Cameron Esposito’s Bold New Sitcom; Why Two Wives Are Better Than One
Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher are on fire. Along with regularly sold out shows, the comedy power couple host “Put Your Hands Together”, a weekly stand-up podcast through Feral Audio. For their next project, they’re debuting a brand new series. “Take My Wife” is loosely based on their own personal lives together as a married lesbian couple. In the show, we get an insight into what their day-to-day experiences are like at home as well as their lives as stand up comics.
The show is hosted through Seeso, NBC’s comedy-exclusive network where you can watch stand up specials, original shows, classics and more. Cameron and Rhea are executive producers along with Scott Aukerman and David Jargowsky. I had the chance to talk with Cameron about her new show, Seeso, and what it’s like to make a groundbreaking series.
Take My Wife premieres August 11 exclusively on Seeso.
The Interrobang: The name, Take My Wife, is it from when stand up’s say, “Take my wife, for example?”
Cameron Esposito: Yes, exactly. It’s like that old vaudevillian form joke except there’re two wives! That’s what makes it new.
The Interrobang: What kind of problems did you run into when making this show?
Cameron Esposito: Well, you know, making a show in and of itself is always a bumpy process. There’s always a zillion things that go wrong. Rhea is a graphic designer and her character on the show is a graphic designer and our opening titles somehow were, um, having some hijinx where they weren’t laying right and Rhea sat down and redesigned the opening titles to overlay on her face, where she’s also working as a designer. In terms of the actual process on this show, we were so lucky because Seeso…bought a live stand up show from us. We asked if we could write some sketches to go in between the stand up where people would come home with Rhea and I and see what it’s like after the show. When we got in the writers room to write those sketches we realized that going home with us from the show was really what we had the most passion about. We went back to Seeso and asked them for more money and basically to finance an entirely new show than we sold to them. They believed the project so much that they said yes. Its an outlier, that’s not usually how it goes. But, they have been great to us. They wanted to make the show as much as we did.
Also the process, the entire process of piloting, shooting, editing, casting, every part of the show took six months because they are a new service. They don’t have the same mandates that they have to satisfy. They don’t have advertisers that they have to make sure see the show before it goes out. They also have generally smaller budgets and so there’s a little bit less at stake which is actually really good for creators because it means you go through less filters. When there’s a giant budget, that’s also awesome because you get to make, like, this really high concept or huge thing or you have all this money behind you…but it also means networks have a lot to lose so they really have to refine you and shape you. So, the really positive side of basically doing indie filmmaking for television is that there’s so much more freedom available. Especially for first time creators.
The Interrobang: How much of the show is true with the transition from Rhea’s graphic design career to stand up?
Cameron Esposito: The actual details in the show, the plot of how it goes down, the story points are written and created for the show, but the themes that are present-you know Rhea had a full career and I basically asked her to leave that career to devote her time and energy to our budding family business, which was stand up. I had been doing stand up exclusively for several years at that point, so I was at a little bit of a different place. I looked at how much money I was making and how much our family business was bringing in and I felt that we could confidently transition to supporting both of us with just comedy. It was definitely a huge leap of faith for both of us to assume that that would continue to be true and to not have any money coming in. I have had day jobs and I worked in education and that all went away pretty early in my comedy career and I was still pretty young…Rhea had like a full other career. You just get to a point where you reach your 30’s and it starts to seem really bonkers to quit your job and throw yourself into the wind, because you expect to have certain things in your life. It was as hard as it is in the show, it was as much of a challenge, but it was the right thing for us.
The Interrobang: How did you decide how much of your personal lives you wanted to share on the show?
Cameron Esposito: We knew we wanted to create some anonymity for the people in our lives because it’s really important that since we are a real married couple, that we couldn’t just write exactly what happened to us and have those people look exactly how they look. That’s a really great way to lose all your friends. But, also we had some differing opinions on what our relationship should look like on screen. I wanted there to be nudity in the show, there’s a lot of things I was really into and Rhea was like, “You are being bonkers.” So, I’m actually really grateful to her. I think what Rhea realized is that the heart and soul of the show is really just that we’re a couple that does stand up. There’s something very traditional sitcom about like, this couple [and] here’s what their home life is like. There’s almost a King of Queens element to that, but through like a totally new lens like cinematic shots and single camera and you know, really different subject matter. I think Rhea was right to try and make it seem a little bit more in the traditional comedy sphere in terms of what’s on screen.
The Interrobang: Because you guys are a lesbian couple and you’re women, do you feel pressure to be political or do you invite it with open arms?
Cameron Esposito: Every one does stand up from their own perspective. Everyone does. So, a woman getting on stage and talking about what it’s like to be a woman sometimes stands out. Because, why can’t she talk about just what it’s like to live in the world? Well, she’s a woman living in the world. That impacts every moment of her day and the way that she sees every topic that she’s talking about. And the men that she’s performing along side, especially if they’re straight white men, their perspective is often invisible because it’s the majority perspective. But they’re still speaking from their experience, it’s just that there’s this assumed universal appeal like, “Oh, everyone understands that I love, you know, whatever it is. Drinking beer at this time of day on a Thursday.” There’s, for some reason, this presumed invitation for everyone else to -not for some reason, we know the reason. Majority culture often requires minority voices to relate to it, but it doesn’t go the other way. So like, we’re supposed to watch movies and if there’s a man on screen we’re supposed to see ourselves in that man or see ourselves with that man. Dudes are not often challenged to do the same thing. So, if there’s a woman on the screen, you could either imagine yourself with her or you could imagine yourself as her and I think the “as her” is very limited. We’re just not taught to do that. Men are just not taught to do that. So every woman is living a political existence whether or not she realizes it because we live in a world right now that treats women as if they are less than men. So just getting up on stage and talking into a microphone, it doesn’t matter what you say. You’re claiming space and that is beautiful and political and nobody should shame you for that.
The other side of that is that you’re in the majority and you have to make yourself stand out because the things that you say are accepted as general truths. So therefore, how do you sell a product that’s interesting and new? So, there’s always a challenge and every comic has to figure out how to make the career that they want.
Make sure to check out Take My Wife on Seeso premiering August 11th!
Read more comedy news.
Sarah Jacobs
Latest posts by Sarah Jacobs (see all)
