\t\t\t\t\tHeather McMahan and her mother Robin onboard the Absolutely Knot cruise. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tDid the attendees seem similar to the crowds that attend your shows stateside?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019d say it was 80% women, 20% men. And then 10% of those men were gay and the other 10% were husbands. But also, a lot of women brought their single brothers, and those guys were cleaning up and having the time of their life. What was cool is that you don\u2019t great cell service, so everyone was just down to clown. It was so cool to see women take time for themselves and create this sense of sisterhood. It was non-judgmental, unadulterated fun. There were a lot of solo travelers too, and a bunch called into the podcast this week to tell me they formed a group on Facebook for all of the solo travelers and now they have all new friends. A lot of women will come alone to my shows, too. This is the sisterhood of the traveling Spanx.<\/p>\n \n\tHow did you go about programming the lineup?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tChelcie Lynn did something similar, and so my team and I went and scoped that out. It was a completely different audience than mine, but we could tell it was fun. We planned it for over a year. Tina Tompkins, who runs all my operations, spearheaded it and then we used Six Man, a large scale production company out of Atlanta. We first sat down and figured out what sort of vibe we wanted. It was theme parties, braid bars, DJs who pretty much only played music from 2005. I wanted the 50 Cent P.I.M.P. <\/em>album on repeat. <\/p>\n \n\tAnd then I personally hand-picked all the other comics and talent that were coming aboard because I knew what my audience would want to see. The best part was there was no toxic masculinity on this ship. That was a huge takeaway \u2014\u00a0all of the talent were phenomenal people, and we were hanging out every night drinking after the shows, just having fun. And everyone that we asked to come on said yes right away, which I was really surprised by. I did have a girlfriend who is afraid of birds, so she declined my invitation. She was like, if I see a bird out in the wild and it lands on me, I\u2019ll jump off the ship. That was Jackie Schimmel.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat felt most different about running your standup set on the cruise, as compared to either your tours or filming your specials?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tOn tour you can wind up performing for people who don\u2019t necessarily know you. You hit more broad subjects. But on this boat, I was able to do inside jokes. I could literally roast people in the audience about seeing them at the buffet that morning. <\/p>\n \n\tWill you do it again, and would you do anything differently?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tAbsolutely, we\u2019re going to do it in 2027. We need a year to recover. I\u2019m sure in a month or so a lightbulb will go off about what I want to change, but right now it feels like it was a little utopia. I do need to learn how to pace myself and my vocal cords. I can\u2019t be at karaoke singing \u201cYou Oughta Know\u201d by Alanis Morissette and also perform for four days. <\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019re on a new tour at the moment, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI am, it\u2019s the Bamboozled Tour. I\u2019m talking about some personal changes that I\u2019ve made in my life. I\u2019m talking about how women are too overstimulated and overworked. It\u2019s a reflective hour. I\u2019m also touching on political topics that I haven\u2019t before. It\u2019s a necessary evil. Basically, it\u2019s about what\u2019s important to me right now and also some reflection on the things I\u2019ve fucked up. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tHeather McMahan at her Bamboozled tour. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tDid you make a conscious decision that now was the right time to incorporate political elements into your hour?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI don\u2019t think anybody wakes up and says, man, today\u2019s the day I want to make Trump jokes. It\u2019s more talking about how we\u2019ve been affected as women and also how we may have done some of this to ourselves. I\u2019m looking at that nuance. I\u2019m based in Atlanta, which is a great little melting pot of a city. So it feels wild that Marjorie Taylor Green is also a Georgia representative. That\u2019s not my girl. If I ever run for something in the state of Georgia, I\u2019m probably going to have to cage fight her UFC style and that gives me anxiety. But listen, I opened this tour in Huntsville and Birmingham, which I thought would be more conservative, and I was surprised to learn that so much of the audience feels the same way as me.<\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019ve sold development deals for two TV pilots that so far haven\u2019t gone into production; can you share any updates on where that side of your business is?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI just sold a show. I don\u2019t think I can say where it went, but I want that to get picked up. Stand-up is my love, because nobody can tell me no, but I do want to act and do television and film. I want to play somebody else. It can be hard, sitting back and waiting for people you\u2019ve never met to give you approval on a self-tape that you did in your mom\u2019s basement. I always joke that when I have my funeral, they\u2019re going to play a reel of every self-tape I\u2019ve ever done. I do love auditioning, but I haven\u2019t booked a gig in a second. Creating these shows \u2014\u00a0everything that I\u2019ve sold involves me as the lead role \u2014 is another tool to try and just make what I want. I also would like to write a book, that\u2019s on my vision board. I\u2019m going to take some time off from touring this summer and will be tinkering away at that. Maybe I\u2019ll fill it with a bunch of nude photos to make sure we end up on The New York Times <\/em>bestseller list.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Heather McMahan has always been a huge cruise girl. Maritime vacations were a constant when she was growing up. \u201cOne of my parents\u2019 favorite memories was that once on a Disney cruise they couldn\u2019t find me, and I was in the hot tub with all my friends that I met at the kids club,\u201d she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[616,1248,1249,1246,1247],"class_list":{"0":"post-1120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fashion","8":"tag-comedy","9":"tag-created","10":"tag-cruise","11":"tag-heather","12":"tag-mcmahan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1122,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions\/1122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>