An interview with Jess Delfino
Comedian, mom, author, musician, and Jill-of-all-trades
Jess Delfino is a one-woman powerhouse. She’s a standup comedian, author of the book Dumb Jokes for Smart Folks, writer, musician, and mom — and I’m sure I’m forgetting many of the one zillion things she does. She also has a Substack, Jessica Delfino’s Museletter, where she muses about comedy and creativity — and dishes on some of her own exploits and her many celebrity encounters.
Here, Jess (who is my sister from another mister, although I’m not literally one of her many siblings) and I talk about the evolution of jokes after becoming a mom, finding the time to be creative, focusing on certain projects, and more.
Janine: You were making jokes long before you were a mom. How do you think your jokes have changed since you've become a mom?
Jess: Well, they've changed because before I had kids I didn't care at all about who liked my jokes. I was like, whoever wants to laugh at my jokes, great. I just had no concept of what kids laugh at or what kids do at all. Since becoming a mom, I’m paying more attention to whether something would make my children laugh. Would this be something I could play in front of my kids? At what age would they be able to watch this or enjoy this?
Janine: You definitely did some not-G-rated stuff before you had kids.
Jess: Oh, yeah. A lot of things, and they're out there. And I know that one day my kids are going to come to me and they're going to be like, what's this?
Janine: That's coming sooner than you think.
Jess: I know. I'm going to have to come up with some kind of story that will jibe with them. I’ll have to come clean and say, “Yeah, I wrote this stuff before you were born. This is who I am.” It's interesting because I don't think that kids ever really know who their parents are. I’m still sometimes amazed by my own mom. I mean, I think I have a pretty good sense of her at this point. I've been with her for over 40 years, but she still surprises me and I think that I'm going to be one of those moms who is surprising my kids for a long time.
Janine: Moms are people, too.
Jess: Not only are they people — they're even wackier than you thought they were. I'm still wackadoo and I always will be.
Janine: But you’re 10% less wacky after having kids.
Jess: At least!
Janine: I know you also came from a big family, with a lot of siblings.
Jess: As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure how many siblings I have when you count all the siblings by marriage.
Janine: Do you think that has informed your comedy worldview, coming from such a big family?
Jess: I think that everything a performer takes in informs their comedy.
Janine: I know you've talked about making your comedy more accessible to all ages. How else do you think that having kids has had an impact on your comedy?
Jess: I value my writing and creative time more than I ever used to. I used to have this mentality of, like, when lightning strikes, I will take that lightning and turn it into gold. But now, I have to make the lightning strike. I've got 30 minutes. There's a little bit of pressure in terms of getting more creative output and having less free time. I also find that I'm willing to be more open to comedy stimuli and ideas than I used to be for the same reason. It's like, okay, I've got 10 minutes to be alone in the car, look around and see what I can see that might inspire something. So the pressure is definitely on to take advantage of those small creative windows that I have, because I tend to be creative when my kids are around. But I can't really soak it in and take a bit out to see how far it'll go. I can take an idea and I can jot it down. But I can't always ride it out immediately.
Janine: I know what you mean. And you do comedy in a lot of different formats.
Jess: Every kind of outlet, as far as I'm concerned, is an excuse to mine a laugh. That includes writing music, stand-up, illustrations, and conversations — there are a lot of different outlets that I enjoy pursuing for comedic purposes. Stand-up is probably my favorite. That’s what I want to focus on more in 2024. Comedy music has taken me to a lot of places that I wanted to go, so it's hard for me to set it to the side.
Janine: I admire the fact that you can combine music and comedy and do it so well, because I think that's so hard to do. I write humor, and I play a little bit of music, but as far as music goes I’m a dilettante. I just muck around with music. I mean, I've played in bands before, but I haven't done that in forever. Anyway, I think combining music and comedy can sometimes go badly, for some reason. But you do it well, and I admire the way that you've been able to combine those two things.
Jess: Well, maybe this is the wrong way to go about performing. but I don't treat things very preciously. I've never sat down and been like, “This will be my opus!” It's always like, “Hey, fuck it. It's fun. It's funny. Let's see where it goes.” This year, I am trying to be a little bit more like, “Okay, what can you do Delfino? Let's see what you've got!” Maybe in a bigger way than I used to. I love writing and performing. That's what brought me to this party, so that's what I'm going to explore.
Janine: I like that. I look forward to seeing what you can do when you sit down and say, “This will be my opus.”
Jess: I’m writing a solo show right now, and I'm working on a television show. Those are the only things I want to do this year. That might even be too much. Honestly, in the past, I've had like 50 things that I'm doing, or 100.
Janine: You and I are alike in that way. I think you're a real polymath. You're someone who has a lot of different talents. I'm not saying I have a lot of different talents. I'm just saying you do.
Jess: I see that in you as well. And you know, and I see that in myself. I do have a lot of different skills and it's hard to pick just one because I like to do the things that I like to do and I spent time practicing those things and getting good at them over the years. But at the same time, I want to just pick one thing and dig into it and see what happens.
Janine: We should also mention that you and I wrote a screenplay together, along with our friend Amy Barnes. We think it's hilarious — and everyone else who read it did, too — but otherwise, nobody else seemed to be too interested in it. It’s a female buddy comedy/holiday movie called Jingle Belles.
