Leanne Morgan’s L.A. Life Includes Erewhon Chicken and the Anonymity of Costco

Few entertainers can say they’ve had a better year than Leanne Morgan. The ascendant stand-up started booking arenas, saw her self-titled Netflix sitcom renewed for a second season and recently added Oprah Winfrey to her growing list of fans.

But Morgan has long been known for talking about her family — husband Chuck Morgan is the butt of many a joke — and her life in Knoxville, Tennessee. What happens to her material when she spends a good chunk of the year filming in Los Angeles or on the road? Her latest Netflix special, Leanne Morgan: Unspeakable Things, is her first work that starts to marry those two, seemingly dueling identities.

Morgan recently guested on The Hollywood Reporter‘s new podcast, I’m Having an Episode (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple), a few days before the special immediately shot to No. 1 on the Netflix Top 10 and spoke about the perks of her time in Los Angeles, plans to find some more grounded material during a visit to Dollywood and flirting with Pedro Pascal at the 2025 Emmys.

You just had a big birthday, so happy belated. How are you processing — and how did you celebrate?

I thought it was gonna kill me. I got sad and freaked out.. Then, the day I turned 60 I thought, I’m glad to be alive. I’ve got my health. I’m tickled. I thought it was gonna really put me under. I don’t know why we get that in our head. I’m settling into the fact that, as you know, I’m a grandmama and it’s OK for my legs to look like this… crepey. OK, so we went to our favorite spot in Florida — All my children, my husband, my grandbabies — and we stayed in every night because the babies. My kids bought me two grocery store birthday cakes, and I ate both of them. I mean, everybody else got a piece but then I ate the rest of them. I love a grocery store cake.

I heard that you really enjoyed the grocery store experience when you were in Los Angeles filming the first season of your sitcom. Where’d you go?

Oh, honey, that Erewhon! My child, Tess, who’s my makeup artist and lived out there with me, she goes, “Mom, Justin Bieber’s wife has a smoothie. We’ve got to go try it.” So we go and drink that smoothie, and it was good. I think it was $27, but it was good. I had never seen Erewhon and I was fascinated by it. The tiny aisles, I don’t like that, but nifty. That rotisserie chicken, I’d get that once a week and it would be my thing. I’d eat that, because I don’t get enough protein. Everybody yells at me all the time. So I’d eat that at the kitchen counter. It is the best rotisserie chicken, and I know my rotisserie chickens.

We would go to Costco in Burbank because I love a Costco. That would be our Saturday night. If I didn’t have a show somewhere, I would go to the Costco and just walk around and maybe one person would know who I was. I could just walk and stare at stuff like candles.

How are you balancing your material changing when you’re spending all this time on the road and in L.A. filming a sitcom?

I know, I’m worried about it. Am I going to just sit and talk about Jimmy Fallon? The good news is my family keeps me humble. When I come home, I’m washing clothes and doing everything I’ve always done. I still have my stories from my family, you know, and I get to have a little time off in November and December. So I plan on, honey, going to Dollywood. Something always happens at Dollywood.

Among your family, friends and acquaintances, who is the least impressed with your success when you are back home?

I think it’s Chuck Morgan. Let me tell you what he did to me. All right, I got home after midnight last night. I freaked out all day, thinking [my flight would be canceled]. He always pushes the snooze, which drives me crazy, and he took his phone, laid it somehow next to my body. So when the snooze went off, it had to have been 5:30 this morning. He does not think I’m really working, is what I’m saying. He thinks that I’m out having a ball, which I am. I am! But he doesn’t understand how hard show business is, so he doesn’t think I need sleep. I woke up to somebody’s vibrating phone on my body and a beagle between my legs. They’re not going, “Shhh… she just got back. Let her rest.”

Your family is such a big part of your material. In your new special, your daughter introduces you by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, my mom…”

Maggie, my middle one. My boy introduced me on the first one. So we’re going to go down the line.

Tess tours with you and works on the sitcom. What is the biggest disagreement that you’ve gotten into since putting her on the payroll?

