Jill Kargman Marsha Bernstein Jill Kargman is known for being gleefully out of step with the denizens of her native Upper East Side, so it seems fitting that when I find her in the aggressively floral library of a private club in her neighborhood — one of so many to open in New York of late — she is, as always, wearing black. And even though the May weather outside is starting to flirt with summer temperatures, she is completely covered.
“I have the blood pressure of a vampire, 86 over 60,” says Kargman, explaining the cup of tea warming her hands. “I’m like a dead body. I’m cold on a beach.”
Related Stories
Lifestyle Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Beauty Gets Rare Discount During Amazon's Big Spring Sale
Movies Belle Burden's 'Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage' Lands at Netflix with Gwyneth Paltrow to Star
This public-facing version of Kargman, the one who grew up on 66th and Madison Avenue and only briefly entertained a life downtown, is familiar to many who’ve followed her dispatches from her beloved corner of Manhattan. She’s published a dozen books with titles like Momzillas, The Rock Star in Seat 3A and Sprinkle Glitter on My Grave. Perhaps more prominently, she created and starred in the three-season Bravo comedy Odd Mom Out (Yes, Bravo briefly made scripted TV). It was her outlet to comically position herself against her wealthier, pastel-loving neighbors. But in her new movie, Influenced, she takes the opposite approach and goes full Stepford. Almost.
Born of an early-lockdown Instagram bit, Influenced follows a seemingly vapid Upper East Side Mom (Dzanielle) on a journey from social striving to self-realization. Famous pals Gwyneth Paltrow, Drew Barrymore and Matt Damon make cameos. And a Pomeranian must endure an interview before being taken on by an elite dog walker. It’s playing in New York and Los Angeles, expanding to more cities through June before a streaming drop eyed for September.
While trying to keep warm, Kargman spoke about her segue into features, why she thinks the women she affectionately mocks don’t even pick up on the satire and going darker (much darker) with her next project.
When I found out we’d be speaking, I revisited the Odd Mom Out pilot. I’m kind of shocked that came out over ten years ago. That was an Obama-era show.
It’s funny because we predicted a lot of shit in there. Not that we’re The Simpsons, but we predicted a pandemic. We predicted billionaires going to space. All this fitness shit and all the anal bulimia.
The what now?
The fiber everything! People chow fat things on fiber crackers and then pee out their butthole. I call it anal bulimia. Because, instead of hurling, they just put a honk of cheese with a fiber thing and it’s just… Remember Olestra?
Oh, I sure do. So this character is very different from Upper East Side mom of Odd Mom Out, who was much more akin to yourself. It started as an Instagram bit and just grew from there. Do you feel like you’ve finally excised her from your system?
Yes. It’s been a journey. We went to Aspen for spring break, and there was a moment where I thought, “Oh no, I need to do a sequel, Dzanielle takes Aspen!” It’s like fish in a barrel with these dumb fucking $2,500 cowboy hats. But I’m done with this. I’m moving on. My next thing is the opposite. It’s super dark because it’s based on one of my books. It’s about a death positive family that does green burials and there’s a death doula. It’s really gothic and dark. I can’t go back to the spray tan blonde thing. It just feels frivolous in this world. But that was why I think this movie was good for this moment because it’s just pure silly escapism.
Drew Barrymore and Jill Kargman in Influenced We’ll get back to the death thing. But this was an Instagram bit during early covid. That’s when we spoke about it last. A feature is much bigger commitment. When did you decide it had legs?
Originally, I sold it as a half-hour pilot to IFC. We had done drafts and notes and it was going great. And then one day I found out all my executives got fired. Of course, I was devastated for them. But also, what does this mean for my show? Sadly, it was jettisoned. So then I did that movie, Love… Reconsidered, the director [Carol Hartsell], told me she’d been dying to write about the Upper East Side and asked me if I’d want to collab. I said, “Yeah, I have this pilot. It’s 30 pages. Do you want to help me flesh it out into a feature?” She and her husband gave it more gravitas — which is not something I typically go for. I’m the fluff bitch. I just want to be silly.
If I remember correctly, the Instagram character had fewer redeeming qualities.
It was inspired by this mom. My kids, not that they’re saints, but they did not react to the pandemic like their friends. Dzanielle was born from my daughter on the iPad, FaceTiming one of her little twat friends. Her mom was in the background being like, “This is a fucking nightmare!” And I heard [my daughter] Sadie be like, “This isn’t a nightmare. You’re in a mansion on the Hamptons. You have Seamless. You have the internet.” So, I started making fun of this mom, doing the whole shtick for my friend, and she said, “You have to post this. ”
Have you alienated many of these women by lampooning them for a living?
Oh, I don’t give a shit about them. And I don’t think that this character’s mean-spirited. Even with Odd Mom Out, it never was mean. There was never any malice. If you look in a funhouse mirror at a carnival, it’s just silly. I know it’s not me. I know it’s warped. So, I can’t get mad at the mirror.
