Stars of The Teachers Talk Writing Process & Working with Friends
Crushing on women who are crushin' it.
The Cast of TV Land's The Teachers
TV Land's Teachers is an irreverent ensemble comedy about six elementary school teachers based on a web series created by The Katydids and Matthew Miller. The Katydids, a comedic troupe of six women from Chicago whose names are all derived from Katherine, wrote, executive produced, and star in the show (C&C fave Alison Brie is an executive producer), which is entering its third season.
We were able to grab the attention of 2/6, which is an F by school standards, but def an A in content.
Kate Lambert & Kathryn Renée Thomas chat with us on everything from the writing process to being scared to audition to superpowers.
On the writing process:
What does the writing process look like for the six of you?
Kathryn Renée Thomas: We generally spend the first 10 to 15 minutes talking about garbage. We have to get it out. We all arrive in the morning and have to gossip about what horrible things Trump tweeted last night or whatever Real Housewives did-- we cover all the really important things. Then we just dive right in.
Which means?
KRT: It depends on where we are in the process with the script to be honest. Sundays we come in and there are times where we’ll have to brainstorm a plot for an episode. But sometimes we just jump right in and start throwing out ideas. In the beginning we have a couple weeks of brainstorming. Sometimes a plot gets thrown out by the network and we’ll have to come up with something new to plug into a current script. There’s one script that we’re going to table read together for the first time. There’s another script that already has been table read that we’ve gotten notes on. Everyone has written their punch-ups and we bring them in and we sit around a monitor with our writers' assistants and we all pitch for different lines.
Kate Lambert: Going into Season 3 we’re looking to explore our characters on a deeper level. So that’s something we’ve been doing as well.
On having tough convos with the team:
You work together on so many levels and have known each other for a long time. Is it hard to be honest or tell someone you don't like their idea?
KRT: We’re pretty open and honest with each other. It was a hard transition at first. We’ve been together for over 9 years. It started with improv and it started as a joke. This group started as, “Hey we all have the same name. Isn’t that funny? Let’s do a show.” 9 years later we’re executive producing and writing our own show. The transition happened slowly, but we started treating the improv as a business early on and getting pretty serious. Then when we were actually getting paid for what we were doing as a business, we had to shift gears. At first, it was hard for me a to hear a “No” or have my pitches rejected in the room. Especially from people who were my friends and my sisters. We had to learn pretty quickly that that is just part of the process and part of the writer's room process. Any writer's room you go into, you’re going to have to pitch one thousand ideas and maybe none of them get chosen that day. I had to separate friends from business and say “You know, these are just my business partners,” for a while. Then once I got comfortable enough to understand,we’re doing what’s best for the show, I was able to go, “Oh yeah these are my friends!"
On the turning point for the business:
You mention a turning point-- when it all changed. When was that?
KL: It originally started as a one-off show. It was a lot of fun. Then it ran at a small black box theater in Chicago and that was so much fun and so exciting. I think it was the highlight of everyone’s week, and we had a great time and there was such an interesting chemistry between everyone that we thought we should explore. We ended up hiring a coach and getting a run on IO which was a huge deal. From there, we decided to make videos. It's such a great way to get your comedy out there. We made a video promoting the run and we thought that if people didn’t know our name or names of people in the group, they could watch these videos and that would entice them to come to the show. From there it turned into more of a business. We got a website, a Facebook fan page, we took professional photos, and we had a friend design a logo for us. We decided that we wanted to pursue this together, put our best foot forward and try to get to the next step.
KT: I wanna give a shoutout to Kate Lambert because she was really awesome about leading the charge with a lot of that stuff. I think it was Lambert's idea to create a press release for our show and some of the videos we started to make. Which, at the time, I didn’t know a lot of people in the improv community that were doing press releases about their show runs. I think that was a step above what other people were doing.
KL: Aww, thanks!
KT: It’s true! You really lead the charge on some of that stuff and I think it was incredibly helpful and lucrative for us.
On relationships and culture shock in Hollywood:
You've obviously got your tribe and support each other. What was in like moving from Chicago to Hollywood?
KL: Well, I think when you move to Los Angeles, like anything business and Hollywood related aside, the weirdest thing is that the weather never changes. And you lose all sense of time. I can't tell you whether I’ve lived here a hundred years or four. Living Chicago, you remember experiences according to weather and what people were wearing. I really can’t tell if something happened 3 years ago or two months ago.
