Heather McDonald on comedy, Chelsea and the infamous nickname

Comedian Heather McDonald

If things had turned out differently comic/actress Heather McDonald might have been better known for managing a Robinsons May department store near you instead of writing and appearing regularly on E!’s Chelsea Lately. Thankfully, the department store gig didn’t work out and McDonald can make fans laugh along with Chelsea Handler as well as in her own act. This Friday, for example, along with fellow Chelsea comics Whitney Cummings and John Caparulo, McDonald will take the spotlight and perform her stand-up as The Comedians of Chelsea Lately specials continue on E!. I grabbed some phone time with McDonald to talk about her doomed career in retail, how she successfully impersonates the likes of Sarah Palin, Celine Dion and Drew Barrymore as well as who she finds cute on the Chelsea Lately roundtable.

Jim Halterman:  Let’s start with your background and how you got into the whole comedy scene.

Heather McDonald: I grew up in Woodland Hills, California, which is in the San Fernando Valley. My parents weren’t in the business but we were surrounded by people who were. I had an agent as a kid.  I didn’t book any commercials but my sister did. [laughs] I was always in plays and all that kind of stuff but then I was accepted to USC and I was so jaded and my parents were like “Are you sure you don’t want to be a drama major?” Then, in college, I wasn’t pursuing it but then I’d feel sick to my stomach if I saw someone with a pager because that meant they had an agent. I thought “I’m not pursuing my dream!” I’d be doing a speech in a communications class about rape and I’d be doing legal findings and statistics and then I’d go, “And now for a monologue from Extremities.” I’m doing that scene where she has the guy trapped and I’m poking and prodding him and afterwards they’re like “Um, you realize this is just a speech communications class, right?” The jobs I was getting out of school was like the counter at Robinson’s May which turned into an assistant buying training thing but luckily they fired me after 10 months. I took a stand-up class and I actually had a music teacher in high school that would say “Why are you going to college? You should be in stand-up. You imitate all the teachers, you tell these stories.” I said, “You don’t understand. Why would anyone who doesn’t know me…why would they laugh?” I didn’t understand how a stranger would find me funny. So, in a stand-up class on the first night I imitated an Asian guy doing Karaoke and the strangers all laughed and I left the parking lot and it was like ‘Okay, my life is going to be different from this point on.” I started to pursue stand-up and at the same time I went through The Groundlings theater program and performed every 2 years in the Sunday show. It was kind of like the graduate school of comedy so that was really fun. I was with really great people – Cheryl Hines, Chris Parnell – so it was really fun.

JH:  How did you hook up with Chelsea and her show?

HM:  With Chelsea, I remember seeing her for the first time at this bar where we’d do standup and I’d say, “Wow, this girl is really funny and pretty, too, like me. Wow!”  [laughs] At the time when I saw her and I was doing it, I was sort of like that grungy, I’m ugly, I’m trying to be Janeane Garofalo. That’s what was happening and I couldn’t leave the house without black converse tennis shoes. I saw Chelsea and I thought here was a really funny girl and Chelsea is very different from my stand-up too but she could just talk and tell stories and completely be herself and I respected that. We were friendly and we’d see each other at auditions and everything and then I had actually taken a break from standup to have a couple of kids. [Chelsea and I] were friendly and I had recently started doing stand-up again and she had the half-hour Chelsea Handler Show before this one and then they said they wanted her five nights a week. I said “Hey, if you ever need writers, I’ve written on TV shows and I love your show.” So when it came about, I just emailed her and submitted and it was great. In the past I had worked a lot for the Wayan Brothers and so it was so much easier to write for a cute white woman! It’s a little more up my vein. That’s really when we became close friends. It was weird to find another female comic who was like “Hi! I’m Chelsea, you’re funny!” She’s always been so generous and not-jealous and that’s why I think she’s so successful.

JH: When you got started on her show, did you  know you were going to be on-air or did that just evolve?

HM:  Right from the beginning, we were writers and they said ‘We’re looking for stand-ups’ and I think I was on the third show and she said, “You were good and you can be on regularly.” Then, just one random day I imitated Katie Holmes and that was the first time we started doing more sketches and stuff like that. In the beginning the only sketches we did was [Chelsea] going out in the field but those kind of had to end because then people knew who she was. In the beginning of the show she could do things and people didn’t know who she was. And I love that because my background is sketch and I’m always looking to try to come up with another sketch and put the other people in it and we really have a lot of fun with those. We don’t do them that often but occasionally we’ll have days when we do them.

JH: Your Amy Winehouse and Sarah Palin impersonations are great. How do you master them? Do you do a lot of rehearsing or just go with your gut?

HM: Thank God for YouTube and stuff like that because I can just watch a couple of interviews and just do it. Sometimes I don’t know if I can do it but I’ll be telling a story and that person will just come out. Someone will go ‘That’s pretty good!’ and I’m like ‘OK, I’d better write that down.’ I don’t consciously go ‘the next person I’d like to tackle is…” It’s usually just someone who interests me. Right now, I love the Atlanta Housewives and I know I’m not black and technically it’s illegal for me to do a Black person but I’m asking the public if I can get a…whatever you call it…can I get someone to approve She by Sheree? I don’t call it that but everyone was like “Do it! Do it!” If I can just say “I know it’s wrong. I know I’m not black. But I just have to do She by Sheree because I love the things that she says.” I can’t hold back.

JH: Has there been anyone that you haven’t been able to master?

