Comedian Maeve Higgins on her Irish origins, moving to NYC and being a panelist on 'Wait Wait'

“I do love Bill [Kurtis], and usually we get to have dinner before the show, so I get to chat with Bill and then I try and lightly bribe him because he actually does keep the score. And sometimes I have gotten an extra point here or there if I’ve maybe slipped him some dessert beforehand,” Higgins joked. “I also love when we get to do the show live. They tape it in Chicago, and then they tour around as well. So I love being out and about and meeting people and having a live audience, because the audiences … are so smart and engaged and also into the same things I’m into. So if I mention, I don’t know, knitting, then I always get a big, big reaction from the NPR crowd.”

On comedy as a medium well-suited to oppressed and minority groups:

“[Comedy] is kind of an indirect way of saying what you think, and it’s quite a non-threatening way of expressing yourself, isn’t it?” said Higgins. “In Ireland — now this is maybe a reach — but I think, you know, we were colonized and also we had our language taken from us. The Gaelic language was banned. So sometimes I think when we’re speaking in English, it’s fun to make it our own, to say, ‘Yes. This has been pressed on us, but here’s what we’re going to do with it.'”

“I do this weekly standup show here in Brooklyn and it’s really extraordinary. So many of the newer comedians that maybe haven’t made it onto the national scene yet, they’re immigrants, or they’re the children of immigrants. And there’s something about humor too I think that allows you to edge into a space that you’re not usually welcome in or maybe that you’re not from, and I love it. I mean, I just think that there’s always room for funniness even in serious things and even in sad things,” said Higgins. “There are these news stories about oppressed groups and it’s so grinding and sad and I think sometimes we miss out on the kind of joy and subversion that comes out of living a life like that. And that’s a pity because nobody is just one thing. Nobody is just sad or just oppressed.”

On acclimating to Americans’ direct style of conversation:

“I have to say I’ve gotten a lot better. I am still not the kind of person that … sometimes, God you ask somebody here, ‘Hey, how are you?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, my IBS has been acting up.’ You get the whole spiel about how their bowel is doing. And I say oh my goodness you’d never say this In Ireland. In Ireland, your hand could be hanging off. You know, ‘I’m fine. I’m good. Yeah, good now. Sorry about the blood dripping there now. No bother.'”

“When I got here first, I had a manager, a talent manager, and she said to me, ‘Maeve, you have to stop being so self-deprecating in meetings because you’re making people wonder what we’re all doing sitting there,'” recalled Higgins. “I’d go into a meeting and … it would be like an executive, a TV person and they would’ve seen my packets, seen what I did before, read my work and I’d go in and talk them out of thinking I was talented. I’d say, ‘Oh no for God’s sake. Anybody could have come up with that. Oh no I actually have a sister. She’s much funnier than I am.’ So, I mean, that is not helpful to anybody, particularly not me. So I think the cool thing about Americans is this confidence. Now, it’s sometimes misplaced, but I do think it’s better to have it than not have it.”

Maeve Higgins will appear as part of the “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” Standup Tour at the Tabernacle on Dec. 17. Tickets and more information are available here.