Ilana Glazer on Motherhood and Friendship, On- and Off-Screen

The New Yorker Radio Hour

In their breakout comedy series, “Broad City,” Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson played raucous and raunchy best friends who were the glue in each other’s lives. In “Babes,” the new movie co-written by Glazer and directed by Pamela Adlon (fresh off her own series, “Better Things”), friendship is, again, a life force. Glazer plays Eden, a yoga teacher who gets pregnant unexpectedly and becomes a single mom. This time Glazer plays opposite Michelle Buteau, whom Glazer calls a “muse” for the film. Even though it didn’t take long to get the script green-lit, Glazer says some of the more graphic realities of pregnancy and having children were taken as somewhat “blue.” That assessment, she tells The New Yorker’s Naomi Fry, makes her wonder, “Perhaps we’ve been so disembodied from our own life force, from our own origin stories, that we find it disgusting. But it’s not disgusting. It’s hilarious, it’s beautiful, it’s also ugly, it’s sweet and soft, it’s hard and intense, but the way women talk still really rubs people the wrong way.” Glazer also talks with Fry about what Jacobson taught her about being an artist, going to therapy three times a week, and being wild about her daughter.