Teterboro Airport is located just twelve miles from midtown Manhattan in that uniquely unlovely part of New Jersey that gives the state a bad name. But it is the place one must go to if one is lucky enough or rich enough or famous enough to fly private. On a Thursday morning in late April, I meet Amy Schumer and her entourage in a lounge there to board Schumer’s rent-a-jet as she heads off on tour for the weekend, and as she walks through the lobby toward me to say hello—in yoga pants, a plaid flannel shirt, and an orange ski hat—her younger sister, Kim Caramele, who is trailing behind her, peels off and takes a seat on a sofa far across the room. Schumer sits down facing me and then suddenly notices her sister in self-imposed exile. “Kimberly! It’s weird for you to be sitting over there. We’re not doing an interview.” Kim walks over to introduce herself, and as she is saying hello to me, Amy says,
“Shut up! I’m being interviewed!”
This reminds me of a famous Don Rickles gag. One night Rickles was having dinner in a swank restaurant with a pretty lady when he ran into Frank Sinatra and persuaded him to come say hello to impress his date. “Hello, Don. How are you?” said Sinatra as he dutifully dropped by their table, to which Rickles barked, “Can’t you see I’m eating, Frank?!” I bring this up to point out that, while the subject of much of Schumer’s stand-up material is radically, shockingly modern, in some ways she has more in common with the comics of stand-up’s golden years than she does with those of her own generation. Indeed, just after Joan Rivers’s death in 2014, Schumer gave a hilarious and moving speech in which she essentially said that Rivers was the reason she got into comedy. “I carried her with me for as long as I can remember,” she said that night onstage, choking up.
“I’m probably like 160 pounds right now and can catch a dick whenever I want.”
“All my friends are getting married. I guess I’m just at that age where people give up.”
Turns out, Schumer knows that Rivers was my friend for 25 years, and as soon as we get settled on the plane, it’s the first thing she mentions. “When I heard she had died, I was like, ‘Well, that’s not possible.’ It really fucked me up.” Just then, our flight attendant, Sahel, comes over to tell Schumer that they have her favorite Chardonnay onboard. “This is not a Chardonnay kind of day for me,” says Schumer, who has a nasty cold. I tell her about the time Rivers was on an overnight flight, and as it was about to land, the flight attendant leaned down to offer her breakfast. “Chicken and eggs?” said Rivers. “On the same plate? What is that, the mother-daughter special?” Schumer lets out a big laugh, as it is classic Joan but it is also a joke that could easily have come from Schumer’s brain. She is lightning fast and whip smart, a New York Jew with a copy of the Times tucked into her bag. Her worldview is surprisingly broad for someone who has made a career out of playing “the drunk slut” for laughs and talks about her pussy so much that anyone is now free to say that word on her network.
Despite the fact that Schumer’s much-anticipated memoir, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, for which she received a reported $9 million advance, comes out next month; and that her Comedy Central show, Inside Amy Schumer, has in its four seasons changed the game of television and its rules (see above); and that Trainwreck, the Judd Apatow–directed comedy that she wrote and starred in, catapulted her to the top of Hollywood’s A-list, she is, above all else, a stand-up comic—arguably the most exciting and successful one working today. At the moment, she is in the midst of a six-week tour, filling 15,000-seat arenas, trying out new material and perfecting her act so that when she headlines Madison Square Garden for the first time, on June 23—the benchmark for any comedian who’s reached the big leagues—she will be battle-ready.
"I get labeled a sex comic. But if a guy got up onstage and pulled his dick out, everybody would say, ‘He’s a thinker.'"
Schumer and I are sitting in plush leather seats facing each other. Kim, who is three and a half years younger and has brown curly hair, is across the aisle. The sisters laugh at each other’s jokes, bust each other’s chops, and finish each other’s sentences. They also write together: on Schumer’s TV show (in whose skits Kim sometimes appears) and on screenplays, including the one written with Jennifer Lawrence that they hope to start shooting in the next year. Indeed, Schumer and Lawrence will play sisters. (For the record, the most enviable girlmance in recent memory began when Amy posted a video of Jen talking about her on the red carpet. “I was just so excited that she knew who I was and liked me,” says Amy. Jen saw the post, emailed Amy, and said, “Maybe we could work together.” “That was all I needed: I just wrote six scenes and sent them.”) Amy glances over at Kim, who is slumped down in her seat, looking like she’d rather be in bed. “Can I have your scarf . . . ” says Amy, “without your attitude?” Kim laughs and hands it over.
“I just realized I’m not wearing a bra under my shirt, and it’s pulling, and I don’t want to put on a show.” She looks at me and leans closer.
“I can tell you’re very attracted to me, and I don’t want that to affect this interview.”
Kim is giggling under the hat she has now pulled down over her head. “Making Kim laugh is the best thing in the world,” says Schumer.
“Even on my worst day when I’m feeling awful, I smile and say, ‘You’re doing the best you can, Good Job, bitch!’”
