Hello everyone and welcome back to People Do Want to Know
podcast. If you are watching this and
you're looking at me and wondering why I look so nice,
it's because I'm going on a date.
But that's neither here nor there.
Today's episode is fun, light hearted and fast-paced featuring
Jill Kargman. Jill is a writer and actress
born in New York City. After graduating Yale in three
years, she worked in magazines with articles published in
Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, GQ and many others.
She went on to become a New York Times bestselling author of 12
books, including Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut and Mom Zillas,
which was the basis of her scripted comedy The odd mom out,
currently streaming on Peacock. Randomly.
I want to add that I'm having Andy Buckley from the office on
my go. You will enjoy season and he
happened to be Jill's Co star in the show odd mom out.
It's a small world. Jill has appeared on The Tonight
Show with Jimmy Fallon, late night with Seth Meyers, Jimmy
Kimmel Live and as a contributor to the Drew Barrymore Show and
the Today Show. She's also the Tony nominated
producer of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway, which is a
musical I liked so much that I went to see it twice, once with
Eddie Redmayne and the other time with Adam Lambert.
She lives in Manhattan with her husband and her three grown
kids, and her new film Influence will be out in theaters on May
8th. I actually knew of Jill's
husband, Harry Kargman before I knew of Jill because of his
company, Cargo. Since I work at Adtech full time
and Cargo is in that industry, I had heard of him and the company
before. Another coincidental connection
with Jill. In this episode, Jill and I
discuss her movie coming out this week and her energetic life
story. What's funny is Jill's writing
is exactly like her speaking voice and it has such a clear,
resonant feel to it. It's so awesome.
She's so funny and real and I hope you love her as much as I
did. Please enjoy this episode, Jill.
Hello. Hi, welcome to People.
Do you want to Know podcast? Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited to chat. Please tell us about yourself.
What do you do and how did you get there?
I am a 51 year old Jewess from New York City.
My family is Sephardic on my mom's side, Ashkenazi on my
dad's side. They're Holocaust survivors and
came to New York in the 50s. My grandparents met and married
in Paris and moved to New York. My mom went to the Li SE
Francais. She was in a very tight knit
Orthodox Jewish community where she had to sit upstairs at
temple. They weren't allowed to get bat
mitzvahs. She and her sisters couldn't get
bat mitzvahs. And she kind of like broke free
of the ortho world when she married my atheist Jewish dad
whose family had been here for like 200 years.
So together they made me. And I was born in 74 when New
York was kind of bankrupt and there's a lot of crime.
But I had a really great childhood.
I was given so much rope. It's almost crazy.
Like you'd be arrested today for the shit that I was allowed to
do, like get a bus pass and subway tokens at 8 years old and
go anywhere I want. So I just had like free range
and I would spend my allowance on Tower Records vinyls.
And I have really hashtag blessed childhood, except that,
you know, our car window was smashed a lot.
Not because we are Jews, just because, like, your basic crime.
Yeah. So I really had a great
upbringing. I decided I want to be a writer.
I guess in college, I was always acting, but I felt like I don't
want to be an actress because you have to, like, blow fat
casting directors or something. And I wound up wanting to work
in magazines, which were a bigger deal then.
You're young so you don't know that, but they used to be big
and fat. Not the pamphlets you see today.
So I worked in magazines. I worked at Harper's Bazaar
intern and then started writing for a whole bunch of magazines
and then started writing books when I got married and had my 3
kids. So my husband Harry and I met on
a blind date set up by our Jewish grandmothers, and they
played bridge together for 50 years.
So we're what I call shtetl chic.
It's like yenta, actual yentas. And I thought he was going to be
like a fogly troll, but he was adorable and awesome and the
best dad. And then we have three kids,
Sadie, Ivy and Fletch, and that's who I am, I guess.
I want to shout out your husband.
So I work in ad tech full time and I'm very familiar with this
company. They've actually tried to
recruit me to work there and it's.
Cargo with AK they always seek out the best so you must be the.
