Mary Beth Barone is so over straight male comedians. And establishment Democrats, the British, Mark Zuckerberg, JK Rowling, and the Katy Cats, just to name a few. With the release of her first Netflix special Galaxy Brain this week, the deadpan comedian finally gets to air some of those many grievances. And while she is already bracing for upset, so far her pop culture complaints have only been met with uproarious laughter. Fresh off the set of Overcompensating season two, Barone called up the person who empowered her to wear Tory Burch flats to high school and channel her inner bitch unapologetically—Leighton Meester. In typical Blair Waldorf fashion, the pair gossip about everything from method acting and killing your darlings to being dubbed “too fucking sexy” for stand-up. —BRENDAN KENNEDY
FRIDAY 4:30 PM JULY 24, 2026 NEW YORK CITY
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LEIGHTON MEESTER: How are you today?
MARY BETH BARONE: I’m good. I canceled something after this so I could take a sleeping pill at 8:00 pm and go to bed, and I feel really good about that.
MEESTER: Okay, I’m glad that you’re doing that. Have you been doing a lot of press?
BARONE: It’s been a lot of press, yeah. There’s a burnout that happens, but it’s gratitude wrapped in exhaustion. So I’m also trying to make sure to stop and smell the roses amongst feeling like I’m being pulled in a thousand directions.
MEESTER: Yeah, I know exactly that feeling. It feels necessary to remind yourself to slow down and be grateful, but it’s also okay to acknowledge that it’s work and it can be exhausting.
BARONE: I forget that sometimes. Success in this industry is so coveted and difficult to achieve, and it requires so much work that you almost have to feel grateful for every single thing.
MEESTER: Are you able to compartmentalize and shut off and have a truly personal life where you’re not wheels turning about the next thing, and vice versa?
BARONE: I have not cracked that yet. I definitely make time for my friends and family, but as far as work-life balance, I don’t have that. Any conversation I have could spark something that I want to write into a script, or something I talk about in stand-up, or the podcast. So there’s really no separation for me right now, maybe that will come with time, but it’s to the point where I have to schedule breaks so that I actually can just stop and take a beat.
MEESTER: Well, your work is so personal, obviously, but do you find that having a character, as an example on Overcompensating, it’s easier to disconnect from that part of your work?
BARONE: Yeah, I’m not a method actor. [Laughs] I think Kirsten Dunst said that only men can really afford to do that. But when they call cut or when I get to go home, I can take the makeup off, and I’m just right back being myself. Whereas with standup, it does feel like it all just bleeds into my personal life. I like that my work is really personal, and I want it to always feel like it’s representative of where I’m at in that exact moment. But there are certain things that are hard to talk about or write jokes about, but those are the jokes that are the most satisfying because they’re the ones where you have to thread the needle a bit more.
MEESTER: Has success helped you to be more or less insecure and confident?
BARONE: It’s this weird push and pull where the more success you have, the more criticism you might receive. But the amount of negativity doesn’t outweigh the feeling of being able to share your art with people and feel like you are reaching the right audience most of the time. But maybe ask me again in a year.
MEESTER: [Laughs] I’m going to ask you once a year. Actually, at least twice a year. Okay, what is the definition of Galaxy Brain for those who don’t know?
BARONE: First, I’m going to give you the internet’s definition.
MEESTER: Okay.
BARONE: Galaxy brain is appearing to be insightful and profound, but actually absurd, incomprehensible, or nonsensical. What I wanted to do with this special was approach topics from such a dumb perspective that they actually come around to being smart. It’s a take or observation that you’d actually have to be really dumb to think of. But then, once you sit with it for a while, you’re like, “Wait, that’s kind of profound.”
MEESTER: But in its own way, you actually probably had to be profound to come up with that perspective to begin with.
BARONE: If you could quote Leighton calling me profound, the interview could be over whenever. [Laughs] I guess other people have to tell you if you’re profound. You can’t really say it about yourself, but I hope that people walk away thinking that.
MEESTER: They very much will. Okay, this is serious.
BARONE: Yeah, this isn’t supposed to be funny. The special is funny, these questions are serious.
MEESTER: [Laughs] So what was the first joke of Galaxy Brain? Is there one that stayed in there that was the big bang?
BARONE: The first joke I wrote for this was because I was blonde. But I remember I hadn’t done standup as a blonde yet, and I had on jean shorts, a black top, and cowboy boots, and I was on FaceTime with my gay best friend Jake [Morris]. I said, “I look like I’m doing standup dressed as a mother of three sons: Macklin, Declan, and Braden.” We laughed so much about that because I have a lot of theories about how you present on stage dictates how the audience responds to you. So I had a theory that doing standup as a blonde would be perceived a lot differently than a brunette, which I did prove correct. I did prove that was true.
