Rachel Feinstein Will Make You Laugh August 27 in East Hampton

Comedian Rachel Feinstein, who has been on a steady trajectory to the top of her game in recent years — culminating in her hysterical 2024 Netflix special Big Guy — is coming to The Room at The Clubhouse in East Hampton (174 Daniels Hole Road) next Wednesday, August 27. Presented by Governor’s Comedy Club, the show will bring the laughs as Feinstein regales the audience with tales from her chaotic life as the wife of a NYC firefighter and mother to a smart young daughter, as well as her experiences as a successful working comedian.

Named one of Variety’s “10 Comics to Watch” in 2024, Feinstein has been on a long list of great television shows and movies, featuring multiple productions with her best friend and fellow comic Amy Schumer (Inside Amy Schumer, Life & Beth, Trainwreck, to name a few), Steven Soderbergh’s Red Oaks on Prime Video, Judd Apatow’s HBO comedy Crashing with comedian Pete Holmes, and even the blockbuster Grand Theft Auto V video game, where she played Michele Makes, host of the Chattersphere talk show. She’s also had three fantastic specials, including two with Comedy Central, and her standup clips have millions of views on YouTube.

The Queens resident is thoroughly relatable, extremely funny and tells stories from a life filled with wonderful characters who are at once endearing and utterly vexing, like her hippy dippy mother and father, among others. Here, Feinstein spoke with Dan’s Papers about her upcoming show, visiting the Hamptons and what she’s working on now.

A Conversation with Rachel Feinstein

Have you spent any time out in the Hamptons before?

I’ve done gigs there and stuff like that, and hung out there with friends a bit, but this will be fun. It will be a nice vacation. I’m going to bring my whole family — in case anybody has any suggestions of what I could do with a 5-year-old while I’m there. I won’t bring her to the show, though. She can’t hear those things.

Your Netflix special Big Guy, which I loved by the way, focused a lot on your marriage. What’s the focus of your new material?

I have a lot of stuff about parenting and basically an hour about me wildly failing at different aspects of my life in a fun-loving way. So there’s definitely plenty about marriage and relationships, and childhood and dysfunction, and dating alcoholics, and I sort of go back into how I came to this place, and being a parent as well.

I love all the stuff about your mother. It’s great. Does being a mother now change the way you look at your own mother?

Definitely. Yeah. I realized that I don’t understand how she had three kids. I’m like, no wonder they were a little bit jacked up. I’m unwell, and I have one kid. I’m barely pulling anything off. So, yeah, I definitely see that. But also, it’s funny to see the choices that she made. Sometimes you’re like, oh, I’m not that bad. I’ll overthink everything with my daughter, but I’m like, oh, when we threw a tantrum, my mom would just put us in the backyard. The answer to everything: Let’s just put them in the backyard. And then the neighbor behind us would come in, bang on the door, and he’d be like, “Karen, come on. When are you gonna get her?” She’s like, “Give me an hour, Bruce, I’m making a casserole.”

My mom said, in the freest voice you could ever have, “We never discussed how we parented you guys. Now they discuss all this. We’ve never had any discussions about it.”

I don’t know which is better, oddly.

I get a real kick out of your mother, at least your portrayal of your mother.

She is that person. I kind of blend her voice with all of her friends, so everything is true. She just says it in a slightly different accent. All exact quotes.

Does your mother like you telling stories about her?

My mom likes it when I talk about her. I feel like she thinks it kind of gives her street cred because I talk about her empathizing more with Black teenagers than with us, or her desire that I marry a Nigerian lesbian or a genderless Kenyan composter or whatever I say in the special. … Her staff used to come out when she was a social worker in Southeast DC, and they would all come out, and she’d be like, “Don’t forget to put me in your skit.”

As a comedian, do you find yourself ever making decisions that are maybe not the best because it might be funny or become a funny story?

I mean, I don’t think I do that, but for whatever reason, make bad decisions naturally and zoom through red flags… I’m really clumsy and really forgetful, and I do just ludicrous things. People are always saying to me, “What were you thinking? Like, walk me through what you were thinking when you made these series of choices,” and I’m like, “I wasn’t.” … I do things that are so insane that people have always openly scolded me. I get scolded throughout my day. I thought I’d reach an age where I stopped getting scolded, but everybody scolds me, so I feel like I just naturally don’t think things through, so I end up in ludicrous situations.

When you go to somewhere for a show, like out here, do you tend to do any material based on where you are at the time?

Yeah. We’ll be out there. So I try to take it in a little bit before I go on stage. You have to, because now that I have a kid, you have to go out with them. Now I understand why people get them out. You know, you have to get them out or you’ll lose your mind inside, or they’ll just actively destroy everything. So, yeah, so I like to do that, and I’m excited to see it. Honestly, I never been to The Room, but I’m really looking forward to this. I hurl myself to a lot of disgusting places regularly. So to just have a beautiful show in the Hamptons, and I can bring my family and relax — it’s a perfect way to end the summer.

Visit clubhousehamptons.com for tickets and info. Learn more about Rachel Feinstein at rachel-feinstein.com.