Best. Well, thanks.
Listen, I'll take it, OK. You know, I'm interested to
know. A lot has changed in New York,
especially in the last few years.
Talk to me about what that experience has been like for
you, especially now that you have kids that are going to
school. I know that a year or two ago
you made a difficult decision to move your son to a different
school because he had experienced anti-Semitism and
you felt like the school didn't handle it adequately.
Yeah, it was actually 20/19. It was.
He was little. I mean, he was in middle school
and a kid in his class, the parents are like, you know,
RedState southern people. The kid said they both ran for
class president and my son won. That's why like it was picked up
in some places online like that. He was bullied.
He wasn't bullied. He was class president.
He won the class presidency. And the other kid when he lost,
he was upset and just sore lashed out at my son and said
well, God sent Hitler to kill the Jews because you nailed
Jesus to the cross. So I totally like flip my shit.
I was really upset. And the reason I was upset and
aside from the fact that that happened is that the kid wasn't
punished. He had to miss a field trip and
write like a paragraph on why it's not OK to say that.
But he never gave it to us. Like he never wrote anything to
us. And in the grade above us a kid
said the N word and was expelled, rightfully so in my
opinion. But I went to the headmaster at
the time and said, OK, what's the difference?
And he was like, well, it's just different.
And I said, how I'd love to know if you could break that down for
me. And he had no answer.
And I just didn't feel like they had our back.
And so we applied out in July. I mean, anyone who knows New
York Independent Schools knows that's not a thing.
Like, you can't switch schools out of the admission cycle.
But I was desperate and just like called every school and
ours may it created a spot for him like they they had the fire
Marshall give permission for one more desk and I could just cry
thinking about it because they saved us.
It was such they just had our back and they were wonderful and
welcoming, but I didn't feel like I could send him back and
he was sad he didn't want to leave, but I didn't want him
there anymore. How are you having these
conversations with your kids today, especially in light of
what's happening in the Jewish world?
Right. I think, well, now they're
older, they're now they're 2219 and 18.
So they see it with their own eyes and they know that, you
know, I am not crazy about the Israeli government, not crazy
about our government, but I believe Israel has the right to
exist. I've been a Zionist my whole
life and you know, that there's just no room for anti-Semitism.
And so, yeah, they stand up for themselves.
My girls had like encampments and free Palestine people in
their school and they just walked right by in their black
tie dresses on the way to a party.
And they sort of said, mom, don't get upset.
What you see in the media, like these people really have no
friends and they feel part of something now.
So it doesn't bother us. It shouldn't bother you.
So then I just like didn't really care because they framed
it that way. But and my son, you know, he's
going off to college. I'm not worried about him.
He's like 6-4 Jew. A catch.
Yeah, he's a really tall Jew. That's awesome.
Throughout your career, you've kind of told all these different
stories that I feel like center around being a mom.
Yeah. How?
Why? Well, I feel like I loved
writing for magazines and I did celebrity interviews and I did
novels too, but I feel like I really found my voice when I was
just telling the truth about my life and the novel that was sort
of the what joined those two chapters was mom Zilla's where
that's, you know, right what you know that I had three kids in
four years. So that was kind of, you know,
reshaking the Etch A Sketch and it was still me, but I felt like
I was navigating this new world. And so when I wrote that book
and I saw the response to IT and people, it was my only book that
was in like 14 languages. I would hear from women all over
the world that felt less alone and less like they were sort of.
Even though you feel so lucky that you have these kids, you
definitely feel like you're drowning in your life a little
bit when you have them, at least the way I did without help at
that time. But I just I started writing the
truth kind of rather than hiding behind characters.
And then when my show got made, it's on Peacock odd mom out.