KT: I’m so Midwestern and I think all the women in the group are really. My idea of LA was a very stereotypical -- douchey managers and fakey-fakey everything. Boob jobs and coke, you know? I was thinking, I’m this nice Midwestern girl, I’m not going to fit in there. But I love it out here. I think what helps with moving from the midwest to LA is the fact that we had a team of people whom we'd been working with and that support system was amazing. We were also really, really lucky to work with TV Land-- I'm not saying that because they’re our boss but they were really willing to take a risk with our voice and our vision. We anticipated that if we did sell this show, we would have to change it a lot to make it mainstream or that we’d be let go in creative aspects, and maybe just get creator credit. We truly found the love of our lives with TV Land because they let us keep all the same cast, all the same producers, all same writers, and they say yes to a lot of the crazy stuff we come up with. So my idea of this bad boss, people being douchey, was really squashed as soon as we started working with them. Not only that, but they’re just the nicest, warmest people so we felt like we were being brought into a family. That was such a great surprise.
KT: Also, on the business side, we came from a sketch background and all of our characters in the web series were different. But they were different by shades of gray and we tried to really blow them out for the show. We had to differentiate the characters and make their differences even more apparent. We also had to make them freer and move into their histories more. We weren’t just exploring them for two minutes anymore-- it was 22 minutes now. It was all a process of developing the characters to a further extent.
"Our success, in the end, came out of a lot failure."
Tweet this.
How did your backgrounds in sketch comedy prepare you for the successes you've seen?
KT: We failed a lot. Our success, in the end, came out of a lot failure. We’re 6 weird quirky girls from Chicago who were auditioning for a lot of things-- not all for weird quirky girls though. We weren't getting cast but instead of taking that as “Forget it, you’re worthless,” we collectively thought, “Forget it, we’ll do our own thing.” So being told no so many times, getting rejected, doing a show to an audience of one, or a hundred who aren’t laughing, we took all that and we learned from this and said how can we just keep going? And we managed to succeed anyway with our own trajectory and our own voices and we have more creative control than a lot of people do.
Early group shot. photo credit: TOM MCGRATH
On dealing with uncomfortable moments:
What’s worse, doing a show with an audience of one who is laughing hysterically or audience of a hundred who are silent?
KL: I always think it’s more uncomfortable to perform for one person. I’d much rather be in front of a crowd of one hundred people. To be honest, sometimes it’s pretty hilarious when nobody laughs. You just have to focus on what you think is funny. If an audience feels like you’re trying to be funny, they get uncomfortable for you as a performer because they can feel your nervousness. You just have to be comfortable and pretend it’s a huge audience.
But you were scared of auditioning...and didn't do it for a long time...
KL: I was lucky. I was working at a department store and the people I worked with knew all about my dreams and what I wanted to do. They were incredibly encouraging and they honestly really pushed me and helped me get over my fear. It was when I was working there that I took my first improv class for actors and I was there when I got cast in my first sketch show. I think it was a combination of support from friends and family, my parents obviously. And also just realizing life's short and I need to do what I want to do. Working jobs like that was good for me in some ways because it made me realize just how bad I wanted the job that I have now.
KT: For me, it can go either way. You can definitely kind of get in your head like Lambert was saying. You can even let go a little more than you would with a crowd of a hundred people. If you’re in a crowd of four people in the audience, it’s kind of like “Well maybe I can take more risks this way. I’m not gonna blow it in front of one hundred people.” I might take a risk and let go a bit in an audience of 4 people and I might play more lightheartedly and have more fun, that often times happens. It just takes a minute to get out of your head to move from “Fuck this, no one came to my show,” to “Okay, well let’s make the best of it.”
On their superpowers:
KL: I can love any dog on sight. And anytime I see a dog I get extraordinarily excited. I think dogs are the best thing.
KT: Oversharing. Girl, I’m an open book. It’s gonna get me in trouble some day.
Teachers is on TV Land. Catch up with the series here.
MORE FROM OUR BLOG
How This Massive IG Star Handles the Haters
It's so simple, it's brillz.
She’s got jokes. Which also means, she’s got brains.
