Comic Leanne Morgan glows in peach for an interview, accessorized with an invisible halo of buzzing nerves clouding her thoughts.
It’s not exactly the confidence she exudes in her 2023 Netflix standup “I’m Every Woman,” in which she delivers sharp quips about aging, tending to her “little mama and daddy” and life with her “anal-retentive, overachiever” husband, Chuck Morgan. The success of that special, paired with interest from the King Midas of comedies, Chuck Lorre, resulted in the standup’s very own 16-episode, half-hour Netflix sitcom. Finally, after years in comedy clubs and the promise of other series suddenly evaporated.
“What was the question, honey?” Morgan, 59, asks, raising her hands into the air like the blonde shoulder shrug emoji. “This is my first press junket, my darling.”
Morgan drops “my darling” and “honey” like women in the South once dropped handkerchiefs to flirt. Her captivating drawl showcases her upbringing in Adams, Tennessee.
“Leanne” opens with Morgan’s character, Leanne Murphy, heartbroken over the end of her 33-year marriage when her husband (Ryan Stiles) falls for a younger woman. Leanne initially “takes to the bed” but learns to muscle through with the help of her sister (Kristen Johnston), while caring for their parents (Celia Weston and Blake Clark) and her kids (Graham Rogers and Hannah Pilkes). One hunky FBI agent (Tim Daly) helps Leanne get her mojo back.
Morgan’s family has long been a source of material for her comedy career, which began when Morgan’s “baby child was 18 months old,” she says. Tess, now 27, is younger sister to Charlie, 31, and Maggie, 29.
“I’d had three babies in five years,” Morgan says. “I swear, I think that was some of my best material.” She mined jokes from breastfeeding and elementary school.
“Middle school was a dry time because everybody said, ‘Don’t put my name in your mouth, Mom. Don’t talk about me,'” Morgan says. But they came around in high school. “And all these women would say to me, ‘Oh just wait, Leanne. Menopause is really going to be your best material.’”
For about 25 years, she worked consistently in comedy clubs, at corporate events and fundraisers, careful not to be away from her kids for too long.
“I really just got on stage anywhere I could, my darling, so that I could raise these three children in Knoxville, Tennessee,” Morgan says. “It got to a point where I thought, ‘I’m not happy, and this is not going the way I want it to, and maybe I should stop.’ But … I just always kept thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got to keep going.’”
Enter Lorre, with numerous creator and co-creator credits (ABC’s “Dharma & Greg,” CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory,” “Young Sheldon,” “Two and a Half Men,” “Cybill” and Netflix’s “The Kominsky Method,” for starters). He’s built sitcoms around comics like Brett Butler (ABC’s “Grace Under Fire”), Melissa McCarthy and Billy Gardell (CBS’ “Mike & Molly”) and Sebastian Maniscalco (HBO Max’s “Bookie”).
“When he came to my house,” Morgan says, “and held my grandbaby on my back porch and said, ‘Leanne, please make this with me,’ − he said that to me − I felt validated at 57 that OK, this was worth it. I was on the right track.”
Morgan’s unique point of view in her standup stirred something in Lorre.
“I was really startled when I saw it,” he says. He thought to himself, “‘This is special.’”
Netflix subscribers agreed. The platform revealed to USA TODAY exclusively that since its release, “I’m Every Woman” is the streamer’s most-watched special globally from a female comic, racking up 11 million views as of June 30. The special has been watched in more than 190 countries.
“When we’ve seen this type of global success,” says Tracey Pakosta, Netflix’s vice president of comedy series, “it’s really been about the fact that they’re touching on universal themes… I feel like things that resonate are things that Leanne talks about in her specials, whether it be starting over or female friendship, family, all of these things that people around the world can relate to.”
Morgan’s bit about a friend going through a divorce and returning to the dating pool sparked Lorre’s idea for the sitcom. “I asked Leanne if she’d be comfortable taking on that type of role for a show,” Lorre says, “where a woman (is) at the time of life where she shouldn’t have to be reinventing her life but now has to.”
“The comedy is generated by trying to deal with life as it happens, as a child goes off the rails, as a marriage crashes and burns,” Lorre says. “How do you respond to that? And there’s no book. You learn as you go. Somehow, in that stumbling forward through those crises, that’s where you mine some comedy.”
In real life, Morgan and her husband are still happily married, but the fictional version of Leanne “reacts how I really would,” Morgan says. “If Chuck Morgan did walk off and leave me, it would be a catastrophic event, and I would take to the bed, and I would lean on my sister and my kids. I wanted this sitcom to have my sensibility, and those writers really honored that.”
Writers also included Morgan’s love for church and exercise classes in a church basement.
Zumba, she specifies, “and I have done jazzercise, honey, many a time in a Presbyterian gym.”
If only she felt so confident when walking onto the “Leanne” set at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California, where the show is taped before a live studio audience, on the first day of production.
“I was so nervous because, honey, I walked in there, I didn’t realize there was 250 people working on this. I really did not know anything,” Morgan says. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, how am I going to live up to this? All these people are counting on me.’ But everybody was cheerleading and lifting me up.”
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Morgan had questions for everyone, and says Johnston (“3rd Rock From the Sun”) provided priceless advice.
“When I first saw my fanny on screen, I’ll just tell you, and my chin, I thought, ‘What happened to my chin?’” Morgan deadpans. “And I know I’ve always had a big fanny, but I didn’t know how big it was on TV. And (Johnston) said to me, ‘Leanne, don’t let all that get in your head. Be funny. Think of Lucille Ball… It’s hard when you see yourself on TV, but it’s about being funny.’ And she was right, and I had to let that go.”
Fans will see more of Morgan when her second Netflix special debuts this fall. There’s a third in the pipeline. Morgan is also touring through October with a new standup show she’s aptly dubbed “Just Getting Started.” While achieving her dream of a sitcom might seem like Morgan’s Hollywood ending, she says this is only the beginning.
“I came up with that name because I feel like − and I don’t mean to sound sappy − but I feel like I’m just getting started, at 59 years old!” she says. “And when I say that on stage, women throw their purse there. It’s so much bigger than comedy. It really is.
“When this all blew up for me in my early 50s, I really kind of had a hard time, probably should have talked to somebody about it,” Morgan continues, “because it wasn’t just like people enjoyed my comedy. It was kind of like a movement of women my age, realizing it’s not over and you have worth and you’re smarter than you’ve ever been and you’re better at your craft or your job than you’ve ever been. I think society, after a woman gets a certain age, kind of throws her away, and it’s crazy because we’re the best we’ve ever been.”
“You only get one time around this life,” she says. “You might as well give it everything you got.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Leanne Morgan on new Netflix show at 59: ‘I’m just getting started’
