Sheria Mattis: Your compliments have not cured my depression. Yet!
‘Why Are You Funny’ highlights QTPoC comedic writers on their funny writings, words, and selves.
Why Are You Funny is an interview series highlighting queer QTPoC comedians and comedy writers on their funny writings, thoughts, and selves.
This month, I sat down with Brooklyn, Bed Stuy-native, writer-comedian Sheria Mattis. She’s written for Leslie Jones, Netflix is a Joke, and Fran Drescher, been featured in Standup NBC, and was a semi-finalist for the Funny Women Awards.
The Loud Bitch Comedy fest creator keeps it candid in her sets, offering hilariously raunchy tales about her fibroids, queerness, Brooklyn gentrification, and ‘long titties.’ Here we talk about baby Black girl Chris Farley impressions, The Fibroids: A Love Story, and why toxic masculinity’s long reign in comedy must end.
You grew up in Brooklyn with Caribbean parents. How does that influence your comedy?
Listen. The trauma is really good for comedy.
There was lots of high pressure, lots of discipline. There’s lots of mental illness all up and through both sides of my family. But also my mom is really funny, very charming. My dad is also very funny, very charming. That definitely influenced me.
What made you laugh growing up?
I watched a lot of Comic View on BET, ‘coming to you six nights a week’.
I loved the Queens and Kings of Comedy. A lot of Comedy Central. I used to do Chris Farley impersonations as a baby, you know what I mean? Just a little chubby Black girl doing ‘Fat Guy in a Little Coat’ for nobody. Everybody’s worried.
Yes, Chris Farley. What are some of your other comedy inspirations?
Oh yeah see, I loved all the problematic men. I’ve just been disappointed and disappointed. Like, Louis C. K. was my favorite comedian. I loved Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock. When I was depressed and in college, I got into Bill Hicks, and he had some weirdly homophobic jokes. I loved all of them.
But there are also ones that never disappointed me like Maria Bamford. Love her down, forever. More random like Elvira Kurt. Wanda Sykes, of course, like every one of her specials.
And Mo’Nique! I Coulda Been Your Cellmate! doesn’t get the respect it deserves. It doesn’t. It mixes hearing people’s stories into her comedy. It is an incredible special for exactly the people that deserve comedy.
You mentioned in an interview that you started doing stand-up as an extension of your love of comedy writing.
And I fell in love with it more as I was doing it. I think I always want to do it, and I probably always will but that was not the goal. The goal was to get into a comedy room, and I’m still trying. But I didn’t go to Harvard. I didn’t write for The Lampoon, and I don’t have any famous cousins, so I was like, I guess I got to do stand-up!
Did you write growing up?
I wrote a lot. I wrote fanfic a little bit. I used to write stories. I wrote terrible poetry when I was young and my mom had me recite it all over the place on weird TV shows and stuff like that. I always wanted to be a writer, I think, until I got depressed and became a grown-up, or tried to become a grown-up.
And then and I was like, “Well, that was silly.”
That seems to be true for most Black or queer and Black and queer comedy people I talk to I talked to.
Yeah, I can think of several reasons for that. Because you want to write about your experience and you want to bring your experiences to something. But if every TV show, every comedy, and movie is white, disaffected, suburban, straight—you’re not going to see yourself.
Then you’re going to be like, “Who’s going to let me in a room and what are they going to let me say?”
When people started busting open those doors, is when I realized I could do it. I think a lot of us queer Black weirdos were like, “Wait, maybe people will hear my story.”
You’ve been doing stand-up for a few years now. How long do you feel like it took to figure out a flow or your style?
I’m still doing that.
But it’s so weird because I was such a comedy nerd for so long and the only reason I never tried stand-up was because of my anxiety and my depression. Like, that was the only reason why.
So once I was medicated and introduced to meditation and yoga. And acid! I felt comfortable enough in my skin to go on stage.
When you first started stand-up, what motivated you to keep going?
Wanting to be in a writer’s room really motivated me. But also, I fell in love with saying things that people aren’t saying, or that people aren’t talking about in a way that isn’t academic or pedantic.
Like, oh, I have fibroids. I also have long titties. When that started happening, that’s when it was on and popping.
You’ve got to be the first person I’ve heard make a fibroid joke, which I really appreciate because back in the day when I used to have periods, it’s something I wish I knew about! No one wants to bring it up.
Yes. It’s so common! And I have talked to other comics with fibroids, but talking about it is a big deal for people, you know, in a public way.
Like, my mom had fibroids and never told me until far down the line when I started planning my hysterectomy. You know what I mean? I wish it weren’t such a scary topic for people, because it’s such a basic reality for so many of us.
I watched Weekend Pupdate. I loved it.
Oh, my God.
