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Funny Girl: Rachel Feinstein on Fueling Her Stand-Up Comedy with ADHD

Star of the stand-up comedy special Big Guy, Rachel Feinstein talks about her ADHD journey, from adrenaline highs to rejection lows (and how she’s always losing her passport).

By Nicole C. Kear Updated on September 30, 2024
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Rachel Feinstein finds herself in some ridiculous situations courtesy of her ADHD. Because she’s been gifted with a razor-sharp sense of humor, she takes these unlikely, sometimes absurd moments and turns them into comedy gold in her stand-up routine.

Rachel is a nationally touring comedian and actress whose newest hour-long comedy special, Big Guy, is now streaming on Netflix, where it premiered in the Top 10. In it, she talks about everything from her aggressively liberal mother and Facebook-blundering dad to the odd-couple relationship she has with her fire chief husband, who affectionately calls her “Big Guy.” In vivid detail, Feinstein illustrates how perplexing and frustrating her annoyingly neat husband finds her chronic messes.

“One morning, I walk into the kitchen and my husband is just pacing,” she recounts. “He goes, ‘One question. I got one question for you: Why are there three open seltzers? I’d love to hear the story behind that.” And I’m like, ‘It’s not gonna be a good tale. It’s not like I’m gonna tell you ‘Well, there was blow and hookers and then three open La Croixs!’”

Feinstein’s been praised for her “amazing impersonations” (Vulture), “acute observations,” and ability to be “subtly, exquisitely attuned to her audience” (AV Club). She’s had three Comedy Central specials, co-hosted The View, and been a guest on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, among other late night shows, not to mention her slew of TV and film appearances. And she’s the mother of a three-year-old, who provides plenty of comedy material. “My daddy’s a hero,” her daughter likes to say. “And my mommy’s sarcastic.”

Below, Feinstein opens up about the good, the bad, and the funny of her ADHD journey.

[Read: In Praise of the ADHD Funny Bone]

Q: What does your ADHD look like?

I am insanely disorganized. I am always running late. I shed debit cards. I’m always leaving a shoe in somebody’s car. I lose a passport almost every year.

My husband, who is OCD, always says to me: ‘Why don’t you just put things back in the same place?’ And I’m like, ‘You’re assuming I know where I put them. My hands take trips throughout the day. It’s like my hands are not connected to my body.’

I’m a workaholic — but only if someone’s sitting with me. I always have to have a babysitter for myself. I pay people to sit with me.

[Read: Get More Done With a Body Double]

So, for example, an editor expressed interest in working with me on my Netflix special, but I knew I was never going to go through it and email him time codes. So I said to the editor: ‘I’m going to come to your house and sit with you and edit every line with you.’ I don’t think he thought I was going to really do that. Then I was over at his place — just me and him and his wife in his little apartment. I’d leave and bathe and give him time to implement notes, but we were together for two weeks and we got it done. I think we were common law wed by the end of that process.

Q: What was school like for you?

When I even smell a school now, it brings me back to all these weird bad feelings about myself. Ever since I can remember, I was always doing so terribly in school. I was failing, getting Ds and Fs in my public school. They couldn’t stuff information into my brain. I had no idea what was going on in any of the classes. I remember getting 23% on a quiz and thinking, ‘Wow! I can’t believe I know 23% of this!’

I felt like a quaking, throbbing mess in school. It created my core self-esteem issues. When I was 11, I was diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive type.

Then, junior year in high school my parents took me out of the local public school and got me into a tiny Quaker school. There were 60 kids in the whole school, 8 kids in each class. I was able to learn there. I wasn’t distracted and confused. I had a 3.8 GPA for a beat.

Q: When did your love of comedy begin?

From very early on, I loved accents and imitating people and affectations. My parents got me into acting classes and I’d put on living room plays and impersonate everyone in my family.

I always thought I had to entertain people. I remember trying to make everybody laugh in school — and being good at that. That was one thing I could do.

Q: How does ADHD inform your comedy?

I think about things in a funny way. I wasn’t able to think about things in a straight way, so that was the only option left available to me. I need things to hook on to that are funny; that’s what helps me pay attention. So, if someone uses a weird word choice, I’m going to notice what’s funny about it, otherwise I won’t retain anything.

My mom said I was always friends with people who had very distinct personalities and accents — it woke me up, jolted me. That’s true to this day; I’m married to a Brooklyn firefighter pronounced “fiya fida.”

Q: What’s your favorite part of your job?

When I’m on stage, I get a very immediate reaction: it either works or it doesn’t. I am addicted to it, the way my husband’s addicted to the adrenaline rush of being a firefighter. This also helps me as an editing process: I know what works and what doesn’t, and I shed, shed, shed as I go.

The other great thing about stand-up for somebody with ADHD is once you’re booked, you have to do it — you have to be on stage. It’s not something you have to turn in; if it was, I’d never turn it in.

Q: Your least favorite part of your job?

The constant rejection, which mimics all those bad feelings I had about myself in school. There’s always a new insult, even when you think you’ve gotten past that and you’re accepted.

I have to retrain my mind every day to not focus on the person that isn’t into me, that doesn’t like what I’m doing. When the rejection starts to take its toll, I go to the Comedy Cellar and have an immediate connection with the audience.

Q: Where have you found inspiration or encouragement along the way?

I had a therapist who told me that I could juggle a lot of things and that I could grow up and do something where I could be thinking of a million things at once. I remember thinking, ‘This is a man with a desk, who went to graduate school, and he believes this?’ I thought. ‘If Dr. Castellano thinks I won’t be in a Gray Gardens situation for the rest of my life, maybe I won’t be.’

Later, when I was 17, I moved to New York with this random guy and his band, which was named ‘Dick’s Sister.’ I was very obsessed with guys at the time, thinking more about them than what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I had a vague idea of being something funny.

I really didn’t know how to keep a job and I kept getting fired from everything — waitressing, bartending. Then I started nannying for this five-year-old boy with autism. That was the one job I could keep. I really related to his struggles.

I remember I’d tell him, ‘Go put that in the trash can and come right back,’ and he’d get caught between where we were sitting and the trash can. I’d see him get almost there and then get lost. I really related to the feeling of making it halfway to what you were supposed to do. I still do that — I do most of the work and it falls apart at the end.

I worked really hard at the nannying job because I just had this feeling that he had really complicated thoughts, that he was really smart. I didn’t know if I was projecting onto him, but there really was something very special and creative and gifted about him. He ended up going to Harvard. We’re still in touch. He came to my wedding!

It was the first successful experience I had of following something through, until I did stand-up full time. He taught me a lot more than I taught him.

Q: What’s your advice to other people with ADHD?

For anyone who struggles with those old bad feelings from school, my message would be what a lovely therapist said to me: Believe in the way your mind works. Do what you need to do to support yourself.

What might be considered indulgent or lazy might be your own weird route to success. When I was getting started, I did stuff like take cabs everywhere because I was always late. That’s the way I had to do it. I knew I would never be the person who was going to take two buses and be there on time. I spent money to make money. I bet on myself.

ADHD and Comedy: Next Steps

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