Arielle Vandenberg, who is on a first name basis (@arielle) with the digital world, has been making videos and thereby making people laugh for decades. She says she made her mom laugh all the time when she was little, but it was her grandma who thought Arielle was, “the funniest kid ever-- she even wrote everything I said down into a book,” the actress and comedian tells us.
It was also her grandma who told her “Don’t do drugs,” when she first thought about moving to LA. "I think that's pretty great advice,” she laughs. While GMA might have kept the digitally savvy star on the straight and narrow, it's her hard work, diligence, and “being true to myself,” that have really paid off.
In December of 2015 the actress and comedian was one of the most followed personalities on Vine, with a fanbase of almost 2 million. People tuned in to watch her goof off, ask life’s big mysterious questions, and upload videos with bestie and now boyfriend (AKA from Cutty to CUTIE) Matt Cutshall. Though the video app announced its shuttering in 2015, her feat of amassing such a loyal and large following can't be ignored. It comes down to creativity and precise comedic timing. If you can get people to laugh in six seconds or under, with an iPhone, you’re doing something right. She's transferred her following to Instagram, proving that it wasn't a one-off. She's good a social. Like, really good.
Calling herself “the professional Jim Carrey impersonator,” it was the funny man who got Arielle hooked on comedy. “I wanted to be a comedian because of Jim Carrey. I would sit in my room alone and just make faces in the mirror for hours. And also Tina Fey, well because she's a powerhouse of a woman!”
Growing up outside of Los Angeles, Arielle got the bug for acting when she was young. She’s had roles in numerous TV shows like How I Met Your Mother and Bones. She’s opinionated, telling Esquire, “If you don’t like animals, you’re not living,” not worried about fangirling out over Justin Bieber or dressing as the pop star for Halloween (a role she reprised this year), and says “internet bullies” have been challenging, but jokes, “haters gon hate.”
It’s easy for her to keep going, even in the face of Vine’s shuttering. She continues to build her career in the face of a tectonic shift in the digital landscape. “I’ve always loved making people laugh,” shares Arielle, “so I made it my job. And now I have the best job in the entire world!” She can also bust out “performance dance” anywhere and everywhere to keep her spirits up and her morning prayers “make the day a million times better.”
"I've always loved making people laugh, so I made it my job."
Tweet this.
The multitalented digital star preaches kindness— makes sense she’s BFF with last year's C&C 100 honoree Lauren Paul. “Teaching young girls to be kind,” she says, is immensely important. “Kids are the future and kindness is the way.”
In the last five years Arielle says she’s “gone to third base” with her career, which, guess what? means we can still expect her home run. What might that mean for her? Making Jim Carrey (who else?) a costar, creating her own show, and “purchasing a wiener dog.”
Alrighty then.
MORE FROM OUR BLOG
Comedian Natasha Leggero Shares Her Top 3 Social Media Pet Peeves
And chats Mariah Carey.
“I remember when I moved to LA, I didn’t have a cell phone, I didn’t have a computer, I would check my email at the video store,” says comedian, writer, and actress Natasha Leggero.
“As soon as Twitter came, I started Tweeting all my jokes. It's the great equalizer. But it meant I gave away all the ideas. Now the bigger problem is that people get offended really easily. There are a lot of people online that are looking to take you down at anything. For me it’s been very challenging, I almost prefer to write a TV show instead.”
That show is “Another Period,” renewed for it’s 3rd season (coming this summer) on Comedy Central. It’s like if "Drunk History" met "Upstairs Downstairs" met "Barely Famous."
“I was sick of playing prostitutes...I felt like most parts I played I wasn’t wearing pants. I really wanted to do a show where women were in control,” the comedian shares. On the show Leggero plays Lillian Bellacourt, defined by her family’s wealth who cares about one thing: becoming super famous. Presumably harder in 1902 without a hashtag where the only viral was cholera. So where does that put Leggero in terms of social media 2017? For one, she recently shared her best tips Straight Talk Wireless.
"I was sick of playing prostitutes. I wanted to do a show where women were in control."
Tweet this.
Second, she’s happy to list off a couple pet peeves.
Pet peeve #1: People posting photos of themselves at the gym. "I know they’re really proud of themselves but it’s annoying and makes you feel bad. They’re in full hair and makeup having someone take their photo.” However, she's happy to concede: “Mariah Carey’s gym posts are always the best because she’s in high-heeled tennis shoes.” (Case in point: here and here and here.)
