Getting Ready With Hannah Berner Ahead of Her Stand-Up Show in the Hamptons

Just me being silly in the green room! I don’t like to be too serious before shows—if you take this job too seriously, you will have problems.

It’s giving Kendall Jenner trying to pretend she knows how to cut a cucumber. I normally ask my husband to iron, because he’s a feminist icon who loves ironing. Full disclosure: I rarely buy anything linen because it crinkles the second I buy it, and I can’t deal with the administrative work that comes with bringing an iron on the road.

We made it to the venue! This is the green room that’s actually called the Susan Lucci room because she has performed there and I think she lives in Westhampton, but don’t quote me. Fun fact: most green rooms are not green, so use that at your next boring party conversation. Before shows, I like to write down the order of my jokes that I am going to tell—it helps get my mind organized and visualize the performance. I’m about to talk for the next hour straight, and I probably haven’t shut up all day long, so this is a nice moment for me to be calm with my thoughts. Sometimes, I will do this on the toilet if there are too many people chatting in the green room. It’s a glamorous life.

Quick tech check before doors open. I’m with my bestie and opener for a lot of my shows, Tracey Carnazzo, and my featured comedian John Campanelli, who texted me last-minute that he was in town, so I threw him on. This is when you say, “Testing one, two, three,” or you can get creative and say something controversial. Sometimes, I will pretend I’m on American Idol, and no one likes that. We also check the lighting to make sure the audience is lit enough so I can see them and do crowd work, but not too bright that it feels like we are in a seminar.

My husband and I are fostering a dog named Abby from the Southampton Animal Shelter, and we brought her out at the end of the show. We started fostering during COVID, and now whenever we are in town for a couple weeks, we like to foster one of the amazing dogs. If I wasn’t on the road all the time, I would start a dog sanctuary and adopt them all. (My husband would not be happy.)

We did it! I had to do a thot squat in front of the venue because it’s my entire personality. Comedy can be lonely on the road, so I’m lucky to have cool friends in the business to perform with me. I’m on tour the next couple months all over the U.S., so check out hannahberner.com to see if I’m coming to a city near you!