Kate Berlant: The Comedian Who Plays a Genius Who Might Be a Fraud

Kate Berlant does a very specific impression: the performer who is certain she is a genius. On stage she talks in a stream of half-finished profundities, reads the audience's minds, and treats a pause as if it were a sacred event. The joke is that she is playing a fraud. The trick is that she is so precise and so fast that you start to suspect she is the real thing. That tension runs through her stand-up, her solo show Kate, her podcast with Jacqueline Novak and her long collaboration with John Early.

This profile covers her whole career and where to begin. If you are here for her friends, see our profiles of John Early, her most frequent creative partner, and Jacqueline Novak, her Poog co-host.

Los Angeles, NYU and performance studies

Berlant was born in Los Angeles in 1987, the only child of the artist Tony Berlant and the performer Helen Méndez Berlant. She grew up around art and artists, which helps explain why her comedy is so interested in the rituals of creative self-importance. She studied at New York University, earning both a BA and an MA in performance studies, an academic field about performance in every sense, from theatre to everyday self-presentation. It is hard to imagine a more fitting degree.

She spent most of her twenties in New York, performing in the downtown alternative scene where she met John Early and Jacqueline Novak. Her early sets were already recognisably hers: improvised-seeming, physically loose, full of mock-spiritual pronouncements about the room.

The style: the comedian as oracle

Most stand-ups build toward a punchline. Berlant often seems to avoid one. A typical Berlant passage begins with an observation, swerves into a riff about the audience, stops to marvel at her own insight, and then collapses into a tiny, deflating admission. The laugh comes from the gap between the grandeur of the delivery and the smallness of what is actually being said.

That makes her one of the purest examples of anti-comedy technique applied to character rather than to joke structure. She is not withholding the punchline to frustrate you; she is playing someone who thinks punchlines are beneath her. Her influences are as much from performance art and acting-class culture as from stand-up, and she is very funny about both.

Breakthrough work (2016-2019)

• The Characters (Netflix, 2016): Berlant made an episode of Netflix's sketch anthology, alongside Early and Novak.
• 555 (2017): a five-part Vimeo web series created with Early, directed by Andrew DeYoung and produced by Abso Lutely. Each episode is a short, glossy horror story about Hollywood desperation.
• Taskmaster (2018): she won the American version of the British game show on Comedy Central, which showed a mainstream audience how quick and fearless she is.
• Film: a role in Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You (2018) and a small part in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), plus voice work on BoJack Horseman.

Cinnamon in the Wind

Berlant's first hour, Kate Berlant: Cinnamon in the Wind, was directed by Bo Burnham and recorded at the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre in 2019 for FX. It then sat unreleased for three years before Hulu put it out in September 2022.

It is a strong introduction to her stage persona: loose, apparently spontaneous, constantly commenting on its own performance. Burnham's direction keeps the camera close enough to catch the micro-expressions, the flickers of doubt behind the confidence, that make the act work.

Would It Kill You to Laugh? and the John Early partnership

In June 2022 Peacock released Would It Kill You to Laugh? Starring Kate Berlant + John Early, made with A24 and directed by Andrew DeYoung. Framed as a TV event about the two comedians reuniting, it spirals into parodies of every format a comedy duo might be trapped in. It was nominated for best comedy special at the Critics' Choice Awards.

Berlant and Early are close friends rather than a formal double act, and their work together is built on two complementary vanities: her performer who believes she is profound, his performer who needs to be adored. Berlant also co-stars in Early's 2025 film Maddie's Secret. Our John Early profile goes through their projects in detail.

Kate: the solo show

Kate is Berlant's one-woman show, again directed by Bo Burnham. It ran Off-Broadway at the Connelly Theater in the late summer and autumn of 2022, her first New York run in more than a decade, and later played the Pasadena Playhouse, closing in February 2024.

The show is roughly seventy minutes long. Berlant plays a version of herself who is desperate to be recognised as a serious actress, along with several other characters, and the evening builds through stories about how she got here toward a long-hidden "truth". It is a satire of the confessional solo show, the kind of hour that ends with a tearful revelation, and it is also a very good confessional solo show. Reviews were strong, and it confirmed that the Berlant persona could sustain a theatrical structure, not just a set.

Poog with Jacqueline Novak

Poog began in 2020 on iHeartRadio's Big Money Players network. Berlant and Novak use wellness culture (supplements, beauty rituals, retreats, the vocabulary of self-care) as a launch pad for long, fast, very verbal conversations about pleasure, desire and their own anxieties. It was one of the most praised comedy podcasts of 2021.

The iHeart run ended in October 2024 after more than 200 episodes. The two then launched an independent show, Berlant & Novak, and in April 2026 they acquired the rights to Poog and relaunched it themselves. Novak's own career, from her book to Get On Your Knees, is in our Jacqueline Novak profile.

Acting career

Berlant has become a sought-after character actor, often cast as the funniest person in a scene for a few minutes at a time. Credits include Amazon's A League of Their Own (2022, as Shirley Cohen), Olivia Wilde's Don't Worry Darling (2022), The Other Two, Dream Scenario (2023) and an appearance on The Bear (2025). She played a role in Early's Maddie's Secret and appears in several 2026 releases.

Parmesan: the 2026 HBO special

As of October 2026, HBO has announced Kate Berlant: Parmesan, a new stand-up special filmed over two nights at the Plaza Nightclub in Los Angeles, scheduled to premiere on HBO and HBO Max on October 16, 2026. Advance descriptions point to a mix of personal stories and free-associative riffs, including her relationship with technology. It will be her first full stand-up hour released since Cinnamon in the Wind.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Kate Berlant?

An American comedian and actor from Los Angeles, known for a stand-up style that parodies the self-serious performer, her specials Cinnamon in the Wind and Would It Kill You to Laugh? (with John Early), her solo show Kate, and the podcast Poog with Jacqueline Novak.

What is Kate Berlant's show Kate about?

Kate is a one-woman show directed by Bo Burnham in which Berlant plays a version of herself desperate to be taken seriously as an actor, plus several other characters. It ran Off-Broadway at the Connelly Theater in 2022 and at the Pasadena Playhouse in early 2024.

Did Kate Berlant win Taskmaster?

Yes. She won the 2018 American version of Taskmaster on Comedy Central.

Does Kate Berlant have a new special?

HBO has announced Kate Berlant: Parmesan, a stand-up special filmed at the Plaza Nightclub in Los Angeles, for release on HBO and HBO Max in October 2026.