Peeve #2: “I don’t think anyone has ever flown in a private jet and not done an Instagram photo shoot.” Adding, “Which by the way are very bad for the environment.” (Looking at you Leo.)
Peeve #3: “Pics of food don’t even register anymore.”
“It’s very hard to not annoy anyone,” Leggerro jokes, “and I feel hypocritical because of all my political posts." Scroll her Twitter and yes, it's pretty political. “With politics, people get mad. Anything anti-Trump and you all of the sudden get death threats-- it just doesn’t seem funny anymore. With the current admin every single person is a political comic, so I almost want to take a few steps back and come back in a couple of years." Don't actually expect her to take any breaks. In addition to "Another Period," Leggero and husband, fellow comedian Moshe Kasher, will hit the road this summer, continuing their "Honeymoon Tour" at Bonaroo, giving love advice and “fixing people’s relationships.”
When asked if social media has made it easier for women in comedy, there's a bit of a shrug in her voice. “I would never want to carry around video camera all day and record everything I do. Everyone says, 'Oh standup, that’s the hardest thing in the world,' but for me it’s natural." She brings up YouTuber Cameron Dallas and his tour— "He doesn't perform," she laughs. "It’s an international tour where he meets people.” There’s no shade though. “Doing the road for 15 years is kinda hard… but what I’m doing is a different skill.”
While the world of comedy has been described as fairly cutthroat, for Leggero, it doesn’t feel competitive. And she's happy to love on fellow comedians and friends like Sarah Silverman, Tig Notaro, Maria Bamford and Chelsea Peretti. "Maria and Sarah were both pretty established when I started but they’ve both been super positive. It’s been fun to come up with everyone. If one person can’t do a job, the next person does it. Of course there is competition in a way, but I feel very lucky that I have a TV show and I’m able to hire my friends," she shares.
“Bringing up other people with you is the idea,” she laughs. “Or at least the people you like.”
For those who don’t have friends hiring on them shows, Leggero has this advice for those who want to get into comedy. “It’s kind of a bummer,” she shares, “but you simply have to start writing and performing. Even if you can write for three minutes and go to an open mic, it’s really about working. Most of my comedian friends were going up at least five times a week, sometimes more. Sometimes a couple of shows a night. You have to work your material and keeping trying and figure out why you are or aren’t getting laughs. Pay attention to what people are laughing at when you’re onstage. It takes a lot of careful study of yourself. From stage presence to mic technique to making sure your jokes aren’t super hacky. You have to immerse yourself. If you want to have a career in comedy, full immersion.”
So to review: support your friends, work super fn hard, and nix the gym selfies, unless of course, you're Mariah.
MORE FROM OUR BLOG
Content Creator: Arielle Vandenberg
The funny girl-next-door.
This article is part of our Create & Cultivate 100 List created in collaboration with KEDS, you can view the full Content Creator List Here.
Making grandma laugh since the '80s.
She’s got jokes. Which also means, she’s got brains.
Arielle Vandenberg, who is on a first name basis (@arielle) with the digital world, has been making videos and thereby making people laugh for decades. She says she made her mom laugh all the time when she was little, but it was her grandma who thought Arielle was, “the funniest kid ever-- she even wrote everything I said down into a book.”
It was also her grandma who told her “Don’t do drugs,” when she first thought about moving to LA. "I think that's pretty great advice,” she laughs. While Gma might have kept the digitally savvy star on the straight and narrow, it's her hard work, diligence, and “being true to myself,” that have really paid off.
In December of 2015 the actress and comedian was one of the most followed personalities on Vine, with a fanbase of almost 2 million. People tuned in to watch her goof off, ask life’s big mysterious questions, and upload videos with bestie Matt Cutshall. Though the video app announced its shuttering last year, her feat of amassing such a loyal and large following can't be ignored. It comes down to creativity and precise comedic timing. If you can get people to laugh in six seconds or under, with an iPhone, you’re doing something right.
Calling herself “the professional Jim Carrey impersonator,” it was the funny man who got Arielle hooked on comedy. “I wanted to be a comedian because of Jim Carrey. I would sit in my room alone and just make faces in the mirror for hours. And also Tina Fey, well because she's a powerhouse of a woman!”
