Queer Power Couple alert!!!
Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne had both already found success in the comedy scene by the time they met on the set of the 2013 indie movie In A World… and fell in love.
But, since getting together (the pair married in 2015) they’ve managed to push each other to new heights, adding more credits to their resume: Actors, writers, producers, directors, and even parents, when they welcomed twins Max and Finn to the world in 2016.
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Their latest “baby” is the dramedy Am I OK?, the feature directorial debut for both Notaro and Allynne, which follows thirty-something Lucy (Dakota Johnson) as she comes to the never-too-late realization she might be gay—just as her long-time support system and best friend Jane (Sonoya Mizuno) is getting ready to move halfway across the world.
With a script from Lauren Pomerantz (SNL, The Ellen Degeneres Show), the film is an especially personal one for Allynne who, like Lucy, didn’t know she was queer until she was an adult—in fact, it wasn’t until she met Notaro!
And for Notaro, the experience of making Am I OK? taught her an important lesson: Maybe she’s not all that crazy about directing—whereas Allyne totally is. “Stephanie had her eye on everything in a way that made me so aware of: Wow, she is the director. I am the director’s wife,” the comic jokes with Queerty.
With Am I OK? now streaming on Max, Queerty jumped at the opportunity to speak with both Notaro and Allyne for a first-ever “Couples Edition” of our . In our conversation, the partners opened up about mining their lives for comedy (Allynne just directed Notaro’s latest special Hello Again on Prime Video), Notaro’s notorious “talent” for not being able to recognize famous people, and how they’re celebrating Pride Month as a family.
First, our favorite icebreaker question: Is there a piece of media—whether a movie, TV series, book, album, theater, video game, etc…—that has played an important role in your understanding of queerness or the queer community? Why does it stand out to you?
TIG NOTARO: I feel like it’s on the nose, but The Indigo Girls. I would say their Strange Fire album was right around the time that I was thinking, “one of these things is not like the other.” [Laughs.] It was just part of cracking things open for me, about my feelings and starting to understand they were likely singing about women.
STEPHANIE ALLYNNE: When I met Tig on the movie In A World… and we fell in love, I was so not connected to queer culture or any of that in myself—there was never anything I had seen where I was like, “Oh my god, am I gay?” And then having those feelings for Tig, I started watching the original L Word, and then i was like, “Oh my god, if I had seen this before, I think I totally would’ve known I was gay!” Of course, I was watching it way after it was over… but then I ended up on the reboot of it!
You’ve both got some directing experience under your belts, but Am I OK? is the first feature for both of you, so I’m curious: What was it about Lauren Pomerantz’s script that most excited you both and made you say, “yes, this is one!”
NOTARO: Well, I never set out to direct, but Stephanie is a director and wants to continue directing. And when when we looked at it together, it just felt right. Lauren was a friend of ours, and we really responded to—and were familiar with—her story, and reading the script, it was just so funny and relatable. So, doing it together made sense for us, even though I wasn’t waiting like, “Oh, when can I direct a film?” It only sounded appealing for me to do with Stephanie.
And Stephanie, we can’t help but draw some parallels between your story and this character Lucy’s story—was that part of the appeal for you?
ALLYNNE: A million percent! The difference between my personal story and Lauren’s is that I really didn’t know. What we had in common was we were both in LA, we didn’t have obstacles like religious backgrounds, or [unaccepting] parents, or anything that we sort had to “overcome” to be gay. What I connected to was just that part of yourself where you’re like, “What does it look like to say this out loud? What does it look like to live this life? What does that mean for what I thought my life was going to be?”
And, coupled with it being later in life, you kind of grieve what you’ve missed a little bit. So I really loved that that character was in her 30s. I also just feel like the Gen Z generation has changed LGBTQ+ so much, where now it’s like, “we’re all everything!” The coming out thing—they don’t really do it as much. With this, I really understood and liked that this actually is something [people go through,] and it’s hard to do.
Tig, you and Dakota Johnson have a bit of a storied history—you’re her favorite comedian, you performed at her 30th birthday party—can you tell us a little bit about the journey from fan, to friend, to creative collaborators?