I felt like, yes, it's sort of a fictionalized version of me at
28, but I felt like it was the most pure, you know, I always
say balsamic reduction of myself because it felt honest rather
than using what I'm using characters to say what I wanted
to say. So, you know, my number one
thing in my career, everything is it always comes back to my
family. Like that's just to me, the most
important thing. None of the stuff I do, even
though it's fulfilling, it doesn't come close to what my
husband and kids are. So I just, I don't know, it's
sort of like they they one feeds the other in terms of
inspiration. But you know, in my new movie,
it's not so much about the kids. It's more, you know, because
they're older now. So I have my more time back to
myself, more leisure time, but they're always kind of with me
and I hear their what they would say and they're way funnier than
I am, so they're always inspiring me.
Just like a word for that. I think there's like adolescence
when you go from, like when you have puberty and it's an
irreversible process. And then when you have children,
you also experience a process that you don't go back from.
And I forget what the word is, but once you become a mom,
that's like a one way kind of road and you're never the same
person as you were before you had kids.
It's so true. It's so true.
But I also feel like I was, I had a really strong personality
before then, so I wasn't going to let the noise sway me about
what you have to do and cut all the grapes in half and like
purell yourself 57 times. And like there's just a lot of
people telling you what to do. And I already had been a fully
formed person in order to be like, thanks but fuck off.
Like do not tell me what to do with my kids.
So I didn't get a swept into it as some people.
I also am from New York, so I had friends here.
It's really hard for some people who are settlers here and
they're meeting mom friends just through the school.
And so that's their community. Whereas I already had my friends
in all different neighborhoods here kind of steeped in.
So I didn't feel like unlike the character in the book where
everybody there's this mom world.
I didn't. I wasn't.
That wasn't like a tsunami that swept me away because I had my
own roots from growing up here. So if it was hard for me and I'm
from here, I can only imagine what it's like if you move here
and you're trying to find your way.
Let's talk about your upcoming film Influenced.
I thought it was so delightful and fun.
And just like that, it gave me this nostalgia of what I felt
when I watched ROM coms and like, comedy movies in the early
2000s. And I was really missing that.
And you gave me that throughout your film.
And just like the character, like Danielle, you know, from
Long Island is just quintessential Jewish mom vibe.
I want to kind of get into your world of like, how did you
decide to make this film? Why now?
What is your message with it? I want to know everything.
Well, first of all, thank you. That's exactly what I was going
for. I really feel like every the
world is very heavy and I grew up watching John Hughes movies
and Allen movies and I just love to laugh and I love a ROM com.
I mean, I feel like it wasn't really planned for quote this
moment in time. The truth is, I I had sold the
TV rights earlier five years ago and at to IFC as 1/2 hour
comedy. And then all my executives got
fired, all three. So I was so upset because I'd
put in so much work and we had done rewrites and notes and they
were like, OK, it's getting greenlit.
This is happening your your next show is coming.
And I thought it was going to be just like odd mom out like
smooth sailing meant multiple seasons.
Nope, never got picked up. So I was despondent.
And then I had like, a small acting role in a movie, and the
director and I were talking and we kind of had hit it off.
And she had seen my show. And she said, would you ever
want to work on something together?
And I said, yeah, sure, I have the screen, this teleplay,
whatever pilot, take a look, see what you think.
But I was sort of toying with the idea of turning it into a
feature. So that's how that happened.
So yeah, I would. I wanted it to be or, you know,
not 2026. I would have hoped that it had
been earlier, but I feel like now I didn't, you know, I
couldn't have forecast the state of the world.
And I feel like it's 88 minutes of just escape.
And that's really all that I want.
In the screenings we've had around the country and then the
New York premiere Sunday, a lot of people said, like, that's
just what I needed. I've been so stressed.
It just, it's an escape. And that's really all I want.
I'm not trying to like, change the fucking world, you know?
How do you hope the film is received?
What do you hope people see in it?
I know you talk about it being an escape but for anyone who
watches the film there are underlying tones of like a
greater moral like your the character.
Your characters relationship with her kids and teaching them
about wealth and happiness and what makes life worth living.
And how to build relationships with your neighbors and with
people who have different life experiences than you.
