Rachel Bloom responds to hecklers, pet deaths and cosmic indifference with song

Times of discover News: Rachel Bloom has never shied away from tackling big, deep issues through music. It's her choice. The writer and actress, who first captured the internet with her viral music video for the track "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury," tackles mental illness and mental illness in song and dance with the dark (and extremely funny) CW musical comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriends. She spent four seasons researching her own identity.

 After that series ended in 2019, everything goes wrong. 2020 has been tough for almost everyone, but especially tough for Bloom. After giving birth in the first wave of the pandemic, her daughter went straight to the NICU. Then, her friend and longtime songwriter Adam Schlesinger died of complications from COVID-19. Death, danger, and reality suddenly came to mind. So when she began rethinking a previously planned one-woman show, she wrote a part for the Grim Reaper herself. Bloom has performed Death, Let Me Do My Show on stages across the U.S., presenting humorous and often raw songs that help him understand man's brutal cosmic journey. 

It reached its largest audience ever when it premiered as a comedy special on Netflix. Death, Let Me Do My Special, directed by Seth Barish and produced by Matthew Vaughn and Rotten Science, will be released on October 15. So when Bloom hopped on Zoom recently, he talked about bringing the show to the screen, his evolving relationship with Hollywood in the years since Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and how hecklers, both real and suppressed, shape the moments that happen onstage. That helps me stay in it, talking about it.

At the risk of trying to lure you out the door, what do you think it says about you that what's billed as at least one of your one-woman shows is actually a two-hander with another cast member?

I mean, if you read it wrong, it could be a believable thing. (Laughs.) But I like surprising people — and being a riff on the idea of ​​death. Death and grief are like a nuisance that's ruining your life. That was an idea I already had in mind, but we went through several iterations of it. Rowdy was partly inspired by some of my experiences in the writers room, with men using comedy to exert their dominance over others. If I think about who my inner critic is, it's guys. So the idea is to engage not only with the existential bully, but with your own inner critic. Death in the show was a terrifying thing for me. So if I make it therapeutic, maybe part of that character will make you laugh at me before you laugh at me.

There's a good minute or two where the audience thinks you're fooling around with a real nuisance, not your Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-star David Hull, who plays Death. Was it appropriate to do that in the room?

It's really uncomfortable - especially in the country we live in. We saw him alone, dressed completely in black, wearing a black baseball cap. Whoever is playing Death knows that for the first 50 seconds the audience is going to hate him. After going to one show, my husband's cousin said, "Oh, I was going to punch that guy." Of course, that didn't happen, and the point isn't to make people uncomfortable - but the point is that Death is a nuisance. Live, he pulled a little bit. I tried my best to make people feel real, but it was awkward and uncomfortable.

I don't know what happened in Boulder, [Colorado], but we had some problems there. On the first night, when the show finally got more serious, someone said, "I thought the show would be funny!" With no irony whatsoever! I tried to work with them. Then the guy said, "Tell me a joke!" So I stopped the show and told the audience, "I understand you all think it's a plant, but it's just a stupid thing.

Please go away." They still think it's a plant. The next night in Boulder, when we did the Death Reveal, someone got up and started filming it. I said, "Excuse me, what are you doing?" and he said, "I'm filming." I asked why and he said, "Because it's cute." Rock!

At one show in LA there was a guy in the audience who had severe Tourette syndrome. It's supposed to be about safety, but it's not me. This person with a version of Tourette's yelled, "I've got a gun!"

I stopped and her friend said she had Tourette's and that would happen. The next thing she said was, "I hid the cocaine!" This kept happening throughout the show and then the last time she said, "I pretend I have Tourette's."