On ‘No Worries If Not,' Riki Lindhome rewrites her hero's journey to motherhood
Riki Lindhome never intended to go solo. Since 2007, the comedian, actress and musician has performed as one half of Garfunkel and Oates, a raunchy comedy duo also starring Kate Micucci. But as the COVID era set in, Micucci became a new mom and started writing children's music, and Lindhome began to reevaluate her own path. At first, she felt frightened. But Lindhome is, by her own admission, naturally predisposed to find the positive in everything.
'Before, it had to be something that was true to both of us,' Lindhome told The Times. 'So I started thinking, 'What only applies to me?''
The answer turned out to be right in front of her. Now 46, Lindhome, who started acting professionally in the early 2000s with bit roles in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Gilmore Girls' and has since appeared on 'The Big Bang Theory,' 'New Girl' and 'Wednesday,' had been on a yearslong, often demoralizing fertility journey.
It started when she was 34 and decided to freeze her eggs, an experience Lindhome chronicled in song (the Emmy-nominated 'Frozen Lullaby') and on Garfunkel and Oates' eponymous IFC show, which ran for one season in 2014. 'I think we were the first show to do realistic egg-freezing storylines with the shots and stuff,' she says. 'There are so many medical shows, but [we] couldn't find the shots for IVF at the prop house. Our prop people had to make them from the pictures I took of my IVF drugs.'
Lindhome ended up writing the rest of her fertility story into a one-woman musical, 'Dead Inside,' which premiered at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival and has currently been running on a semi-monthly basis at the Elysian Theater in L.A. As she workshopped the show around comedy clubs and small stages, Lindhome also realized she had a solo comedy record on her hands; now, her debut album, 'No Worries If Not,' came out on April 4.
Across its 11 tracks, which feature contributions from Fred Armisen (Lindhome's husband since 2022), Nicole Row, Eric Jackowitz and production trio Polyglam, Lindhome traces her maze-like 'hero's journey' to motherhood while poking fun at other quadragenarian quandaries. For instance, on the Barry White-styled 'Middle Age Love,' Lindhome jokes about sex after 40 ('F— me like an animal, if that animal's a turtle / You can c— inside me, it's OK — I'm infertile'). Elsewhere, on 'Don't Google Mommy,' Lindhome imagines her future child Internet-stalking her one day ('Because mommy writes comedy songs that are a teensy bit obscene').
Lindhome also includes a few songs that didn't make it into 'Dead Inside' — '90 Percent Sure,' a back-and-forth duet with fellow comedian Ken Marino, looks back at the comedian's breakup with an unnamed ex-boyfriend. After trying to conceive naturally, experiencing a miscarriage and spending thousands on a few failed attempts at IVF, Lindhome and her ex parted ways when he told her that he wasn't up for having more children. (Lindhome's ex had two children from a previous relationship.) '[My ex] said that he was only 90 percent sure he wanted to have a baby and he deserved to be 100 percent,' Lindhome says. 'So I wrote a song about all the things that I'm only 90 percent sure I'm going to do to him. But don't worry, because it's not 100, so it could never happen!' Meanwhile, on 'Infertile Princess,' Lindhome adopts the lens of a Disney heroine: 'Pocahontas got pregnant just by talking to a tree … If I was like Ariel, I'd be fine, because she makes 20,000 eggs at a time.'
While Lindhome solo retains her trademark singsong, sweet-and-sour delivery, the themes within her work have deepened to reflect a more complicated stage of life. For instance, Garfunkel and Oates wrote expletive-laced, satirical pop ditties about bad and embarrassing sex, religious 'loopholes' (IYKYK) and self-satisfied pregnant women, among other things. But Lindhome takes the formula one step further by getting ultra-candid (but no less acerbic) about the social isolation around trying – and failing – to conceive.
'There's so much blaming,' she says. 'When I was going through all of my stuff, a lot of people's first reaction was to give me advice. Like, here's what you're doing wrong. Despite their best intentions, they were making me feel like it was my fault. That should not be it. Your first reaction should be, 'I'm sorry that's happening. How are you?'
'I was feeling so overwhelmed [by the advice] that I stopped telling people what was happening,' Lindhome continues. 'Then I felt super isolated. I'm like, where is the middle ground? From that point, I was like, 'I refuse to be ashamed about this.''
As she prepared to debut 'Dead Inside,' Lindhome remained uncertain that it or its accompanying album would connect with audiences who had not undergone fertility struggles. That's why she called the album 'No Worries If Not.' 'My old music was more crowd-pleasery, not in a bad way. It was just for more people,' she says. 'And this one is about menopause and fertility trauma — such specified things that [I feel], like, 'If you don't like it, I get it!''
Much to her surprise, however, a range of audiences responded to 'Dead Inside' and its music with overwhelmingly positive feedback. 'When I started [performing] in Edinburgh, I was a little taken aback at first, because it would be a lot of women sharing their experience, and I was very touched,' Lindhome says. 'And it was raining all the time. So I always found myself standing in the rain, hugging and crying with people.'
What's more, Lindhome has been fascinated to learn how audiences she never expected to relate have connected to the material. '[A] number of straight men without kids who felt included in this were like, 'I understand the feeling of not having information and not knowing my way out.' And I'm like, 'Oh, right, that is universal.' I'm talking about it in a fertility sense, but everyone feels like there is some key that they don't have, that they can't get through the door they need to.'
Lindhome's personal story has a happy ending, too. In March 2022, Lindhome welcomed a son, Keaton, via surrogacy and a donated sperm and egg. And while she fully expected to be a single mom, she reconnected with an old friend, Fred Armisen, while filming Netflix's 'Wednesday' in Romania. The summer after Keaton was born, they got married.
'My life changed so much so quickly,' Lindhome says. 'It was funny because when I fell in love on set and had a baby and all this stuff happened at the same time, I was like, 'This was so fast.' And my 'Wednesday' costar Jamie McShane was like, 'Well, if you look at the physics principles, you lost everything in a day and you gained everything in two weeks. It's equal-opposite reactions. This is actually the right cadence for you, scientifically.'
Looking ahead, Lindhome is still tweaking 'Dead Inside,' which she wants at least another year to develop. ('Dead Inside' will run in New York on April 3; Austin on April 12; and back in L.A. on April 23.) 'Things change every performance,' Lindhome says. 'I want more time to make it happen. My goal would be to do an off-Broadway or off-off-Broadway run. Then after that, maybe think about trying to film it.'
For now, Lindhome hopes 'No Worries If Not' will help people to laugh about the things that are outside of their control. 'I hope people feel seen,' she says. 'When I listen to comedy music, I just want to have a good time. And then if they come to see the show, I want them to feel less alone, especially women who've gone through that stuff. I want them to feel like it's not your fault. I think that's true with most things in life. So much is luck … But you just keep going.'
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