Cathy Ladman

When Valerie asked Cathy Ladman to describe her past in a single word, she didn't hesitate: "Courageous". And honestly? The word earns it.

Cathy grew up glued to comedy records and the Tonight Show, staying up past her bedtime to catch whatever stand-up she could sneak in on TV. She always knew — in the bone-deep way that's either a gift or a curse — that she was supposed to be performing. But knowing something and doing it are two very different creatures. She got a teaching certificate "to fall back on" and, as she puts it, immediately fell back on it. She was teaching eighth-grade English at twenty years old, just a few years older than her students, and the experience mostly confirmed that this was absolutely not the life. But stand-up? She still couldn't make herself go on stage. Yet.

It wasn't until the seesaw finally tipped — when the fear of not doing it outweighed the fear of failing — that she finally got up at an open mic in Philadelphia called Grandma Minnie's. She admits, "the fear that I was feeling became less motivating than the need and desire to do it. It just tilted in that direction." Then she moved to LA, had a rough go of it, moved back to her parents', floundered for a couple of years until landing in New York in 1981 and just... never looked back.

Forty-five years of stand-up later, that seesaw is still doing its work.

The 1980s New York comedy scene was something Cathy describes with a nostalgic warmth that almost aches. Everyone was broke, everyone was hungry to get better, and the camaraderie was real. She was running in circles with names like Susie Essman and Joy Behar (yes, that Joy Behar), and there was even a club in the Village called Comedy U that existed specifically as a space for female comics. Cathy credits those early years with giving her something that got harder to hold onto as her career grew: community.

Of course, it wasn't all warm feelings and open mics. There was the booker who told her he already had "another girl" on the show — and she's very clear on how that landed: "Nothing feels as horrible as hearing that." The industry has more women in it now, she acknowledges, but she still bristles at the notion that an all-female comedy showcase is a novelty.

Then there's the TV Guide review of her first HBO special that called her "probably a very nice person" but not funny — which, as she notes with great satisfaction, led to her winning the American Comedy Award for Best Female Comic. The business has always been in the habit of telling people where they don't belong, and Cathy has spent a career ignoring those types of voices.

Here's something Cathy Ladman will tell you without blinking: performing is her first love. Not writing — she's done it, she cried through a season on Roseanne, she walked off Caroline in the City two-thirds of the way through, and she's mostly made peace with the fact that the solitary part of show writing doesn't suit her. What she loves is being in the room, whether that's doing stand-up, shooting an improvised scene on Curb Your Enthusiasm (her second-favorite credit, after the Three Stooges parody that got a cease and desist from the Howard estate), or — as of this conversation — preparing to appear in Bill Hader's new film.

She's also a long-time coach, helping comics who already have their foot in the door figure out who they are on stage, which she describes with the same energy she brings to everything else: "I'm really good at deconstructing jokes and figuring out what's funny about a concept." It turns out spending a year teaching eighth graders did leave one mark after all.

When Valerie closed the interview with "one word to describe your future," the answer was fearless. Not that the fears are gone. She's clear about that too — she still has them, and she intends to keep walking through them. That's kind of the whole thing.