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Join author & host Linda Marigliano (triple j, Love Language) each week to explore modern relationships, mental health, family, career identity and cultural conversations by speaking with friends like Benny Blanco, Jessie Ware, Leslie Liao, Gabrielle Stone and Osher Gunsberg. Recorded as a unique documentary chat series, you’ll be immersed in full scenes with these personalities as you learn their tough love lessons on all the sh*t that counts. Follow Linda's IG @lindamarigliano & @toughloveteam <3
It's just another beautiful day in Los Angeles. And that's me being sarcastic because it is fucking pissing down, and it has been for days. So I look like a fucking wet dog rag, but you're gonna meet one of the most glamorous, husky voiced comedians on the fucking planet, Leslie Liao. Okay. Leslie Liao is a comedian that I've been a fan of for so long.
Linda:She's sassy. She's sarcastic. She's easygoing. I'll send a little text. While my pregnant body is definitely expanding at the moment, our tough love social circle is also growing.
Linda:There's a bunch of people I wanna introduce you to. So each week, you'll get to know one of them. The point is that everyone has a set of tough love lessons to share. Leslie. Hi, Leslie.
Linda:I'm Linda. Dude, I'm so sad outside. We've come to hang out with Leslie today at her apartment.
Leslie:I was, like, scared for you. It's so sad outside.
Linda:And I really wanted to catch up with her.
Leslie:This is gonna be a very hilarious podcast because you're about to see my condo.
Linda:Both her parents migrated from China, and she was born here in the United States. Oh, my place is also unfurnished. Are you in LA? Yeah. Yeah.
Linda:I live actually just in West Hollywood. With Leslie, I feel like we've got a lot in common. She speaks about the ways she's tried to fit in, from growing up in the OC with her Asian family to discovering her humor. And her tough love lesson has been how she's learnt to face the sadness in her life and what she needs in a relationship to really make her happy. She talks about dating, freezing her eggs, and, like so many of us, how she fucking loves a to do list.
Leslie:My condo, it represents my life. Like, you're gonna see it. It's like a cage. I have a bed for sleep.
Linda:Snacks?
Leslie:I have I have so many snacks. I have a bathroom for what is needed to do in the bathroom.
Linda:Big shits.
Leslie:And I have you got you heard it here first. I have a standing desk.
Linda:Oh, of course. Of course.
Leslie:Where we must stand. But we won't stand there. We won't we won't do this on my standing desk.
Linda:I mean, we could.
Leslie:You moved recently from
Linda:I moved from Sydney, Australia.
Leslie:Which is where I'm going soon.
Linda:That's where I saw because I had you on my kind of dream gal list
Leslie:What?
Linda:To have on my podcast.
Leslie:Oh my god. What?
Linda:And then I saw that you announced, Australian post for June, and I was like, fucking get Resuri on now.
Leslie:So we must discuss. I've never been
Linda:Should I take shoes off?
Leslie:Yes. This is an Asian household.
Linda:I know. Yes.
Leslie:No no shoes, but the irony is I have, like, no furniture to ruin. This was all my merch Oh, wow. That I have not sold.
Linda:So there's boxes and boxes of it. When you look up YouTube yoga, there's always, like, a person in this exact setting.
Leslie:It it actually sadly looks, yeah, like a TikTok influencer, like someone who, like, teaches yoga. I never do yoga, but basically I work here, and I eat meals over the sink. I sleep, and I shower. So we can sit do you want a beverage or something? Level.
Leslie:Leslie, I can go I can go louder.
Linda:I want you to go lower, the lowest that your husky, already husky voice can go. Level. Gave her a podcast.
Leslie:But it's so, I I like my voice, but I worry that people say it's soothing. Like, I do live comedy, so I'm not trying to, like, it's a comedy show, not a sound bath. So I do get self conscious that my my voice is soothing. It can be. I don't think it grabs attention.
Linda:I kind of think that's part of the charm of it though, because you could slip under the radar, people might not realize, and then they catch themselves laughing so hard that they're like snotting.
