WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Iliza Shlesinger at Live! Casino in Maryland (Part 1)

Marylanders will soon have a chance to see one of the funniest standup comedians working today.

Iliza Shlesinger cracks up The Hall at Live! Casino & Hotel in Arundel Mills, Maryland, on Friday.

“This is the ‘Get Ready Tour,’ you guys are getting ready with me because I’m shooting my brand new special with Amazon, it’ll be my seventh hour in November in Salt Lake City,” Shlesinger told WTOP. “I’m polishing that hour and I’m also capitalizing on those ‘get ready with me’ videos that people like to make online like, ‘Get ready with me while I journal, have a green juice and lie about everything.’ It’s girly, it’s fun and that’s the special.”

Born in New York City in 1983, She mostly grew up in Dallas, Texas, before studying film at Emerson College in Boston, where she joined sketch-comedy groups on campus. Shlesinger then moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in standup comedy, gaining national notoriety after winning the sixth season of NBC reality competition “Last Comic Standing” (2008).

From there, she began cranking out a string of Netflix standup specials, including “War Paint” (2013), “Freezing Hot” (2015), “Confirmed Kills” (2016) and “Elder Millennial” (2018), which explored the vastly different life experiences of those on opposite ends of a generation defined as being born between 1981 and 1996.

“Comedy is about bringing people together by pointing out the differences,” Shlesinger said. “Elder millennials are where you’re not Generation X but you’re also not a younger millennial, so I wanted to point out, ‘While I’m not one of you, I am an elder, so I do have the life advice and I do remember things that people younger than me may not have a context for.’ All any generation wants is to leave their mark and get an apology from the one before.”

Now, she’s ushering in a new generation by parenting alongside her chef husband Noah Galuten. Their 2018 marriage was the subject of her fifth Netflix standup special “Unveiled” (2019), while her sixth and most recent Netflix special “Hot Forever” (2022) dropped before the birth of her two children in 2022 and 2024.

“I took a step back to actually give birth to a child, which I know we like to fault women for doing that, but you know, I’m doing my best,” Shlesinger said.

Elsewhere on TV, Shlesinger has hosted the game shows “Excused” (2011) and “Separation Anxiety” (2016), the late-night talk show “Truth & Iliza” (2017), the sketch-comedy series “The Iliza Shlesinger Sketch Show” (2020) and the stand-up comedy series “Iliza’s Locals” (2023), highlighting the best rising standup comedians.

“I’m always trying to create things from an honest and funny place and flex different muscles,” Shlesinger said.

She even transitioned into movies, starring with Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne in “Instant Family” (2018) and Wahlberg again in “Spenser Confidential” (2020), before writing and starring in her own rom-com “Good on Paper” (2021). Her most acclaimed film remains the indie drama “Pieces of a Woman” (2020), playing the sister of Vanessa Kirby, who earned an Oscar nomination and won best actress at the Venice International Film Festival.

“It’s always great to go to a set where you are the least experienced person; all you have to do is shut your mouth, watch other people and let them make you better,” Shlesinger said. “If you’re doing standup, it’s all me, I do everything; but when you go on set with people like Vanessa or Ellen Burstyn, it’s an absolute chance to get to learn something. As an actor, I want to be around people who are better than me. Standup is such a solo sport.”

WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Iliza Shlesinger at Live! Casino in Maryland (Part 2)

Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:

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