When you've done Edinburgh you don't want to do America'

MORGAN MURPHY is part of a strong bill of US comedians on at The GRV this year. They include Rick Shapiro, whose 2007 Fringe debut went down a storm, and Carol Leifer, whose fans include Jay Leno and the late Frank Sinatra.

MEETING a stand-up comedian in a New York diner just after he has come from an appointment with his psychiatrist sounds like a bad joke, but Rick Shapiro, below, has just met his shrink, who wants to put him on medication for attention deficit disorder. "He says he needs to monitor me, so he can't do it till I get back from Edinburgh. I'm having a bad day."

Despite the years he spent living on the streets, working as a rent boy to feed his heroin addiction, the whippet-thin Shapiro looks a decade younger than his 49 years. "My act is pretty high energy," he says, "it keeps me in shape."

It is 20 years since Shapiro gave up the drugs and drinking and reported for his first AA meeting. Around the same time, he started doing open mic nights in New York. It was not long before his explosive talent got him noticed. He recently made his TV debut on HBO's Lucky Louie and has a DVD shoot lined up.

Edinburgh audiences can expect sex, politics, a sketch he describes as "the Hitler caf" and an experiment he's keen to try out using graphics and an assistant. He lowers his voice and conspiratorially says: "When you've done Edinburgh you don't want to do America again. They're all bubble-headed fajita eaters."

Just as likely to make audiences laugh as cry, Long Island native Carol Leifer, above, is doing a show based on her humorous and moving new book of short stories, When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win. It is a new venture for the former girlfriend of Jerry Seinfeld, who has appeared on everything from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to Will & Grace.

Her proudest career moment was opening for Frank Sinatra in Vegas, who declared: "I wish my mum had been that funny, I wouldn't have had to work so hard."

Four events inspired the book: her 50th birthday, the death of her father, her recent discovery, after years of marriage, that she was gay, and her decision to adopt a baby last year with her partner, Lori.

"I'm loving this even more than stand-up because it feels like I'm taking it to a new level," she says. "I've never made people cry before and it feels good."

&149 Carol Leifer – When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win, The GRV, until 24 Aug, 4pm; Rick Shapiro – Wild Card, The GRV, until 24 Aug, 7:45pm.