And how to stop caring about frivolous things like how fancy
your dog Walker is. There is a through line of
something greater and I want to know what it is.
Well, I was really trying to like hot, you know, when you
little kids and you hide the meat in the, in the pasta.
I, I didn't want to like slap people in the face with
morality. I just wanted it to be funny,
but I wanted it to have some heart too.
And I guess I mean, when I look back on it, I realized that for
me, the main overarching moral thing is like, don't be
influenced by influencers, be influenced by your kids or by
whoever you respect that's in your inner circle.
You don't have to look to some billionaire with a private jet
posting about her life, her fabulosity.
I mean, I get it. And my kids follow some people
like that because they feel like it's voyeurism.
They're not. It's not for them.
They're not trying to be that, that it's more almost a cure,
like a morbid curiosity peeking through the keyhole or pulling
back the brocade curtain. But it's not aspirational for my
kids. But for a lot of people it is
aspirational. And they think, wow, I would
love that life. And so the the characters and
yell, you know, she has all these trappings, but you also
see there's loneliness there. So I kind of wanted to show the
difference between what people are posting and their outfits
and tagging everything, and then the loneliness that they might
feel in their penthouse. One of the funny things for me
was seeing the celebrity cameos because when I connected with
your publicist, they, I realized after the fact that they put it
in like the e-mail that like, by the way, this film includes all
these celebrity kind of spottings and cameos.
And I didn't even look at that. And then when I watched it, I
was like, oh, yeah, there's Drew Barrymore.
Yeah. And it was such a fun touch.
And I was like, wait, this is so cool.
How did you think about kind of who to call up and who to
include? Well, I feel like the tone is of
the movie. It can be like odd bomb out, can
be a little cartoonish, like a little hyperbolized.
It's not total reality. Like, so for example, you know,
there's not probably a dog Walker that has like a robot
pooper scooper or whatever and an odd mom out.
You know, I'm hallucinating in synagogue that because I'm so
hungry, we did a Yom Kippur episode fasting and furious, and
I'm hallucinating that the Torah turns into a Turkey acidics.
We're not happy about that. But anyway, you know, I'm just,
I like to be silly. And so to ground it in reality
more, I wanted to put all these cameos as Easter eggs to lend
veracity to New York and this world of the Upper East Side.
So Drew, for example, was married to my brother, so she's
family. But then everyone else, I just
asked favors and I said, you can do it on your phone.
You can do one day whatever it is.
But I have a lot of people that no one outside New York will
know, probably editors and writers and stylists that are
kind of known in the fashion world.
So they play themselves on the red carpet.
But it's just kind of fun because I think New Yorkers will
spot the Easter eggs. Yeah, that's great.
There's also I I saw a lot of the time it's been discussed
that in the movie you're wearing a blonde wig which is like super
opposite from what your style you're.
Like the Angel of darkness. In fact, you called yourself a
goth vampire on one, OK? Many people have called me many
things including that. But yeah, people say I'm Marilyn
Manson and drag whatever. I've always had dark hair and
pale skin but I had skin cancer twice so now I really can't go
in the sun. So like a lot of I mean, I get
so much hate anyway from anti Zionist being like you're an
ugly Jew cunt, Zio whore. But usually what they go for is
you look like a vampire. You're so pale, get a tan, get
whatever. And I'd actually like do not
care. I don't care about any of it.
But I like my pallor. I think it means I'm healthy and
alive and not dead of Melanoma, which I could have been.
So I don't take it as an insult. I don't I'm not getting a spray
tan. Like, we don't all have to be
Britney Spears, you know what I mean?
Fellow pale girly myself, I empathize very much there.
You do have a style though. It's like how you layer black,
different blacks together and like fabrics and patterns.
Where do you think your style comes from?
My mom calls me a Sicilian widow, she said.
I always said I dress like a Sicilian widow, even as a
teenager. I guess just living in New York
and the kind of music I listen to.
What kind of. Music do you listen to?
Metal. I love rock and metal and 9 Inch
Nails, some industrial, but I'm wearing my 9 Inch Nails jacket.