But other people might not share that self-awareness.
True. But I think the people who don’t are a little bit delulu and would never recognize themselves in any of these characters. I learned this with Odd Mom Out. No one thinks they’re a bad mom. They all think they’re a good mom in their way. Even if you’ve farmed everything out — never given a bath or changed a diaper.
Do you still have relationship with the other moms of the Upper East Side now that you’re kids are all out of school?
I still see all the moms. At one point, I had three kids in three schools. And when they were young, if you don’t work full time, it felt like you’d wind up at everyone’s birthday lunch for 12 people. Because you’re not driving anywhere, you’re walking, it’s just very close quarters. I bumped into 10 people on my way here. You gather material by osmosis. But I really am only friends with the down to earth, normal people. I’m not friends with these over-the-top ones. What people don’t understand about the Upper East Side and lampooning it is that you go for the easy joke. You can go for the hyperbolized cartoonish characters, but there are also normal hardworking moms who are badasses — PhD professors, heart surgeons, child oncologist. But people don’t see that in the media and representation, the amazing parents and they’re raising amazing kids.
Then, on social media, you have this sort of keyhole view behind the brocade curtain of these bratty, flashy people — everything that I was raised to not do in the eighties. I feel like even the wealthiest kids at Spence were dropped off from their stretch limousine two blocks from school because they were embarrassed. Now, it’s the total opposite. People are posting a shot of a private jet shot and geo tagging Teterboro. It’s just vile and disgusting. Those two worlds exist concurrently, and I’m just one of the normal people steeped in it geographically.
Jill Kargman in ‘Influenced.’ Gwyneth Paltrow, who you know from Spence, appears in via FaceTime in the movie. Were you the first talk her out of retirement or was it Josh Safdie?
Josh Safdie, but I have always been saying she should be acting. I’m really excited for Strangers. Belle Burden is a friend of mine. I was lucky enough to read an advanced copy and I was like, not only is this going to be a New York Times bestseller, it’s going to be a major motion picture. And I was write about both.
You keep a “funny shit” note on your phone. What’s on it these days?
I erase it when it’s been vomited into a script. So now I have a new one going. So right now it’s all like death shit.
OK, back to death. What does a “death-positive” family look like? My dad, he was obsessed with death my entire life. He had to take the Concorde for work and he would always be like, “Give me a hug because, one of these days, that pig’s going to blow.” And then it did! I grew up in the real Addams Family. They talked about death all the fucking time, and my mom’s family is buried in that horrible cemetery in Queens. They all died super young. We’d go to visit their graves and there’d be a plane flying so low it was shaving your head. My dad would look around and be like, “This place is disgusting. I am not RIPing here.” So they began this odyssey to tour cemeteries the way that normal people tour colleges. They went everywhere in in the tristate area but then they found one in Massachusetts. It’s like a co-op. You have to get letters written for you.
By the dead?
No, by the living who have plots. What do the letters need to say? “They’ll be really quiet?” “Their kids will not leave tacky flowers?” By the way, post-script, at first they got rejected. I think because we’re Jewish.
Oh, so it’s like a country club.
It is, only for the dead. And then my godmother [Teresa Heinz Kerry] is married to John Kerry, so we asked him to write a letter. They moved over some bones of people, and we got spots. (Laughs.) But, really, there was suddenly more space. The rumor was that people had to sell their plots because they lost all their money with Bernie Madoff.
And there’s room for all of you?
We have 24 plots. So there’s room for my unborn grandchildren. It’s so fucked. My book Sprinkle Glitter on My Grave is all essays about my morbid family. The upshot is that when you are morbid — and there are studies backing this up — you’re actually happier than everybody else, because you don’t sweat the small stuff. We’re all going to fucking die. That’s the prism through which I’ve lived my entire life. Very carpe diem. I am very much appreciating every single day, and I just think I’m happier than everybody else.
To your point, agonizing about everything isn’t doing me any favors.
I’m the happiest person I know. I think it’s because I was raised with hourglasses everywhere. I have an hourglass collection now. My parents are those people in Annie Hall who were like, “Guess who has stage four pancreatic?” So, I was just very aware. People think I’m Debbie Downer sometimes because I’m just like, “Guys, we’re going to die. Let’s not worry about this nonsense.”
At the risk of ending this on a dark note, you lost your father two years back. Is he the only one currently occupying this very large family plot?
He’s holding down the fort. When he was sick, I called my parents and they were like, “We can’t talk. We’re looking at tombstone fonts.” They were literally on Pinterest, scrolling tombstone fonts, talking to the designer. He was fully involved. When we buried him last August, I was bawling but also kind of laughing because it was what he wanted. He’d said, “We got the best view.” I said, “We’ll be dead. Who cares about the view?” It was just so him. I kind of want to die like that.
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Subscribe Sign Up
