US comedian Maggie Widdoes is on her way to the Edinburgh Fringe with Stay Big & Go Get 'Em. It’s about life in all its agonies, absurdities and ecstacies. I asked her about the show and the motivations that drive her work and why the Fringe is such an appealing place to perform, but not before I'd read some of her social media output.
What’s a college frat boy if not just a destructive, seasonal weather pattern?
Maggie, I've been having a rummage through your Twitter account and I’d like you to expand on a of couple items. Let’s start with the description you give of yourself: “noisy girl, explosive piece of ass”. Is that your definitive summary of yourself?
Definitive? No. Hyperbolic? Absolutely! Still containing morsels of truth? Unfortunately, I think so! I find that social media bios are often just lists of credits or a secondary CV, and I just think there are more exciting ways to show who you are to the world. I am not someone who is interested or able to take social media super seriously as a part of my life, so using it to say things that make me smile or laugh is my chosen method. So yes, as someone who has been told from an early age I am “loud” or “too much,” “noisy girl” feels appropriate. As for “explosive piece of ass,” that is perhaps more aspirational, but the act of claiming it for myself feels fun. I never expected to reflect this deeply on those two identifiers, so thank you for allowing me this space to indulge in my noisy, explosive ass self.
Another post says: “For someone who is emotionally at all times living inside a Jane Austen novel, I sure do like to show my tits off huh?” Is this something you do on a regular basis?
Well well well, if it isn’t all my silliest internal thoughts coming to back to greet me! I would not say I do this regularly, despite the fact that my show’s poster is a censored topless photo of me. But I do get in these moods where I feel an intense need to feel ownership of my body and the liberation that claiming it as my own provides, and in those moods I will throw out a playful semi-nude or something that feels unserious and joyful.
The original poster for my show had this picture of my grandmother in it, where she’s sitting on the back of a convertible with a handkerchief wrapped around her hair, holding a bundle of wildflowers in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other. It was taken on her honeymoon, and in it she is looking into the sun and sporting the biggest smile and look of pure pleasure and contentment. As an image, it is simple and life-affirming and free, and while the image of a topless woman is clearly a much raunchier one, the poster photo of me feels like my version of my grandmother’s. They’re wildly different in specifics, but both are photos of women in complete bodily and spiritual bliss, which is the best life can really get. Sometimes you just happen to be topless for it!
Do you think it’s something Jane Austen would like to have done?
I’ll reference my answer to the previous question here, because I think my comparison to my grandmother’s photo versus mine feels apt. I don’t know that 1800’s Elizabeth Bennett or Anne Elliot—the two characters of hers I was most influenced by—would be putting their naked flesh on posters around town for everyone to see. But I would like to think, and I’m aware this is leaning into extreme romanticisation of myself and life in general, but I would like to think there’s a shared fortitude and self-dignity between an Austen woman and myself. So while I don’t think Jane or her pack of spirited, fictional women would expose themselves quite so entirely, I think they’d cheer on the idea that women of the future might. Jane Austen wrote for the misunderstood, creative, complex, emotionally and intellectually impassioned woman, and in 2023 that can look like having your tits out just for the fun of it!
What’s your emotional existence like inside a Jane Austen novel?
Ugh, if the exhaustive dissection of my use of public nudity is any indication to you, it’s A LOT! As I’m sure you’ve gleaned by now, Austen’s work was very formative for me. I discovered her books when I was in middle school and then went on to read all her broody contemporaries as well. It was the first time I felt seen and understood in my big, big feelings and most importantly my big, big, eternal wanting, of those feelings and everything else in life. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up often feeling like I and my feelings were “too much” and I needed to shrink them/myself in order to be accepted, which is basically a universal experience I think for most non-cis male artists.
But then Jane A comes along, and she’s got these emboldened, fiery, brilliant women who don’t settle for less when they know they want more, and I saw myself and my deepest desires not just expressed but supported. So to me, emotionally living in a Jane Austen novel is living in a place where I’m in conversation with, and oftentimes overindulging in, every one of my feelings, and desires, and curiosities.
It’s not a place you can live 24/7, because not everything is meant to be romanticised so intensely, and no person can maintain that level of yearning. I mean, my god, the yearning! But I’m hard-wired to indulge in my senses and emotional life, and I could find the romance in staring at a blank wall. But sometimes it really is good to just let a wall be a wall, you know?
You Tweeted a quotation from an article in The Edinburgh Reporter as follows: “I didn’t know how much I’d love the description “Honest, funny, and very naughty” until I heard it. Will be incorporating naughty into my permanent vibe.” How are you progressing with that?
Such an important question. We don’t use “naughty” nearly enough in the States, so I’m taking my duty to spread its beauty and power very seriously. Just yesterday I surprised my boyfriend by squeezing his butt in public. I loved it! Naughty is everywhere! 2023 is the year of Naughty!
That’s dealt with the naughty,. You also said: “The distinction between messy and dirty is an important discourse I’d be willing to engage with”. What would you like to say about it?
