Ilana Glazer spent several years wanting to do a Broadway play, but never elevated the thought to a formal goal. The logistics involved — eight shows a week, working (almost) every night — seemed unreasonable. “The time and the money just don’t add up for a working mom,” she says. And then, last September, Grant Heslov and George Clooney asked her to participate in a two-day workshop for their forthcoming adaptation of their 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck. The experience, and the opportunity therein, was (finally) rich enough to justify the potential scheduling downsides. “In my mind, and in my husband’s mind, too, it was going to feed our family system in the long term,” adds Glazer. “It’s worth the time away.”
Now, the Broad City creator has made her Broadway debut in the play (of the same name) as Shirley Wershba, whom she describes as one of the founding foremothers of broadcast journalism. Good Night centers around CBS News host Edward R. Murrow’s attempts to expose and combat the destructiveness of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into supposed Communism. This time around Clooney plays Murrow himself (David Strathairn was nominated for an Academy Award for the role in the film). Wershba (played onscreen in 2005 by Patricia Clarkson) is an employee of Murrow’s “See It Now” newsmagazine and secretly married to one of the field producers. Shortly after the play’s opening night, Glazer spoke with THR from her dressing room at the Winter Garden Theatre about landing the part and the impact the play’s themes (political and otherwise) are having on her emotions and her other work.
How did the workshop of Good Night, and Good Luck translate into the Broadway role?
When I met George and Grant, I was so enthralled. Even just during this two-day reading, the aliveness of the play was palpable. I was so moved by the writing and its minimalism yet density — the words carry such heft. Afterwards, I wrote them a note of gratitude. I wanted the part, but more than anything I did want to thank them for that experience, because it was so fun and interesting. And then they offered me the part.
Is there anything about the process of doing Broadway that’s surprised you?
We do our own makeup, which I did not know. I was like oh, fuck. But it’s good because now I’m very efficient, I can do it in 10-12 minutes, save for my tattoo makeup. It’s so old school. I’ve also done something that I started in my standup tours, which is to get to the theater really early and sort of make my dressing room my office, and then it sort of becomes my home. I’m also finding that my mind and my heart and my nervous system are holding up this play all the time, even when I’m not here, almost like it’s a baby that needs tending-to. I was also surprised by the process of doing previews. When I’m crafting my hour for my standup specials, there’s an exploration period that’s very low stakes — I’m working on it locally, or at clubs with only 200 people in them. It remains shocking to me that we get the play on its feet and then paying audience members watch it before it’s fully formed.
What did you learn about Shirley through this process?
I’m so excited to talk about Jessica Kahkoska, who was the researcher and dramaturg for Good Night, and Good Luck. Jessica’s research really bolstered the creative vision for this show. She sent each of us so much material about our characters and about the time we’re portraying in the context of McCarthyism. When Clark Gregg reads the headline about how women are traffic cops now and it gets a big laugh — Jessica provided that story. And George and Grant talked to Shirley and Joe when they were making the movie, they have hours of footage. They were in their 80s, and Shirley’s now 102. She lives in Queens, and Carter [Hudson, who plays Joe Wershba] and Jessica and I are going to go visit her. Shirley Wershba is not necessarily a household name, she’s not necessarily front and center for the foundational work that she put in to Murrow’s show, but she’s deep in the bones of it all.
In the play, Shirley is laid off — but it’s delivered in a way that presumes she would eventually quit in order to have children. Have you ever experienced anything like that, where folks assume something about your own family or family planning?
I’ve experienced plenty of systemic dehumanization in my career, through all different avenues of my identity — but actually, I haven’t experienced that. But I’ve been very fortunate in my career to have creative control, and it’s allowed me to really plan for starting my family and for my maternity leave. What’s coming up for me is the thing where people are like, are you going to have a second [child]? It’s not the most gracious question to ask. But I also want to have a lot of space for women to share information with each other even if it feels invasive.
What’s your cable news diet like, and what has your relationship been to cable news over the years?
I’ve been taking my news really specifically from Democracy Now, which I appreciate because it’s funded by people-powered money and not corporate money. And Instagram, honestly. We’re all subject to this narrowing and narrowing of the scope of our news, and having this experience of being in this play is reminding me how important it is to take in news that many people are taking in. It’s been making me want to watch more MSNBC and CNN. I need to gather a larger swath of perspective. I also don’t want to take Jon Stewart for granted because he’s only contracted to do The Daily Show for a year. To me he’s the Edward R. Murrow of our day — the voice of common sense among the hypernormalization of everything.
Do you ever worry about the flipside, which is that resisting your algorithm may result in you not hearing about things you care about? More granular or local stories, like a lot of the details about ICE abductions lately, are spreading on social media.
I agree. I think that news from an abolitionist perspective is much harder to find, and you do have to seek that out from a news source with a relatively smaller audience. The New York Times has really changed, and sort of loudly amplified its corporate interests in the past couple years. Now we have this experience of watching the voice change — that’s new to me, and I couldn’t have noticed that without having first narrowed my scope of news for awhile. I think as a global consciousness, we are working as quickly as we can to organize an understanding of what is happening. I hope we can put the pieces together in time to preserve humanity.
This show is speaking to an audience that is quite large for Broadway — 1,600 seats, eight shows a week. Do you have a sense of how the themes are resonating with folks, whether it’s provoking people to think differently about our current political climate or whether it’s more of an echo chamber?
This is such a different animal for me because you’re creating this intimacy with people in the theater. I do that in my standup, and it’s so meaningful to go around the country and see that there are goodhearted people who want basic human rights for their fellow Americans. That’s the vibe at my show. But in a Broadway theater, it can feel confining to not be able to look right at, and into, the audience. I really want to connect with them and be like: right? But there’s something hopeful in taking 90 minutes together to reflect on the heroism of Edward R. Murrow and the indecency of Senator McCarthy — and the fact that he displayed total decorum compared to the grotesque nature of what we are subject to in today’s politics.
Without spoiling things for folks, I imagine the moment where a montage of cable news plays some of those grotesque moments continues to get a big reaction at shows…
That the billionaire-owned news organizations purposefully buried Elon Musk’s very clear two Nazi salutes at the inauguration is very scary to me. I’m very grateful to George and Grant for their bravery in taking up space and pointing it out. I hope it’s mobilizing. There are always people weeping in the audience, and they’re shook up for sure. George Clooney stares right at you and says, “What will you do?” I’m getting the sense that it’s activating. I also do want to say that I’m from Long Island and the tri-state area is a huge part of why the viewership of Fox News skyrocketed. There are a lot of people around New York City who come into the city to take in its culture, and then go home to a different design of environment, and they are being shook up by experiencing this play.
Has this experience made you think about your career differently?
Something I had been asking for — talking to my agents and my manager, and asking God — is for a project in which I can fully surrender to someone else’s vision. I’d been wanting to offer myself as an actor, as a vessel, but I also do feel like I have very high standards because I have the skills to create my own work to act in. And I feel so fortunate to be able to trust such a genius vision with this. If I weren’t doing this play, I’d be working on my next hour. And I am writing a movie and a TV show, and now it feels like all of that is just brimming, since I’ve been living inside of George and Grant’s words. I’m working on my next movie with Josh Rabinowitz, who I wrote Babes with, and we just cut down our outline, so I think this play is elevating my own work. But I cannot wait to go back to looking at people’s faces from the stage. I feel like the other parts of me are now like gorillas in a cage, just trying to break out.