Leanne Morgan inspires with later-career success and tour headed to Moon, Greensburg & NJ

Leanne Morgan can pinpoint the messy moment when she realized she had the skill to become a standup comedian.

It happened while Morgan was making a living by hawking jewelry at living room parties, tossing in a few jokes about motherhood as part of her sales pitch. On one such night, those jokes made a customer laugh so hard she peed her pants.

"She goes, 'I am so sorry, I got so tickled, I peed on Janet's couch'" Morgan said. "And we had to blot it, and that's when I really and truly thought, 'OK, I've got it. I really could do this.'"

So maybe wear your thick pants if you're headed to see the now full-fledged comedy star's Just Getting Started Tour, where she's likely to discuss everything from being a housewife, to sharing Jell-O recipes to doting on a new grandbaby.

Morgan's standup material is relatable enough to fill theaters, auditoriums, comedy festivals and now mid-sized arenas.

Her versatility is evident in next week's schedule, headlining the 4-year-old, 4,000-seat UPMC Events Center in Moon Township on March 21; then 1920s vaudeville theaters-turned-concert sites the Palace Theatre in Greensburg on March 22, and the Count Basie Center for The Arts in Red Bank, N.J. on March 23.

"Those beautiful old theaters are the best, and y'all got pretty ones in Pennsylvania," Morgan said in her thick, enchanting Tennessee accent. "As for arenas, I haven't done many, but I'm starting to do more and I'm getting used to them. It's different but I like them."

Morgan's star is rising; she's got 3 million social media followers; her own Netflix comedy special, and a prominent role in a wacky wedding comedy headed to theaters where she appears with Reese Witherspoon, Will Ferrell and Geraldine Viswanathan.

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"I play Reese Witherspoon's big sister, and we had a ball," Morgan said. "And I was scared to death because I'd never done anything like that, and I didn't know how things worked. Like they put a piece of tape on the floor, and you stand on it and say your line. I didn't know that."

Morgan's first book, "What in The World?" hits shelves in September.

"And I feel like I gave birth," she said. "I just turned in my last edits yesterday."

The book will detail her not-so-overnight success along with her comical musings on raising children.

She suggested to her literary agent that the book also include tales from her sinful single days in the 1980s.

"He said, 'You know what, you're not Joan Crawford yet. Why don't we save your sins for later? Why don't we just tell readers funny stories to introduce you to the world?' I thought that was so funny. Because I was telling everything that ever happened to me and he goes, 'Nobody wants to hear that right now, and let's do a cookbook in between. And then you can tell people about your sins in the '80s."

Morgan symbolically named her upcoming comedy shows the Just Getting Started Tour.

"Well, honey, I'm 58 and I got two grandbabies and I feel like I'm just getting started, but I've been doing comedy for 20-something years − 100 years it feels like," Morgan said. "And lord, there were years I couldn't get arrested. Nobody cared. Then this all happened to me in my 50s. And I just ... well it is, it's just now happening, so I named this the Just Getting Started Tour."

Fans tell Morgan her later-in-life stage success inspires them.

"They tell me, 'If you can do this, I can go back to school. I can start a business,'" Morgan said. "I feel like our society kind of acts like, well, it's just over for middle-aged women, and it's really not."

Even in her early adult years, Morgan deep down knew she wanted to do standup.

"But I'd gone to college, and I finished and I was too scared and didn't have any comedy clubs around. And I wanted to be a momma and get married and have babies, too, so I was just grasping. And then I started selling that jewelry and everybody noticed and wanted me to start speaking at their big things."

Hearing how much Morgan's humor helped with sales, the jewelry company started booking her for sales rallies.

"And then 500 women in a convention center would be saying to me, 'You need to be doing standup,' and that gave me the confidence to really try."

In 2001 she and her husband went for it, moving to San Antonio, where he found work with a big company after selling his own small business. Morgan finally had access to comedy clubs and began appearing at open mics.

"I got moved up pretty quick," she said.

Morgan worked her way through the comedy club ranks, earning a spot in the prestigious Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal.

"This first started hitting for me right before the pandemic, when I started blowing up and selling out all over the United States," she said. "It felt like overnight even though it had been 20-some years. "

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Morgan's first national headlining tour, her Big Panty Tour, brought her face-to-face with fans coast-to-coast.

"Women would say, 'Oh my gosh, you got me through my divorce' or whatever. And they were so sweet. I felt like I needed to go home and clean their house because I couldn't believe they were so good to me," Morgan said.

Then came a second tour and the Netflix special, and now her crowds are more of an even mix of men and women.

Morgan feels she's at a perfect point in her life to entertain them and keep all this growing fame under control.

"I don't mean to be sappy, but I feel like I'm smarter than I've ever been, I got more sense," Morgan said. "If this had happened to me when I was 20, lord knows what would have happened."

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Beaver County Times and easy to reach at stady@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Netflix & film star Leanne Morgan to bring laughs as tour heads here