Given the opportunity, I think I could write a PhD dissertation on this. My main thesis is that “dirty” is often used as a moral indicator of one’s character, whereas “messy” is more a sort of surface personality trait. Messy is something I identify (and struggle) with, I’ve always had a hard time keeping tidy and doing my laundry on time (hello lifelong ADHD!). When those things are called dirty, it feels like a moral judgment of someone being “good” or “bad,” which feels unfair. Having a perennial pile of clothes in my room doesn’t make me a bad person, it’s just a physicalisation of my mental overwhelm. And even if beneath that pile I had a crusty, “dirty,” old plate of spaghetti, that wouldn’t make me bad either!
Don’t worry, I don’t have old spaghetti in my bedroom. But I could and that would be fine! I’d still be a person worthy of love and respect in this world! I just want my messy, dirty queens out there not to feel judged. Eat the pizza in bed, babe! Skip laundry another day! You didn’t kill anyone!
You’ve made a few comments about men. One day you said, “Sexualizing/romanticizing the Los Angeles wind as I would an emotionally-withholding but morally sound dude in college - April”. Would you care to expand on the nature of that?
To love the classic romance novelists at a young age is to prime yourself up for a life of attraction to brooding, emotionally-withholding men. I talk about this in my show, but I spent a lot of my life believing that healthy, good love required a certain amount of yearning and pain. So a season of blustery, careless winds descends upon me? Well, much like a blustery, careless 20-year-old I probably spent years pining for, that’s something I know how to be emotionally and sexually attracted to. What’s a college frat boy if not just a destructive, seasonal weather pattern.
Talking of boys, you comment or respond to comments on three men in particular. With reference to A Room With A View, @jowrotethis said on Twitter: “Julian Sands didn’t have the career that he deserved but he is one of the all-time, every top tier cinematic kissers and that’s not nothing." To which you replied: “A movie in which Daniel Day-Lewis convincingly lacks any sense of real sex appeal. That’s acting, baby” Other comments of yours include: “Knowing I live in a world where someone might not understand a sexual attraction to Michael Shannon, well that’s the scariest of it all”. What are you feelings towards those three men now?
My feelings towards these men are quite simple: I love them, I want more of them always, and I dream of playing opposite them in a tumultuous, ethically questionable love story at some point in my career. If the role calls for a bit of a kiss, I would not be against that either. I love a talented, committed, emotionally dignified man who looks like they’ve experienced a little bit of life. Sue me!
Talking of people who’ve “experienced a little bit of life”, your Edinburgh show sounds quite autobiographical – is that because your life is a rich source of material or is it cathartic?
I don’t think my source materials are any more rich than the next person. I feel like everyone’s got their own big, deep, weird troves of experiences and those differences are what make life exciting. So to me, this show definitely lands in the cathartic camp; it’s me exploring the raw materials of my own life and seeing how those things can shift in the process of doing so. That’s my very high-brow, pie in the sky, idealist artist perspective on it. Because at the end of the day, I really just want to cry and laugh and tell stories about how weird it feels to be alive in front of other people so that they can mirror back to me a confirmation that (1) I am in fact alive and (2) X-rated fan-made cartoon art is in fact very, very funny.
You draw on “troves of experiences” in your issues-based comedy. What are the topics you explore?
Perhaps this is too broad of a stroke, but I feel like the show is mostly about feelings. I just have … so many of them. Not always bad ones! Fun, silly, joyful ones too! But it’s definitely a “feelings forward” show, and with that goes into mental health diagnoses, sexuality, grief, adolescent angst and all the music, and characters, and global political events that happen in between. I hope I haven’t just made the stroke even broader with that.
Feeling are obviously a universal experience but how have you tailored this show for Edinburgh? Does it differ from the sort of work you do in your podcasts or on stage in the USA?
For starters, it’s just me and it’s for an hour, so on a very basic level it’s a different structure than my normal comedy or acting projects which are collaborative in nature. With that, I feel a lot more ownership and creative freedom to tell the story that I want to tell exactly how I want to tell it. With the strictly comedy stuff I do, it doesn’t always feel like there’s room for the more emotionally vulnerable parts of myself, and vice versa, when I do more dramatic work I find there isn’t always opportunity for humour. So in doing this show I feel like I get to satisfy and express a lot of different parts of myself.
Coming to Edinburgh involves time, money and commitment – why is it so attractive to you and so many other US performers?
I can only speak for myself, but I think this festival offers a completely different experience than any others that we have in the States. The sheer volume of shows, the concentration of them in the city and over such an extended period of time, and just how international the performers and audiences are is unique to Edinburgh Fringe. On an artistic level I think any time you can perform or create outside your own bubble is hugely important, and the chance to do it so many times in front of so many different kinds of people is really exciting.
Another line from the article you refer to on Twitter says that you’ll take audiences “on a rollercoaster ride” through all of your “life’s ups and downs”, of which I’m sure there have been a few, but If you could plan your perfect comedy career, what would it be?
Well, other than somehow becoming 18 again and making a handful of better life choices, the ideal career from here on out would be to carve out avenues for both collaborative and individual projects. I don’t know that I want to be doing multiple solo shows, but creating my own work in whatever form that takes as well as getting to be in projects created by others would definitely be the dream.
I really admire a lot of artists and projects out of the UK that allow people to be their full entertainment hyphenate selves and create, act, write, direct, what have you. So a life that includes and supports all my different practices would be amazing.