Leslie:They they I that's the goal though. Like, the the goal is for them to be snotting, but then when I see them yawning, I'm like, oh, goddamn. But anyways, yes. We're testing levels.
Linda:Is this is this right? Okay. Question number 1. So far. Question number 1.
Linda:I wanted to start more at the at the beginning. The beginning of your life. Growing up in Orange County with your parents. Where had your parents immigrated from?
Leslie:From Taiwan. They then went to Utah to have my older brother, and then they came to California to have me. So I'm a SoCal girl.
Linda:And what were your impressions of growing up in SoCal and your parents' relationship to living there?
Leslie:I mean, it's just like, I immediately recognized the difference in my own house with my parents, and with just orange county in general. Like I always felt like you're super young, but you still recognize like, oh, I don't belong here. Like, that's what I felt like in Orange County. I was like, oh, I'm not from here. My parents weren't born here.
Leslie:I feel like a little bit of an outsider. And OC is have you been to Orange County?
Linda:I've never been. I've watched the show. Is that an indication?
Leslie:Honestly, semi accurate. It's like an amusement park. Like, everything is so, like, built and constructed and clean that you're, like, it's kind of like a town that's, like, man made. But, yeah, I I immediately felt, like, weird when I when I was younger. All the kids at school knew how to dress and knew how to talk, and I'm like, how do you guys know that?
Leslie:Like, how did you? And my my parents were doing their best, but, like, they they didn't teach me how to be cool, which, like, I don't know what parent does, now that I think about it. But, I think it was always a struggle of, like, how to be cool.
Linda:What did you do? Do you remember doing
Leslie:stuff to try to be cool and less weird? I watched a lot of MTV. So, MTV was cool. They were the barometer of what was cool. So whatever colors they wore, I wore.
Leslie:Whatever music they played, I listened to. So, like, that was like I just copied what was on TV and then, like, followed the because this is before social media, so just followed the trends of what the cool girls were doing. It's sad because you're trying to be cool, not trying to be yourself. So So that's what I was always trying to do from birth until probably college. Like, trying to, like, okay.
Leslie:Follow the thing, be what's cool, whatever, but OC is a weird place. And I go there a lot still, but it's a it's a weird place.
Linda:What was it like when you're at school? Did you have lots of friends? Was it very diverse?
Leslie:There was a heavy Asian population at school, which was nice. And then otherwise, it was like a lot of cool like, I just remember a lot of cool white people. Like, that's what I just remember. It's like, it's a haze of, you know, the skater surfer culture. Like, it just like a it's just like a billabong ad, and I just wasn't that.
Leslie:And I it made me very self conscious, but there was a healthy Asian population, and the Asian kids were so close, which was really cute. Like and I think they were cooler than me because I don't think they cared as much as me about being cool. But then when I got to high school, I did somehow navigate both groups, like, authentically. I was genuinely friends with all the Asian kids, and we hung out and did little trips together. I had a lot of the cool white friends and, like, we went to punk rock shows on the weekends, and we hung out a lot at an in and out parking lot.
Leslie:Like, the place to hang out was like a Del Taco parking lot next to the beach. Like so I did all of it, and I I like to think those friendships were genuine. Like, at the time, I really was like, they all signed my yearbook. I can prove that. I can I can if anyone wants evidence, but, that was one of my first sources of stress?
Leslie:Like, who are all these people and where do I fit into this ecosystem? Like, first source of stress.
Linda:Was your brother going through the same thing, do you think?
Leslie:I have an older brother. He's 8 years older. I don't think he went through the same thing. He's so easy to talk to and friendly, and he played sports, so he was in varsity tennis, homecoming king type of vibe, lively and people just liked him. And he had a ton of friends, so I don't think he went through the same thing as me.
Leslie:If he did, I did not notice. He was cool, and now looking back at it, he was, like, kinda cool.
Linda:And were you wearing head to toe billabong?
Leslie:A 100%. I represented so hard. I went like like the PacSun Tilly's. I don't know if you know these. It's whatever was fed to me, so I was wearing those platform sandals that were like 5 inches, Just to like go to calculus, I wore the puka shells and like bright pink polo shirt.
