Ilana Glazer
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
In the first episode of “Broad City,” the hit Comedy Central show that premiered earlier this year, comedian Ilana Glazer, 27, posts a Craigslist ad that reads: “We’re just 2 Jewesses tryin’ to make a buck.” Later that day she winds up cleaning the apartment of a man wearing a diaper, with her best friend, Abbi Jacobson.
“Broad City,” which averaged 1.3 million viewers per episode and will be brought back for a second season, has made Glazer and Jacobson the darlings of the comedy world.
Glazer, who grew up on Long Island — in an interview with the Forward she said that the combination of her New York upbringing and Jewish background makes her a “double Jew” — met Jacobson while attending classes at the comedy school Upright Citizens Brigade. When both women failed to make the UCB house improv team, they decided to start their own show, and in 2009 they launched “Broad City” as a Web series.
Since then, “Broad City” has gained critical praise and widespread popularity for its irreverent depiction of two 20-something women trying to get by in New York. In a New Yorker profile of the duo, Nick Paumgarten called them the “idols of a largely underserved and under-chronicled female id,” while the Forward’s Sarah Seltzer deemed the show “a refreshing dose of equality, like ‘Girls’ without the self-seriousness sentimentality.”
Move over, Seth Rogen. There’s a new schlemiel on the block.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
