Hannah Berner is having a 48-hour reprieve at her home in the lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. She\u2019s catching a quick breath before heading back on the road, where she is headlining around the country, living in hotels and trying to get a decent meal. All the years of work and determination are in anticipation of recording her first Netflix comedy special in Philadelphia at the end of March. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berner has been working on her first Netflix special for six years. \u201cIt\u2019s the same hour. I\u2019ve just edited it a thousand times. The San Jose Improv shows are critical because they\u2019re the last five club shows before I shoot the special. It\u2019s the last chance for me to get my reps in,\u201d says Berner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The young, vivacious and engaging Berner didn\u2019t start off wanting to be a comedian. Luckily\u2014for us\u2014there are a thousand paths to end up onstage telling jokes to strangers. For Berner, it started with job dissatisfaction. \u201cI was 25 and I hated my job,\u201d says Berner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Originally wanting to become a sports broadcaster, Berner realized it would be unfulfilling and boring. So, like all good creatives, the multi-faceted millennial started diving deeper into her passions. \u201cI was good at editing and I started making funny sketches online and Tweeting a lot,\u201d says Berner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berner knew some NYC comics in the bustling East Coast scene who were very encouraging of her online endeavors. \u201cThe hilarious Emma Willmann reached out to me and told me that one of my tweets is a stand-up bit. Francis Ellis, who works at Barstool, was really supportive early on. We are both former athletes. I was a tennis player and he did lacrosse. He told me that a lot of athletes can be good at comedy because they have discipline. And athletes know how to deal with pressure. Stand-up pressure is more fun for me than sports pressure. In sports, if you mess up you\u2019re a fucking loser, but in comedy you can fake it and tell people you were being creative and trying out new things,\u201d Berner laughs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Based on the jokes she was writing for her online sketches, Berner was peer-pressured into trying stand-up. \u201cI had never really thought about it too much. I was busy doing a podcast and reality TV. Then, a friend dared me to do 10 minutes of stand-up. Well, it\u2019s not the way you\u2019re supposed to do it, but the first time I did stand-up was 10 minutes in front of 300 people. It went well. People liked it,\u201d says Berner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 21st<\/sup> Century, more people can see your sketches and comedy on social media platforms than on TV. But there\u2019s only one way to get better at stand-up comedy, and that is to do it as much as possible. \u201cMy comedy friends told me to go out every night and work on my material,\u201d says Berner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What really stood out to Berner was the way she felt onstage. \u201cOnstage, I felt calm. When I\u2019m offstage my thoughts are always running. Onstage I have to be in the moment, listening to the audience and making sure they understand what I\u2019m saying. I think, for me, comedy is therapeutic. It gets me off my phone. I enjoy making people laugh and, bonus, I make money doing it,\u201d says Berner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Berner tried appearing on some reality TV shows, but nothing was really clicking. \u201cI decided in 2022 that I was going to commit to posting three videos a day on TikTok. I saw people I knew blowing up and going viral. So I told myself, I\u2019ll do three videos a day for six months. I started connecting with new people and it felt like I had my own<\/em> TV show. On my own channel. Instagram was dead for me at that time. I felt like nobody was seeing my stuff. I\u2019ve failed at a lot of stuff, but with TikTok the secret is you have to be consistent,\u201d says Berner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you watch any of Berner\u2019s stand-up clips, or comic-on-the-street\u2014TikTok or Instagrams\u2014it\u2019s obvious Berner has a genuine curiosity about people and she wants to raise people up rather than the hack comic method of tearing people down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI do crowd work because I\u2019m nosey. People tighten up if they sense you\u2019re just using them for some joke. You have to speak to the crowd like they\u2019re your friends. They\u2019re people. too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI started doing crowd work because I was sick of my jokes,\u201d continues Berner. \u201cI like getting loose and challenging myself to see where the moment can go. The only tip I got from crowd work was that you just have to do it. It\u2019s like throwing yourself into the deep end and seeing if you can get out.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n This Netflix special could be the crossroads where Berner becomes a household name. \u201cThe best part of my career is I have done everything on my own terms,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what I plan on continuing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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