Broad City co-creators, writers, and stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer worked their way from having a low-budget web series to being the executive producers of their own Comedy Central show…without sacrificing who they are. But they did get some help from Amy Poehler in the process.
Abbi Jacobson, left, Ilana Glazer, right / Via Lane Savage / Comedy Central
One bitter-cold Wednesday night in January on a quiet block of New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater was packed and buzzing with energy as a crowd of twentysomethings rushed to find seats for "Broad City Live," a monthly variety show hosted by 26-year-old Ilana Glazer and 29-year-old Abbi Jacobson.
Those who arrived early headed to the makeshift bar for drinks, while the stragglers scoped out the standing room in the back of the black-box theater. After the lights dimmed and applause broke out, Glazer and Jacobson claimed the stage as Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Something" blasted throughout the sold-out 150-seat theater. They riled up the crowd, dancing around the entire room with their respective moves: Jacobson whipped her hair in audience members' faces, while Glazer stood on a chair to shake her hips. It was funny, weird, and sometimes uncomfortable, but the women never backed down. And eventually, the crowd was on board too.
"I can't believe so many people are here! It's fucking freezing outside!" Glazer shouted when the song ended, tying a sweatshirt around her waist to cover the midriff her cropped T-shirt left exposed.
The two were on the verge of bringing their act to a far bigger stage with a TV show of the same name (sans the "live") on Comedy Central. But, on this night, they're just two friends performing at the improv theater and school that Amy Poehler built before she made her way to Saturday Night Live.
"So…um, we have a TV show," Glazer finally spouted out a little nervously before asking the audience to watch Broad City on Jan. 22. If they didn't have other plans, of course. Then, the pair played an exclusive clip for the crowd that was met with outbursts of laughter.
"Wow, we hadn't heard anybody watch it before," Jacobson replied. "That was emotional."
Broad City is an experimental, ludicrous show in both its live and televised forms, and its outlandish, tomboy characters could change the game for women in comedy. But all Glazer and Jacobson can do now is keep working, and wait.
The Comedy Central series Broad City follows caricatures of Glazer and Jacobson through the daily absurdities and annoyances of being young and broke in New York City.
Jacobson's on-screen Abbi is the straight-edged older sister type to Glazer's on-screen Ilana, the younger, crazier one, always pushing to get her way or teasing Abbi over her uptight, routine life.
In the opening scene of the pilot, which aired Wednesday night, Ilana jokes that Abbi is so anal-retentive, she probably even schedules when she masturbates. "Schedule when I jack off?" Abbi replies with a laugh, before discreetly removing a Post-it note from her vibrator that reads "Tuesday, 7 a.m."
In Broad City's upcoming third episode, a split-scene cold open takes the viewer through a full day in the life of each character: Abbi scrubs a toilet, while Ilana smokes weed and passes out on one; and, later in the day, Abbi goes to sleep early, while Ilana goes out dancing.
But the TV show's characterization of Abbi and Ilana as hot messes are hardly the women who arrived promptly for breakfast at a Midtown hotel restaurant a week after their UCB show. "Our characters are extremely exaggerated versions of ourselves," Jacobson noted. "Ilana is a little wilder than Abbi, which was based in reality at some point."
The series' characters are really more representative of who Glazer and Jacobson were when they first developed the idea for a web series six years ago while studying at the famed UCB theater.
A few years later, they'd grown frustrated with the hierarchal nature of the New York City comedy scene. Glazer performed stand-up wherever she could, and Jacobson had a one-woman show, but they were auditioning for spots on competitive in-house improv teams at UCB and not getting placed. Though they formed their own improv group with some friends, they didn't have much to show for all their effort.
So, they decided to create something of their own.
Glazer and Jacobson wrote and filmed a two-minute video about asking a homeless man for change, which launched an 18-episode season of the Broad City web series. It was extremely low-budget, and all their collaborators were friends from UCB. They had no release schedule, so episodes came out sporadically over the course of a few months. Despite the scrappy production, the videos were making waves online. Soon, people Glazer and Jacobson didn't know were watching the show.
They were onto something, and they knew it.
The pair approached the second season of the Broad City web series more professionally and decided to make what Glazer called "a TV show for the web." The women met in advance to write all eight episodes, form a tight production schedule, and pen a TV pilot on top of it all.
Glazer and Jacobson had strategized the second season so meticulously that when it came to film the finale, it dawned on them to think bigger. And a friend of Abbi's suggested approaching Amy Poehler.
Although they'd never met the now-Golden Globe-winning actress before, they approached Will Hines, a teacher and performer at UCB who knew Poehler from the theater, to ask if she'd be interested in starring in an episode. He asked Poehler. And she said yes.
That was the real moment everything changed.