NOTARO: Well, I had gotten an email from her boyfriend, Chris Martin, and he told me that he was planning a surprise birthday party for her, that I was her favorite comedian, and that he wanted to surprise her with me. I remember saying, “Are you sure it’s me? Because if I come out as a surprise and she’s wondering why I’m there, it’s going to be pretty uncomfortable!” But he assured me it was me.
So, I performed as a surprise at her party, then we hung out and chatted that night and had a really nice exchange. And she had mentioned that she’d love to work together at some point—just doing something. And when this movie came about, I didn’t know her super well so I didn’t want to just send her the script, you know?We sent it through her reps—not to her directly. I just wanted it to be legitimate! But it was funny because, when she got the script, she was like, “Why didn’t you send this to me? I love this; I want to do it!” And I was like, “Wow, that was easy!”
What’s something new you’d say you two learned about each other in the process of making this film together?
NOTARO: I learned that I don’t think I’m going to have a directing career. [Laughs.]
I love working with Stephanie and doing the film, but I I think that there’s so much attention to detail in a way that is mind blowing! Like, I don’t like to talk to a lot of people, and with directing, you’re talking to everybody. And then people are asking you questions like, “In the background, should this pen on the table be blue or pink?” Like, oh my god! But then, meanwhile, Stephanie’s like, “Oh of course it should be blue!” So I think working with Stephanie made me realize, like, she’s actually, really a director. I love being in those moments in the scene and saying, “Oh that was funny,” or “Let’s try this!” But Stephanie had her eye on everything in a way that made me so aware of: Wow, she is the director. I am the director’s wife. [Laughs.]
ALLYNNE: And it’s so fun to have Tig next to you! I wish there were just a job where she could be hired to just be on set and make people laugh. It’s so refreshing and nice.
NOTARO: So, that’s what I bring! I’m a clown. [Laughs.] Or production morale.
Stephanie, you also directed Tig’s excellent new comedy special, Hello Again, and there’s plenty of material about your relationship and your beautiful family. Do you get to be a sounding board for the jokes before Tig performs them?
ALLYNNE: Yeah, I’m living a lot of it! And Tig’s process is usually like: something happens, and then she’ll go, “Oh, I’m going to try that on stage”—and then I’ll tell her if she’s allowed. [Laughs.]
How, then, does your closeness to the material—and to Tig, of course—influence your approach to directing the special? Do you feel like you have to step back from it a bit to be able to put your director’s cap on, so to speak?
ALLYNNE: I’m so aware of her sensibility, and I think I share that sensibility. And also pace! So I feel like just allowing things to breathe and just be exactly as they are was kind of the goal in that. It’s similar to even doing Am I OK?—we both have the same reaction to things, whether it’s negative or positive, so there’s never really butting heads.
NOTARO: When there’s a moment that Stephanie points something out that I didn’t see, I’m always very interested to see what she sees, or understand what she’s saying. To be like, “Oh yeah, I can see that—I didn’t even think about it!” And I think it’s a pretty easy “yes” or “no” when we come to a fork in a road.
She’ll just flag something where I’m like, “Wait, what?” I feel like that happened with wardrobe—that’s another thing with directing! Stephanie would be like, “I think it should be this era, from this part of town, with this kind of vibe similar to this actress…” I’m like, “Whoa, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Like, it’s so nuanced.
ALLYNNE: There was one outfit Sonoya [Mizuno] put on early on that was so wrong and you were like, “Yeah, that’s fine!”.And I did have a moment where I thought, “God, I would love to see this movie if you did—what would they all be wearing?” [Laughs.]
NOTARO: This is coming from somebody who picks out an outfit and wears it an entire week.
ALLYNNE: It’s like, “Everyone’s in clothes? Okay, great!”
NOTARO: And ACTION!
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In a queer landscape where we’re often told to look on the bright side, Tig Notaro’s raw honesty stands out.
On a more serious note, with Pride Month right around the corner, I’m curious: Is that an occasion you celebrate with your family? I know your sons are still relatively young, but what do you want them to know about pride?
