It was the fall of 2009 and Ilana and I met up at a pizza shop on 32nd Street and Eighth Avenue, around the corner from the UCB training center, to start brainstorming. (I remember this spot, because years later, during one of our first interviews after Broad City became a TV show, we convinced the magazine Fader to do a photo shoot there, at the pizza shop. I’m a sucker for nostalgia.) There were only a few web series we knew of in 2009, but somehow that became our plan: to make a web series about us, our friendship, our dynamic. We cracked each other up and our banter felt different, like it had legs. It was like the first day of school with new pens and pencils, the whole experience laid out in front of us. We were energetic and propelled by this new priority. We had no idea how to start, so we began brainstorming things that annoyed us about the city, frustrations, anecdotes, conversations the two of us recently had, anything really that made us laugh. I still have a black-and-white composition notebook from that night filled with scribbles of our first ideas: how ridiculous it was that places wouldn’t serve eggs after 11 a.m., wanting to kiss someone under mistletoe, trying to buy weed after a long hiatus, etc. The difference between our creative process then and now is simultaneously vast, and not much at all. We just finally managed to fit that egg observation into Season 4. We’re not great at killing our darlings.
We came up with the name Broad City one night after work sitting on the floor of an aisle in a Midtown Barnes & Noble. I was now working at Birdbath bakery and Ilana at SkinCeuticals, and this Midtown location was midway for us and our commutes home, as most of our nighttime meetups tended to be. We had our notebooks ready and started throwing out names. I spewed out a string of potential ideas around words referring to women and words referring to New York, and Broad City was somewhere in the middle. Ilana stopped me. “Broad City,” she said, “that’s it.”
The web series was the first time we were in complete control, and we attacked it full force. We wrote outlines and scripts for our two- to five-minute shorts and I drew the title cards and credits. We found local locations that would let us shoot on the cheap. We stole shots and used our own apartments. I had seen a post on the Improv Resource Center by our friend Rob who I knew from the community. He was looking to direct some projects, so we brought him in. He ended up directing and editing the first season of the web series and helped pick the theme songs we used, which were “Swing For Ninine,” and “Django’s Tiger,” by Django Reinhardt, performed by the Cook Trio. The second season we found more collaborators, more people and friends in the community looking to direct and edit, shoot, hold a boom, or be in one of the episodes. It was like a door opened, but one we first built and nailed into the wall. It was freedom. We paid people $100 or in pizza or bagels—apparently Broad City was born, and still runs best on, carbohydrates. We couldn’t afford much, but as the show progressed, it gave these other collaborators experience, and content for their own reels.
The web series grew, as we experimented in style and voice, but we also grew our lives around it. By the time we were in the thick of making the Broad City web series, Ilana and I worked next to each other, making cold calls for Lifebooker, a group buying site and direct competitor to Groupon. This was the place that would eventually be the inspiration for Ilana’s job on the show at Deals Deals Deals! We, however, actually worked, although making cold calls to salons and spas, encouraging them to discount their services by 50 percent, was one of my least favorite, and most anxiety-inducing, jobs I’ve ever had. Lucia Aniello, our main director and a writer on the TV version, worked there as well, across the room as a copywriter. Lucia worked there first then got Ilana a job, and Ilana recommended me. In between anxiety calls at work, Ilana and I planned episodes and punched up outlines over Gchat, and we’d shoot at night or on the weekends. There’s a web episode that we shot at our desks one Saturday (I believe after convincing our bosses we needed access to the office to work), called, brilliantly, “Work.” It was partially about how once you start wearing a padded bra, you can’t stop or else everyone will know—we never veered away from those controversial issues. We released the show once a week on YouTube, breaking them up in two seasons over two years, and used all the social media platforms we could to share the web series with the world.
