Maria Bamford Asks for the Check
On a recent Wednesday morning, in a small black-box theatre in East Los Angeles, I watched the comedian Maria Bamford try out new material. There was no alcohol, but there were free doughnuts. Women in athleisure sipped lattes. Someone brought a baby. The show started promptly, at 9 A.M.
Bamford, among the most daring and charismatic performers of her generation, is always testing the boundaries of what counts as standup comedy. Is it still standup if you’re telling jokes to a group of high schoolers in the aisles of an independent bookstore? Or to friends sitting on a park bench? Bamford does both of these things in her 2017 Netflix special, “Old Baby.” In “The Special Special Special,” she performs for the most intimate audience imaginable: her parents. Bamford’s repertoire includes painfully specific impersonations of her mother and father, and it is uncomfortably thrilling to watch them watch her imitate them, in between jokes about depression and suicide.
Mental illness—and the stigma that surrounds it—is a recurring theme in Bamford’s work. Growing up in Duluth, Minnesota, Bamford struggled with bulimia and intrusive thoughts, though it wasn’t until she was in her thirties that she received the clarifying diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder. (One of her jokes turns on the absurdity of talking about physical illnesses the way people often talk about mental-health problems: “I was dating this chick, and three months in, she tells me that she wears glasses. I was, like, listen, I’m not into all that Western medicine shit. If you want to see, then work at it. Figure out how not to be so myopic. You know?”) When Bamford turned forty, she had a hypomanic episode and was diagnosed as having bipolar II; for the next year, she ended up in and out of psychiatric hospitals.
These struggles are recounted in “Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story,” a new documentary directed by Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley. The filmmakers interview not only Bamford but also her family and admirers in the industry. Stephen Colbert and Patton Oswalt tell the directors that Bamford is their favorite comedian. Ted Sarandos, a co-C.E.O. of Netflix, calls “Lady Dynamite,” a fictional TV show loosely based on Bamford’s life, his favorite Netflix original series.
In the documentary Bamford is living with her husband, the artist Scott Marvel Cassidy, in their home, in the L.A. suburb of Altadena. But not long after filming ended, around the time of the 2025 wildfires, the couple divorced. Earlier this month, I visited Bamford at her new place, a one-bedroom apartment in Highland Park. Bamford has been touring non-stop this fall; when we met, she was taking care of some laundry between trips to Brooklyn and British Columbia. Over the sounds of her dryer, we spoke about participating in documentaries, how much she made from her Netflix special, and how standup can function as a form of therapy. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
You started filming the documentary four years ago. How did Judd Apatow first reach out to you with the idea?
He texted the night before, saying, “Hey, can I stop by and start filming?” I was, like, “Sure,” but I was texting my manager, “Hey, Judd Apatow wants me to shoot something. Can you talk to him about money?” My manager—the darling, the sweet, the extremely proficient and professional Bruce Smith—said, “But . . . it’s Judd.” So then I was, like, “O.K., I think I’m on my own here.” I texted Judd back. I think I asked for eight hundred dollars.
He brings you five hundred dollars in cash in the first scene of the film. And then he gives you ten thousand dollars at the very end, right?
Part of it was, they were going to shoot me performing one on one for a fan at a coffee shop, so I wanted to pay the fan. Then, I also wanted to pay the coffee-shop barista who was working that day—a hundred bucks or something. And then, I wanted to get paid.
It’s not really about the money. I guess I need it, but it’s also that I think of it as a job, and I don’t want to be a victim of my job, where it’s, like, “Oh, you’re so lucky. Now you have to do this thing that is exhausting.” I was embarrassed to ask, but Judd brought the cash like he said he would, and I got to talk to him a little bit about his relationship with money.
Everyone has different, strong feelings about money. I’ve been in Debtors Anonymous for years, and that’s fascinating, because you’ll meet people who are millionaires, yet they’re filled with this feeling of lack, or panic. Like, “I can’t make my mortgage in the Pacific Palisades, but I can’t possibly take my kids out of this extremely expensive private school.” I think they’ve done research on this: if you’re living below the poverty line, you are often much more generous dollar per dollar than someone who has billions.
I feel I could be more generous. I have a bit of an obsession with giving away eleven per cent of my income, and I can never figure out how to calculate that. This year I was, like, “It should be from the gross. It should be from before taxes.” Now I’m, like, “But I think that’s too much!” Part of this is O.C.D.
I wonder if that self-doubt is also part of the reason people don’t give any of their money away. It’s almost easier to shut out the question of giving entirely than to make the difficult moral decision of, Exactly how much can I afford to give?