I’d love to know what you learned about comedy writing from that gig.
I would say that was the first writing job I really felt a part of. And I was doing it at a really difficult time—during the pandemic, during the uprising.
And then Ricky Glore asked me to write for Weekend Pupdate. Shout out to Ricky Glore for being that bitch. Right? We love you. I still have my puppet. I need to do something with her. Her nose fell off.
But being able to do that was a really fun, interesting intro to writing because I get very nervous about putting stuff out there. I still battle this anxiety every goddamn day. You know what I mean?
So having the deadlines and having something that I wanted to say when we were doing, like, a defund the police thing, I believed in that shit. It was at a time when I still believed that we could make a better world, and I believe that comedy could make it happen and blah, blah, bullshit.
I’m less optimistic about it now, but at the time, I was like, “I’m going to change some minds!”
I don’t know if we did that, but it was really fun to try. It was really fun to try.
You wrote for Netflix Is a Joke, which is a huge accomplishment for any comedy writer. How did it feel to get such a culturally respected writing job like that?
Whew. I was like, “Nigga, we made it!”
I really believed that, you know what I mean? It felt like such a huge, amazing door opened. I made good contacts. I wrote for big people that I really respect, and they liked my work which was very cool. But it was also really difficult and not what I was expecting it to be.
There are things I’m literally not allowed to talk about. They keep their shit on lock, you know what I mean? But I had some really difficult experiences there. It showed me media needs something. Something a little more ethical. Like, I am not ready to sell myself completely. I’ll sell some of it! But not the whole thing.
Sounds like you got to peek behind the curtain a bit.
Just a little bit, and I was like, “Ah!”
Speaking of Netflix is a Joke: capitalism. That’s really how I felt.
I got to get into a room and do the thing, and really money-wise it was great. I think I realized you’ve got to make the money to go make your own things. So I took the money, and I did some classes, and I had people look over my scripts.
You decided on a different path.
Yes! Like Michaela Coel did it herself. Issa Rae did it herself—with a little more resources!—but like, you know, they did it themselves. They said, “Oop, fuck that I’m just going to do it.”
And look what happened. I honestly don’t think the things they made, that are so precious to the culture-at-large, would exist if they hadn’t just said, “Fuck it.”
That brings me to the next thing, which is your YouTube series Black Girl Feeling. It’s a really honest, funny snapshot of your comedy, but also a little bit of your personality, whatever you’re comfortable sharing.
In one of the episodes, you talked about how social media and this constant need to release content can be really anxiety-inducing. Do you feel like Black Girl Feeling is your response to that need to share?
That still rings true. I still have a lot of anxiety about social media.
I just started that series though because my aunt died and I had so much on my mind, and I was kind of trapped in the house and just writing, writing, writing. And I was like, “Okay, I need to release content.”
Dead ass, what had happened was, I was going through the surgeries before the hysterectomy. I was dealing with the effects of menopause. And I was like, “Oh, let’s talk about this, and let’s put it on the Internet.”
But the thing is, when you put things on the Internet, yes, it resonates with a lot of people. In fact, more people will resonate with it than will hate it, but there will still be haters and they will still hit you up.
I was getting DMs like,
“Don’t do this hysterectomy. Here’s a bunch of studies about why and don’t let the white man take your uterus look at what Oshun said.”
Even if it’s misspelled and coming down to somebody with like a weird PFP. You know they’re ugly. It doesn’t matter. It still hits a part of you. Especially if you’re a sensitive bitch. I’m a PISCES. I am sensitive. So this shit, it’ll hit you just a little bit.
When you have to share so much of yourself and you struggle with mental health, it’s really hard. I’m not sure what the middle ground is.
I don’t know. I still need to get to a place of peace within myself that I think I haven’t achieved in order to be the content creator that is required of me during this horrible time in history where you have to be constantly creating.
If you’re comfortable talking about it, I’d love to know how you got your manager.
Shout out to Alison Flierl, who wrote for BoJack Horseman, and a lot of things. So I had a little outline for The Fibroids: A Love Story script idea. I took it to a class she was teaching, and she was really helpful in the whole process helping me bring out some things with it I wasn’t expecting. And then I worked on Fibroids with another writer’s group and finalized it there.
And she reached out to me and was like, “Hey, I just can’t stop thinking about Fibroids. I want to see how it’s going.”
So I spit-shined it and I sent it to her. It took many months, but she read it, and then she sent it over to Epicenter. After a few more months, Epicenter got back to me and they were really interested.
Congratulations on that. A show about fibroids is really interesting and unique. It’s something we don’t get to delve into in shows, really ever.
It’s a new development but since then I’ve gotten a few generals. Having people at studios know my name and read my work and talk to me and say that they liked it and they liked my voice, is a huge, massive step.
