Patti Harrison Is Ready to Take Control
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Comedian Patti Harrison is what they used to call a true character. In roles in shows and films like I Think You Should Leave, Theater Camp, and Julio Torres's new Max series Fantasmas, she pops off the screen thanks to her finely tuned sense of anarchy and fearless commitment to the bit. It's these qualities that inspired Bazaar to ask her to model fall fashion in our August 2024 Performance issue. (See the full portfolio here.) Below, Harrison explains her unique comedic path.
The first time I started doing comedy was doing improv at Ohio University. When it started to go well, that was the first time I ever really thought I would professionally maybe have a shot at reorienting myself toward a career like that. I didn't even really know what that meant because there's not any improv jobs.
I really didn't like standup when I was in college, and I never thought I would be performing solo until I moved to New York. The idea of having to memorize stuff and prepare anything and have any sort of discipline was deeply horrifying. The thought of applying myself filled me with transparent terror. When I started performing on standup shows, I was always doing a character. I don't think I was ever doing proper standup per se, but usually I would just map out beats of things I needed to hit during my set. But a lot of it would just be kind of meandering, ad-libbed improv, but by myself.
If you're on an improv team, there's just a bunch of people on stage, so you're not alone. You feel like you're with a group of people, you're supported in the best cases. When you're on the stage by yourself as a standup comedian, I think the stakes feel a little different. I mean, there are different dynamics in an improv team where people can step on each other's toes, people can bulldoze, people can talk over each other, people get mad at each other. People in your improv team start fucking, people in your improv team start excluding people from the fucking, and so those are maybe negative things you don't have to deal with as a standup.
When we would do our rehearsals and our shows, we would just say, ‘Leave it at the door, leave whatever is going on in your personal life at the door.’ It's not a hard set rule. Obviously, the things that you're experiencing inform your performance and can make it great in certain cases. If you're on an improv team and you have conflict with someone else, it's harder to pretend you don't. Just to go on stage and be like, ‘Mom, our dildo lasagna is done baking!’ Or whatever the fuck incredible improv magic is happening on stage—and, meanwhile, you and some person who just gave you throat gonorrhea have to be trapped in the scene together and pretend like you didn't experience that with them. But, this is all hypothetical to say because I never fucked anyone I did improv with because I was unfuckable at that time.
It's a good experience as a communal organism to get to work with other people in a creative sense because it helps you. I think you learn a lot about not being so precious about certain things. I think I can be precious about things when I want something to be really good and I feel like I can see the potential for it to be good, but it's learning how to advocate for myself and have the language tools to communicate those things in a way that feels productive and kind. Also learning that, as an actor, a lot of times you're not the person in charge, so a lot of times it's just about trying to do it the best way you can to fulfill whatever vision the other person has for this project. They have more of an overarching sense of what it should turn into.
Whereas performing live onstage, it's like I have full control, full autonomy. It's like instant gratification or instant confirmation or instant rejection. You know immediately in that moment if people like what you're saying when you're performing live comedy versus if you were to shoot a comedy TV series or movie, you make the joke on the set, people aren't really allowed to laugh and then you have to wait a year or more until the thing comes out. I love doing live comedy because I think it feels like a more pure artistic endeavor for me when I am in a room with people and connecting with people in that way. It really puts you in your body.
There was a time in my career when I was trying to audition for a lot more stuff and really trying to pursue acting. That process in and of itself can really bring up a lot of self-doubt. You're experiencing a lot of rejection, and I think how that compounds with how hard the entertainment industry is on the appearance of women—and to be a trans woman with that, it compounds even further. To need to look a certain way that is not natural for my body to do and to live in a place like LA—I don't want to be the person who's drumming on about how living in LA can make you feel insecure about the way that you look—but I think if I am not super recharged, I'll spin out quicker.
The entertainment industry side of it, the on-camera element of it, where other people are dressing you, other people are making decisions about the way you look, other people are commenting on the way you look— it's very easy to go into a dysmorphia spiral and it arises a lot of dysmorphia insecurities in me that, sometimes, I have the bandwidth to endure and, other times, it just feels terrible.
In the past couple years, I've tried to lean more into live performance. It's been a reminder of how good it feels just to be in a room with other people where it doesn't really matter. It's like I get to dictate how important what I look like is to the audience. I don't think anybody's coming to my show because they think I'm really hot or something like that. I think they're coming to my show because they like the work that I've done so far, and that feels special.
It's helped me kind of reorient how I would want to approach working in TV or movies. As much as it can feel like the only way you can be successful is if you're leaning into the conventions of beauty, it's harder work to have to be like, ‘Oh yeah, it might be a longer schlep to find success in TV and film by being interesting with the story you're telling, being interesting with the ideas you have.’ I think it is possible, and I feel like we're kind of in an era of great movies coming out, which feels really exciting. ‘Cause I was feeling really bummed out for a while, and now I'm seeing all these cool TV shows and movies coming out. I hope that continues and that someday I would get to work on something that I feel that way about, too, again.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Styling: Carlos Nazario; hair: Jimmy Paul; makeup: Yadim for Valentino Beauty; manicure: Dawn Sterling for Nail Glam; production: Day International; set design: Griffin Stoddard; special thanks to Please Space Studios.
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