The American standup sensation has been burning up the TV streaming charts with her six Netflix specials.
The newly resuscitated Just for Laughs festival wraps on quite the unanticipated high note Sunday night at Place des Festivals with a free outdoor concert by American standup sensation Iliza Shlesinger.
Few could have ever foreseen a happy ending here. Certainly not me.
Just a few short months ago, Just for Laughs was given up for dead. It was in March when it appeared the end was nigh with the announcement that this summer’s fest had been cancelled and that its ownership group was seeking financial protection from its creditors.
Fast forward to early May when it was announced that Quebec City’s ComediHa! festival, in marking its 25th anniversary, was planning a special comedy salute to Montreal July 18-28. Out of the blue a month later, it was learned that ComediHa! had purchased the assets of the financially troubled Groupe Juste pour rire and assumed control of the festival. Not long after, ComediHa! and now JFL president Sylvain Parent-Bédard disclosed the franco lineup for the Montreal salute and pledged to soon reveal the anglo roster under the Just for Laughs banner.
There were few great expectations. It often took the previous JFL programmers a year or more to recruit anglo standup heavyweights as well as up-and-comers. But in little more than a month, the new regime managed to land the likes of, among many others, Bobby Slayton, Hassan Phills, Marito Lopez, Moody McCarthy, Nathan Macintosh, Kyle Brownrigg, Dane Cook and Shlesinger — the latter two superstars doing free shows to boot this weekend.
No small feat.
Hopes are now running high about what sort of lineup these new programmers might be able to piece together for the fest’s 2025 edition with a year’s lead time.
No question that Shlesinger is a great get. A frequent visitor to past JFL fests, she has been burning up the TV streaming charts with her six Netflix specials. In the midst of her The Get Ready Tour, she will soon release yet another special, her debut comedy show for Prime Video culled from her present tour.
She also wrote, exec produced and starred in the film Good on Paper (2021), in which she uncovers a conman posing as her perfect partner. And she penned the book All Things Aside: Absolutely Correct Opinions, the follow-up to her first opus, Girl Logic: The Genius and the Absurdity.
As the aforementioned titles should indicate, Shlesinger doesn’t hold back.
A frequent guest host on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Shlesinger hits all the right notes with standup stylings that are dead-on sharp and hysterical — not always mutually exclusive. Staunchly feminist, she obviously has a massive following among women but manages not to alienate men in the process by offering simple but valuable comic counsel on attracting a mate.
Those who have been following Shlesinger’s career since she won NBC’s Last Comic Standing competition in 2008 can’t help but be blown away with her evolution both as a performer and writer. Again, comics don’t come much smarter or funnier these days.
“That’s the goal — always be evolving, always get better and bigger,” Shlesinger says in a phone interview.
“I’m always inspired by the human condition and our society, for better or worse — and the ugliness between men and women, and the ugliness in the beauty in our heads as women … The benefit of aging is that I get to keep observing. I love doing standup and I love making people laugh.”
Nonetheless, that can be quite the balancing act, particularly because Shlesinger doesn’t pull her punches on stage.
“You’re always going to be faulted for what you do or don’t do, and at my core, at a comedian’s core, is a desire to be heard,” she notes. “I got to a certain point in life where jokes are always the most important, but standing for something and helping people feel a little bit more uplifted is (also important) as I also try to figure out what the f… is going on.
“People are going to be offended either way, so I may as well have said the honest truth … that even if you don’t like it, I was right,” she quips. “Some people find everything offensive when it’s about them. But I like to say the things we’re all thinking. I always want people to feel good. And, you know what, the truth can hurt and be funny at the same time.”
In the minds of many, Shlesinger is much more frank and provocative than offensive. She has carved her own comedy path, equally adept at tackling the hot-button issues as the minutiae.
“Of course, you hope to inspire people, but I got into this to be myself and be an original and say original things. And, luckily, I found an audience that wants to keep listening.”
For good reason. Shlesinger, the mother of two young children, sees life from a refreshingly different lens, be it discoursing on dancing on TikTok — “a blight on American history” — or her notion of marriage, as uttered in her last Netflix special, Hot Forever:
“Marriage is every morning for the rest of your life waking up next to someone and having to listen to a full report on how that person slept. And if you don’t act like this information is new and interesting, you are a monster.”
For the record, Shlesinger states her husband does not sleep well, though one assumes he does possess a sense of humour.
Iliza Shlesinger’s free outdoor Just for Laughs show is at Place des Festivals on Sunday at 9:15 p.m.