By Christine Stoddard | cstoddard@queensledger.com
The following is an excerpt from an episode of the TV talk show Badass Lady-Folk, featuring guest Hollie Harper, a comedian and actress based in Clinton Hill. Hosted by Christine Stoddard and filmed at Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Badass Lady-Folk is a feminist talk show that originated on Radio Free Brooklyn, where it airs on Fridays at 9am. This transcript has been edited and condensed for print purposes:
Badass Lady-Folk talk show episode featuring guest Hollie Harper and host Christine Stoddard.
Christine: Hello there, you’re watching or listening to Badass Lady Folk. I’m your host, Christine Stoddard. And this episode, my guest is Hollie Harper. Welcome, Hollie.
Hollie: Hi, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Christine: Yeah, of course. I had the director, who you know, Melanie Goodreaux on the show.
Hollie: Yes, yes.
Christine: She was our first guest.
Hollie: Oh!
Christine: And that, dear listeners, is how Hollie and I met working on this production, [“The White Blacks” at Theater for the New City]. But Hollie is really just a brilliant all-around actress.
Hollie: Thank you.
Christine: Comedian especially.
Hollie: Thank you. I’m silly. You are silly. I say inappropriate things and then I realize that’s my strength.
Christine: I like how everywhere on your branding it’s comedy nerd.
Hollie: Yes.
Christine: So tell me, what is that about? A comedy nerd.
Hollie: Okay. It took me a long time to realize I was a comedy nerd. But, okay, it started when I was like eight or nine, nine years old with Mad Magazine. And I was like,
Christine: R .I .P.
Hollie: Yes. (laughing) And then it was Cracked, you know what I mean? But I felt like, I remember when I saw it the first time I was like, “Is this real?” I was like, “Oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Like, and then Cracked was like a shoot off of Mad. I just, I was religious with it. And then any kind of comedy sitcom, any kind of comedy movie. And I love funny songs, I love sketch shows, I love sitcoms, I love funny moments on talk shows. And I realized you’re, you’re a freaking comedy nerd. Like I love stand-up, I love to do funny plays. So, I am just a nerd, a nerd for things that are comedic.
Christine: Yeah, what were some of–besides Mad and besides Cracked–what were some of the early references, some of the sitcoms and movies and whatever else you just adored as a kid?
Hollie: Okay, this is so great: Three’s Company. That stuff was trash, it was trash. But it was high art trash. And I realized, I started getting to the point. where I started keeping a journal. I kept a diary from five to 25. It’s the strangest thing, to go back, I kept a consistent diary for 20 years. From kindergarten until the second year out of theater school.
Christine: Did your parents read it?
Hollie: They’ve read a couple things. I got grounded a few times. I was like, why y’all reading my stuff? Like, what’s wrong with you? But I was not a bad kid. I was just like, damn. (chuckles) Guess I thought I could write here but it was not a safe space. Why are you–just to get intel, but I would keep a diary and I would watch sitcoms and I would start listing different types of jokes and I didn’t realize that I was really just breaking down what comedy was to the point where I’d be watching Three’s Company and I remember realizing when there were double entendres, telling things that meant two things. Like, I remember Jack and Chrissy were, like, moving a couch, moving a mattress in the bedroom, and Janet would be in the living room and they’d be like, “It’s too big !” And she’d be like, “So, it’s too big.”
Christine: Yeah.
Hollie: So that just, yo.
Christine: That show was not for children.
Hollie: It was not.
Christine: But so many people watched it as little kids.
Hollie: Okay, my son is in the sixth grade, right, and let me tell you something, when you have kids, you get these crazy flashbacks of things you did when you see them at that age you long forgot. So my son had a science project (and I went through this with my 16-year-old, too). I went through this last night. BS they do. It’ll be like 10 o ‘clock at night, they be like. “I got a science project.”
Christine: Oh no.
Hollie: You’re like, what? Look, I got to rush. You got to come up with a hypothesis and like, remember that [three-sided presentation board].
Christine: They’re so big.
Hollie: It was a nightmare. They’re huge, and they still do it. They still do it. You know, just once, I want to do adult science projects with comedians.[When I was a kid], I had some science project. I don’t even know what it was, but I waited. And all of a sudden I was like, “Oh my God, I’m just gonna have to dazzle them with a performance.” And my dad was like, “No, like you need–”
Christine: This is middle or high school?
Hollie: I was 11, in sixth grade. And everyone had to go up and present this project. And I don’t know what I was thinking, but I just came up in front of the class and they’re all just sitting there ‘cause they knew I was a little silly They’re like, “What is this girl gonna do?” And all of a sudden I just said, “Hit the lights,” and I had a friend, he was on the lights, and the lights went out and the teacher was like, “What’s going on?” And the lights came on and it went poof! This big, like, baby powder and then came on Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” and I started, like, moonwalking and, like, doing this whole dance. And I was just something like, “Oh, the clouds, really, the clouds.” But it was ridiculous. I got, like, an A for presentation and then, like, a D for my report.
Christine: Was the teacher laughing during all that?
