Julie Klausner would like comedy liberated from the phone and returned to the sitcom.
“If I want to canvass for one cause, it is for the return of the hard comedy sitcom,” the Difficult People creator told a sold-out audience at Televerse in downtown Los Angeles, where The Hollywood Reporter’s It Happened in Hollywood staged its first live episode. “I think that the idea that comedy is for your phone is not great. I think that it’s a little isolating. I think it’s reductive.”
Klausner joined me for an hour devoted to Difficult People, the cult Hulu comedy she created and starred in opposite Billy Eichner. Four clips from the series guided a conversation about its making, its reputation for being ahead of its time and the television landscape that has changed dramatically since its 2015 premiere.
The phone-comedy discussion followed a scene in which Julie Kessler and Billy Epstein, the proudly embittered struggling comedians played by Klausner and Eichner, confront an up-and-coming digital creator.
The face-off was pointed in 2015. Eleven years later, its target has largely won. Front-facing-camera videos and scrolling feeds have claimed an enormous share of comedy consumption, while traditional television has moved away from tightly constructed joke machines and toward dramedies and funny hourlong shows. Klausner cited Succession as an example of how much great comedy writing now resides in dramas.
