Comedian Chloe Radcliffe is changing the conversation around cheating

We have more sympathy for serial killers than we do for cheaters

Yeah. We have so many documentaries and TV series, fictional TV series

or historical fiction or whatever, going into why a serial killer did what they did

Why a murderer did what they did. And with cheating, it's like, if you want to indicate that a character is bad, you make them cheat

My favorite joke of yours is the lever joke. I asked my ex to do one very specific thing in bed with his hand

And he said that following my instructions felt like going to a factory and pulling a lever

And what a great way to get your job replaced by a robot. Rhythmically, emotionally, like mathematically, it is a perfect bit

Thank you. But I was trying to empathize with him. I was trying to put myself in his shoes

I think that he felt emasculated, right? I think that's what it was. He felt like I was saying that he couldn't make me come on his own

And I can sympathize with that because he couldn't. How long did it take you to like hone that bit

I have now been doing that joke for a couple of years, but it probably came together

It probably like from the first time I said it to, you know, 90% of its current form probably was like six months

I think I seem to remember that one being like fairly fast. like and for a true good big bit six months is like fairly fast i think here's the thing

even if fine even if even if it felt like going to a factory and pulling a lever

does the lever make me come pull the lever i'm gonna need you to put on your safety goggles and

Go in there and save American manufacturing. And I remember like having written one of what is now the like the tentpole punchlines in that joke

I wrote it like less than a week before I shot that joke in my Don't Tell set

and so it already the joke was already like working very well and well enough to be my

closer in my don't tell set and then I just like added this extra somebody sort of made a comment

that made me be like oh that's where that that's what belongs right there and I added this extra

thing and it truly now is my like most reliable applause break line and I remember in my don't

tell taping I you can you can watch it and I like stumbled just the tiniest hair you can't if you

weren't looking for it you wouldn't notice it how are you not how are you not walking into the factory every day and being like oh awesome a lot of men are actually notoriously pretty bad at

finding the liver it was probably the second or third time i had said that on stage said that line

in the taping because i actually like that i like the way you do that set that that bit better in

that set than in your uh just for laugh set oh amazing yeah i think i think because it's so early

It feels freshere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's like a rawness to it. Yeah, exactly. So tell me more about Cheat

It is a solo show about how I have a history of cheating in most of my relationships

Nice to meet you. Thank you for having me on the show. The show does not condone cheating

I think cheating is always bad. I think cheating always hurts somebody. I think a healthy relationship does not involve cheating And I think cheating happens all the time And we hear about it in such a black and white way that I just don think um I don think the way we talk about cheating helps us uh cheat less basically

Oh, clearly not, because people don't talk about it in a way that's like, yeah, that helps

It's just, cheating is evil, cheaters are the villains, that is the end of the story. And I think, you know, it's like if abstinence-only education worked, then a lot of teenagers would not get pregnant

You know, like it's not – just saying just don't do it I don't think has ever worked

I would eat fewer Oreos if I could just say just don't do it, you know

Why Oreos are the best. I know. So to me it's like if we want cheating to stop or decline, we would want people to talk about it

And I happen to be the person willing to stick a microphone in front of my face and say I've done it

and talk about why and talk about my personal experience. And, um, it, it, I think it's an incredibly revealing show

I think it's very, very funny. Um, and I, I feel basically I am sort of willing to like excavate what's inside of me and be

like, here you go. What do you think of that? kind of f***ed up, but also kind of not

Also, like, kind of just normal, kind of whatever, and we all have our shits

It's super personal, but it is still a stand-up show. It's still a comedy show

It's still through the lens of stand-up. And so I think audience members can come in

and feel more comfortable coming into it. Totally, because I think it is kind of mind-blowing to me

that there haven't been more solo shows or stand-up shows specifically about this approach to this topic

You know what's funny? But it's because we have more sympathy for serial killers

than we do for cheaters. Yeah. If you want to indicate... We have so many documentaries and TV series

fictional TV series, or historical fiction or whatever, going into like why a serial killer did what they did why a murderer did what they and and

with cheating it's like if you want to indicate that a character is bad you make them cheat

end of story end of sentence it's like so fast it's so you're dead the minute a character cheats

you're in a horror movie you're like they're dead or or or the minute they cheat it's like

Yeah, they deserve to die. Does your joke writing change when you're writing..

Like a full piece? Yeah, like a full solo show. A great question that I think, unfortunately, the answer is like a little bit of yes and a little bit of no

I mean, the way that solo show came about, or I should say, as I was developing it

the first versions of it were me just sort of being like, here's half an hour of jokes that i already have that are about relationship stuff where you can

clearly see somebody who's struggling with the boundaries within relationships this shows up

or or i haven't framed this as struggling with within the boundaries but i know because i know

that i am writing from that perspective i can see where that's appearing and i can like pull those

threads out so but basically like here half an hour of material i already have that i think fits the theme yeah and then here 20 minutes of just straight serious writing no jokes about infidelity Yeah

And maybe five minutes of actual jokes about cheating that I had written already

And then it sort of mixed. Then it like started, you know, I started to peel out a bunch of the material that was not about cheating specifically

