I met up with [Fortune Feimster](https://www.instagram.com/fortunefeimster/) at Tartine Coffee shop in Hollywood. In the hour we spoke, from 9:30-10:30am on March 13th, America took a pandemic size swerve from the normal and came to rest in Isolation Land. But when we met up that morning life was still fairly normal. As Fortune and I ordered coffee all the folks working behind the bar greeted Fortune by name and she greeted them warmly in turn. Fortune records Netflix is a Joke Radio’s morning show _What a Joke with Fortune and Papa_ with fellow comedian Tom Papa next door. She calls Tartine her Cheers bar. We sat down at a table in a corner to talk about her hilarious and personal Netflix stand up special _Sweet and Salty_ as well as being different in Hollywood, having faith in the journey, and the coming pandemic.
I began by asking if her comedy tour was still on? “Ugh I don’t know!” She was in good spirits for someone whose tour could be cancelled at any minute. “It’s not a good time for live comedy. Which is the irony. Your special comes out and that's when people want to see you most.” It’s her first theater tour and she sold out most venues, adding second shows, “It’s such a cool feeling to be at this point.” She quickly adds, “there are obviously greater problems at stake. I’m the lucky one because I don’t have kids so I can take some hits. But people living paycheck to paycheck… this is going to be really really hard on the economy and people like, who work at coffee shops, cause we don't know how this is going to unfold. Like people that work in any capacity where they are in a public place will be affected. You just hope that something subsides. People stay healthy. And we got to look out for our old folks. That's the key.” By the next day her March dates had been rescheduled and Californians were being asked to isolate.
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Being from North Carolina, Fortune speaks with a southern twang, is a warm soul and has an infectious, generous laugh. She began doing standup by taking “the nerd approach” aka she took a class. She “learned how to just get up on stage and do it. It took the fear out of it. … It’s a very safe way to start. I think I talked about how much I hated strawberries. Which is clearly - I didn’t dig too deep.” She laughs, “The hardest leap is just _trying._ Because there is so much fear. At one point you think, ‘How am I, as one person, going to command this entire audience to be quiet and listen?’” It’s clear from her stand up special _Sweet and Salty_ she is very comfortable commanding an audience now. The special opens with images from her past and she weaves in stories that bring those pictures full circle. She shares hilarious personal stories, from her first and only swim meet to Girl Scout crushes to her family’s love affair with eating at Hooters. I asked how she goes about crafting jokes. Fortune replied, “Not every joke’s going to work. So you have to be okay with sitting inside that... I’m essentially a Storyteller. I’m not good at the set-up punchline thing. So I really just rack my brain: ‘what’s a funny take on something? What's an experience I had? What is a situation that a lot of people have been in but somehow I handled it differently?’ You know, I'm always trying to find what’s that angle that’s amusing or that's relatable but still funny.”
Fortune is working on material for her next stand-up set and performed last night. “So what I did last night is I just started telling stories. I don’t do this on tour but when I’m in town I can say, ‘You guys wanna hear a story? I don’t know where it’s going to go. I know what it’s about. I don't know if there are punchlines yet. It might peter out. But you just want to hear it?’ And they go ‘YEAH!’” We both laugh at her impression of how aggressively supportive her audience was. She continues with a smile, “So that helps me. ‘Cause then as I tell a story I find where some of the more interesting parts of that story are. Then you just keep building it. Every time you tell it you add one more thing, take away a thing… It’s a big puzzle. And,” Fortune smiles knowingly, “you know when it's working or not working based on the audience, they’ll tell you.” She goes back to the nuts and bolts of crafting the joke: “You can't do it once and it works well and you know that it's gold. And you can’t do it once and it doesn't work and you know that it's crap. It has to be like 20 times.” I say it sounds like a very zen practice, the ability to sit inside finding the joke. She nods, “I'll do a show, like at the Laugh Factory I’ll do a 15 minute set that’ll go amazing. And then I'll go down to the Improv and it's quieter. You don't know what the difference is. Did _you_ do something different? Is the audience different? Is the room different? But then you just keep working on it til both rooms are giving you the same response.”