The hilarious part is, twenty years ago, I gave what was, for me, a giant chunk of money—I think it was fifty thousand dollars—to a charity I believe in. I got a call saying, “Would you like to come in and have lunch with us?” And I’m, like, “No! No, I don’t want to do that.” That’s my own fear of intimacy, of getting involved in a community. I never want to be a part of anything, because once you become a part of something, you realize how imperfect it is. Anyway, I’m not sure if I’m answering anything properly.
This is great. So, after you texted Judd asking about payment for the documentary, he was gracious and said, “O.K., I’ll bring it”?
Well, first he said, “I can’t pay you, because if it’s a documentary, I’m not supposed to pay you.” And then I looked it up and saw that it’s actually being addressed by the Screen Actors Guild, because there are so many more documentaries about entertainers. At least, that’s what I remember reading. I am not a fact checker.
Also I thought, This isn’t going to be a documentary. Every time I’ve been in a documentary related to show business, there’s story creation. Like, “The Comedians of Comedy” was one of the best things I’ve been a part of. But they edited it to look like I was hanging out with all the guys. That was not true. I didn’t know those guys that well, and was completely freaked out by human interaction. I was too shy. But they tried to make me look cool. Like, “Oh, Bamford’s hanging out,” and it’s, like, “Well, she’s by herself by the pool reading twelve-step literature.”
I remember the first time we shot something [for “Paralyzed by Hope”], my ex-husband Scott had a painting show downtown. The director, Neil Berkeley—who I adore, super nice—had us “do” the entrance to the art gallery several times.
So that’s the work of it. And I know it’s not hard work. I’ve cleaned houses. I’ve waited tables, poorly. That’s hard work.
When the directors started shooting, were there any conversations about how much creative control you would or wouldn’t have?
No, no. I don’t care.
When did you see the film for the first time?
The première, at Sundance. I think they sent me a cut, but I didn’t watch it. I’ve already had the chance to tell my story a billion times, so it’s, like, if you wanna take a crack at it, all right.
Were there parts of this documentary that felt like “The Comedians of Comedy” in the sense that you were, like, “That’s an imposed story line”? I don’t mean in a bad way, but which parts, if any, felt more like reality TV to you?
I don’t know. What I kept pitching to them was, “This should be all about financial literacy and finding out what everybody’s making.” What Judd is making, what the cameraman is making, what the restaurant we’re shooting at illegally and not asking permission from is not making. . . . I find that super fascinating.
My parents passed away. They both died earlier than they had thought and left me with a pretty hefty sum. I could retire if I moved to Duluth, maybe. I could live pretty O.K., and definitely not tour as much as I tour now. But do I want to do that? No. I wanna be part of the capitalism, man. I wanna earn or burn. What’s that about? What is this false engine that’s also making a lot of creativity happen? I find that interesting. I don’t have any answers on it at all.
But [the directors] were not interested in doing that. They’re, like, Mm-hmm, no, not that. So, I think it just depends on what you’re interested in. I think Judd is interested in watching people do standup. A lot of the documentary is me doing comedy stuff, which is great.
I just shot something else, with a company called Blonde Medicine, and it’s all about open-book accounting. So I tell everyone what I’m being paid. I was paid three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a Netflix special. It’s the most I’ve ever been paid for a Netflix special, and I was, like, “Oh, hey, how much is the opener being paid?” And they said, “Five hundred bucks.” And I’m, like, “Oh, well, O.K., I think I’m going to hand her five grand.” [Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.]
You’re making a standup special about open-book accounting?
It’s sort of an obsession, because it isn’t spoken about. At all.
And it’s a comedy?
It’s a comedy.
One of the things that struck me in the documentary was related to money, and what people think should and shouldn’t be done with it. You do these one-on-one shows where you recruit people from the internet and pay them an hourly fee to watch you rehearse new material. There’s a sequence in the film where a bunch of other professional comedians express their shock at the fact that you’re paying your fans, rather than the other way around. I was curious what you made of their surprise.
I assume people who are huge stars—Conan O’Brien, Judd Apatow—have staff or writers who will go through the jokes with them or who are working on things with them, which is exactly what I’m doing, but it’s just sort of one-offs instead.
You must know from talking to people in your industry: Do people have editors? Do people have coaches?
I think everybody has something different. I know that the co-writer for Jim Gaffigan is his wife, so they write his material together. My friend Jackie Kashian was hired to write jokes for standup, for a comedian who didn’t have the time. I’m very self-protective, so it’s ideal for me to do it on my own. There is the risk, of course, that people won’t laugh. But even if they complain or say, “Oh, that sucked,” I can go [mock-pensively], “Yeah, man. Life is disappointing on the regular.”
You’ve said that the most important thing for you isn’t if someone else finds the joke funny, but if you do.
Yes, for sure.
What are you looking for in the reactions of strangers during these one-on-one rehearsals? Or is the goal to hire an accountability partner?
