Heather McMahan Turned Death and IVF Into Beautiful Comedy
This week, comedian Heather McMahan’s first comedy special Son I Never Had debuted on Netflix and according to McMahan, it all started with an edible and a vision board. A few years back, McMahan says she was hungover on New Year’s Day and as corny as it might sound, she decided to manifest that she wanted to bring her popular jokes to a wider audience beyond her Instagram followers and devoted fans, dubbed McManiacs. The brainstorming led her to Son I Never Had, which her friend and fellow comedian Whitney Cummings suggested she produce herself before shopping it around to different streamers.
Now, McMahan says she’s in the eye of the hurricane in the best way possible: She’s feeling the love and success from her Netflix launch, touring the country, and preparing to film her second comedy special in a few weeks in her hometown of Atlanta.
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“Even though my stand-up talks about kind of heavier, more serious subjects, I’m the goofiest person on the planet. I think everything’s super funny because life is short and you have to laugh,” McMahan tells Rolling Stone.
She continues, “The funny thing is the guys have just had the mic for so long and it’s so great when you go back and you watch a lot of female specials like, oh, girls have been talking about this shit forever. It’s just time that people actually started to perk up and listen.”
Son I Never Had is uniquely funny and simultaneously vulnerable as McMahan talks to her audience about her journey navigating IVF, how she lost her dad to cancer only seven days after his diagnosis, and her general feelings about being a woman in the world while grappling with body image and fertility issues. At the height of this chaotic and accomplished moment in her life, McMahan opened up about how she produced Son I Never Had and sold it to Netflix, the role of women in comedy, and how she continues to thoughtfully use comedy as a way to cope and grieve.
How did you decide you wanted to make this special? Walk me through the genesis of it.
I’ve been touring for the last three or four years and all my shows were packed and sold out. I kind of did things in comedy my own way. I had been doing stuff in L.A. and New York but I really kind of popped off on Instagram. It was just a way for me to put my comedy directly out there, so I felt like a lot of my fans knew who I was but I wanted to make sure the rest of the world knew who I was. I always knew I wanted to do this special and Whitney Cummings is a friend of mine — she’s another amazing, fearless female in comedy — and she was like, “Heather, do this on your own. Produce it yourself and then you can take it out and sell it or whatever.” So I did it on my own. I was ending my first tour, which we ironically called The Farewell Tour, and I decided to shoot it by myself and executive produce it. I had my television writing partner Jen Zaborowski direct it for me, and when we took it out to market we had a lot of bites on it.
Ultimately, it landed in my dream spot, which is Netflix. About a little over a year ago, I did Netflix Is A Joke festival in L.A. and it was just one of those things where it really planted the seed in my mind. To me, Netflix is truly the home of comedy right now and all of my other peers who I look up to, so I just knew that was where I wanted to land. This is so cheesy but it’s true and honest: I had a Netflix comedy special on my vision board like four years ago. I do vision boards when I’m hungover on New Year’s Day, I do an edible and I have a little art project to start my year off, and then it’s really wild when you make these things. You look back and you’re like, oh shit, I actually accomplished this. What started off as kind of a stoner project turned into making my dreams come true.
You’ve gone on tour before and you’re always posting for your fans on Instagram and social media. How was working on this comedy special different for you than other projects you’ve done in the past?
It’s a real labor of love. I’ve been touring with this material, but the material specifically for this special is an intimate look into my life. I go through a lot of vulnerable topics: I talked about what it was like to grow up as a chubby child in the South, what it was like losing my dad in seven days to cancer and his whole funeral, the shocking revelation of my infertility journey and my journey of having to do months of IVF drugs to get an embryo. I really exposed a lot of my life, but I wanted this special to be a good introduction [to me]. If you’re going to go on Netflix and be like, “Who the hell is this bitch?” I at least want you to get the real tea, piping hot, from me. In my stand-up, I don’t hold back. I’m an open book, even on social media with Tik Tok and Instagram. I’ve always shared so much of my life; that’s how I gained my audience. I only speak from my point of view and my perspective. I’ve always thought, “How do things in the world affect me? How does this affect me?” And then I hope that people can find it relatable from there.
You mentioned how you spoke about losing your dad in your stand-up special, which was funny at times but also meaningful and emotional. How have you used comedy to navigate grief?
