Whitney Cummings Dishes On What's Been Keeping Her Busy - Exclusive Interview

You're working with Annovera on the Just Say Vagina campaign, which is about women feeling empowered, and not apologizing for saying the word "vagina." Why was this important to you?

You know, it's weird, I spent so much of my career saying vagina, not realizing it was going to be such an incendiary, taboo term. I didn't realize. And so [when] I started doing stand-up, I was labeled a dirty comic. I was labeled an edgy comic. I'm like, "Why is this dirty?" And I went on stage and I remember the first time I said vagina on stage in the context of a dating joke or something about an insecurity I had, the audience reaction was so mixed. It was like half the people were laughing, the women were like, "Woo," and the men were cringing, and then other comics were like, "Ah, here we go, a girl talking about her vagina."

Okay, you guys have all talked about your wives for the past 60 years, you've talked about airplane food for the past 50 years, how is this somehow ... It's a very loaded area and it's the clinical term. And I found that, when I was a teenager, I was thwarted in my pursuit of medical care and even being able to advocate for myself because I was too afraid to say that word, even to my gynecologist. I lived with my dad a lot of the time and when a tampon commercial came up, I would run out of the room embarrassed.

So, I feel like I was just very much, whether it's religious or socially constructed or whatever it is, commercials I saw, I go to the Rite Aid and there was a whole aisle dedicated to making sure vaginas didn't stink. Douches and what, and I'm like, "Does my? ..." [And when] you were a kid, the kids make jokes about vaginas smelling, and you're like, "What?" And then guys were watching porn, so by the time you hook up with them the first time as a teenager, guys were like, "What is all that hair?" And you're like, "No, it's supposed to be like this, I think." And so there's lots of little traumas, I think, for women that make us default to "We're supposed to be embarrassed about this."

So another part of the campaign is about how women apologize so much more than men do. Do you have any hints or tips for women who find themselves saying sorry all the time?

Well, what I would say is it's pretty savage advice, which is, I think a lot of those type of women, they don't want to be a problem, they want to keep harmony. All I'll say to you is when you do that, you're annoying. That's the only way to get people to stop, because if you say, "Hey, you're enough. Don't apologize if you don't need to," it's so ingrained in our bones, in our cells. What I will say is you are giving your power away when you do that, and also if you're going to be codependent and apologize to everyone all the time, nothing is more annoying than a woman running around that's done nothing wrong being like, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," because it makes the person you're apologizing to look like they're abusive.

So that's my new thing with any of the women I work with, they're like, "Sorry, sorry, sorry," and I'm like, "You haven't done anything wrong and it's annoying to me because now you've thrown your insecurities at me, now I have to deal with it." I have to go, "No, you did nothing wrong," and now you're wasting my energy. So I think a lot of codependent ... I'm sorry, addicts, don't realize that they're actually ... We say people-pleasing is a form of a**holery.

If someone's apologizing for something constantly and they didn't do anything wrong, I'm always like, if you did something wrong, tell me. Because all you're doing is apologizing, which makes me think you did something wrong. So did you? Do we need to have a conversation? Because you're carrying a lot of guilt that doesn't belong here. So either go call your dad, go to betterhealth.com, go to a Twelve-Step program, but if you're apologizing to me all the time, I'm going to take you literally and go, "Well, what did you do wrong?" And you're going to go, "Well, I opened the door too soon," and I'm like, "Okay. So what, you're apologizing to me because if you didn't, I would hit you?" You're insulting me when you apologize to me and you've done nothing wrong. So I've taken a more savage approach to it and that's usually when people listen. I was just going to say, just cut it out. It's done. Stop.

We want to talk about your podcast, "Good For You," because you've had some amazing guests on there so far; Paris Hilton and Amanda Knox were recent ones. Who would be your dream guests?

Oh my gosh, yes. Billie Eilish is a huge dream guest. Because during the pandemic, I only brought people on this show that I was okay with killing with COVID. I'm kidding. That's not going to translate well in print at all. But no, there's a couple people. Dolly Parton, Billie Eilish, those are the dream, dream, dream, dreams. I also have to say, as I've been doing this podcast, you realize that fame and celebrity, sometimes it hits, sometimes it doesn't. I think it's really about, in a podcast, the chemistry between the two people, and sometimes when I have really famous people on, I kind of am like, "Oh my god, I don't want to get you in trouble. I don't want to get you canceled." I can't say anything I want to say or make the jokes I want to make. Because it's three hours of hanging out with a comedian. Something's going to go sideways, you know? 

And so when Paris Hilton was here, I barely spoke. I was just, "Oh god, I do not want to get her in trouble." And so I have a couple dream guests that are women, because when we look at all this stuff about women and Me Too and finally, it's not the first time this has happened. We just were never able to connect through Twitter. Women like Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos and Etta James. There are women that were expressing these sentiments, but not in a way that could catch fire on Twitter, it was through their music or something.

I go back and I listen to Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette and Ani DiFranco and Fiona Apple and I just, oh god, I was screaming lyrics to your song when I was younger, but I didn't even understand what you were really saying until becoming an adult woman. And so I want to have a lot of those women ... on the podcast to go through, just pick their brains and celebrate a lot of the lost women that were trying to say all this, but couldn't. Cher would be amazing. Sharon Stone, oh, dream. A dream.