ALLYNNE: It’s really interesting because now they’re seven. And it was maybe a couple years ago where they saw—our son Finn is really into flags of countries and knows flags, so he saw a Pride flag and was like, “What’s that flag?” And it was at our friend’s house, a heterosexual couple that had their Pride flags out. So I thought, “God, there’s so many people doing so much for the community… and then our son is just like, ‘What is that?'” [Laughs.] So that was the first realization of like, “Oh, we actually have to bring them in on this.”
NOTARO: But we weren’t keeping it from them or anything.
ALLYNNE: We had a kind of epiphany—because we are gay, and we think it’s so glaring! And we have so much pride in our family that we didn’t really think like, “Oh, we need to sit down and tell them this,” it was sort of leading by example. And now I think, this year more so than ever, is where we’re starting to get more involved with them.
NOTARO: We’ve had more conversations with them about it. But, I mean, their school that they go to celebrates Pride Month, and they’re surrounded by every different walk of life. And they’re so proud of having two moms! They think it’s so cool. So, I don’t know, I feel like things are moving along at a good pace. But it’s definitely more in conversation now.
Shifting gears, Tig, I’ve always loved your Funny Or Die interview series “Under A Rock”—where you try and guess who your celebrity guests are since you don’t really recognize famous people.
ALLYNNE: Oh, that’s my favorite, too! [Laughs.]
NOTARO: Well, we’re currently retooling it to try to make it a game show of people that have topics where they know everything in the world about, and then topics they know nothing about, so you’re watching going like, “How do they not know this!?” But thank you, I love it, too.
Have you gotten better at that in recent years? Stephanie, is there a time where you’ve had to help or bail Tig out when she’s talking to someone she clearly doesn’t know?
ALLYNNE: Oh, it has not gotten better. [Laughs.]
NOTARO: It’s funny because I take a daily walk, and whenever I come home, I don’t really have anything to say or share. But then Stephanie and I will sometimes take the daily walk together, and we run into a lot of people—and sometimes they’re well-known people or something. And she’s always like, “You know, when I take walks with you, I realize, if I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t notice anything or anybody, you would just… be on your walk!” And I’m like, “Yeah, I never run into anyone.” And she’s like, “But I bet you do.” [Laughs.]
There’s always this misconception—like, how is it that I can work with all of these celebrities and not know who they are? And that’s not what’s happening. I, of course, know the celebrities I work with. There are celebrities that I have socialized with that I also know, and there are celebrities I’ve socialized with that sometimes I don’t remember, or I didn’t know they were a celebrity when I met them. But I really, genuinely don’t follow TV and film. And so I think it will just always kind of remain the same, and it’s no disrespect to actors—at all.
It’s so funny because Stephanie just worked with Kaley Cuoco, who was in one of the “Under A Rock” episodes. And Kaley told Stephanie that it was her favorite thing she’s ever done. She said she showed up thinking, “for sure this is a Funny Or Die bit”—that it’s not real. But she said, “Oh my god, when I sat down with Tig, I could see on her face—she has no clue who I am. It’s real!”
But I’ll tell you, it is so much fun, and I’ve walked away from there a huge fan of every person that I sat down with.
If either of you have seen Veep, I do sort of picture it as a thing where Stephanie is whispering into your ear in the same way that Tony Hale’s character would to Julie Louis Dreyfus—
ALLYNNE: That is exactly it!
NOTARO: That’s exactly our relationship. [Laughs.] You nailed it!
Lastly, who is a queer or trans artist/performer/creator that you think is doing really cool work right now? Why are they someone we should all be paying attention to?
NOTARO: I mean, I know we both agree on this, but we are friends with Sarah Paulson—I know who she is. And we are endlessly blown away by her talent. I just think Sarah is a freak of nature, an absolute freak of nature—just talent beyond measure.
ALLYNNE: And Kate Berlant! [Her show KATE] is an experience. And she’s a friend, so I feel that way with Sarah, too—they’re an experience just to be with.
NOTARO: Whether you’re watching them perform or just having dinner with them, it’s an experience.
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“I was so stunned because we’ve lived together almost eight years and I’ve been gay the whole time ? even prior!”
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