I love Metallica, Queens, the Stone Age, Guns and Roses, but I
feel like that it's more rocker than Widow, but it's all black.
And my, you know, my bat mitzvah present was actually trash and
vaudeville motorcycle jacket right down nearby.
And so I got that at 13. It was the first of many
motorcycle jackets. But I guess, I don't know, I
just love black and spikes and metal.
I'd like lace too, though. I mean, I like the dichotomy of
romance and violence together. I love leather and lace.
I love velvet. And you know, it's just, it's
like that juxtaposition that interests me.
But I feel like being a blonde in this movie was such a
departure that it helps me. We have the Saturday Night Live
hair department. They're on hiatus when we
filmed. So we had the SNL wig team make
the wig Britney and then Corinne the my hair stylist every day.
And it's, it's an HD lace wig. It's like what they use in
Marvel movies. It's super expensive and look
totally real. Yeah, really real.
And it takes a lot of work to put on and off.
There's like a million. I have a wig cap and a million
hairpins. So during lunch hour.
I didn't take it off because it's like a whole process.
You you wear it for the 14 hour days.
So during lunch hour I'd walk around and no one recognized me.
I also was dressed like a hooker and had really, really short
miniskirts, which I never wear. I always wear longer.
I'm basically like Hasidic and. That's the closest we'll ever
see in a shade tool, yeah. That way, that Wick.
Yeah. I mean, it looks more like bitch
whiffs. It's not.
It's not like screaming shuttle. But, you know, I I haven't ran
into a bunch of friends that didn't recognize me.
And then there's like gross people that look at you in a
different way. Like I felt like a rotisserie
chicken on a spit a little bit because I just don't dress that
way. Not that there's anything wrong
with it. You're not like inviting leering
eyes. But I definitely noticed a
change in like gross men and stuff.
Yeah. Like you're being perceived all
the. Time.
Yeah, yeah. There was a scene in the movie
where the character Danielle had a procedure to tighten her
vagina. Yeah.
Is that real? Does that.
Real. I did it.
What? Yeah, I did it.
I had three kids, no C sections, all badge and my friend said I
got re virginized. You get like raped with a
lightsaber. Okay, so it tightens everything
because it's like a. It's like a laser type thing.
It doesn't hurt. It's just like, I guess I don't
really know how lasers work, I'm not a scientist, but it emits
essentially a million tiny, tiny cuts that it sounds gross, but
it tightens the walls or something.
That's like how Morpheus works on your face.
Yeah, I think it's like that. I think it's like that.
It's probably the same technology, but yeah, I did it.
I think it works. So there's no like you.
They don't put you under or anything.
No. Well I think they numb you,
there's like a cream or something.
I can't remember honestly, it was a while ago.
OK, well you heard it here first folks.
You can get re virginized. Real.
Really. I guess I figured why not.
That's fascinating. OK, so you've been going around
kind of now you did an event on 92nd St.
Why? Yeah, it was great.
I had so much fun. It's really great seeing
audiences laugh and get into it finally.
I wanted to get your opinion on like Jewish storytelling in
general for how much of A difficult experience we've had.
In some sense, it has become the golden era of telling Jewish
stories in different ways, and especially in New York, like so
many Jewish characters, Jewish films, Jewish books coming up,
and your movie is Jewish. Very Jewish.
Yeah. It culminates in inbornet
mitzvah. Exactly.
I feel like right now, I mean, listen, we need the dark, hard
stories. We need all of those
testimonials about October 7th, just like we need them about the
Holocaust. But I did a number of Jewish
film festivals around the country and a lot of people said
the same thing like this. All of the content is important,
but you know, a lot is very, very heavy right now and
disturbing. And so mine was one of the only
comedies at one of the festivals and they said, wow, we're so
we're so happy to laugh because we've been crying for three days
with these other screenings. So I'm just trying to, you know,
put I watch all the heavy stuff too.