It was just about dating that got chucked. and a bunch of the like series writing about cheating became a lot funnier

I guess in terms of like going into punchline writing, I think it's not that different because I'm not some

I'm not usually working set up punchline, set up punchline. I'm usually here is an idea and we need a laugh line in there somewhere

Yes. Here is an idea and we need a laugh line in there somewhere. You also host a web series

This is In Tandem with Chloe Radcliffe, and my guest today is Akilah Hughes

This is so romantic. You're not only interviewing them, but you're forcing them to do a task

Yes. And a task that is difficult. Yes. I have a person who almost always has never ridden a tandem bike

and often has never ridden any bike, or like not in a decade

on the back of my tandem as we ride around Central Park. I love it

I used to do a web series called the Bob Ross Challenge, where we'd have people paint along with episodes of Bob Ross in real time

What I found in that is what I think also works for yours, which is that when you have them focusing on a task and exerting themselves in any way

I find, I don't know if you found this, but it opens them up so much quicker

Totally. And the types of conversations you've had with some of these people is unlike conversations, like James A. Castor and Matt Broussard

I mean, it's like you're getting things out of them that I don't think would have come out. Totally

I think that you – the conversations get very deep very quickly on the tandem bike

And I think part of that is – I think it's not insignificantly because we don't have to make eye contact

They can sort of forget that they're talking to me or – you know what I mean

It's not quite as confrontational. It's a little bit more freeing. And then, yeah, they're doing something

Half of their body is occupied and half of their brain is occupied

I think it's like why people fidget. It's why, right? Like you're fidgeting right now so that your body can be like releasing energy and your

brain can be focusing on, you know, a little bit less that's going on

A hundred percent. And I think that that's what tandem biking does. And you know, it's funny. I'm having this thought literally in the moment

I've never made this connection during the pandemic. I shot three episodes unreleased forever unreleased sitting on a hard drive somewhere

no one will ever see these episodes of a web series that I never found a good title for

It's a working title is baking and feelings. And the idea was that I wanted to make, um

in like labor intensive desserts and talk about emotions. And the reason that I wanted to make

labor intensive desserts was just as a thing to give people to do. And where it came from was I

that if you whip your own whipped cream, you just have to sit there and stir for like 15 minutes

It's intense. It's intense. And so the idea of being like, now talk about your mom

while somebody is doing something, I think can sort of like take their

it can drop some of the barriers, right? It can lower the walls. Totally. And that show like was experimentational and didn't work

Nothing ever happened with it I never did anything with it But I realized that I actually found a format that does that exact same thing without meaning to like without making the connection I gotta date better men My ex wouldn let me touch

his Magic the Gathering cards. I'm gonna shake it up tonight. So let's put your hands

together for Alex Novak. You just did like a major motion picture. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Is this thing on? Yeah. Which was awesome to see you in it, but like also like as

as a comedian, like as like, you know, what you do. Totally, totally. I mean, uh, Bradley was very

committed to casting real comedians and not massive name ones. Um, and I, I, I just, I don't know

It's awesome to see him like he's a part of the comedy scene. He loves the comedy scene

He wants to represent it honestly. And so he knows that that means putting people

who know the scene really well and do this as a job. And especially if you shoot the seller

like if you're at the cellar and people and like people who go to the cellar watch it

and they're like wait a minute like the amount of people you could have gotten to be in this

who are actually at the cellar every night like why would you not right yeah yeah yeah

something I found hilarious was that like in it you're not only a comedian

but you're also apparently a magician uh huh apparently and apparently because when

because when Will Arnett comes up to you and is like hey I hear you do your magic yeah I totally do

and then he asks you to do his kids birthday party and then we cut to the birthday party

We see the whole birthday party. There's much more important stuff going on at the birthday party

For real. There's other stuff going on. For the story, it's, yeah

There were probably 15, somewhere between 15 and 20, 11 year olds

And the direction was really be at a birthday party. Like, really

be watching this magician. And so we're shooting for hours and these

kids are f***ing feral. And there was like there was the kid you know a couple a couple uh ad's were wrangling the kids but it was like

i really like they were shooting so much and so naturalistically in the background that you

couldn't really have the second ad stepping in and like dealing with the kids you know between

every shot and so i was just entertaining the kids and i basically taught them that they could

be mean to me and then i was mean back to them and so they started bullying me for being bad at magic

and what that and i am bad at magic i'm not a magician but what it meant was that at the end

so i was like trying to do this trick that i had learned and they kept being like you stink you're

like the meanest you can't do that i know you did your trick you you suck you're bad and they were

like having a blast and i was like this is i know that i have to be the sponge here for their energy

Like, I am absorbing all of their attention so that they don't up the rest of this major motion picture shoot

You can't even do magic. And I was like, you're right. And I kept being like, one time, kids, I'm going to get you

I'm going to get you one time. And then I did the exact same trick in the exact same way

And I just happened to land it once. and despite them having seen me

f***ing trick three or four times already despite them claiming to know how I did it

despite their claims that I am bad at magic I f***ed up

those little pieces of s*** I tricked them they were amazed one time

I f***ed pulled the wool over their stupid little eyes f***ed up