That's a good point, though. A lot of people were trying to speak out about these issues and no one really listened before.

They'd only listen if they were dancing and it was music, and it was always female rage. It was marketing that as a unique thing, only for women that got dumped by David Coulier, who gives a f**k about him. So I want to go back and just go, oh my god, we didn't listen. Mary J. Blige, ah, now I hear that. I just want to pay credit where credit's due on a lot of people that aren't being highlighted at the moment.

Whitney Cummings: So I like to play devil's advocate on things that people think are going to be bad for women and figure out how they can actually benefit women, and so I brought a robot. You got to be memorable and it has to still be interesting. It can't be ephemeral, so people [are] still like, "Dude, I just watched your special. That robot's crazy." And that's still shocking a year and a half later, whereas someone going, "Hey, so your boyfriend came home late?" No one cares. It just has to be something that really drives conversation, because we're all subject to the algorithm, we're all victims of the algorithm. If you don't have people on Twitter ... It used to be these big publicists at ... Warner Bros. decided if you've got a banner over the ... We were in the hands of a bunch of businessmen, if you've got a billboard in a certain place.

But publicists now, at least the smart ones, are like, "Hey, talk to you, for example. Talk to this person and go on this podcast." Things sometimes I've never even heard of, but they're fans. It's not necessarily ABC or NBC or "The Tonight Show" or whatever, it's this loyal group of fans. So having something unoriginal on Netflix is not necessarily better than having something super, super original on TikTok or YouTube or Instagram. We have to be smarter about what we do in specials now because they can ... I mean, think about all the specials that have come and go that you didn't even know on there. Ali Wong came out pregnant, being hilarious, and people were like, "What?" It kept being interesting. So I think those are the ones that cut through all the endless amount of content.

You've got so many things to think about just to make a special these days.

Yeah. You've got to be smart. Audiences are smart and audiences don't want to see, in my opinion, just the same s**t they've seen. Jokes about fat chicks, lazy stuff nobody wants to see. Things that aren't fresh and making us think. Because there's so much talent on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube that's really original and taking risks because they have nothing to lose. That's what we're competing with. People that have nothing to lose and are not giving in to all the Twitter, "Don't say this, don't say that," and they're just going for it. So it's almost as competitive as ever.

You made your directorial debut with "The Female Brain," which you co-wrote, directed, and starred in. Will you be making more movies?

I don't know. The movie business is a s***show at the moment. I'm sorry. Now that I say "just say vagina," I just say way too many other things I shouldn't say. They're like, "You can say vagina, but all your other opinions, keep to yourself." It's just a little bit, right now, I think with the kind of stories that have been told for the longest time, I only want to be a part of things that are moving the ball down the field, that are fresh, that aren't stereotypes of women, or aren't something we've already seen, because you give seven months of your life to something and sometimes it just comes out as a little tiny picture on Netflix and someone just goes right past it and you put your heart and soul into it.

So for me, I'm just picky with the kind of stuff I do. And then just some other movies that I've wanted to make for the longest time, but I never felt like the studio system would allow me to do it. I used to go into studio meetings and they'd want to make a movie with me and I'd be like, "Oh great, it's about these two women that are 38 and they just froze their eggs and they want to have a Rumspringa before they have kids, be a surrogate or something," and they'd be like, "Oh great. They're 38, let's" — this was also 10 years ago — "Let's cast Mila Kunis." She's 30 and looks 20. It was always like, "No, they have to look 38." And they're like, "Okay, great. How about Emma Stone? She just turned 25." And I was like, "Ah!" How about Reese Witherspoon or Cameron Diaz, my favorite. How about Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer. 

So I always just felt a little bit like the final product was going to be embarrassing, even though I had good intentions. And now there's so many more people and women and people of color in the business now that I just want to align with, I think, the people that get it and aren't trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Well, I want to see those movies. I want to see movies with real women in them.

I mean, I'm going to have extensive Photoshop in post, but everyone else will look totally makeup free. I'm kidding.

Whitney Cummings: I just think that this business, hopefully soon, it's going to see that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is not going to get them what they want. Looking at the people that came in, Tiffany Haddish, she can do anything. It was like after "Bridesmaids" came out, I got all these calls — I'm sure a lot of women did that were way more successful than me — saying, "Oh my god, can you make the next 'Bridesmaids'? Can you make the next 'Bridesmaids'?" Four women on a divorced trip, four women on an office trip, four women going crazy on a camping trip.

And I just remember being like, this is so backwards, because it made money, not because anyone was a feminist, the whole approach was let's replicate that thing that just did well. And I was like, "No, no, no, no, you don't replicate the thing that did well, you replicate the originality behind the risky idea." So don't call me saying let's make another "Bridesmaids". Call me saying let's make another super original idea with a really fresh cast and taking a bunch of risks, not duplicate the same. And then they ended up making a bunch of movies with four girls, a bachelorette party, and then here and here, four girls doing ... And it doesn't work and they wonder why. And they're like, "Oh see, women aren't funny. That was a fluke." I was like, "No, you just tried to repackage the same movie again and you threw all these actors on the box."