Comedian Robby Hoffman is having a moment. This month alone, she appears in prominent, memorable roles on two critically acclaimed TV shows—Hacks and Dying for Sex. And, as Hoffman reveals in this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, she is on the verge of some very big announcements regarding the future of a comedy pilot about her life and a high profile stand-up special.
Of course, all of this comes after what has become her biggest claim to fame as one half of America’s favorite queer power couple with reality TV star Gabby Windey, who she secretly married earlier this year. During our conversation, Hoffman breaks down how she went from a Hasidic Jewish family of 10 siblings to the alt-comedy world, why she has rejected the opportunity to perform stand-up on late-night TV, and why she would never follow in her wife’s footsteps to compete on The Traitors.
“When it rains, it pours,” Hoffman, 35, says of her sudden ubiquity. She filmed her roles in Dying for Sex and Hacks months apart, but is delighted that they ended up premiering within a week of each other. She jokingly—or is she joking?—compares herself to Taylor Swift when it comes to her total dedication to whatever she has decided to throw herself into.
“If I’m acting, I’m going to really be acting,” she says.
There is a lot of Hoffman in both of her new roles. Like the real Hoffman, Jimmy and Kayla’s new manager Randi on Hacks is a former Hasidic Jewish lesbian thrust into the heart of show business, teeming with anxious energy but also highly capable and ready to take on anything that comes her way.
On Dying for Sex, Hoffman plays a supremely confident “top d–e” (“which I am in real life,” she clarifies) tasked with guiding Michelle Williams’ Molly in the art of BDSM. During her first, deeply intimate scene with the five-time Oscar nominee, Hoffman spent most of their time together paranoid about “lingering halitosis” from a cup of coffee.
Then there is Hoffman’s onstage stand-up persona, which can be extremely aggressive, teeming with frustration about everyday annoyances that most people wouldn’t think twice about. She has delivered memorable complaints about everything from New York pizza culture to having to interact with people who have “zero personality disorder.” The Larry David comparisons are apt, despite that fact that Hoffman once called the analogy antisemitic.
Instead, she jokes that she likes to think of herself as a “reverse” Ellen DeGeneres. “Ellen purports to be kind and nice, but people say she’s a terror to work with,” Hoffman explains. “I’m the opposite. I come off aggressive, I seem a little rough around the edges, but I’m actually a f—ing delight to work with.”
Hoffman’s instinct to alienate her audience is especially present in the short set she performed as part of Netflix’s Verified Stand-Up series in 2023. She opens by using the f-slur to greet the crowd before railing against the use of gender neutral pronouns. “I would have used they/them,” Hoffman, who has always used female pronouns, says from the stage. “They/them would have been a viable option for me. But you took it and made it annoying. And I don’t want to be part of the world’s most annoying f—ing community that ever was. I’m already Jewish.”
She briefly wins the audience back by deeming Dave Chappelle “transphobic.” But in the next breath, she comically gives Netflix’s biggest comedy star a pass for being too old to understand the concept of “preferred pronouns.” To any teenagers complaining that their grandparents don’t care about nonbinary people, Hoffman shouts, “B—h, they don’t care about Black people!”
This fearless approach to comedy made Netflix the perfect home for her stand-up, Hoffman says. Unlike the network late-night shows, which she says have approached her about performing but require a “clean” five minutes, Netflix let her curse all she wanted and didn’t ask her to “change s–t.”
All of this puts her at a curious intersection between progressive queer comedy on one side and the “anti-woke” free speech absolutists on the other. For her part, Hoffman says she doesn’t ascribe to either comedy ideology and cares only about making people laugh.
“Laughter is unprovoked,” she says. “It’s such a natural thing. So I don’t give myself rules around what I like and what I don’t like. But I don’t know, I’m just a walking contradiction in every facet of my life.”
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