We took the show very seriously, even when it was only on the web. I got ahold of a PR friend’s contact list and we reached out to bloggers to write about the show. We made a template that we used for outreach, saying how our content would be alluring to their viewers (for example, our web episode “Yoga” might appeal to any audience that was into fitness or parenting, etc.) and asking if they’d consider posting one or more of our episodes. It hardly worked, but the few times it did was worth me having two-thousand-plus contacts in my phone for the next eight years (I just recently went through and deleted them all). We threw finale parties at 92Y Tribeca, a space that sadly doesn’t exist anymore, and started doing Broad City Live at UCB. I will never forget the morning a photo of us was in the New York Times, accompanying a piece about the Iron Mule Comedy Film Festival, where we were showing an episode. I bought a copy first thing in the morning and looked at it the whole subway ride to work. It was unbelievable, a photo of us, pointing at the mural on Houston and Bowery, was in the New York Times! I felt like everyone in the world could tell by looking at me; I was a woman with a web series, and my picture was in the paper!
The level of excitement contained within the little triumphs of our early years doing Broad City cannot be adequately conveyed. It’s still there, between us, even now, almost ten years later. It’s because we realized very quickly this show wasn’t going to be just a stepping-stone. At first, we thought maybe this could get us hired as writers on something else, get us seen and possibly cast on another show, but once we harnessed our voice and realized how palpably fun it was to make this together, the show, even as a web series, was kinetic. It felt worth fighting for, to the death.
We had been working with a manager, Sam Saifer, for about a year. Getting representation in any form was a huge deal—and she really believed in us. She worked with Ilana first after seeing her do stand-up, and then Sam started working with me when she saw the web series. She lived in LA and was our first real connection to the industry. I had been working for years at shitty jobs and paying to take part in improv, so telling my parents I had a manager, even if that didn’t completely make sense to them, was meaningful. Sam was young and hungry just like we were, and those early years with her felt so scrappy, in the best way possible. We were always hustling, always plotting and planning. Ilana and I were committed, and the web series was our main priority, but without having any real relation or experience to the industry, it would have taken us a bit longer to get there on our own. Sam thought it could and should be on television. There would be no Broad City without her.
It was the spring of 2011 and we’d planned to go out to LA that summer to take a leap and to pitch Broad City as a TV show. I had just quit Lifebooker after I sold three illustrations to AOL as part of their new AOL Artist branding campaign. (We ended up using this as a plotline on the show a few years later, except Abbi makes more money and accidentally draws something for a white supremacist dating site.) I had never sold my illustrations professionally, and the amount of money they gave me was a game changer at the time, enough to allow me to confidently put all my eggs in one basket. I often do that, put all my eggs in one basket—which is the main takeaway I got from my experience attending classes at Atlantic (actually from the required reading, True and False, which I did before I attended). It was something David Mamet wrote. To paraphrase: “If you have a plan B, you’ll inevitably fall back on it.” So, I avoid Plan B’s. That lesson alone was worth the week of confusion at the school because it ingrained in me a belief in doing the thing I was setting out to do fully. I had a little bit of money, enough to quit my job and focus on selling the show. It felt very shaky, but thrilling.
We had made thirty-four web episodes, but we wanted to make one m
ore. A finale. We had put more money into this one, and collaborated with our friend TJ, who was directing. He wanted to use higher-end equipment and raise the bar, visually, to feel more like a short film. We were invested and excited, and figured out a small budget and schedule, and then, almost immediately in the production planning, we experienced a streak of bad luck.
This episode, like most, was set to be shot outside, and bad weather forced us to push the date, which unfortunately made our main guest star unavailable. With a new shoot date, we needed a new guest star. I randomly saw a post online of Amy Poehler speaking at a gala in New York City that week. We had nothing to lose, so we asked her to be in the finale. Well, not technically. We didn’t ask her directly. We didn’t know Amy, so we asked one of our teachers, Will Hines, if he would consider reaching out to her for us. He was in and asked her if she would ever consider making an appearance in our web short. And…she said yes! It was surreal to have Amy there—to meet her for the first time and begin to delicately explain how we were going to pour a crate of oranges on top of her, and then for her to get it and crack up. To make Amy Poehler laugh, well, there aren’t many things better than that. Her laugh (a kind of cackle) is one of the best sounds in existence. We shot with her for an hour in the West Village on a perfect morning in May. The scene is of Ilana and me running frantically through the city on our way to get a cookie; we turn a corner and she runs into frame, joining us on our journey. In hindsight, that scene is exactly what happened, just replace the cookie for a career in comedy.
