Getting her own Netflix show was a breakout moment for Leanne Morgan.
Her series “Leanne” has been renewed for a second season, and the comedian tells Willie Geist she was “thrilled” to see it do so well.
“Jerry Seinfeld called me the day it came out, and said, ‘You have a sitcom with your name on it, which is unheard of,'” she said on the Nov. 16 episode of Sunday Sitdown.
“And he goes, ‘You’re in there with Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, Lucille Ball,'” she added.
Morgan spent many years working as a struggling comedian. After graduating from the University of Tennessee, the comic started a family with her husband, Chuck, and realized comedy was her calling.
While selling jewelry at home parties, she would joke about her life at home with her husband, whom she always calls “Chuck Morgan.”
“I was talking about having hemorrhoids, breast feeding, Chuck Morgan not hearing the baby cry in the night … all that kinda stuff,” she said. “And that was my first material. People would say, ‘You need to be a stand-up.'”
Morgan took their words to heart. While raising her kids during the day, she would take the stage at any comedy club that would have her during the night.
Morgan said she faced plenty of rejection. “I just felt like I was never one of the cool kids,” she told Willie.
Everything changed once she decided to hire social media experts to get her career going. She was 54 at the time.
“It went like gang busters,” she said of finding success. “Clubs started calling all over the United States, saying, ‘We need to get Leanne Morgan here.’
“Now, six months before that, they were like, ‘She’s sweet. She doesn’t get drunk and fight in the parking lot. But we’re not having her back. She cannot sell tickets,'” Morgan recalled. “And I would be so hurt. And then, honey, started selling out all over the United States.”
Morgan’s sold out shows helped her land “Leanne” and her two comedy specials — “I’m Every Woman” and “Unspeakable Things” — at Netflix.
“It’s like a whirlwind, my darling, and you know what people say to me all the time? They go, ‘How are you doing this?'” she said of juggling her various commitments.
While looking back at how far she’s come in her career, Morgan said she’s happy with how everything turned out.
“I look back on it and I think, it was wonderful timing,” she said.
“I got to raise these children. I have led a full life as a mama, a grandmama, my parents are still with me,” she added. “I’ve got this full life I can talk about, and that’s what people are relating to.”