When you’re grieving, you feel almost kind of selfish because you think, “Oh, this is only happening to me, this is not happening to anybody else.” It’s a very lonely feeling, but when I started to talk about it, it was honestly selfishly cathartic for me. I was like, I need to work through these feelings, process these emotions, and wrap my head around what actually happened. The more you talk about it with other people, it’s incredible. The response that I got from folks is incredible. We have this little group we call the Dead Dad Club and women will come to the shows and kind of make their own merch. It’s a powerful thing, I think, as a young woman to lose that male figure in your life. I was overwhelmed with the response from people who said, “Thank you for talking about these things.” And fuck, when I started talking about my infertility, I literally just thought it was insane. The whole idea behind creating jokes about it was I can’t believe that this is what women have to go through. Also, how did nobody prepare me for IVF? How did nobody tell me that these are the struggles that women could be up against? Then when I started sharing it, holy shit, women were DMing me, emailing me, and calling my podcast hotline in droves saying, “Thank you for talking about this because this is insane.” And just like grief, it can be a very lonely and isolating thing to go through.
You are so vulnerable in this special and also touch on such relatable experiences. What made you want to open up about your IVF journey?
The darkest times produce the funniest shit because you’re literally in fight or flight mode. But I felt just so stupid when I did IVF. I was like, let me get this straight, you spend your whole life trying not to get pregnant and then when you think about getting pregnant they’re like, you should have done this 20 years ago? There’s no education for women when you’re younger about fertility and about our bodies. Then on top of that, you had to laugh at it because I was like, I’m a civilian. I find taxes very hard and trying to figure out what a W-2 is. It’s hard for me to wrap my brain around things like that, but you want to send me home with a bunch of loose vials of drugs and needles? And somehow I’m doing a chemistry experiment on myself every day to try and build a baby? It was wild. I would be injecting myself doing IVF hysterically crying and laughing at the same time in my kitchen, just thinking, “Who let me do this? Why do I have no supervision over this?” But now when you’re on the other side of it, you’re like, “Oh, now that I’ve done this, I can do anything.” You know what I mean? I really truly am like, “My husband could never do this. I can do anything.” Women are so smart. Women can pat their head and rub their tummies at the same time, while being complete world dominatrixes. You can literally do anything.
In the special, you also talked a lot about your thoughts and feelings in regard to body image and other day-to-day issues that women endure, like getting our periods. Do you think women in comedy have a lot more material, or different kinds of material, to use when they’re making jokes compared to men who don’t share in the same experiences? Do you think there’s a different level of vulnerability for women comedians to tap into?
Absolutely. I mean, if you are a woman walking through the world these days and you’re not taking 15 seconds every day to just laugh your ass off and find some joy in how fucking chaotic everything is, then what are we doing? You have to laugh at this shit. But yes, I do think there are major opportunities for women to talk about what is going on in our lives. Also, I knew I had such a heavy female audience and then guys would come to the shows, husbands and boyfriends, and then they would DM me and be like, “Yo, thank you for talking about this because my wife, my girlfriend, etc., was also going through this, and she needed this night out, she needed this night to giggle about this.” And if that is what I’m doing, getting women out of their comfort zones to giggle and laugh and to talk about the bullshit together in a safe space, let’s go. I love what some of the other fabulous female comedians are doing, like when Ali Wong was doing stand-up while pregnant and explaining what it’s like being pregnant, I just think it’s so refreshing. I watch a lot of other female specials and I’m like, “Thank you.” We’re all just talking about these things. The funny thing is, the guys have just had the mic for so long and it’s so great when you go back and you watch a lot of female specials like, oh, girls have been talking about this shit forever. It’s just time that people actually started to perk up and listen.
I mean, if you are a woman walking through the world these days and you’re not taking 15 seconds every day to just laugh your ass off and find some joy in how fucking chaotic everything is, then what are we doing? You have to laugh at this shit.
What kind of responses do you get from women and men in your audiences or who follow your work?
The women are always like, “Thank you bitch for talking about this, I needed to laugh about this.” Women come from a place of almost sisterhood, like we’re in this together. Then the guy’s reaction always comes from a place of like, “Oh, shit, I didn’t know that. Thanks for keying me in, girl.”