We went out to LA that summer to sell Broad City as a TV show, just as we had planned, but now we had Amy Poehler attached as an executive producer. After our web series finale came out online, we sent it to Amy, along with an email asking her, casually and gracefully, if she would like to be involved in producing our show. This email was drafted numerous times, the cursor held over the SEND button for dramatic effect. It was wild, we were asking Amy Poehler to produce our show?! (There were so many interrobangs at the end of thoughts, too many to list.) The worst she could do is say no, and we’d head out to LA as planned on our own. But then…she said yes, again! It was my dad’s birthday, so I will always remember this day, May 21, 2011. I was at the beer garden in Astoria for a friend’s birthday. It was the daytime and I guess the party wasn’t poppin’, because I checked my email. There it was, a response from Amy. She wanted to do it, wanted to make Broad City a TV show with us. Obviously, I immediately left the beer garden. I didn’t say goodbye to one person. My first official Hollywood exit? Although a Hollywood exit is more like the opposite of an Irish exit, one where you announce your departure, making sure you, even upon leaving, are the center of attention. I raced outside on the street to call Ilana. I knew she couldn’t have checked her email, or I would have gotten a call by now. She was upstate shooting an indie short and she rushed into the middle of a field to freak out. We screamed. I walked home on air. I danced home. Whether we would ever get to make a TV show or not, Amy had completely validated us, our voice, our potential.
We sold a script for a Broad City pilot to FX and developed that script for about a year. Then, after we got to a place we all felt good, it was handed up to the man in charge, the man we never met, the man at the top. He’d probably never heard of us, the show, or the year we’d been in development, and he wasn’t into it. It was, as we were told, “too girly.” So, they passed. We were devastated. This thing that was once so far-fetched had actually started to come to fruition, and then was abruptly taken away. I’m not a fan of “abruptly,” as it’s almost never a good thing—nothing wonderful happens that suddenly: “And then, the show was abruptly given a greenlight!” “His cancer ended abruptly!” “Then abruptly, they realized their love was meant to be!” Nope, it’s always bad. I’ve had to develop a thicker skin for “abruptlys,” but they still sneak in and catch me off guard.
Call me crazy, or naive, but this development process seems counterintuitive, outdated, and like a complete waste of time. Do I sound annoyed or heated by this snub, over six years later? Maybe, but maybe because I’ve been in the game a minute now and it keeps happening like that. Development for development’s sake. Hard work kept at a certain level, aimed and focused in the direction of what the big boss’s reaction might be. All to please one person. I suppose that’s the vision of any given network, but that’s a tough battle to win. Amy was our saving grace during this time—reminding us that we didn’t want to make the show at a place that treated us like a bad boyfriend. She said we’d find a home for it, somewhere that really wanted it, and she was right. I am so thankful FX passed, because we then took our misunderstood, “girly” script over to Brooke Posch and Kent Alterman at Comedy Central and they got it and us completely. That year in development taught us so much about the business and about how easily things can end. The doors that have been shut, the ones I’ve walked away from, sad, frustrated, and depleted, have always somehow led to the other doors, the ones I didn’t see right away, the ones that opened so many others. I have to remember this more often.
The six years between then and now have been completely transformational. We were so extremely green in the industry, so inexperienced and wide-eyed. We had never written for TV, never “broken” a story (where you crack the plot, the twists and turns in a script, etc.), never worked with a team of writers or within a strict time line of twenty-one minutes and fifteen seconds. Usually, to break the rules, one must learn the rules, but we didn’t have any time to learn the rules. Our early episodes didn’t follow a formula (they still usually don’t); they were messy and raw, sharply focused on idea, and fueled by instinct. The show has always operated from Ilana’s and my gut feelings. Not really knowing how the game works has allowed us to stay in it, to play it exactly how we want to. Broad City has been a complete education in every aspect of making television, of telling stories, creating a team and putting our heads together to dream up a whole world. The editing, the sound, the color, the communication between the network, our producers. Funneling our vision and other people’s thoughts and feedback down to the last frame. It truly is a team sport, and we have the best team in town.
