Hey everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome back to Work in Progress.

Where do the New York Times bestseller list rock and roll and award-winning comedy intersect?

Wherever today's Work in Progress guest happens to be.

Carrie Brownstein is a name you probably recognize most from the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning sketch series Portlandia,

which she wrote and starred in alongside Fred Armason.

But before and after that, Carrie has done equally groundbreaking work and in entirely different artistic areas.

She was a hard-rocking riot girl as a band member of Slater Kinney and a critically acclaimed memoir writer.

And now she's written and starred in a genre-bending film called The No Where In, which was released in September.

I think Carrie is a really fascinating individual. I am such an enormous fan of her work and her brain.

And I am betting that as you get to know her better over the course of this interview, you all will feel the same.

So let's get to it.

How have you been? How's your pandemic year in a half gone?

It's been okay. I feel lucky people in my family were safe and no one really got too sick.

But it was also hard. Just a lot of experiences becoming muted and strange.

And then this search for the return to normalcy, but then realizing that perhaps that's a fallacy.

Just normal as a concept seems to be slipping away. And then also what of normal do we want to hold on to?

I just feel like I went into the same or similar existential crisis as anyone.

But I also, I'm an introvert. There are things about it that aligned with how I am.

As a human in terms of just the insularity. So that was nice after a while.

Like after we got past the point of thinking we're all done for.

Then I was like, okay, I guess certain parts of this are good for contemplation.

Yeah. What about you?

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