‘When You’re A Woman in Media People Don’t Want to See You Too Much’: Amy Schumer Talks TV Return on ‘The Daily Show’
Amy Schumer is returning to her roots. Season Five of the Emmy-winning Comedy Central Sketch show Inside Amy Schumer is set to premier tomorrow night with its first episode in more than six years. Last night, the actress, stand-up, screenwriter, author and star of the returning series appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah to promote her homecoming, right as Noah prepares to leave the desk he’s worked for the last seven years.
Schumer left her eponymous sketch show in 2016 in order to pursue a career outside of sketch comedy that included massive stadium tours, a foray into film and a best-selling book. When asked about her absence from television, she told Noah, “You know, as somebody in the media, especially a woman, people get annoyed when they see you too much, so you have to kind of disappear a little bit,” to which her swaths of online haters replied, “Any amount is too much.”
Anyone who has used the internet in the last decade knows that the award-winning comedian’s hate-following is big enough to sell out an arena on its own. Even that interview clip has been brigaded by downvotes, with the dislikes now outnumbering the likes two to one. Schumer attributed the negativity directed toward her to misogyny, as she sarcastically quipped, “You know, you just want to burn women at the stake.”
Schumer and Noah used that wisecrack as an awkward transition into a discussion on the ongoing situation faced by women in Iran, and Noah used the hot-button issue as a launching point to explore how Schumer feels her show is influenced by the “camaraderie around the world where women are saying, ‘We experience many instances of men policing us, on how we do, or dress, or say or perform.’”
Schumer explained the feminist influence on her show with the following anecdote: “One journalist once said, is like sneaking shaved carrots in with the brownies. … People don’t want to feel like they’re learning something, but if you can make people laugh, and have a point, that’s the only way I want to learn anything, you know?”
The new iteration of Inside Amy Schumer will be a more personal experience for Schumer, whose material has skewed toward a private place in recent years. She hopes to share more of her struggles as a method of healing, not just for herself, but for her audience, who may be experiencing something similar. Said Schumer, “I found that, when I was honest about my struggles, and the things I was battling with that I was ashamed of, people were expressing, like, ‘Me too.’ And that made me feel so much better. And so that makes me feel like it's worth opening my mouth.”
Inside Amy Schumer Season Five premiers tomorrow, October 20th, on Paramount Plus, whether you like it or not.