It’s only accountability. The main thing is that I’m getting out the words in the way that I’m planning to say them, and rehearsing. I don’t have the ambition to rehearse stuff on my own, so I have a babysitter watch me go through the jokes.
What’s wonderful about it is people are not that impressed by fame. People are doing their laundry, they’re picking up their kids, they’re driving. They’re barely listening to me.
The risk that someone doesn’t laugh doesn’t feel devastating, because they’re just one person.
It’s also really meaningful to me, because I get to talk to people who I would never get to talk to. I don’t go out after shows, because I do talk about mental health and I get overwhelmed, if somebody after is, like, “Hey, I need to tell you, my dad just died of suicide, we decided to come to the show.” I just don’t want to give anybody that blank face of “Thanks for coming to the show!” I want to be there for somebody.
You’ve talked extensively about your struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder. And in the documentary, and in your memoir, you describe never having heard the term O.C.D. until you Googled “unwanted thoughts” when you were thirty-five?
I hadn’t.
That’s so shocking—no one before then had been, like, “That might be O.C.D.”?
No. I went to a therapist in Glendale who was just a regs therapist, and I tried to tell her about my fears, my intrusive thoughts, and she was, like, “I’m a mandated reporter.”
Oh, that was the therapist who called 911 on you. [The therapist was not familiar with O.C.D. and mistook Bamford’s obsessive fear about committing an act of violence as a threat.]
Yeah. So then I didn’t go for a couple more years. I got a book called “The Imp of the Mind.” Then I looked online, and saw the International OCD Foundation, which was great for me because I’d felt so alone as a kid. It was, like, I have this weird thing that I can’t tell anybody about. And then, once I told a professional O.C.D. person, they were, like [mimes looking up from a notepad], “Uh-huh. [In a bored voice.] So you wanna rape and kill people?” [Yawns dramatically.]
The therapist assigned you this cognitive-behavioral-therapy technique called “flooding.” The practice involves writing down your intrusive thoughts and fears, and even recording yourself talking about them, and playing that recording back to yourself. The idea is that by exposing yourself to these anxieties, you begin to rob them of their power. I wondered, while hearing you describe this: Isn’t that also what standup is?
It totally is. The thing becomes kind of boring and has lost all meaning to it. It’s totally therapeutic.
Saying the shameful thing out loud is a form of exposure therapy for you.
I heard a joke that really made me feel better, where the comedian said, “You know, sometimes I look at my dog’s butt and it’s kinda sexy.” [Laughs.] And I was, like, “Oh, that’s such a creepy thought, and thank you for sharing.” But I can only say those jokes in front of people who are fans or into mental health. I will tank everywhere else. I will bomb right in my neighborhood; I just did at a karaoke night. There are plenty of people who don’t want to hear the kind of material that I’m doing, or think it’s creepy, or weird, or gross, or boring, or tedious, or humorless.
You have permission in standup comedy to talk about things that you might not be able to talk about in other settings.
There are comics out there who are currently touring who have been accused of sexual assault, and nothing is really being done, especially by the comedians themselves. Like, they don’t say, “Hey, I actually went through a program. Here’s what I’m doing as a living amends by giving a million dollars to each of these people whose life I affected.” There’s none of that. I feel sad about the comedy community, because these guys are still working clubs, and no one’s protected who’s working there, at least as far as I can tell.
I think comedy is where you could at least talk about it. It’s where you could say, “Hey, there’s obviously a huge problem with people being isolated with these sexual compulsions.” These comedians who are so good at expressing specific experiences, isn’t there a way they could bring that experience to the world? Like, it’s the most taboo topic ever, and no one wants to hear about it. Let’s not isolate these people. Let’s find out what’s going on in their minds.
I’ve been an addict—I was bulimic—I know the secretive behaviors. I’ve eaten all the food in somebody else’s refrigerator. I understand doing shameful things, and having those things revealed is a bummer, but it could also be a gift.
You share personal experiences onstage that are painful or embarrassing, but I’m assuming that at the time those things are happening to you, you’re not, like, “This could be great material.” Is the ability to turn something into a joke in a set a sign that you’ve processed the experience?
I would hope so. Some things I’m still not sure about even as I record them. I’m, like, should I? But I’ve read “The Artist’s Way.” You have no control over what blossoms.
I haven’t read it. I have it in my house, though.
Of course you do! Everybody has it. It was life-changing because it was, like, Oh, I could say, “I’m a comedian.” It helped me define that for myself. But some of it is very white privilege-y, very much, like [in a fancy woman’s voice], “Oh, my gosh, I just, I thought of blueberries, and then there was a bowl of blueberries.” It’s like, O.K., are you a fucking rich white lady living in the Hollywood Hills? The odds are pretty good there’s going to be a bowl of blueberries near you.