I actually probably watch more dramas than comedies, but I
wanted to just write something light and fun and not take it
too seriously. Yeah, the last thing that I
could think of that made me feel kind of a similar way was when
I'm thinking of Adam Sandler's movie when his daughters had the
bat mitzvah. That was the the last time I
felt kind of this like lightheartedness, fun, Jewish
vibe. Yeah, I mean, we're niche, but
we're a big niche and I feel like we have other.
There are a lot of gentiles that came to 92nd St.
Y and people who write me on Instagram who want to see it or
already bought tickets. It's playing in 10 cities and
they're not all Jewish cities, you know.
I mean, I guess they're probably Jews in every city, but there
are a lot of Christian people who write who are fans of the
show or whatever because odd Mom out played everywhere.
And I mean, I don't know the the Peacock geography numbers, but I
feel like, you know, there's definitely people of all
backgrounds. It's not like just a private
joke for Jews or something. Do you think the way that the
kids were portrayed in the movie somehow resemble your actual
kids or no? They don't look like my kids.
They look like each other. They're boy, girl twins.
So we wanted, we needed boy, girl twins, which boy girl
actors who looked like each other.
So that was really the goal. And then Justin Bartha has blue
eyes. So we just did the best we could
and they look like they could be siblings, but they don't look
like my kids. Yeah, but I mean, do they act
like your kids? Do you do they resemble in a
more like emotional or? No, no, no.
I think they had a sweetness and a purity to them that New York
City native kids probably don't have.
Like, my kids were a lot edgier. Also, I was, you know, an
irreverent mom. Like, I cursed a lot.
And I I give them a lot of freedom.
And I think the kids in the movie, without giving too much
away, are going through, you know, it changes and struggling
a little bit with this, the pressure of the bar mitzvah,
banay mitzvah, I don't know. My kids didn't luckily have
that. How old were your kids when they
started taking the subway by themselves?
My son was really doing it first.
And I would say like 12, but I was eight.
I was 8. I mean, it's so crazy.
And they were. And I didn't have a cell phone.
My son was the youngest 1 to get a cell phone.
He got it at 12. My girls got it at 13 as bar
mitzvah presents. When I got my first cell phone
when I was 5. Six.
I was 25. How about that?
Because they didn't exist and I'm old as dirt, ready for the
urn. So you don't know this about me,
but I was a child pop star in Ukraine before my family
immigrated to America. No way that is.
So cool. So the reason I had a phone is
because at five years old, I would be out and about, like,
singing on albums at a recording studio.
And then my parents would have to coordinate pickup.
And they, just like, they didn't want to entrust other adults
with me necessarily. They always wanted to give me a
chance to talk to them directly. Because in Ukraine, there's a
lot of like, adults lie. Like adults can take your kid
and do take them somewhere else. Like sex traffic you.
Or like hold you for ransom because they think your family's
rich and they can get money out of.
You OK? But why did they like drop you
off there in the 1st place? Why weren't they like lurking?
It's not about that. It's more that you never know,
like in Ukraine was a developing country in the 90s, there was a
lot of like mafia. Yeah, a lot of corrupt.
Crime and people were being held at ransom, Like, Americans would
travel to the former Soviet Union, get kidnapped and held
for like a bunch of money. And that could happen to
anybody. No rhyme or reason.
That's how people made money. That was part of the life there.
And so my parents could drop me off with a nanny who's
completely safe and reliable. She looks away for five seconds.
Somebody grabs me off the street, Right.
That has nothing to do with the nanny, necessarily.
Scary. Yeah.
And so from a very young age, I had a phone, and I was always
responsible for communicating my needs to my parents, myself.
Somebody could call on my behalf, but they always talk to
me. I called from school myself.
I asked them to pick me up. And I guess that's like the
closest thing to being a New Yorker kid in some sense, but in
a very different way. Did you get out of Ukraine
because you had special abilities as pop *?
Oh, no, I, I had, we were Jewish refugees when we came to
America, and we were very poor. It was far from glamorous.