Leslie:Like, not now saying it out loud, it's like such a bummer, But we all have to do that. We all have to go through the like, is this this is this my style? Is this my style? Are these my friends? Is that my boyfriend?
Leslie:We have to do hardcore trial and error.
Linda:I actually remember that reminded me, maybe when I was about 14, definitely doing the same thing, wearing Billabong. There was a brand called Roxy as well. Oh, I love Roxy. I loved Roxy. And I remember once walking along the beach and a and a guy said something like, I was walking with my friend Noelle, who's this beautiful petite blonde surfer looking girl.
Linda:And I remember him gesturing to her and then pointing at me and going, who's that exotic friend of yours? Yeah. And I remember feeling so ashamed and that, like, I had a birthday coming up and insisting that my mum buy me this Roxy hoodie so I could wear this Roxy surfer girl jacket, like, every day, so that if I would go to the beach or something that people could associate. It was a it was trying to camouflage me. Yes.
Leslie:When he said that outrageous comment, like, in public, out loud to you, do you remember what you were wearing? Was it just like like it wasn't Roxy?
Linda:No. I think I was because we were going to the beach, and I think I would have been wearing essentially what Noelle would have been wearing, which would have been I think this is what reminded me of it, the the kind of shell kind of necklace. I had one of those, and I had like a spaghetti strap singlet that was in, like, a khaki, green, probably with, like, cargo shorts. Yeah. And, like, you know, those the glasses that were not real glasses, but they had, like, the yellow lens.
Linda:Yeah. Yeah. Like, something like that. Looking back, it's like
Leslie:I feel like I was just cos playing as an OC girl and just wearing this costume, but, like, whatever. We had to do it. It was survival mode, but I now saying it out loud, it is like, that was the earliest sign of my anxiety and stress. It's like, what am I? Who am I?
Leslie:Who are all these people? Like, what what does gnarly mean? I was, like, what is this language? What are you guys talking about?
Linda:I wonder, do you think that there's a parallel between that feeling of little Leslie in the OC and the grown up Leslie now that puts yourself in a situation where you go on stage each night and you try to win people over
Leslie:and get them to think you're cool? Oh, it's all connected. My whole my whole life is a a web of chaos. It's all connected. One of the many reasons I just do stand up is, I didn't like when I was younger, the idea that people would see you as an Asian person and make a couple of assumptions without ever talking to you.
Leslie:I always thought that was a very annoying. If they looked at me and thought like, oh, she must have, like, super strict parents or she must, like, be really obsessed with math or she must love video games or they they would just make assumptions. I had this attitude even back as a kid of, like, get to know me, dude. Like, get to know me, sucker. You don't know me.
Leslie:So part of it of doing stand up is, like, now I have the mic. Now you have no choice but to sit in this room, and I'm talking, bill. Like, it's so aggressive stand up. It's actually very rude. It's like a rude thing to do to, like it's like having a conversation where you're not allowed to talk to me, but I love it.
Leslie:So that's a part of it. And there's definitely a part of, like, removing the anxiety of trying to bond with people and fit in and feel like where to belong. And and, oh, and here's where it's where it connects. I love stand ups who just lean into whatever their voice is. So whatever whatever their style is, they do it, they don't do it for anyone else but them.
Leslie:So I think good stand up is rewarded by authenticity. So because I didn't own that my entire life growing up, now it's a weapon. And now it's like, I have to have my authenticity. Otherwise, I'm like a hack, or I I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy writing and performing jokes that don't come from a true real place, so that's a huge part of it.
Leslie:Like, now I have to be myself and now you're gonna love it. Do your
Linda:parents understand what it is that you're doing?
Leslie:That's such an honest, real question. They barely are starting to understand now. So when I started doing it years ago, they did not want me to do this. They did not, there is no nepotism in my life. I will say that I, my parents were not comics coming up at the clubs in Orange County.
Leslie:They came here for my brother and I to have comfortable, safe lives, and with that comes a stable job. One of their career goals for me was not stand up comedy. So when I started it, they were super confused. They were never, like, unsupportive. They never were, like, please don't do that.
