'Broad City' becomes bolder in Season 2
NEW YORK — For some comedians, landing jokes is about as easy as pulling teeth.
But the laughs are effortless and plentiful for Broad City stars Abbi Jacobson, 30, and Ilana Glazer, 27, whose surprise Comedy Central hit returns for a second season Wednesday (10:30 p.m. ET/PT).
Rewind to early September, and up a flight of creaky, paint-chipped stairs, where a Brooklyn soundstage is dressed to look like the homey stoner pad of Ilana Wexler (loosely based on Glazer). Today, they're filming an episode in which a loopy Abbi Abrams (Jacobson) is recovering from wisdom-tooth surgery.
Luckily, pals Ilana and Jaime (Arturo Castro) are on hand to play doctor. Decked out in sexy nurse costumes, they treat Abbi to frozen yogurt, and unintentionally, one too many painkillers.
"We might've been too nervous to do something like this last season," Jacobson says over lunch last month at a bustling Midtown restaurant. "It's such a weird, fun episode, where I don't want to reveal what happens, but we go full force with it all over the city."
Glazer says the episode is "a good example of going deeper into the Broad City world," now that the duo is more comfortable and confident in the show. This season, "it's crazier in a way that it's higher stakes. It's not like, 'Three eyeballs!' "
But what exactly is Broad City? Put simply, it's a bawdy, boisterous comedy about two twentysomething best friends in New York: working crummy jobs, cannonballing into the dating pool, and cracking each other up in a cloud of pot smoke.
While those unfamiliar may liken it to Lena Dunham's Girls, Broad City stands out for its offbeat way of looking at everyday minutiae, such as filing taxes, losing a phone or trying to save money for Lil Wayne tickets. Glazer and Jacobson's natural chemistry has also won over many of the show's most vocal fans, including Lady Gaga, Mindy Kaling, Questlove, and Amy Poehler, the series' executive producer.
"Abbi and Ilana are funny, genuine, they work really hard, and their stuff is very fresh," Poehler says. "That's the most exciting thing about being able to do a second season and keep working on the show: you hear the feedback that people are responding to what is really real about Abbi and Ilana, which is what I, just like viewers, liked right away."
Glazer and Jacobson met on an improv team in 2007 while studying at Upright Citizens Brigade in New York, and continued doing shows with the group for two years before branching out with their own Web series, also called Broad City, in 2009. At the suggestion of their manager, the girls decided to take a stab at a TV pilot, eventually hooking up with Poehler in 2011, who was instrumental in landing the series at Comedy Central, which aired the first season in early 2014. (The show was just renewed for a third season this week.)
"It wasn't like she could really ease our fears. The fear was, 'This is going to be really hard,' and that's correct," Glazer says. "It was more just trying to give us a picture of what we were going to be going through. We weren't even scared about people not liking it, it was just making it, like, 'What's it going to be?' "
Although the series premiered to rapturous reviews and quickly developed a passionate online fan base, the girls didn't set out to top themselves with Season 2. Instead, they simply tried to strike that same chord. "And it was better because we were better," Glazer says.
For them, the biggest compliment is producing comedy that makes people feel included and is embraced by fans of all ages, which may also be what makes Broad City so relatable.
"We look like normal people. We don't look like other people on TV," Glazer says. "Also, we didn't grow up in the industry at all, so we really are these wide-eyed comedy nerds from New York."
Ultimately, says Jacobson, "It's just about, wherever you are, with whatever (expletive) job you have, wanting to do something else but always having your best friend to shoot the (breeze) with after. I think people can relate to that.
"Even in your 50s, you're like. 'Yeah, I still hate my job, but I still have my friends.' "