MEESTER: [Laughs] Your style evolution and how you have settled into your style on stage show up in the most glamorous and fashion-forward looks. Have you always done that, or is that something that you’ve evolved into?
BARONE: When I first started standup, I was wearing stilettos and dresses to every show. And once a booker came up to me after a show and was like, “Your jokes are great, but you’re just dressed too fucking sexy. It’s distracting.” So for a while, I stripped it back and I was doing more of an athleisure, streetwear vibe. If I’m doing a shorter set, I still want to look really put together, but I don’t necessarily wear a full fit. But when it’s my own show or if I’m hosting, I want to always serve.
MEESTER: Yeah.
BARONE: Part of that really is reaching women and queer people with comedy because when you’re doing a show for a typical comedy club audience—which is mostly guys in baseball caps who look like they want to hit you—if you come out there in a corset, they’re going to just be really confused. [Laughs] So when it’s my audience, that gives me so much freedom to wear the exact thing that I want to wear. In this case, we’re really lucky that Jackson Wiederhoeft was willing to design a custom look for the taping.
MEESTER: It’s absolutely gorgeous, and it’s such an iconic color combo. I have more questions for you. These are hard-hitting.
BARONE: I mean, you’re in a leather chair. Look at this mahogany bookshelf. This is business.
MEESTER: [Laughs] Yeah, this is 60 Minutes. Is there a topic that you want to talk about that you decided to cut?
BARONE: Yes. I have a larger idea for a bit about the Me Too movement and how ultimately we hold rapists accountable. It’s obviously one of those topics that immediately makes the audience tense up, so you basically need to have so many punchlines that everyone can relax again. I just didn’t feel like I had enough time to accomplish that, and I didn’t want to rush it because that’s something I want to handle with a really delicate touch.
MEESTER: Okay, now I’m going off script.
BARONE: Do it.
MEESTER: Have you had to kill any darlings? Is there a joke that you love so much and you can’t connect it with an audience?
BARONE: Yeah, there’s definitely been jokes I’ve said that I thought the punchline was something else, but then people laugh at a part where I go, “Oh. I didn’t think that was funny, but I guess people are telling me otherwise.” The weirdest thing that happens with jokes is when it works well for eight months, and then one day it just completely stops working, like every audience decides on the same day that that joke doesn’t work anymore. But that’s just part of the artistic process, I guess. But then it was weird because, at the taping, some jokes got way bigger laughs than they usually do, and then some jokes just didn’t get as big of a laugh.
MEESTER: Yeah. And editing, I imagine it can just be really painstaking in general.
BARONE: I didn’t know this, but for the first two months of post-production, I was watching an edit that, I knew it hadn’t been sound mixed, but I didn’t know that it was just my microphone. So I was watching it like, “I feel like the laughs were louder on the day. Did I bomb at my show?” And then my producer, Taylor [Kowalski], was like, “Oh, we haven’t layered in the audience microphones yet.”
MEESTER: Ugh, what a relief.
BARONE: So much better. I went into psychosis a few times throughout the edit, but I’m out of that now.
MEESTER: Recently, I did a movie where I played a stand-up comedian and the director that I was working with, she sent me your stand-up as an example of glamour and even costume and tone.
BARONE: I’m kind of a reference for you in a way.
MEESTER: You definitely are. That’s the profound circle of the universe. What do you think is tired and what do you think is fresh in comedy?
BARONE: Tired, to me, is punching down. Racism, any of the phobias really, and especially coming from men who don’t fall into any of the categories. No more straight male comedians for a couple years. When a straight man is talking into a microphone, I am physically incapable of listening unless that straight man is Seth Meyers. And then what is exciting, definitely more women, more queer people, those voices that we haven’t really heard from before. We need more diversity in comedy as we do in many different industries. They will help revive the genre because, right now, it’s feeling like a lot is the same.
MEESTER: Agreed. Well said.
BARONE: They’re going to edit that down to make me sound really smart, which is good.
MEESTER: Looking back on your career thus far, have you had points of view or jokes that you’ve changed your mind about?