Let me tell you, there’s some conflict. I would like for her to act as an assistant on the road and maybe go down to the lobby at the Marriott and get me a cup of coffee at the Starbucks. When I go to these towns, precious people are booking these hotels that are going to my show. So I’ve got all these fans. And I love being with everybody, but I can’t just stay down in the lobby all day. So I would like for her to run and get me a coffee, but she’s in her twenties and can still sleep late. She doesn’t feel like that’s her responsibility. I would like for her to do more than even what she’s doing. And she does do more. She lifts the suitcase and she drives the rental car in between cities, because she thinks I’m an idiot now and I can’t drive. I said, “Am I going to get like Mariah Carey, where I can’t even walk across the floor? I see her out with people and there’s like two men on each side helping little Mariah walk.”

Are you superstitious at all before you get on stage? Do you have any rituals?

I kinda am. This sounds crazy, but if I don’t have on a heel, I don’t feel like I’m gonna put on as good a show. I’ve tried, because they hurt. You’re standing up there for an hour and a half, my sciatica starts barking at me. So my stylist will get me a cute tennis shoe, but I feel like I’m not going to have a good show. She’s trying to put me in suits, which would probably be more modern and hip and cute, but I don’t feel right. I don’t feel like myself. Which is loony. And I say a prayer before every show, and I take deep breaths in. I watched one of those boys on one of those podcasts. [Andrew] Huberman? That big old good-looking man, I heard him say, “You gotta breathe in and then take another breath. I do those, honey, to calm down my nervous system.”

What makes you nervous — and at what point when you’re on stage do they go away?

It’s not the material. And, yes, they do go away. They do. I think what I get nervous about now is when I jump to arenas. Arenas are a whole different thing, and every arena is different. Some of them feel like you’re in a cavern and that people can’t even see you. I did the American Airlines Center, which is the biggest one I ever did. I saw that ticker saying the Mavericks play here and Dua Lipa’s coming, and I thought I would die. I hope I get to do more of those things, but I’m just not used to it. If somebody like Oprah’s coming, I told my team, I go, “Don’t tell me!” If I know that Oprah’s coming or someone like that, I’m sitting there thinking, “Does Oprah think I’m dumb? Am I using the correct grammar?”

I don’t think Oprah would think that of you.

I don’t think she would, because she loves me and she was raised close to where I was raised. I think we have bonded. But it gets in my head.

Before your first arena show, who did you go to for advice in the comedy world?

I talked to Jeff Foxworthy, because he and I headlined one of them together, and then Nate Bargatze. Nate helps me a lot.

When a profile just skyrockets like yours did, it means that people are going to want to be in business with you. That doesn’t mean necessarily that they get you. And that happens with everyone, but what were the tells for you when someone wanted to be in the Leanne business but had no idea what that actually was?

Well, I had four development deals before Chuck Lorre came to me. They never knew. People were just a deer in headlights with me, except Matt Williams that created Roseanne and Home Improvement. He came and stayed with my family, and he got me and he really tried to get me. But we would go and talk to people and everybody would want to put us down, you know? Like we lived in the woods and the car won’t start and we’re pitiful. think everybody thinks that about everybody in the South. I’ve had people say stuff to me in Hollywood about the South that is crazy. Like somebody said to me, “Leanne, you know how to shoot a gun.” No! I’m not carrying a gun. My little daddy never shot a gun. I think people think it’s almost like the wild west.

You filmed Unspeakable Things in Wilmington, North Carolina — and every 10 minutes, it seemed like you were apologizing to the men in the audience. They paid to see you! Are you getting comfortable with the fact that more men want to go to your shows?

Honey, I love men. And I’m a flirt. I’ve always enjoyed men. I want them to think I’m pretty because I am from the South, and we care about that. I’m sorry, that’s my age. It was all about pageants and being pretty and all that. So, I do want to be pretty, but then I also talk about gross stuff. So, yeah, I apologize. But I’m also winking at them at the same time while I’m talking about my retaining fluid.

You flirting with Pedro Pascal from the stage at the Emmys this year was a highlight. Did you ever meet him that night?

No! And I would like to meet little Pedro Pascal, because I think he’s darling. He had on a white suit, that’s the reason he caught my eye. I was sitting there thinking, “My gosh, Steve Martin, Martin Short, all these people that I have always loved. Catherine O’Hara in the front row!” Everybody’s got black on and there’s Pedro Pascal with a white suit on. He was darling. I don’t have a lick of sense over a Latino man.