Maeve Higgins Interview

It’s an unseasonably balmy October afternoon in Ballsbridge: sipping a latte in the sunlit beer garden of The Dylan Hotel, Maeve Higgins is considering the peripatetic precariousness of her career path to date.

Despite various ups and downs, and countless changes of address, for the most part she reckons it’s been a good laugh... which is just as well given the nature of her vocation.
“I just realised recently that I’ve been doing comedy for 10 years,” she muses. “Now I’m like, ‘I know what I’m doing’. I always feel on shaky ground with stand-up, but now it’s like, ‘Look, I’m doing it for 10 years. Clearly this is something that I do’. I didn’t just happen to find myself on stage, and it’s a long time to be doing something.”
A warm, giggly and friendly type, she’s quietly confident today. But, by her own admission, it took more than half of those years for that to develop. “I remember David O’Doherty, he was very helpful to me when I first started, saying that it takes seven years to get good at comedy, so just relax!” she smiles. “I think that’s true. By ‘good at comedy’, I mean finding your own voice.”
Not only has Higgins found her own voice at this stage, lots of other people have found it too. Born in Cobh in 1982, the 33-year-old writer and comedian – who first shot to national fame as one of the stars of RTE’s Naked Camera – is now based in New York. She’s home in Ireland for a few days to promote her new book, Off You Go - the follow-up to 2012’s bestselling We Have A Good Time, Don’t We?
As with her debut, Off You Go is a collection of humorous essays. Some are observational, dealing with the trials and tribulations of thirtysomething life generally. Others are more autobiographical, dealing with the trials and tribulations of being Maeve Higgins.
On the book’s cover, Paul Howard – aka Ross O’Carroll-Kelly – blurbs that she’s “the funniest person in Ireland.” High praise indeed, but she doesn’t find writing easy.
“No, I find it really hard,” she sighs. “I was just reading bits there for this radio recording earlier and I was like, ‘This is so conversational, this should really be easy’, but it’s torture. I put on 30 lbs writing this book, it’s just torture. I always think I’m not going to able to do it. Looking at my history, I can do it but it always feels like I won’t be able.”
Normally distinctively raven-haired, she’s gone blonde recently. It was easier than hitting the gym. “This always happens to me when I’m annoyed with my body, which I was because I put weight on. I’m like, ‘I need to change something’, and the easiest thing to change is my hair. Forget about stopping eating burgers, just change my hair.
“I didn’t intend on going blonde, I wanted to go grey. This just happened. Something happens to me when I deal with hair and beauty people; whatever I say gets lost in translation somewhere and then I end up with butt implants and blonde hair!”
Although she had achieved a decent level of success in Ireland before hitting 30, it didn’t last. Following three seasons of Naked Camera, and just one of her subsequent solo show, Fancy Vittles, her Irish career had essentially stalled by 2010. She had become far too recognisable for a hidden camera show, and RTE didn’t commission a second series of Vittles.
As painfully detailed in the book, a year living in London didn’t work out but she’s now making waves in America.
“I didn’t like London,” she reflects. “I didn’t get much work there. There’s panel shows and everyone’s called ‘Russell’. It wasn’t the right fit for me at all. In New York there’s so much more diversity and people are really curious and more open, and it suits me and my style of comedy. I always had the romantic notion of going there, which I never had about London.”
Having bounced around Brooklyn for a bit (her book’s essays about the perils of flat-sharing are particularly funny), she moved to East Harlem this summer. “I was in Brooklyn for the first year and I liked Brooklyn, there’s an energy there. I’m in New York three-and-a-half years now and only moved up to East Harlem a few months ago. Brooklyn thinks very highly of itself. I’m speaking of the highly arty, literary side of Brooklyn.
“Obviously it’s huge and has every type of person – there’s like two million people – but ‘the scene’ there is very self-regarding so it was nice to come out of it. It was great to land there and get plugged into a community with loads of comedy shows.”
She currently curates a monthly show in Brooklyn’s Union Hall with English writer Jon Ronson called I’m New Here – Can You Show Me Around? There’s also been some TV work, with sporadic slots on Inside Amy Schumer and more regular appearances on the National Geographic Channel’s Startalk (a science-based chatshow hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson).
“I love Amy Schumer,” she enthuses. “She’s cool. It’s Comedy Central’s biggest show. I’m surprised how many people watch it here, as well. It’s really popular. The thing that the networks love about her is that she really appeals to young, 18 to 30-year-old guys. She’s hilarious. She’s bawdy and really raucous.”
The new book features a couple of well-observed pieces about the
dating scene in New York.
“It’s so straightforward over there. Here, it’s so hard to know where you stand with people. It’s like, ‘Is this work? Is this a date?’ Even after you’ve slept with someone a number of times; ‘Is this... friends?’ You don’t know. There, it’s very clear. ‘I’ve got half an hour after work before I go and do whatever other activity I’ve got on so do you want to go and get coffee then?’”
She laughs giddily. “I’m like, ‘Whaaat?’. It’s so easy. There’s no shame around it. It’s just a normal part of life. It’s great, really refreshing.”
There is a man in her life right now, but she doesn’t want to say too much about him. She has no interest in settling down just yet but, while we’re on the subject of the opposite sex, does she think it’s harder for females to make it in comedy?
“I don’t know,” she says, shrugging. “I think it’s definitely true that there’s less women in comedy. I do a joke where I’m like, ‘Yes, there’s less female comedians but there’s less female paedophiles. We’re under- represented in a lot of areas in life!’
“I can’t tell if it is harder. I do know that I don’t earn as much money as my male peers, so I feel like that’s a thing. It reflects the pay gap in most areas of life, and that’s unfortunate.”
Maeve Higgins’ future is uncertain, but things are going remarkably well at the moment and she’s rightly optimistic. However, while the stand-up gigs, TV appearances and book sales are all relatively lucrative, it’s all still not quite steady enough to rely upon.
“I still babysit sometimes!” she admits, laughing. “Comedy is really hit and miss. You can make tons of money and then you have none of it. I’m bad with money, too. Yeah, I babysit these two girls and I love them. I really like spending time with children... but it is because I need cash, too.”

Off You Go is published by Hachette Books Ireland.