Kate Berlant and John Early

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2022

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kate Berlant and John Early have been performing as a comedy duo for over a decade now - their brand of comedy is a little surreal, a little unhinged and always laugh-at-loud funny. They just created an hour long sketch special called Would It Kill You To Laugh? - it debuts on Peacock today. John and Kate talk with Jesse about how they met, how they balance their creative partnership with their independent work and why Kate should have eaten a tuna melt before sitting down to her NPR interview.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:21.6	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorne.
0:23.6	Kate Perlant and John Early are comedians and performers.
0:27.2	Kate has appeared in movies like Sorry to Bavu and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
0:32.1	John has appeared on TV shows like Search Party, 30 Rock and the After Party.
0:37.3	They've also been best friends and collaborators for over a decade.
0:41.4	They've done sketches on YouTube and other platforms, live performances on TV and around
0:46.4	the country.
0:47.8	When John and Kate perform on stage together, it's really something.
0:51.2	There is a frenetic, unhinged energy.
0:54.5	They tend to veer between intense platonic love and seething contempt, thinly masked
1:01.2	with backhanded compliments and probing questions.
1:05.0	Their TV sketches are equally unhinged, though in a slightly different way.
1:10.1	The settings are usually pretty grounded.
1:12.4	The stakes aren't too high, but they almost always insert a little bit of surreality into
1:17.4	the mundane.
1:18.4	A meat-cute at a farmer's market where both Kate and John have enormous face tattoos,
1:24.0	and an awkward who gets the check moment where you pay the bill with hot melted caramel
1:28.8	sauce.
1:30.5	Their newest project combines both of those practices into one very, very funny special.
1:35.6	It's called Would It Kill You To Laugh and it comes out this week on Peacock.
1:40.1	Here's the premise.
	...

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