Leslie:They would just ask a lot of questions, like, why are you doing this? Do you like this? And also very often, are you getting paid? Over over time, I won them over because I always kept my day job until recently to give them some comfort and also, like, I needed a job. And once they saw that I was honestly, like, maintaining somewhat of a healthy life and doing it, they're like, okay.
Leslie:As long as she's fine and healthy and no one's mean to her and, yes, do your little hobby and but now that it's picked up in the last year or so, and and they saw me on TV, they're like, oh, are you good at this? I'm like, I think I'm okay. Like, now they finally like, oh, you should pursue this thing. I was like, yeah. Yeah.
Leslie:I will.
Linda:I kind of hate to admit it as well, but sometimes I feel like my my mom anyway, who's also Chinese or even my dad, they didn't really get what I was doing until almost they could see it as an outsider. Like once they saw that it was a bit public facing, they were like, oh, I ran into someone at the store and they knew what you were doing. And then all of a sudden it was like it clicked, like, oh, you are making a living, and what you're doing is respected in some way. I just didn't understand what a podcast was or some something like that.
Leslie:Yeah. But also, it's like, can we blame them? No. Because they don't know what they of course, they don't know what a podcast is. I have to explain to my mom what a podcast is and even how a show works, and, you know, now that I'm going on a tour, I'm explaining to her, like, what the schedule is and, you know, of course, they don't understand.
Leslie:I don't blame them at all. They just want us to be happy. And if they don't know what this thing is we're doing, how how are they supposed to associate happiness with it? So I don't I don't blame them. Those cutie pies.
Linda:They are such cutie pies.
Leslie:Cutie pies, does your mom worry a lot?
Linda:Ultimately. Always. They they're just worried.
Leslie:Everything. They'll find things to worry about, like and unfortunately, I think it's heredit it's spread to me. I'm a little bit of a worrier.
Linda:Same.
Leslie:Same. You know, of course, they're gonna worry about something unknown, but I love them.
Linda:Yeah. And, let's talk about it. as 2 women that have frozen our little eggies. How was it for you? I luckily,
Leslie:so many of my girlfriends did it. So luckily, that reduced so much fear. I tried to remove all emotion from it as a self defense thing. I was like, this is just something you have to do. Give yourself the shots, stay by the schedule.
Leslie:And my girlfriends made fun of me for it because for those who aren't familiar with it, it's a very intense process where you're pretty much alone giving yourself shots daily. And for many women, they don't give their some self shots daily. You go into the fertility clinic every other couple days to do check ins and ultrasounds, but you do the shots yourself at home or sometimes at a restaurant, if you're because they have to be at the same time every day. So my girlfriends were automatically, like, very supportive of, if you want us to do the shots for you, we'll help. And I'm like, first of all, no, like, you're not a nurse.
Leslie:Like, they made fun of me because I was so robotic about it. Like I would take the bottles, mix the medicine, fill the shots and just do it and not even flinch. And it was like scary.
Linda:And they're big needles too.
Leslie:They're big needles. And I just did it with no mercy, no fear, no emotion. Cause I chose to remove it out just to be like, just do it. And it was a little painful, but I'm so grateful that I had friends that did it cause I I remember I went to Palm Springs one weekend with a couple of friends during the shot process, and I brought everything with me. And all my girlfriends are like, oh, do you need help?
Leslie:Oh, cool. Like, let's make sure we make the dinner reservation so that Leslie can get home and do the shots. Like, I I felt so comfortable with with my friends doing it, but when you have to do the trigger shot So be before the actual retrieval of the eggs, you have to do a trigger shot exactly 24 hours before, I believe. So I'm such a manic scheduler where I pack my days in with too many things, because I just have to be productive every second of my life. I happened to be driving while I had to do the trigger shot.
Leslie:Like, I mistimed my day, and I wasn't at my location to do the trigger shot. So I pulled over in downtown LA to do my trigger shot alone in my car. I did the needle, and I was like, you know, if a cop drove by and saw saw me just, like, giving myself shots, I would probably get a I don't know. It was, like, miserable, but, like, I'm grateful for my friends, and I did work at a place where they covered it financially, which I don't know that I would have done it if I didn't have that, like, huge benefit. So I think it should be free for everyone.