You recently got divorced. In an interview you did at the start of this year, you said you didn’t know how to talk or joke about your divorce yet.
Yes, yes.
A few weeks ago, I went to your show, where you brought up your divorce. I was wondering how it felt to start talking about it.
It feels O.K. now. We got very clear in our divorce decree that I will not talk about our divorce onstage beyond the facts of it. I have this verbal platform, and he’s a painter. He doesn’t really have a bunch of people he can spout off to. That felt fair. Also, there are ways to talk about it that don’t involve my ex, but that are about the universal.
The things that were untenable with us were that our views of the world were very different. The joke is, I grew up in Minnesota, so I see everyone as a new friend. Like, “Oh, noooo, we gotta let these two cars into our lane because they might be families of guinea pigs trying to go to a museum!” And he’s from Philadelphia, super tough, had a rough childhood, so for him, everything is incoming. Everything is death asking him to play chess.
He’s not wrong, and I’m not wrong. But it’s just a measure of whether you can live with each other. That kind of came to a head when the fires happened. We had a joyful divorce, and we have a good relationship sharing the doggies.
The documentary is a time capsule, in a way, because it shows the two of you together in your old house in Altadena, before the fires of 2025. What’s it been like to move here and live alone?
It’s been lovely. I have a friend who lives on the other side of this complex, and she’s awesome. All my neighbors are super friendly. Almost everybody’s Spanish-speaking, so I can practice my Spanish a little bit.
We owned a very beautiful house. It’s still there, in Altadena. But it was too isolated. I don’t like suburbs, it turns out. I don’t like that much house upkeep. I loved having people over. I love parties. But in this neighborhood all I have to do is rent a party place. There’s this co-working place that used to be a church, and that’s where I did a singles event the other week.
How was it?
One hundred and fifty people showed up. A third were men, which was really impressive.
That’s huge!
Two of the guys were shaking when they came. It was really adorable. I was proud of everybody who came, and I threw a chunk of change at it, so I think the next time I would want to see if it could support itself and have it truly be a community potluck.
Did anyone go home together?
Yes. Two couples left together. Nobody asked me out, which is hilarious. I wasn’t sure what to do about that. My sister was, like, “Maybe it seemed like you were too intimidating.” And I’m, like, “That seems like a punishing point of view. I’m just wandering around, tremoring, just like anyone.”
I’ve gone on a lot of internet dates, which are wonderful, too, but also can be very hopeless. I had a date with one guy, perfectly lovely. It was da, da, da, da, boop, da, da, da, boop, boop, boop, beep. Then he said, “So, I saw your comedy. You’re crazy!” It reminded me of somebody introducing me in the nineties: “This lady, she’s schizophrenic!” No, I’m a middle-of-the-road comedian who does voices. That’s all that’s happening here.
You’ve said that you’ve always been performing for your parents on some level. Your father, who appears in parts of the documentary, passed away in 2023, a few years after your mom. I was curious how their deaths have changed your relationship to your imagined audience.
My dad would watch me do whatever I wanted. I would practice doing speeches for him when I was a kid.
I was just listening to NPR, where Terry Gross was interviewing Yiyun Li, the writer whose two sons died of suicide. She was saying there’s a difference between sadness and depression. I think I feel that about my parents. I’ll never stop feeling sad that they’re not here. I shouldn’t compare myself to the lady losing her two sons. But it really spoke to me about how you never get over grief, but can still enjoy life.
In some ways, I know my parents didn’t always like my material, so they weren’t perfect at being the best audience or the most supportive. My mom had actually told me that when your parents die, there is some kind of freedom. When she was alive, my mom was always, like [imitates Marilyn Bamford]: “Honey, put on some lipstick. What’s going on with your hair? Are you not getting it done?” I don’t have to think about that anymore. That my mom might be disappointed in me in that way, or that my dad thinks I’m lazy.
I need to ask you about the vibrator bit with your dad. Right after your mom died, your dad tried to give your mom’s vibrators away to you and your sister, as though he was passing down a sacred family heirloom.
Oh, yes. That’s all true.
Do you feel like he knew how funny he was being when he handed his daughters a shoebox and said, “Your mom would’ve wanted you to have these”?
Oh, no. I think my dad, especially during that moment, was very sincere. I did kind of want to take them, but then my sister put them in the garbage. I was, like, “Well, that’s going to be fun for someone.” I still feel guilty for using that as a joke.
Your dad happily talks about it in the documentary, though. The filmmakers interview him, and he reiterates, “I really thought it was something that I could share with the two of you.”
[In the voice of her father, Joel Bamford.] “These things are expensive!”
My sister seemed slightly grossed out, but I thought it was very thoughtful. ♦