Rosebud Baker’s Dark Art of Comedy
Rosebud Baker is an expert in making light of life’s most devastating moments. In her first Netflix special, The Mother Lode, Baker uses her gift for dark humor to talk about her difficulties getting pregnant, the agony of miscarriage, and the challenges of motherhood.
Topics like death, grief, and addiction have often been fodder for Baker. In her 2021 Comedy Central special Whiskey Fists, Baker tells jokes about the tragic death of her seven-year-old sister, who drowned in a jacuzzi when Baker was in high school. “My sister drowned in a jacuzzi, which is a really festive place to drown” she tells the audience in Whisky Fists. “It throws off the story, guys. It’s like hearing somebody got shot in the head with a T-shirt cannon.”
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“The first special was shot during COVID so I had maybe five road dates leading up to it to work the material,” Baker, who joined the Saturday Night Live writing staff in 2022, tells Rolling Stone. “This Netflix special was shot and edited over a period of four or five years, so I had all of those years to do the road to work and also, a lot was going on in my personal life. I was getting pregnant and doing IVF [in vitro fertilization]. I had a lot of personal life material to work with.”
Baker recently spoke to Rolling Stone about making The Mother Lode, (streaming now on Netflix), how she uses comedy to address trauma, being a new mom, and writing for SNL.
In your first comedy special you talk about grief and the loss of your sister, and while this special is about your journey with pregnancy and motherhood you also make light of heavier topics. Why do lean into dark comedy?
I think it’s just instinctual. I think that when you go through something traumatic it’s so isolating because it feels like you can’t talk about it and to me, that goes against where comics really want to go. Comics want to say the thing you’re not supposed to say. Maybe it’s a little bit of that. It might also just be my sense of humor. Most of the public speaking I did before I did stand up comedy was in 12-Step meetings as an alcoholic and those rooms laugh at darker things.
How did it feel to open up about your miscarriage in this kind of forum?
It’s funny because I don’t even see it as opening up. Once it gets to joke form I’ve already kind of worked through it in a private setting, so this relieves the pressure and the heaviness of that. It’s energizing, I would say, more than anything. When you’re talking about it in therapy it’s emotionally exhausting and then once you have the joke, you’re like, “O.K.kay, I got something out of this.” It’s like a pressure valve.
You went back to work six weeks after having your baby. Why did you want to get back to work so quickly? Why was that important to you?
I was so insane after I gave birth. It’s not like I can go back and really track the logic but it was very important to me to keep working. There’s such a pressure to continue to work, both financial pressure and also the pressure of the industry in general. I think it was a combination of factors. I wanted to use my brain in that way because after a certain period of time, I started feeling like an innie from Severance or something. But I would be remiss not to admit that there is an amount of pressure that you feel as a working mom where people have to know that I still care. There is a pressure to work like you’re not a mother and you have to be a mother like you don’t have a job. That’s just a real thing that I can’t say I haven’t noticed.
In The Motherlode you talked about how motherhood can feel isolated and lonely at times. How has work and comedy helped you navigate that?
Well, comedy is great because you are surrounded by a lot of narcissists. Nobody’s really going to treat you differently in comedy after you have a kid because nobody really cares. It’s kind of a nice relief to go to work and have people not really treat you all that differently and not think of you as just a mom because you’ve been around these people, you’ve known them, you’ve worked with them, and they think of you as a comic. That feels good because that was my identity for so long and I really was attached to that identity in a way that I didn’t want to let go of when I became a mother. I’m trying to expand my identity rather than shrink or change it. Continuing to work has really helped with that and writing this hour-long special that’s all about motherhood and the struggle to become a mom has helped as well.
How did you start writing for Saturday Night Live back in 2022?
I just got a text from one of the producers asking if I was interested and obviously I was like, “Yes.” Then I met with the head writers and I was brought on about a couple of weeks later. It was pretty much that simple. It was a stroke of luck. There are so many funny comics and hilarious people. I’m not saying I’m not skilled, but I do think that when it comes down to how many skilled comedians there are, there is a stroke of luck that they called me. Maybe thinking of it that way is helpful to me, it keeps you kind of humble.
Were you involved at all in SNL’s 50th Anniversary special?
No, I was not on that episode. I got to go to the party, I got to go to the concert, and I got the week off. To be there for that historic anniversary and that moment surrounded by so many funny people was truly surreal. It was one of the best nights of my life. I remember looking around and going, “Whoa.” I wanted to go back in time and show my younger self just to be like, “Hey, it’s all going to be alright.” I wish I had words to describe it but I haven’t really figured out what those words are yet. You’re kind of just looking around speechless at all of your heroes and pinching yourself, going, “Whoa, I’m here right now.”
Are you approaching writing the Weekend Update segment for SNL any differently after the election now that Trump is president?
I think the key to writing jokes for all of America is you have to remove your opinions. If anything, my approach is to try to go at this in a sillier way than my stand up routines. In my stand up, I try to make a little bit of a point. There’s a point underneath it but it’s a light touch. I try to remove that when I’m writing for Weekend Update. I try to keep it really silly. I don’t always succeed, but that’s generally what I try to do. It’s just a lot to keep up with. So many crazy things can happen in one week, just the amount of stuff that you have to cover. Also, in order for a joke to work the premise has to be true and now there’s so many things to try to sift through when it comes to truth that it’s just exhausting. I think we’re all tired of it. Everybody working in late-night TV, I think, is just like, “Oh man.”
On top of SNL and your stand up comedy, you were also on Hulu’s Life & Beth. Do you want to work on more TV and film projects in front of the screen?
I’m going to be touring through the summer and I’m planning a theater tour for the fall. My eye is always on what the next special is going to be but I’m also working on a couple different show ideas and I’d like to develop. After doing Life & Beth, doing things on That Damn Michael Che [the 2021 sketch comedy], and little spots here and there, I do want to keep acting. I did a horror film called Hell of a Summer that was directed by Finn Wolfhard from Stranger Things, and I had so much fun on that set. I’d love to keep getting in front of the camera because that’s kind of where I started. I was an actor before I ever tried comedy and then once I tried comedy, I was like, “Oh, I am actually obsessed with this in a way that I never really was with acting.” I’d like to keep working with my friends and collaborating with people that I love. That was kind of a whole goal when I got into this and I can’t say that it’s changed.
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