Jess: We got some interest in it, but when you’re trying to sell a feature film, you have to make that practically your full-time job. We wrote a great script, but we were all doing a million other things, and we didn’t do that work.
Janine: Also, the pandemic hit just as we were finishing up the script.
Jess: We couldn’t compete with a pandemic. But the only reason that that script isn't in every single movie theater is because we didn't know how to do the work of selling it.
Janine: There’s still hope! Hit us up, people who want to produce a female buddy comedy/holiday movie. Anyway, to go back to what you were saying before about stand-up comedy, something I know you've also talked about before is finding more opportunities to do stand-up comedy during the day and in family-friendly settings, and I think that's amazing that you're trying to do that.
Jess: Yes. That's a big part of developing the show that I'm working on right now is finding outlets to perform during the day. I’m still booking shows and doing open mics, but I’m also focusing on developing this show without any expectation of an audience. If I can practice things in front of one person or three people or an audience, that’s great.
Janine: Yeah, people talk about how you should just write the thing or create the thing without thinking about whether or not it's going to be commercially viable, but it's hard to work on something for months or years without knowing if anything will come out of it.
Jess: But step one, I have to write the thing and finish the thing. And then maybe I can think about how I make it better and how audiences respond to it. But I've got to I've got to do some kind of rough draft first — and in order to do that, I am finding outlets to be able to try material in front of friends on the phone or my daytime writing workshops. Things that are alternatives to those nighttime open mics that I might have been doing before.
Janine: You can always run stuff by me! I didn’t do open mics, but with my schedule and where I live now, it’s harder for me to get to things at night, especially on weeknights. For me to go to Brooklyn at 10 PM on a Wednesday is just a logistical nightmare for me now.
Jess: On the flip side of that, I'm trying to say yes more. I want to say yes to those offers and look for opportunities. So when I see my friends who have shows coming up and stuff, I'm thinking to myself, like, I'm treating this like a wedding. I'm making the time and I'm going to make it happen. I'm going to go because I have to keep these relationships. The relationships I’ve developed over the years with people are the most valuable. I need to invest in those relationships because otherwise like, What's the fucking point of having spent 20 years pursuing this career?
Janine: That's a good way to look at it, that you have to make the time. People, even people who have kids, will make the time to do a nine-to-five job. It’s different, and sometimes more difficult, when you're trying to make time to do both your art and your career. But if it's not within a certain structure where it's like you put in this time and you get paid this much — even if you know that it's paying off in different ways, eventually — people don't always get that. Not that you have to justify yourself to other people.
Jess: Absolutely. I think that a lot of people don't get that. There are certain norms that people roll with and understand. Like you go to high school and then you go to college and then you get married, and then you have kids. Those are norms that everyone understands. And there are things outside of that, that you couldn't explain to people if you try, because we haven't been having those ideas jammed down our throats in unison our entire lives. So then when you start telling people like, Well, yeah, I grew up and I didn't have kids, and instead I dedicated my life to performing, or I had kids in my mid-40s and then I went back to performing. You know, it's just so deviant from the typical story that most people have memorized that it's like trying to almost learn a new language or something.
Janine: Yeah, whereas if you tell people you’re a stay-at-home mom, people think they understand that and can put you in that little box in their mind.
Jess: They imagine you sitting at home baking a pie, and doing laundry and whatever. You know, no one explains what it is that stay-at-home moms really do and I swear to you, most of it is looking for little projects to do.
Janine: Yeah, you don’t just stare at the kids all day.
Jess: The solo stand-up show I’m working on now is about being a middle-aged woman and the changes that come along in that part of your life. It talks about my background and asks a lot of questions that lead up to: Why is my life the way that it is right now when it could have been so much different?
Janine: I love that. I’m a fellow middle-aged mom. And I think a lot of people ask themselves that question, what if I had made this choice instead of that choice, what would my life look like now?
Jess: Every single choice I made, pretty much throughout much of my life, was a bad choice. I ran away at age 15. I did manage to go to high school and college but I go-go danced my way through college. I didn’t focus on my future in high school. I didn't meet my dad till I was 12. That one wasn't my fault. There were a lot of things that happened that I kind of did wrong. But I'm still living in a nice home with a boy and a girl and driving a Volvo, so things kind of worked out. I could have gotten in the wrong car as a teenager or something. Who knows what could have happened? I'm fascinated by that because I know other people who didn't do anything wrong, they just lived their lives but they felt like things went off the rails for them. So I'm curious about that. Is it fate? Is it is it luck? Is it something else?
Janine: Well, I look forward to learning more about your projects when they come to fruition. Also, I want to say I know you have a showbiz enemy — we won’t mention her name — but anyone who is your enemy is my enemy, too. I refuse to watch anything with her in it now.
Jess: I love that about you. Thank you.
Janine: I know she’s wronged you in the past.
Jess: Not just me — other people, too. Don’t get me started!
You can read more of Jess’ work and watch clips of her performing stand-up at her website, Jessdelfino.com.
Want more Mom Jokes in your life?
Want to share Mom Jokes?
Great interview. Extremely inspiring. Thank you!