But it’s my relationship with Ilana that I cherish most. We have such a strong partnership and have learned how we work most efficiently: I need coffee, she needs tea. When we’re stressed, I pace around and use a weird neck massager I bought online that everyone makes fun of me for, and she knits. When we’re writing together she types, because she’s faster and better at grammar. We actually FaceTime when we’re not in the same city and are constantly texting each other ideas for jokes or observations to potentially use (I recently texted her from Asheville: girl with flip-flops tucked into one strap of tank top). Looking back now at over ten years of doing comedy and running a business with her I can see how our collaboration has expanded and contracted. But it’s the problem-solving aspect of this industry, the producing, the strategy, the realizing that we could put our heads together and figure out the best solution, that has made our relationship and friendship what it is. Because that spills into everything. We both have individual careers now, but those other projects have only been motivating and inspiring to each other and the show. We bring back what we’ve learned on the other sets, in the other negotiations, in the other writers’ rooms or press situations. I’m very lucky to have jumped into this with Ilana Rose Glazer, the ballsy, curly-haired, openhearted, nineteen-year-old girl that cracked me up that night at the corner of the bar at McManus. So many wonderful things have happened since we began working together, but there are a lot of confusing, life-altering things in there too, and it’s such a relief to have someone who completely understands the good and the bad.
There’s a look that Ilana and I have given each other over the last ten years in the middle of big moments, a silent but knowing, How did we get here, how is this actually happening?!: Catching our breath onstage at the first Broad City Live at UCB, in the middle of shooting that web episode with Amy and
our initial breakfast meeting with her, in between details as we pitched the show to networks, moments later as we stole sodas and snacks from those network kitchens, the first day of every season’s writers’ room when we look across the table at our best friends right there with us, seeing Mike Perry’s illustrated titles come to life for the branding of the show, when we knew we’d found the theme song (“Latino and Proud” by DJ Raff), when we saw the Broad City ads on the subway or painted on the side of a building on Lafayette Street, flying business class and sipping whatever orange juice drink they give you for free, when we saw Susie Essman next to Ilana on-screen, as we met Gloria Steinem or RuPaul, when Bill Cunningham took a photo of Ilana in a tuxedo as we filmed us riding down Fifth Avenue on Citi Bikes, when we shot on top of the Empire State Building in the rain, watching our real moms prepare to shoot a scene in which they flip us off, as we danced on our float through the Pride parade, as Hillary Clinton walked onto our set, and during every handshake we give each other before we step or dance out onto any stage—that look is always there, a reminder of how far we’ve come, together.
I often wonder what the show and our lives would be like if we hadn’t used our real names. In the pilot script we did for FX, my name was Carly, and Ilana’s, Evelyn. I can’t remember why we changed them from our own (it was Abbi and Ilana in the web series) when we originally sold the show, but I imagine it was to separate the characters from ourselves, to have a divide. We were in the office one day working on revisions, now teamed with Comedy Central, and one of our producers, Tony Hernandez, came in to tell us how strongly he felt we should use our real names, that so far, at least in the web series, using our real names was what made it feel so authentic. We agreed and changed them back. It would be Abbi and Ilana. A blessing and a curse for me personally. I’m quieter than my character, more shy—an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. It’s the most flattering and affirming compliment in the world to have people believe my creation to be true, but a jarring realization to find, when I meet fans, that for as long as Broad City goes on, I’m living two lives, side by side. It’s ironic that gaining some fame and success, that being known, makes the waves of insecurity and loneliness wilder and harder to navigate than ever before. It’s uncharted territory for me, but it comes with the game. And I came to play.
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