Comedian and actress Leanne Morgan spent years doing stand-up while raising three children, but to her kids, Mom’s Hollywood dream looked a lot like an ordinary job.
“I might as well have been working at Target. I’m not kidding,” Morgan joked on the “Armchair Expert” podcast.
In the interview released Sept. 28, the LEANNE star looked back at the sitcom opportunities that once seemed like her ticket to Hollywood. Those deals fell through, but now she wondered what an earlier breakthrough would have cost her family.
Morgan recalled actress Reese Witherspoon reminding her that she had gotten to raise her own children. Looking back, Morgan questioned whether her children would be the same people today if a television deal had taken off when she was 40.
She also considered the practical upheaval: moving the children, disrupting her husband Chuck Morgan’s career or living away from the family while the children stayed in school. The dream mattered, but so did being their mother.
That does not mean she spent those years sitting around waiting for a phone call. Morgan built a comedy career around the life she already had, squeezing performances between the responsibilities of raising a family.
She sold jewelry at home parties when her children were small, only to discover that entertaining the women came more naturally than pitching the merchandise. A friend from Sunday school later helped connect her with a local emcee opportunity, which led to an invitation to perform at a sandwich shop.
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Her preparation was decidedly unglamorous. Morgan said she used her son’s kindergarten writing tablet to jot down prompts for stories she already told her girlfriends.
While she performed, Chuck looked after their three young children. Morgan recalled people telling her they could see him driving the minivan back and forth behind the venue’s glass, keeping the children with him while checking on her.
The slow build did not always feel like progress. Morgan recalled working clubs and corporate events for years while sitcom possibilities came and went.
“I was just grinding,” she said of the years when her children were small.
Morgan said hiring social-media help finally put her comedy in front of people who connected with it. She recalled going from struggling to fill seats to selling out shows around the country within weeks.
“I could not sell tickets. Nobody cared,” she said of the period before that turnaround.
The eventual breakthrough brought her 2023 Netflix special, I’M EVERY WOMAN, which drew its comedy from marriage, motherhood and becoming a grandmother.
Now that same everyday experience anchors a sitcom. Morgan co-created LEANNE with television producers Chuck Lorre and Susan McMartin, and Netflix brought the series back for a second season Aug. 27.
Success has taken some getting used to at home, too. Morgan said her youngest daughter, who works as her makeup artist and travels with her, saw the crowds firsthand, while other family members needed more time to grasp the scale of it.
“I do think they finally caught up with what’s going on,” she said.
Hollywood arrived later than Morgan once hoped, but it did not erase the life that came first. The children she raised, the marriage she built and the stories she gathered were already hers — and now they help give her comedy its voice.
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