Growing up outside of Los Angeles, Arielle got the bug for acting when she was young. She’s had roles in numerous TV shows like How I Met Your Mother and Bones. She’s opinionated, telling Esquire, “If you don’t like animals, you’re not living,” not worried about fangirling out over Justin Bieber or dressing as the pop star for Halloween, and says “internet bullies” have been challenging, but jokes, “haters gon hate.”
Arielle is wearing Keds' Champion Originals.
It’s easy for her to keep going, even in the face of Vine’s shuttering. She continues to build her career in the face of a tectonic shift in the digital landscape. “I’ve always loved making people laugh,” shares Arielle, “so I made it my job. And now I have the best job in the entire world!” She can also bust out “performance dance” anywhere and everywhere to keep her spirits up and her morning prayers “make the day a million times better.”
"I've always loved making people laugh, so I made it my job."
Tweet this.
The multitalented digital star preaches kindness— makes sense she’s BFF with fellow C&C 100 honoree Lauren Paul. “Teaching young girls to be kind,” she says, is immensely important. “Kids are the future and kindness is the way.”
In the last five years Arielle says she’s “gone to third base” with her career, which means we can still expect her home run. What might that mean for her? Making Jim Carrey (who else?) a costar, creating her own show, and “purchasing a wiener dog.” Alrighty then.
Styling provided by Reservoir LA. Hair and makeup provided by Glamsquad. Photography courtesy of Light Lab and Woodnote Photography.
Entertainment: Nicole Byer
Broke the typecast mold.
This article is part of our Create & Cultivate 100 List created in collaboration with KEDS, you can view the full Entertainment List Here.
Breaking all the rules.
Loosely speaking, Nicole Byer, is a boss. The comedian, writer, and actress who stars on the semi-autobiographical comedy Loosely Exactly Nicole, her show on MTV, has broken every typecast mold. But it wasn’t something the comedic storyteller intentionally set out to do. Nicole didn’t want to be an actor, but rather, an illustrator. One hitch, she couldn’t draw.
What she lacked in technical skill, she made up for with energy. It was the comedian's mom, the person whom Nicole credits as “being so supportive,” encouraged her to join her high school play, and work out some of that energy on stage. The performance was a comedy.
It was the first time she received a lot of laughs and it had a life-changing effect. “Making someone laugh is magic.” Nicole shares. “It’s also powerful and therapeutic.”
She’s been after that feeling ever since. After spending many years doing “doing a lot of free improv shows in a basement,” Nicole reticently credits her career to “being at the right place at the right time.”
But being in said "place" has taken plenty of work. In 2013, Nicole launched her career on MTV with Hasan Minaj’s Failosophy. A few months in the network worked Nicole and her comedic chops into the reality-comedy-advice series Girl Code. There was a bit of learning curve for the actress, who didn’t fully understand the show’s concept. Basically, she went into the studio and talked. “We live in a world,” she says on the show, “where we’ve made it very easy to give opinions.” And opinions were given. The women on the show discussed feminism, slut-shaming, gay besties, and pussy power. They talked about it all. But Nicole, growing more disinterested in being a talking head, was looking to break into scripted-television. However, when the roles available weren't up to snuff (aka, fully-formed, not typical typecast bull) Nicole did what any intelligent badass woman would: wrote her own.
For people breaking into the biz, Nicole says it’s important to, “stay in your lane,” and “keep your eyes on your own paper.” But she’s more than willing to lend an ear to an aspiring comedian. “I try and be as helpful as possible when someone has a question about comedy.”
Nicole wants all women to know that they are “are beautiful, smart, strong as fuck and special. We also have to listen to each other and remember to be inclusive. There's feminism and intersectional feminism.”
Recently telling the Hollywood Reporter, “It went from me going out for a part of a hooker named Bertha to making my web series that I loved and I'm so proud of.” She wants to change the roles available for women, especially women of color, to be three-dimensional, fully-formed characters.
“All women are beautiful, smart, strong as fuck and special.”
Tweet this.
She knows that her humor isn’t for everyone, but adds “nothing is off limits if I find it funny.”
As for what’s been a roadblock on her journey, “Life,” she jokes. Which is also what she says keeps her going. That and the hope of one day making Whoopi Goldberg laugh. She’s already got both her grandma and Beyoncé to giggle. We’re thinking Whoopi isn’t too far a shot.
Hair and makeup provided by Glamsquad. Photography courtesy of Light Lab and Woodnote Photography.