Leslie:I don't know how to make it free, but we talked about this. It's sadly almost worth the price to pay for this mental breath of fresh air. It's one huge thing I don't have to worry about. And even then, it doesn't mean I'm gonna have kids and have them health healthily, if that's a word. It's still just the eggs that have to be I'm not a scientist, but have to be combined with other things, I believe, to make the baby, so it's still not guaranteed, but it's almost worth that breath that I can now take as a 30 soon to be 37 year old.
Linda:That's what I was gonna ask is how you felt kind of walking out of the hospital that day and
Leslie:the day after? Well, I love crossing things off my to do list. Same. So talk about a big thing to cross off. So when I left the next day, I was like, oh, it's off my like, I just felt like how how romantic of me as a future potential mother, like, Oh, it's just off my list, but I felt like I could move on mentally.
Leslie:I wasn't that emotional that day either. I wonder if other people are. I know it's different for everyone, but for whatever reason, I wasn't happy or sad. I sound Christ. You're an ice queen.
Leslie:I feel nothing, but you know it's all a defense thing. It's just, like, for me to be, like, it's okay. Like, don't associate any emotion with this. You just did something and good for you and time to move on.
Linda:It is. It's a defense mechanism of, like, curbing your enthusiasm so that we're not disappointed if things don't go our way. So something will happen. And my boyfriend says this to me really often. He's like, why can't you just fucking be optimistic or, like, hopeful that something's gonna go well?
Linda:And I'm like, because I've been fucking disappointed in my life, and I'd like to stop that happening. So I'd rather just turn into a numb little robot if I've pitched for something or asked for something really big. Like, I'd rather just say to myself it's not gonna happen. So that if it happens, then I'll feel kinda good.
Leslie:Isn't it sad how, like It's
Linda:so bad.
Leslie:These, like, mental gymnastics we play to just not be sad.
Linda:Just to fool ourselves.
Leslie:I know. So now to not be sad, I become numb? But I've learned in my adult life, I think we're supposed to be sad, or not run away from the sadness. Like in my twenties after every breakup, how I would recover from this breakup is like soul cycle, day drinking, you know, shopping, Cutting a fringe. Like, yeah.
Leslie:Yeah. Like, just anything to run away and and convince myself, like, see, I'm fine. But no, I was manically running from the sadness, which, you know, wasn't the right way to deal with it, but, like, I think we're supposed to deal with it.
Linda:Unfortunately. Yeah. I that I think that's my slow tough love lesson. The ongoing one is learning how to sit in the uncomfortability. I know.
Linda:Because we are capable of it. Mhmm. And the only way to move past it, because otherwise it sits in there and it just bubbles and festers.
Leslie:It will fester, and if you don't deal with the uncomfortable, how are you gonna deal with it in another way that's not healthy, then that's the fear. Maybe you might start stand up comedy. Maybe that's the way you do. You're not
Linda:helping me. Maybe you take a microphone and you tell everyone in a room they can go fuck themselves if they're not listening.
Leslie:Like, who knows what unhealthy life that leads to?
Linda:You mentioned how you've dealt with breakups in the past and you talk about relationships and dating a lot in your stand up sets. You've got a boyfriend now. You dropped that bomb earlier.
Leslie:I know. I have a huge form. When I say I have a boyfriend, that shows a lot of women are like, you betrayed us. I'm like, I'm not I know.
Linda:I know. That's how I feel.
Leslie:I was like, I'm not your spokesperson anymore, honey, but I I have a new boyfriend. But, yeah, I I lived in LA my whole adult life, dated around, and had the normal frustrations that any other person does in their twenties. It just shouldn't be that hard. I don't know. Maybe that's my whole primary premise of dating.
