How Leslie Liao still left Netflix’s HR department to return as a increasing star in stand-up comedy

Pacing the stage, Leslie Liao muses about the different moisturizers she, an nearly 37-year-previous, feels compelled to use. “I commit most of my time rubbing lotions all in excess of my body. … Face product, eye product, foot cream, just consistently creaming myself.”

She carries on a mic drop about modern relationship imminent. “I just figured out there is a neck cream. I have to cream my neck. … I overheard a person complaining the moment how he spends all his funds on beverages for women and it is so unfair. Bro, I am sporting $300 value of facial area paint and physique jam to not scare you away. I’d like my Moscow mule now, remember to.” The crowd erupts with laughter.

“That joke was a authentic discussion I had with a male a long time in the past,” Liao states, seated exterior at Jewel in Silver Lake. “He was actually creating the argument. He was like, ‘I would really like if a woman purchased me a consume.’ And then I went on this rant. I was like, ‘Do you know? I experienced to put on my facial area for you to even chat to me. I’m in credit card debt. So, you owe me a Moscow mule.’ And he laughed so really hard.”

This is precisely the form of deadpan observational humor Liao, an L.A.-dependent comedian, tends to lead with. In addition to riffing on several system lotions, Liao’s exhibits cycle via these matters as the cognitive dissonance of “being attracted to men” but “not discovering guys eye-catching,” repairing said gentlemen, developing up Asian American in Orange County, and placing a 100-mile look for radius on courting apps to obtain “maximum efficiency,” among other day by day indignities.

Liao could be self-deprecating about her hyper-methodical nature, but it’s because of her temperament that she finds herself here nowadays performing as a comprehensive-time comedian, free of the company environment for the initially time in her adult existence. From 2017 to January of this yr, she was dwelling a double life—from 9 to 5, she worked in HR at Netflix. In the evenings, she did stand-up. One particular had nothing to do with the other. “I just didn’t slumber,” Liao suggests of that time. “The exhibits had been so late. I would have to be awake so early and be so sharp. Some conferences, I would have to lead them. They’re not generally a Zoom conference the place you can be off digicam and like, set your toes up and secretly be in PJs.”

The comedian’s two worlds commenced to overlap late last calendar year when Liao booked a gig on “The Tonight Show” and a quick established on Netflix’s “Verified Stand-Up.” “My bosses at Netflix saw me on Netflix. They observed me on Jimmy Fallon,” Liao claims. “In a wonderful way, they have been like, ‘What are you undertaking right here? They ended up so amazing and supportive. They were like, go be a star. They did not fireplace me, but they had been like, ‘It’s your time.’”

Though she was well on her way to reaching monetary steadiness as a stand-up, Liao maintains that she necessary a minor bit of a nudge from Netflix bosses to get the leap absent from a company position. “It was so frightening — simply because all I realized was owning a considerably risk-free working day career. But I’m so happy.”

Since leaving Netflix, Liao has utilized her large-essential scheduling to a creative’s life. Her Google Calendar reveals a rainbow of appointments and occasions. (“When comics see my calendar, they scoff, laugh, and barf.”) When she comes at the café for her image shoot, Liao has on an oversized blazer and pulls two pairs of likely shoe possibilities out of an oversize black tote — very low-top sneakers and heeled black boots. She in the long run picks the sneakers, agreeing that the juxtaposition of a workwear leading and everyday trainers feels symbolic.

When fellow comics find out Liao had been used at the streaming behemoth, Liao claims, they approximately constantly talk to if that’s how she acquired her foot in the comedy doorway, to which she responds with a appear that can only be explained as, Lady, no. “Do you think I’m gonna slide my demo under Ted Sarandos’ doorway?” she cracks. “Do you assume I’m gonna discover any exec in Written content and consider out a bit in the elevator? Do my shtick in the cafeteria?”

“Honestly?” she carries on. “If I went to any comedy exec at Netflix and instructed them, ‘You really should put me on Netflix, I’m a comedian. Did you know? Have you viewed my stuff?’ They ought to fireplace me. It is so inappropriate and unprofessional — and lame. They would have had each and every suitable to escort me out of the constructing that day.” Liao in no way even imagined that she’d be a stand-up comedian. Born to Chinese immigrant mother and father, Liao was drawn to amusement from an early age (she’s a huge lover of Jim Gaffigan, Conan O’Brien, Mitch Hedberg and Tig Notaro), but she usually pictured herself doing some thing powering the scenes. “I utilised to want to be a ballerina,” she states. “And then it turned into like, some vague variation of a corporate task. I was like, I’m gonna have a briefcase and a blazer.”

Case in point: When Liao would watch the Academy Awards expanding up, she appreciated how the superstars would thank their agents in their acceptance speeches. “I’d be like, that appears cool. I did not want to be Charlize Theron or Halle Berry. I preferred to be their agent. For no matter what motive, it did not click on for me to want to be the star. I desired to be who’s supporting the star get that gig.”

After attending USC Film College, Liao started out executing what several 20-some thing enjoyment hopefuls do — perform as an assistant and get started climbing up the ladder. Prior to landing the job at Netflix, Liao assisted a comedy producer at Common Studios, wherever she volunteered to assistance scout new talent. That’s when she commenced attending stand-up shows just about every other night. “They did not genuinely will need me to,” she laughs. “I was an assistant, so they had been like, ‘Please continue to be and solution the telephones. None of us are asking you to go to the Hollywood Improv. But I just obtained in the behavior, and I loved it. I tried using to make it section of my career.”

Liao didn’t even look at executing stand-up right until witnessing a considerably less-than-spectacular showcase. Which is when the wheels started out to convert: Should she test this herself? “At that time in my daily life, in my late 20s, a large amount of my buddies would convey to me I need to do stand-up. … But I never ever assumed I could do it. It seemed like this sort of an imaginary earth to me. I did not know any comics personally. My mothers and fathers experienced these small business-y employment. So, I could not get on to the thought that I could be on phase and persons will clap for me. It just didn’t look real.”

Prior to her pretty to start with established at the Haha Comedy Club in North Hollywood, Liao took a crafting class, wherever she’d write, hone and workshop suggestions along with a handful of fellow learners. For graduation, the course executed sets for good friends and spouse and children, every comedian cheering the other on. “[The class] was built in a wise way to [show you] this is how superior it can be. You could have an incredible night time, rather than beginning on your personal and obtaining a ton of s— displays. I recall it like heading as properly as it possibly could. I remembered all the jokes, and everybody laughed the place I believed they would, and at a person instant I even riffed. “I was worried of it heading properly,” Liao carries on. “Because I understood that it intended I would never ever prevent.”

And she hasn’t. In addition to making the rounds at go-to venues like Dynasty Typewriter, the Comedy Retailer and the Laugh Manufacturing facility, final summer season Liao was bundled in Just for Laughs Festival’s New Faces of Comedy showcase. Future thirty day period, she’s playing the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Permanently as aspect of Netflix Is a Joke Fest.

Her route to comedy may possibly be unconventional, but Liao has zero reservations about starting up marginally afterwards than most. If everything, chasing a comedy career in her 30s has proved beneficial. “I feel I waited till I was 30 to make guaranteed that I could feel a teeny little bit self-assured to preach my ideas onstage into a microphone,” Liao states. “A ton of comics start out youthful, like at 20, or a teenager. I’m like, where’s the lifetime you have lived? I knew I was missing perspective in my 20s. I had to dwell some lifestyle to have matters come about to me and be like, ‘What was that?’”