It was like food stamps, you know, Section 8 housing, ESL.
And you crushed it and look at you now you're.
Crazy. Cool ass studio on the Lower
East Side looking out, it's so badass.
Once a pop star, always a pop star, what can I say?
But I have a lot of like understanding and empathy for
kids that grow up in this kind of fun, lively environment,
especially child performers. I really intimately understand
artists who did it from being a child, even though I'm no longer
that. But the kind of like the
trade-offs that come with that, how you view the world, how you
treat others around you, how you want to be treated.
And that's something that will never go away.
That's why I have a lot of friends who are creatives and
artists, because I just get how it works.
Yeah, you learned at a really young age.
Luckily you were safe and OK and made it through.
A lot of them are really hella fucked up.
Yeah. On the contrast though, my
brother, he was one when we came to America.
So he didn't grow up in Ukraine like I did.
I did 3 grades before we moved. And so he doesn't know, you
know, what it was like to live. I mean, our whole apartment in
Ukraine was probably like two of these rooms.
Wow. And back then, it felt so
normal, like there was nothing small about it.
It's only when we came to America and we were like, wait,
there are larger things. They're drinking fountains.
This is. Not in New York City, well.
I guess 12. In a room in America.
Yeah, because we came to Minnesota, we didn't move to New
York. So for him, it's like a
different world. Like he doesn't understand any
of this. I went to one of the nicest
schools in my town. It didn't have toilets.
It was holes in the ground. You brought your own toilet
paper. Shut up.
Yeah, well. That's like our whole shtick in
America. Growing up in the Cold War as I
did, was like, they have to line up for toilet.
Paper that is correct, that is actually true.
And you know what the running joke is?
Sometimes I ask my parents about their like childhood because
they grew up in the Soviet Union.
They're we're a little bit older than you and my dad, when we
were being bratty with my brother, he would always say
these like horrific things about growing up in the former Soviet
Union. Like if we'd complain about
anything, he'd be like, no, I had to wipe my butt with the
newspaper because they didn't have toilet paper in the former
Soviet Union. And then my mom would look at
him and be like, he didn't, what do you mean?
We had toilet paper? Like, what are you talking
about? And he's like, maybe you had
toilet paper. We did not have to.
And then they'd get into these arguments of like, how who had
it worse and who was poor and how bad it was.
It's a different world. But we're so lucky.
I mean, for them to be able to have kids here and say, do you
know how lucky you are your water fountains in your
beautiful public school? Of course.
You know. This is it's truly the American
dream. And you know, being a Jew whose
family, they experienced so much pain and oppression, granted, I
don't have any Holocaust survivors in my family.
My grandparents, great grandparents, they were either
fighting for the Soviet army or they had moved by then.
So I don't have that experience. But my family experienced pain
of its own kind, of course. And to see how life, how it can
flourish, especially Jewish life in cities like New York, it just
the American dream like this is what we hope to experience.
And it's really the most profound feeling.
I am wondering, you know, what is your message to the Jewish
people in this time? I guess it would just be stay
strong and stay positive. Like you.
I feel like I'm not, you know, prophet of doom or anything, but
there are days is with with this mayor in office and his wife
liking October 7th, you know, celebrating that you can get a
little down and feel like, oh gosh, I grew up never thinking
the Holocaust could happen here and it wouldn't happen in the
same way. But how do we know they're not
going to just start like shooting up?
I have like a squirrel hill every Friday night.
Like it. You just don't know if that all
of this rhetoric will translate to violence.
So I want to try to be more positive and not fear and just
celebrate mitzvahs in your life and, you know, happy occasions
and just Jewish joy, which is really kind of the point of the
movie is like Jewish joy, celebrate each other, celebrate
family, celebrate love and like Lahaya motherfuckers.
Yeah, I had Moshe Davis, who used to serve for Merrick Adams
as the Jewish liaison a week or two ago on my show.