I didn’t think Fibroids was appropriate to send to studios, you know? I’m so grateful and blessed for the people who could see what I have to say and see that it has value. I’m genuinely surprised. Not because I don’t think I’m brilliant. I just thought I was the only one. I have been the only one for so long.
What does success look like to you?
I mean, my vision of success is changing as the world gets more horrible and scary. I want a house high up enough that when the sea levels rise it doesn’t flood. That’s sort of where I am.
But I want to be the Head Writer of my own queer, Black, working-class-focused, funny, funny show that resonates with people. That’s what I want. That’s the pig in Squid Game for me.
I would like to keep doing stand-up, but because stand-up takes so much out of me I would live somewhere nice that’s not in New York, someplace with trees and space and all that where I can grow my own food, which I’ve never, ever done. But I’m going to do it.
I want to be there for like a week and then come into New York for the weekend and do shows and gigs and enjoy my time and then take my happy ass back to my nice little home where I’ll write and review pages and either be in a writer’s room or run my own show, whatever that looks like. Maybe do some voice acting. Ultimately, I want a balance of creating.
Quiet success.
Yes! I don’t want to be famous. I want to be that girl who’s, like, that old lady in her pajamas smoking a blunt with Rihanna on the yacht. Who’s she? Nobody knows! Leave her the fuck alone. Don’t look. Don’t find her Kpop fanfic. Yes, look at her. She’s happy. She adores a PJ. She’s in her bonnet. She looks peaceful.
So many comics and comedy writers are like, “I want everybody to know my name!”
I don’t want none of you niggas to know my name! Leave me alone! I want you to enjoy my shit. But leave me alone.
If you could change anything about the industry, what would that be?
All right. Let me get heavy and real with it. I would change the culture of the extremely toxic masculinity that leads to all the bad things.
Like there are some places you go and you’re like, “I’m definitely about to get assaulted.” I don’t want that. I want to get rid of that.
I think the ego, the hustle culture in stand-up comedy needs to go. I don’t think it lends itself to great comedy a lot of the time. I think it just tires people out or makes them do coke.
I think the culture of toxic masculinity is also a part of how comedy came to be and I think it’s time to let that shit go. I think it’s like the “ham hocks” of comedy. Where it’s like, “It’s part of our culture!”
But does it need to be? No shade to the ham hocks. I would like to get rid of that. I think people really do think that it’s required. That that’s just the game. It doesn’t have to be.
Can’t you imagine something better? Isn’t that what we do with creativity? Can’t we imagine something better and make that happen?
Like the Louis CK thing. Everybody’s all like, “Oh, poor Louis. Poor Louie! They took his career.”
How many careers did he destroy? How many great jokes did we not get from the women who left it industry because of him? Because of that. Because they were forced out or because they were scared out. There were probably some great special, some great jokes, and great TV shows that we’ll never, ever see and never, ever get to see because of that. That is not necessary. It’s just there.
What’s your favorite thing about writing comedy?
When you get that feeling in your heart and your gut that’s like, “I think this might work.”
Even when it doesn’t. Even when you try and it’s like, “Damn, you niggas didn’t laugh at that?! That shit was brilliant!”
Doesn’t matter. That feeling is so good. It’s so good. I’m on antidepressants and I have menopause symptoms, so I don’t get a lot of orgasms. That’s the closest thing to a regular orgasm that I get now.
What do you think comedy does for the world?
I think comedy helps people— for better, for worse—get through the drudgery and the grief and the sadness of life. It distracts people a little bit.
People like Hasan Minaj, John Oliver, even Trevor Noah, and The Daily Show, teach people information that they wouldn’t usually seek out because they are so beleaguered by the effects of capitalism, racism, and slavery, and all that stuff.
It’s like a soothing balm for the soul that’s on fire and dying every day a little bit more. I think that’s always been true for human nature.
Why are you funny?
Why am I funny?
“Why are you funny? You are funny. Why are you funny?”
I asked myself that every day.
I do think that it’s the crossover of my identities and experiences. There’s no other outcome. The only other outcome is like, death. It’s dark!
But really, the times when I was not funny are the darkest, darkest days. Even if you read my suicide notes, you’re like, “It’s lit.”
And I think there’s an ancestral part, too. I think I come from Jamaican slaves who worked in the sugarcane fields. I’m from people who probably ran away and tried to escape and were brought back. I’m from people who had no way to escape the circumstance, their circumstances, but to tell fucking jokes. And I think that passes on.
I think trauma, intergenerational, or just in your life either makes you funny or makes you super, not funny. And I’m both. I get to be both.
And also, like, UPN. So trauma and UPN, which is basically the same thing.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