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Fortune moved to LA at the age of 23 “for life experience.” But she had no money, a PA job and describes herself as “naive….First off, you know that long stretch of road from Vegas to LA? It’s like no cars, depending on the day, and all of a sudden you hit LA traffic and it's like - AHHHH!” Fortune mimes holding onto the wheel of an imaginary car while looking around in terror at other imaginary cars zooming past her. You get the impression she’s driving 20 MPH. “That was like my first experience of LA: cars at like 80 miles an hour zooming past and I’m just like ‘OH MY GOD. WHAT DID I DO?!' And my Mom drove out here with me. And she’s like ‘AHHHH!’ We’re both just like these country bumpkins like ‘AHHHH!’” Fortune brings her hands down from the imaginary steering wheel and shakes her head, “I remember going to sleep just thinking ‘Did I just make the worst mistake of my life?’” Even as she recounts this story she is laughing through it. “It was really hard to make friends. That was my biggest surprise. Because in North Carolina you can make friends very easily. Here everybody was really guarded and no one talks to their neighbors and you're just kinda left to your own devices. And that part was very very hard for me. So when I made my first friend after like a year I’m sure I seemed so desperate. ‘Oh my God! I have a friend!!!’ And he’s just like, ‘calm down.’ But one friend made such a difference.” And then her voice takes on a proud tone, “and then I made _two_ friends.” But that transition continued to be challenging, “I called my Mom and was like ‘this is so hard. Like I don't know if I can do this.’ She was like well ‘you can like come home’ and I’m like, that doesn’t sound fun, 'or you can do something about it.’ And I'm more of the pull yourself up by your bootstraps \[type\]. So I wound up joining improv classes at the Groundlings and then it quickly turned into a passion. I discovered this whole, huge LOVE of being onstage, telling jokes, making people laugh and the byproduct is I got to make a lot of friends. And some of my best friends to this day are from the Groundlings.”
I asked her what her first paying comedy job was: “I would get little jobs here and there. I do remember one of my first gigs was getting 50 bucks to do someone’s birthday party at a lesbian bar. And I was terrible. Like, I ate it. I ate it so bad. And she seemed super bummed out to have to pay me. And you just kind of duck your head. Take the money and like get out of there. You know those humbling experiences.” But soon Fortune would get Last Comic Standing which gave her first “real professional real paycheck.” And her first headlining gig:“it was at Pulse, Orlando. So the gay community was the first community that really reached out from Last Comic Standing. Going ‘hey, we’ll hire you, you're one of us and you're funny and we're going to give you these opportunities.’”
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I asked her if there was ever a moment of crisis for her in pursuing this career. “I always had a faith that I was going to figure it out. 2010 was a tough transitional year for me because I was getting seen by people for the first time but then being told they didn't know what to do with me. I was getting that a lot from the decision-makers, who for whatever reason weren't sold on me because I was different. And at that time I think being different wasn't a bonus. It wasn’t a positive thing. So I was getting frustrated for sure. And I just wanted someone to see me. And see what I could offer their thing. It just wasn't happening.” I asked her about Hollywood and everyone needing a brand, she replied “Like I said, I've been on TV now for 10 years. The Industry is always a couple steps behind the audience in my opinion. You can watch that. The audiences want and embrace diversity and differences… they’re like ‘Hey we want to see different things. We’re tired of the same cookie-cutter thing.’ And the Industry will be like ‘Nope, they need to look like this. You need to act like this.’ So I was always grateful that fans, from day one, embraced me: ‘We dig you. You look like me. Or you act like me. Or you remind me of my cousin.’ And that’s awesome. I love that. Because I want to be relatable. That's what my whole stand up is.”