Leslie:It's like, it shouldn't be this hard, but it's like, I think the the struggle is everyone dates before they're ready. Everyone dates before they're ready, before they're qualified, and there's no certificate. There's no approval process. Like, I think you should have a the same way we all have to take a driver's test to operate heavy machinery on the road where you could potentially hurt others, should you not take a dating registration test because you're about to go hurt people out in the wild? I almost dropped a name, but, like, I should
Linda:You're you're gonna hurt people out in the wild. David, Michael,
Leslie:Finovans. Split their Instagram handle. So so that's the hilarity of it is, like, everyone just does it. No one does it with, like, driving. That's what I compare it to.
Leslie:Like, there are rules of the road, and I think there should be rules of dating, of, like, how you should treat people and respect people's lanes and and all this stuff, and it's just, like, it's chaos Yep. Everywhere.
Linda:What are the rules you
Leslie:think should be implemented? Everyone should aggressively know themselves before they mess up someone else. So figure out your baggage before you dump it into me for, like, for real. So that's, like, the major one. And I'm not saying go to a decade of therapy, but just, like, know what your values are, know what your love language is, know what makes you happy, know what you need from a part, like all that stuff that nobody does.
Leslie:And we all just do it in our twenties, and we use each other as scratch pads to kind of, like, figure out our, like, mess. And then we all just make each other a mess and then go to the next mess. It's a hot mess, but I have a joke about women are all kind of secretly DJs because after we break up with a man, we kind of remix him into a better version with, like, a bigger bass drop and, like, a more fun beat, like, whatever. In in my experience, I've always noticed, like, there's little improvements made to both people, obviously, but, like, for him, it's always like, oh, you have, like, matching furniture now, or, like, you actually applied for the job you said you never would, or you finally forgave your mom. Like, there's all these things that these tiny little improvements.
Leslie:What would that look like if they made those improvements on their own before dating someone? I'm curious to know. Yeah. And maybe maybe the other rule is, like, don't depend or rely on someone else to, like, fully fix some things in your life. Maybe there should be a school, but, unfortunately, I think we all have to use each other to learn about ourselves.
Leslie:Every single person, and even a tiny short lived thing or a long term thing, every guy is a lesson learned. Like every time you go through a breakup, it's always very sad and you you talk about it at length with your friends and dissect how and where it went wrong, but at the end of all those venting sessions, it's always just a shrug and lesson learned, you know, and then you just move on.
Linda:When you think about your past relationships or like things gone wrong, what would be one of the biggest lessons that you've learned about yourself or about what you need in a romantic relationship?
Leslie:I think in my past, maybe the the common theme is like, I didn't know what I really needed to make me happy. So in all the relationships before this one, I didn't know that financial stability was so important to me, or I didn't know that, like I always had an issue with saying I love you in past relationships. I didn't know why that was always an issue. And I did this recently with a therapist slash like life health coach person. We did an exercise together where we figured out what my values are in a relationship, and I didn't even know what they were.
Leslie:So I my entire adult life, all my twenties, I was operating in relationships, not even knowing that, like, personal growth was so important to me for both of us. Not just for me, for him and us, like, growth. Also, joy. Like, I need us to be silly because relationships are so boring. They're just like it's 2 people every day saying, what do you want for dinner until you die?
Leslie:It's so boring, and scheduling our double dates, and do we have enough soap for the it's like, it just becomes a huge, like, just logistics. I'm like, we have to make this fun. We can't be in this cookie cutter routine. So I didn't know what my values were my entire 20s. So I was frustrated when someone wouldn't meet those values, but I didn't know what was happening at the time.
Leslie:Yeah. I guess I guess the biggest lesson for me is the one I was just preaching about earlier is, like, figure out what you need and what matters to you, and then try to learn if this person has those things.
Linda:I wonder. I was thinking about this with you dating and being the representative and speaking about it quite often. Single spokeswoman. The single spokeswoman. Being someone that's gaining recognition now, having a face that people might recognize, did guys recognize you or say, oh my god, am I going to be fucking material in your sets one day?
Leslie:Like Luckily, no. Because when I was starting, I wasn't like a recognizable comic. But when they found out I was a comic, they did do the whole, like, oh, no. She's gonna joke about me. Whatever.