You also joke about your different Tik Tok therapists, which some people may find relatable given how saturated some of our feeds can be with therapy speak. What’s your actual relationship with those kinds of Tik Toks?
Since I’ve been on the road, there is no rest for the weary and I don’t get a day off. It’s been crazy and these are all very happy blessings, so I’m not complaining, but it’s wild when you’re on the road. You have to find some sense of normalcy and routine. I couldn’t ever get on my therapist’s schedule back in Atlanta so I would just follow all these, honestly I would say, kind of nut jobs on TIk Tok and I would watch this unsolicited life advice. The Internet makes me laugh hard. Even though my standup talks about kind of heavier, more serious subjects, I’m the goofiest person on the planet. I think everything’s super funny because life is short and you have to laugh. Going on the internet and you know, finding some crystal guru who lives in Sedona, Arizona makes me laugh so hard that it kind of takes me out of whatever is bogging me down in life.
That’s hilarious. Also, what was it like to film with your mom for that short scene at the introduction of the special?
She is an absolute star unit. She’s just got it. My mom and I have a really special relationship; she is such an intricate part of my life. My husband and I literally live with my mom. It’s like Three’s Company. Everybody who knows me and who follows my comedy knows I talk about my mom a lot. I felt like if my dad were alive we would’ve had a conversation and he would have said, “All right, so your mother wants to be in this thing. Are you going to give her a cameo or what?” So I said, you know what? Let’s just put her in and have this really special moment at the top for her to just be insane and so hilarious. I fully created a monster. I’m about to shoot my second special in three weeks in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Fox Theater, and my mom came to the pre-production meeting and the walkthrough, and she kept asking everybody what her cameo was going to be and who was doing her glam.
How do you feel about getting ready to film your next special so soon after hearing the response following your first one?
We were always going to film this one. I knew that I wanted to shoot it at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. It’s one of my favorite theaters in my hometown, so when we were booking the tour dates I was like, this is going to happen. This is insane to have a Netflix special out while doing press for it, while I’m also on tour currently, while I’m also in pre-production for the next special. They say when it rains it pours, and I’m in the eye of the hurricane right now. I’m holding on to the side of a building praying we make it, which people always dream of, so I’m never going to complain. But it’s crazy right now.
And to think it all started with that edible and a vision board.
I tell you what: People think it’s so cheesy to do the vision board, but I’m like, y’all, I swear to you if you make one just for shits and giggles and then you look back in a couple of years, you’ll be like, “Oh, damn, like, I’m actually working on this stuff.” Just do it and surprise yourself.
When you did the intro scene with your mom and you brought an urn out on stage with you, was that actually your dad or just supposed to be symbolic of him?
No. We ended up cutting this out of the special but actually we scattered all my dad’s ashes outside of his local Waffle House in Atlanta, Georgia, much to the dismay of the employees of the Waffle House. So no, that was just symbolic of my dad being there. My dad would go to the same Waffle House every morning. It was three minutes from our house in Atlanta, and he loved the staff there so much. That was his special place, so in our family it was always an inside joke. If you didn’t know where my dad was, you could drive by the Waffle House at any time of day and you’re going to see his Porsche outside there. I don’t know. It’s a Georgia thing.
You’ve done such a beautiful job illustrating what it’s like to endure grief while also making it entertaining and digestible for your audience. What do you hope people take away from the special?
I mean, listen, we’re all in this together, right? When you go through those shitty experiences I think it totally transforms you as a person. You were a person before they passed and then you’re a totally different person after they pass. Taking a glass-half-full approach, you have such a richer perspective on life. There was bullshit that I used to worry about and bitch about when my dad was still here and now I’m like, God, fucking get over it. You have a lot tougher, thicker skin now. It’s challenged a lot of my relationships in my life. And listen, I know, I’m not the first person to lose a dad. I just wanted to talk about how it affected me and then when I started talking about it, so many other people were like, I lost my mom, I lost my sister, I lost my husband. We’re all experiencing different losses in our life and I was just like, I have to find some joy out of it and find some giggles out of it in the only way I know how, which is through stand-up. I really am completely overwhelmed and honestly, verklempt at how kind everybody’s been. If my sole job as a comedian is to take you out of your own bullshit for an hour every night, then let me do that.
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