Fortune lost her day job that year too, so at the end of 2010 she was “at one of those crossroads… I had this Come-To-Jesus moment with my friends at a New Year's Eve dinner.” Everyone went around the room and shared their Resolutions. Instead of hiding her feelings behind positivity, Fortune said, “‘this has been a really hard year. I have no money. I can't pick the right person…’ and I kind of gave myself over to the moment. And you know, my friends were all very lovely and supportive. And then to break the tension, as you do in comedy fashion, someone pretended to be Oprah and was like, ‘you're going to go to Australia! And you’re gonna go to Australia!’ And we all start chanting and clapping and hitting the table: “YEAH WE’RE GOING TO AUSTRALIA.” A week after New Years I get a meeting with Chelsea \[Handler\]’s producers. That leads to a few days later, meeting with Chelsea and then the next day I get hired at _Chelsea Lately_ as a writer. Then I start working there and on the first day the producer of the show goes ‘Oh, by the way, we’re going to Australia to film shows and you’re gonna come.’ And honestly, it changed everything because Chelsea was the first person in a position of power who said ‘you're different and I like it. I want it. It's going to be on my show all the time.’ And she opened all the doors because she did that.”
My time with Fortune was drawing to a close. We drank our coffees but haven’t yet checked our phones to see Mayor Garcetti asking folks in LA to self-isolate. We don’t know it has started raining outside. We don’t know that in 24 hours, Fortune will be postponing her tour that has been ten years coming. I asked her what stories she wants to tell next? She considers the question, “Well, I was kind of putting a lot of pressure on myself after this special came out because this was such a personal set. It was such a map of my life and my journey and finding out who I am. You really only get one chance to tell _your_ story, so I put so much work into that special. I wanted it to \[hit\] whatever that mark was…where you feel like, if I don't do anything else in my career, what's the thing people can look back on and say I'll always remember she did _this thing_? And that was what I felt the special was. It gave me some sort of comfort in knowing I finally put my stamp out. Whatever that means.” But with making that mark, Fortune said she felt pressure for what comes next.“Will anything ever feel as important? It was such a journey. In that special, I was really trying to find out: what's the through-line? What are the callbacks? I was trying to piece it all together like a narrative novel type of situation. So in this new set I was trying to find the theme. What’s the theme??” As she struggled, Fortune’s close friend gave her some good advice: “‘STOP. Worry about that in two years. Or a year and a half. Just tell stories that you like. That you think are funny. Just start there. They don't have to mean anything. They don't have to tie to the next thing. Just talk. Just say things that you think are interesting and they will evolve and if there is a higher story, if there's a higher narrative, you’ll find it in time. But don't put that pressure on yourself.’ And she’s right. As a comic you really just have to throw it all out there.” Fortune’s goal for now “is to just have fun onstage. When I do get to do my shows (hopefully there's a cure or something happens in the next month or however long it takes and life can kind of pick back up) and I can give people an hour of just like forgetting about their day. Give them a good time hearing some silly stories. And if there is a greater meaning that comes through I think it will reveal itself in time and I won't put that pressure on myself.” If you need that hour of good time and hearing silly stories now enjoy _Sweet and Salty_ on Netflix. I watched it a second time the other day and honestly, it was just what the doctor ordered.
* * *
Photography & Creative: [MK McGehee](https://www.instagram.com/mk.mcg/).
Lighting & Digital: [Alexander Fenyves](https://www.instagram.com/fenivision/).
Styling: [Estelle Aporongao](https://www.instagram.com/estella.png/).
Hair: [Matt Fugate](https://www.instagram.com/mattshair/) at [Tomlinson Management Group](https://www.instagram.com/tmgla/).
Makeup: [Elie Maalouf](https://www.instagram.com/elienmaalouf/) at [Tomlinson Management Group](https://www.instagram.com/tmgla/).
Production: [Linse Studios](https://www.instagram.com/linse.studios/).
Location: [Black Rabbit Rose.](https://www.instagram.com/blackrabbitrose/)
Special Thanks: [The Houston Brothers](https://www.instagram.com/houstonbrothershospitality/); [Priscilla Ford](https://www.instagram.com/thepriscillaford/).
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