Leslie:A good voice. That's every man I've dated. Oh, jeez. In reality, and with my boyfriend now, I have a strict rule of, like, I'm not gonna joke about someone without their consent. So I can talk about me all day, all night, but if it's someone else, I always ask my boyfriend, Hey, I think this is hilarious.
Leslie:What do you think about this? And he's told me no before with certain jokes and why. And I'm like, Yeah, I totally get it. And he said yes to a ton of them, but, you know, and like I've had bad experiences in dates, but like I there's something so icky about joking about someone else. That doesn't feel great.
Leslie:So they they all said that, but luckily, no one's ever tried to date me from what I know just because I was a comic. My current boyfriend does love it. He thinks it's, like, cool. He's like, oh, wow. I'm dating a comic.
Leslie:Wow. Like, she was on The Tonight Show. Like, he thinks it's cool. But I I I just like no matter how much bad blood there is, I'm not gonna do a 5 minute joke just, like, shitting on someone. It it doesn't feel awesome.
Linda:I remember reading a quote once that was, like, if you're writing about your life, the general rule is be as hard as you want on yourself and be kind to everybody else that you're including that's a real person.
Leslie:Because that's what we do in real life. That's what we do in our
Linda:It's like, I don't need any more fuel to be a little bitched myself.
Leslie:That's not a rule of comics or writing. That's what we all do every day. We shit on ourselves. Like, I'm not good enough. I suck.
Leslie:I don't deserve this. But if your best friend said those words about her to you, you would hug her and be, like, like, praise her as the queen she is. So it's, like, it's just what we do anyways.
Linda:We're not very kind to ourselves a lot of the time.
Leslie:No. And I don't know how to I don't know how to fix it. I still am hard on myself too, because it weirdly helps. You know? Like, it helps push you a little bit.
Leslie:I wanna always be self aware about comedy stuff. Like, I know people don't like me. I am very well aware that my comedy people just are just not into it, and I have to just accept it. So I don't wanna live in this weird world where I'm, like, everyone loves me, and my comedy is perfect, whatever. Like so I do wanna hear a little bit of, like, what type of audience just doesn't dig me and be aware of, like, where I stand the same way that I was in high school.
Leslie:Where do I fit in the ecosystem? Like, it makes me feel, like, a little calm and safe, but I don't wanna have this, like, misconception of, like, how well I'm doing or what people think of me.
Linda:It does push you to grow and, kind of, progress, like you said, that kind of personal growth thing that you value. But, yeah, when it crosses the line,
Leslie:that's the balance of, like, like, how hard do I be on myself until it's unhealthy and one of your friends has to point it out? To be like, stop. Like, smack you and stop.
Linda:And on that note, Leslie, thank you so much for letting us into your home, into your yoga TikTok influencer studio.
Leslie:Which also if there are any influencer designers who wanna help me, I'm just throwing it out there. If you wanna help me give me some peace in my chaotic life, I would love that. Done.
Linda:And if you're in Australia, Leslie is coming over this June, so go and see her if you can. She'll be in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane. Next time on Tough Love, best selling author, Gabrielle Stone, tells us about her eat, pray, fuck my life right.
Gabrielle Stone:Went to the trash email and literally found all the receipts from
Leslie:hotels and couples massages and, like, dinners. She also gives me an
Gabrielle Stone:insight in fucking lessons that you need to learn. And that is very apparent all fucking lessons that you need to learn. And that is very apparent already in the 1st 6 months. He's been like, okay, look. Look, bitch.
Linda:Tough Love is a podcast by me.
Leslie:Linda Marigliano.
Linda:It's produced by me, Amelia Chappelow, and Adair Sheppard, with a special high five to Mike Williams. If you liked the show, why not rate and review on your podcast plan now? And have you thought about joining our tough love world? You'll get extended interviews, my newsletter, and early ad free episodes. Also, you can be part of our members only series titled Tough Love, Love Stories.
Linda:So if you're looking for ways to support this independent show, then I'd love to have you as part of our family. The link is in the show notes with all the info for you to join our tough love team. Okay. That's it. Thank you.
Linda:Love you. Ciao. Ciao.