HM:  Not really but there are ones that come a little easier to me. And then there are ones that I really don’t enjoy doing that much but people love. Like, I don’t love doing Celine Dion but people just love when I do Celine Dion so “Ok, I’ll do it.” But Drew Barrymore, I can do an hour straight of her. I love doing Drew Barrymore. I was at a cocktail party the other day and this other comedian – Lisa Ann Walter – was there and now she’s the creator and judge of Dance Your Ass Off and I hadn’t met her until that night. I did a little Drew Barrymore and then she just started to interview me and she asked me about Charlie’s Angels 1 and 2 and that was really fun. I love improving with other people. That’s great.

McDonald doing her stand-up act

JH:  We’ll get to see your stand-up act on the Comedians of Chelsea Lately special. What is your act like?

HM:  I talk about my life. I’m married and have been married for 9 years and I have two kids and a stepdaughter and I talk about all that. I don’t know what they edited from it but I did a lot of my impression stuff since I know that’s what I’m known for but I tell stories…my life is pretty funny. I live next door to my parents; I chose to buy a house next door to my parents. [laughs] It’s great if I run out of milk or chardonnay or if my husband used one of my last Vicodin but it’s also like sometimes there’s a lot of pressure. My Mom is practically having an affair with my husband because she wants him to fix things but my Dad is this former Marine that has major ego problems so she’ll be like “Peter, Bob is going to the doctor. Can you come over?” And I talk a lot about pop culture and things. I watch a lot of TV and I can act out episodes and stuff.

JH: Do you memorize your whole act or do you just wing it?

HM:  I feel like I do the best when I’m really prepared. Some people do better when they’re winging it but I feel like if I don’t take the time to say every single joke at least once, sometimes I’ll flub a word. And if I do something like that, then it bums me out. Not that I’m that much of a perfectionist but I like to do my best so if I did slack off and I decided I didn’t want to go through the set and it didn’t turn out to be a 10, I might get upset. Then, after I get off, I look at my set and see if there’s anything I forgot anything and sometimes I will and I’ll say “Oh, I forgot to tell that joke” but most times I look and I’ve done everything that I planned on doing.

JH:  Everyone on Chelsea Lately seems so fearless and up for anything. Does your husband ever get embarrassed by what you do on the show?

HM:  No! I totally married the right person. One of the reasons I didn’t want to be a stand-up at first is because I used to watch them as a young girl and I thought ‘Who the hell would ever want to marry a female stand-up?’ They’re so unattractive and overly self-deprecating and the people I saw I thought were funny but I thought they were so unattractive. I always wanted to be married and have kids but after that awful Robinsons May job I was like ‘Fuck it. I’m going to do what I like and somebody will still find me attractive.’ So, I dated a lot and I found that some guys would be a little like ‘How long are you going to do it?’ and then there were guys who were overly into it. They really wanted to go to the comedy club every night and help every night. When I met my husband he was like “That’s great.” He wasn’t overly star struck; he wasn’t in the business. He’s really proud of me and he loves it and he has no ego. I make jokes about him being cheap and now Chelsea has said it on the air and I came home and he goes, ‘God! Why am I known as the cheapest man in America?’ and I say “Because I talked about it! Where do you think they got it? Look, it’s a compliment. You’re a mortgage broker. Don’t you want the cheapest man in America to be a mortgage broker so he’ll fight for the lowest rate? It’s a compliment. Go for it. You’re the cheapest man and I’m ‘Long boobs’. We need to embrace it and make the best of it.’

JH: Do you hear ‘Long Boobs’ often outside of the studio?

HM:  Oh my God! All the time! I was at the Playboy mansion and someone was like ‘Long Boobs!’ Or someone will come up and say ‘I’ve got long boobs, too!’ I say ‘Listen, it’s a joke. I don’t. But if you want to go to the bathroom to show you, I will.’  But I don’t care because it is such a funny name and one time I did a show with Chelsea and this woman gave me a joke thing that was this long boobs bra, like something you’d get at Spencer’s, and it was hilarious. I mean, I show them off a lot so they deserve to be made fun of. I’m huge on the cleavage so fine, go ahead and do it.

JH:  When I interviewed Guy Branum, we had a little Josh Wolf lovefest. Who do you find sexy on the show?

HM:  I like Chris Franjola. Chris Franjola…I like that he’s trim and I like that he dresses nicely and Chris is kind of like that sexy New York guy who says “Hi, Heather.” He always says my name when he sees me and I like that. We didn’t know each other back in the day of standup but we have all the same points of reference. I’m always like “I’m so surprised that we didn’t make out in a parking lot at one point” and he’ll say “I know! What happened?” It’s not going to happen now but it’s kind of like a fun little thing. I think he’s really cute.

Heather McDonald appears with Whitney Cummings and John Caparulo on The Comedians of Chelsea Lately this Friday at 10:30/9:30c on E!

Photos courtesy of E! Entertainment

Related Posts

1. Q & A with…CHELSEA LATELY’s Chuy Bravo
2. One-on-One with CHELSEA HANDLER: Books, celebs and being single
3. Jennifer Aniston takes CHELSEA LATELY to new heights
4. BREAKING NEWS: Adam Lambert ratings bonanza for CHELSEA
5. Chelsea Lately’s Guy Branum On Stand-Up and Fave Crushes

Tagged as: Chelsea Handler, Chelsea Lately, E!, Heather McDonald, Jim Halterman