BARONE: 100%. A lot of jokes when I was first starting, you’re figuring out what your comedic perspective is and the boundaries you want to push. There are always going to be missteps, so I’m really glad that there’s no footage of all of those jokes. Comedians now are posting so much, especially earlier in their careers to show that they have jokes, and there are some that I don’t stand by anymore. There was one joke in the special that we cut after we had locked it because it just felt like it could be perceived the wrong way, and it didn’t feel like a risk that I wanted to take. I feel proud of that. It was really a joke about me, but Ariana Grande is mentioned in the joke, and that would’ve felt like punching down at this point to me. So, Ariana, if you’re reading this, I love you.
MEESTER: [Laughs] I’m sure she is.
MEESTER: How has your stand-up changed knowing that somebody could discover you by watching a clip online, versus somebody coming into one of your stand-up shows or watching your special?
BARONE: My presentational style really hasn’t changed. When I started, people were like, “Oh, you’re deadpan, you’re dry, and you’re dark.” It wasn’t ever intentional where I sat down and I was like, “I’m going to be a deadpan comedian.” A lot of my jokes are conversational in that I’ll say something with friends, and if that makes them laugh, I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to write that down and maybe that’ll be stand-up.” Of course, “pussy in a denim romper” was debuted on the podcast. When we were putting the set together and the order of everything in that last third, I really wanted to switch up the pacing a little bit, so that felt like a good spot for it. I wasn’t able to do “pussy in a denim romper” on tour because I pinched a nerve and I was getting migraines. So when I did it for the taping, that was the first time I had done it in a really long time, and it will be the last time.
MEESTER: Oh, really? I was just going to say, the “pussy in a denim romper” actually needs a remix and a music video.
BARONE: We’re going to adopt it. It’s just been ordered straight to series, 12 episodes.
MEESTER: I just want to compliment your work in Overcompensating. Grace has such a fascinating and relatable duality, and such an amazing arc through the season. I was just curious how you prepared and what did you discover?
BARONE: Yeah, I was really lucky that I have a gay best friend that wrote me a dream role in this amazing show with this amazing world and the characters had such specificity. And I was also in the writer’s room, so it was really amazing to watch the show go from the page to set to then being on TV. With Grace, it was so fun in season two to really deepen the character. And Grace’s arc this season was something Benny and I talked about before we got back into the writer’s room because he was like, “You’re experiencing this specific thing in real life. How would you feel about exploring that through the show?” I found that really cathartic for my coming out. The way we approached it, it’s going to make a lot of women feel, hopefully, seen and represented.
MEESTER: How do you separate your own sense of humor as Mary Beth Barone versus a character?
BARONE: My sense of humor is a little bit more goofy and playful, and I have a lot more life experience than a college student. So with Grace, what’s so fun is just pitching jokes that are ways she can react to things that are how we would. It’s fun to play a character where the bitchiest option is probably the most true to who she is. To bring it back to Blair Waldorf, she is such a reference point for me when people were asking what shows or characters I watched in order to prepare to play Grace. I hadn’t really seen this on TV of a girl who says exactly what she’s thinking and not apologizing for it.
MEESTER: Do you feel like comedy makes you more honest?
BARONE: As a comedian now achieving these career milestones, it’s like I am being rewarded for being myself. Because like I said, there’s not that much separation between who I am on stage and who I am in everyday life. I’m honest to a fault and I do put my foot in my mouth quite often. I’ve learned a lot from my mom because she is pretty blunt. She grew up in New York, she’s a straight shooter.
MEESTER: Well, your mom sounds really funny. I was really sad to hear about your father. I wanted to ask you how grief has shaped the special.
BARONE: My dad is a huge influence on my comedy as well. He was really dry and quick, and my mom is very blunt and crass. So to grow up in a household where those are our leaders, I absorbed a lot of that, and I found that putting all of that together shaped my comedic voice. When I did Seth Meyers last time, my dad had died four weeks earlier. In this industry, you have to capitalize on the moment and be grateful and be saying yes to things when you’re getting these opportunities. So with the special, I feel really connected to my dad through my work because he wanted to be a stand-up comedian, but instead he became a surgeon. So every time I perform stand-up, I can think of my dad, and I knew how proud he was of me.
MEESTER: I told you before that I connected with one of your jokes that involved your dad, and so when I saw the special and I saw you were talking about him, it really was emotional. I really enjoyed talking to you. I just think the world of you. I was really honored that you asked me to do this and we manifested it together with our brains.
BARONE: You didn’t even know this, but I’ve been manifesting it since the early 2000s. I look forward to continuing the conversation without my publicist, who I adore, but maybe over some wine or something.
MEESTER: [Laughs] Yes, let’s.
BARONE: Next time, can I interview you?
MEESTER: Yeah, you can ask me anything you want. I’ve already spilled some tea privately.