And he was like, go on ceremoniously on Mandani's first
day, obviously, and another Jewish liaison was hired
immediately. Who's like a pro palisade?
Correct. Correct.
And I was asking him, I'm like, you're Orthodox, Like, you walk
around with a keeper, You live on the Upper West Side.
Like, are you concerned for your safety?
And he was like, no, good. And I'm like, Are you sure?
I just got so confused. I was not expecting to hear that
answer. And he was like, this is my
city. Like, there's a Jewish community
here. We have agency, We have control.
No, I'm not scared. And if I'm scared, that means
things are really, really bad and you should not live here.
And I was like, well, how do you know?
How do you know when it's gotten to that point?
And he said, I don't. And what should I choose
instead? Like, what's my alternative,
right? My alternative is to be strong
and proud and positive and show up like and exist.
That's what I do too. But I still have fear.
I mean, I like you. I'll tuck my Jewish star in the
subway, stuff like that. I don't need to.
Be performative. Yeah, right.
It's also because we're women and he's a guy, you know, I
think there's some difference there as well.
But it was so refreshing to hear him say that.
Because it's refreshing. I I want to feel that way.
And I generally do Uptown for sure.
But like, you know, I encounter people, let's say I'm like at
brunch in Bushwick and someone's wearing a kafia.
Like, I just don't want to engage.
I kind of look away. It looks like a swastika to me.
But they're everywhere. They're everywhere.
So you just have to sort of be like, OK, we're not, you know,
not going there. But I think what's nice is for
your movie helps contribute towards getting to a point where
we can feel positive and delighted and optimistic.
And that's wonderful. And I thank you for bringing
this to to the screens instead of something that feels like
doom and gloom and depressing and hopeless.
Thank you. No, I mean those, those are
important too. It's just I, I'm not in a place
in my life where I can watch things that feel like you're
just crying a lot. Like I just want to laugh.
And it's hard for me to sometimes find content that's
fast. This is under an hour and a half
and like silly, like that's just all I want sometimes.
So I hope that people especially like tired moms, you know, you
don't want something heavy. The world's heavy enough and you
feel so protective of your kids. You just want to kind of pull
the escape hatch, so hopefully this will be that for people.
Tell me, how can people connect with you and watch your upcoming
film? You're so nice.
Thank you. It's if you go to the Instagram
is influence dot movie they have they're going to have all the
schedules, all the ticket links for all the theaters it's
playing in. And we open May 8th at the Quad
in New York. I think that night is sold out,
but the 9th and 10th are not yet.
I think they're still seats and it'll be every night.
You know, regular weeknights too, but I'm doing Q&A's after
the weekend screenings, opening weekend, and then my Instagram's
Jill Kargman, and I'll just keep posting that stuff too.
And when I'm coming to your town, I'm coming to Boston.
I know I'm going to LA May 15th to 17th.
It's going to be at the Lemley in Westwood, it'll be at West
Newton Cinema in Boston. I'm going to DC, Chicago,
Philadelphia, so hopefully coming to a city near you.
And I'll just add that if you want to look at funny memes,
Jill shares those as well, for Instagram is very funny.
I am such a meme whore. OK, I have one final question
for you. It's one that I ask every guest
of the show. Who would you like to nominate
for people? Do you want to know?
Oh. That's a good question.
I would like to nominate neurotic Jewish gay Amelia
Adams, who I follow on Instagram and is a friend in real life.
I actually did the ceremony for her wedding to her wife Amanda.
I did not know that. Yes, I officiated and I think
she's really fucking smart. She's Australian, so she has
that perspective on anti-Semitism as well.
But she's she wouldn't probably call herself an activist because
she's just so funny. But she is an activist and she's
a lawyer and brilliant and I think she would make an
excellent guest. And she passed the bar.
Amelia, congratulations. You will be like the 10th guest
to nominate her and really can't wait to have her on.
She's the best, so thank you so much.
Mazel tov, Amelia. Yeah, thank you for doing this.
This has been. My pleasure, thank you for
having me. This is so nice.
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