Hollie: The teacher was dying. The teacher was like 28 years old and like, “What is happening?” I was like dancing all around, I felt the desk, I was like leaping over the desk…oh my God, it was ridiculous. I changed, I had an outfit and I went on the hallway and I put an outfit on and came back in.
Christine: Wow.
Hollie: They were just like, “Why’d you do all that?” And I was just like, “I had nothing prepared.” And I was like, “I think if I could just razzle -bazzle them, they would just…” And it worked. All of the teachers looked at me for a week. Like, “You’re the kid with the baby powder?” And the janitor’s like, “I had to clean that sh*t out.” Janitor was pissed.
Christine: Early improv, right?
Hollie: I think back on it, I’m like, “If my son did that now, I’d be so pissed.” I told him that, and he was like, “You didn’t…why didn’t you do your project?” I was like, “No, I danced it out and had sound effects. It was ridiculous.”
Christine: So let’s fast forward to theater school. What made you decide to do that? well it was crazy to
Hollie: When I was a little kid, I got into acting in Philly. I was Tinkerbell at a community theater in a suburb of Philadelphia. My mom got remarried and we moved to South Jersey. I had a teacher who really hated me in the sixth grade. But I tried out for the play. and I hadn’t done any acting since I left Philly when I was nine. So I was like 11. And I was like, I auditioned for this play, but my mom had a dentist appointment. She’s gonna pick me up and the callback sheet wasn’t going up to the end of the day. So I was like, “Mr. Dixon, did I make it in the callback?” And she goes, “No, and you aren’t very good.”
Christine: (gasps) No!
Hollie: Yo. She, like, crushed the acting me for years.
Christine: How could she crush a child like that?
Hollie: Evil -hearted woman.
Christine: Yeah, when I hear people say, “Oh, anyone can be a teacher,” that is not true.
Hollie: No, they can pass the test, but you actually being…no, she was horrible. She hated me.
Christine: I’m so sorry.
Hollie: That’s okay. It wasn’t till I was almost 17 that I started acting again. And then I was at a boarding school and this girl on my cheerleading squad was like, “You know, my mom’s a director and she’s going to be directing the play here. Why don’t you just try out for it?” And I was like, “Oh, no.”
Christine: Did you tell that friend about what happened to you?
Hollie: No, I didn’t.
Christine: But she sensed.
Hollie: Yeah, ‘cause I was like, we talked about movies all time. And she was a Broadway actress, a child Broadway actress that was just in our boarding school. And so I auditioned for the play. I got the lead in the play and her mother and then the new acting teacher at our school were all “Gung ho, Hollie Harper.” They changed the trajectory of my life. They taught me what theater school was. And so they found the auditions, they were like, this is where you need to go, this is what you need to do. They helped me do everything. They really changed the path of my life. And that director, I still talk to her on Facebook at least once a month. This is like 30 years later. I still talk to her. It was precious. She’s just a really good person.
Christine: So you went to DePaul.
Hollie: Yeah, I went to DePaul Theatre School.
Christine: Okay, you’re gonna talk sh*t or sing your praises or was it both?
Hollie: Okay, it was a horrible time in my life and it was a beautiful time in my life. I had to really sort this out in 2020 with the racial reckoning because I saw something with Jon Baptiste and all these different black actors and musicians were talking about what it’s like to be Black at music and theater conservatories and I was like, I don’t think a lot people really understand. But the actual instruction I got I think is second to nothing. Okay, ‘cause my mom got remarried, I got new siblings. They’re awesome, but I went from being in Philly, which was like Brooklyn, very multicultural, to being like in a Trump pants land in South Jersey. I was the only black kid in the class. I remember being in the first day of school, like getting on a school bus and there were, you know, all white kids and me, and like nobody even wanna sit next to me.
Christine: Gross.
Hollie: I dealt with a lot of racism when I was little and it was crazy. What’s crazy is the fact that I see these people now and we’re adults and we’re like, “Hey, how are you?” I don’t think they really processed how they affected a kid. Do you know what I mean? I went there and then I went to boarding school. My favorite place on earth is my boarding school. Like, when I go back to my boarding school now, I lay on the grass and I cry. Like I wanna be buried there. Like I love that place.
Christine: How many years were you there?
Hollie: I was there for three years.
Christine: Okay, wow.
Hollie: I went back and I taught sketch comedy this past January. I love that place, they changed my life. But it was mostly a white space. And then by the time I got to theater school, there was a part in me that was just burnt out from being in white spaces. Like, it was funny how there was like the racial reckoning in 2020. That sh*t happened for me in 1988. I was a teenager, that happened for me. All of a sudden I just started really looking around at power structures, class, gender, race, just capitalism, just being an American. ‘Cause our school was a Quaker boarding school. All you do is talk about ideas. And you live there, so there’s no off button. You know what I mean? And you either fit in or you don’t. You know what I mean? If you’re like, I just think America’s cool, you’re not gonna fit in. You know what I mean? They’re gonna be like, uh, you don’t have questions? So by the time I got to theater school, racially, it was a nightmare, but for me, like internally, there was nobody beating me down. There was nobody mean, you know what I mean?
Watch the full episode at YouTube.com/@badassladyfolk. Find out more about Badass Lady-Folk at BadassLadyFolk.com.
