Laura Benanti Tells All! + ‘Conan O’Brien Must Go’

The Last Laugh

The Daily Beast

Comedy Interviews, Comedy, Interviews, Tv & Film, Society & Culture, Tv, Movies, Film

4.6 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Laura Benanti has been nominated for five Tony Awards (with one win) and appeared in dozens of TV shows and movies since making her Broadway debut at 19 years old as Maria in ‘The Sound of Music.’ But as the title of her new solo stage show attests, she still reminds herself on a daily basis that ‘Nobody Cares’ about her many accomplishments. In this episode, Benanti talks about mining her most embarrassing life stories for musical comedy in her new show, which returns to the New York stage and premieres on Audible next month. She also reveals how playing Melania Trump on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ finally made people take her “seriously” as a comedic actress and what she thinks is going through the former first lady’s head as her husband stands trial for paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.

But first, Matt and Allegra break down Conan O’Brien’s triumphant (or is it?) streaming premiere after his decades-long run on late-night TV with the new travel series ‘Conan O’Brien Must Go’ on Max.

Come to a live taping of The Last Laugh podcast with special guest Mae Martin at Netflix Is a Joke Fest on May 8.

Get tickets for Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares at Audible.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast.
0:08.7	Coming up in a bit, we'll have my interview with Laura Benanti, who is probably best known for being a Tony Award-winning star of several Broadway musicals,
0:17.5	but has a special place in my heart for her just spot-on portrayal of
0:22.1	Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She is here to talk about her new solo show
0:27.6	called Nobody Cares, that she is bringing back to the stage in New York next month, and will
0:32.4	also be available exclusively on Audible very soon. More on that later. But first, Allegra and I are going to talk about
0:40.5	the big TV return of a comedy icon who I think is near and dear to both of our hearts, Conan O'Brien.
0:47.9	Allegra, are you ready to talk about Conan? I am. I'm always ready to talk Conan. Yeah, me too. I mean,
0:53.6	this is a big deal. Conan is back on too. I mean, this is a big deal.
0:55.3	Conan is back on TV.
0:56.7	I mean, as people are hearing this, his new show, Conan O'Brien Must Go is up on Max.
1:03.4	He premiered this past Thursday with all four of these new episodes.
1:08.4	It's been almost three years since Conan ended his TBS show, which is kind of
1:12.7	wild to me. And I remember right after he ended it, there was like all this talk about what he was
1:17.5	going to do next. People thought he was going to do some sort of, you know, weekly variety show on
1:22.9	Max, which he since said was just something that somebody made up. But I mean, I, you know, I think we were all very curious what he was going to do next,
1:31.0	if he was going to do anything next.
1:33.2	And now we have this travel show, which really is like a takeoff on the remotes that he
1:39.1	used to do on late night, but sort of in a bigger way.
1:42.0	It's a lot like the specials that he was doing for a while, these international travel
1:45.6	specials.
1:47.2	But yeah, it was a long wait for these four episodes, but what were sort of your first
	...

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