Welcome back to Hot Takes and Deep Dives and my next guest is the director and

producer of the Netflix documentary Outstanding a Comedy Revolution which explores the history of

queer stand-up comedy over the past five decades. The doc features tons of fresh

interviews with Lily Tomlin, Scott Thompson, Margaret

Cho, Sandra Bernhard, Bob the Drag Queen, and so many others.

Paige Hurwitz also cast and produced Last Comic Standing, where she ostensibly

discovered Amy Schumer and Fortune Feemster, and she was also the showrunner for Rosie O'Donnell's

second talk show on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

We are getting into all of this and more,

Hi Paige Hurwitz.

Hi Jess, how are you?

I'm great, how are you?

I'm good, thank you. It's nice to see you. So there's a lot that I want to cover with you. I guess to start to sort of explain your role in these varying comedians careers.

So some of these people you sort of discovered

through Last Comics Standing, would that be fair to say?

That would be fair to say, Jess.

Yes, it's been a great journey so far in my career and what's been really nice is that I've been able to

Sheppard and champion a lot of comedians that I love and been able to I've been able to work with them in on different projects and see them grow and hopefully help them grow and that's been incredibly rewarding

rewarding for me. So you were an executive producer of Last Comic Standing

for many years. Yeah, I was and, but I did it a little differently because a lot of producers and showrunners run shows, but they don't get that hands

on in terms of their casting.

And I always like to do my own casting.

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