By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Tammy Pescatelli got out of Hollywood. But Hollywood followed her.
The comedian and Kent State graduate stars in A Stand Up Mother, a series blending reality and comedy, which premieres at 10 tonight on WE. It focuses on Pescatelli’s attempts to balance a standup career with marriage to comedian-actor Luca Palanca, motherhood to their 2-year-old son and small-town life in Meadville, Pa. (Asked what that is near, she said, ”Nothing” — before adding that it’s not far from Erie.)
It is another step forward for Pescatelli, 41, whom you may know from the second and third seasons of Last Comic Standing or as the winner of Comedy Central’s Standup Showdown last year. Her love of comedy started in Northeast Ohio; she was born in Ashtabula and grew up in Perry.
Tammy Pescatelli, comedian and Kent State graduate, is staring in a reality/sitcom premiering on WE. Tammy is seen here with Litta Luca. (Photo courtesy WE)
”I was a huge fan. . . . Huge,” she said in a telephone interview from Meadville. ”I would sneak the tapes in my house because I wasn’t allowed to listen to the Eddie Murphys and George Carlins. . . . I went to Kent and had a fake ID to go into the comedy clubs — not to drink but just to watch.”
She also knew a comedian — John Henton (Living Single, The Hughleys) — though not through his performing.
”John was my older cousin’s best friend,” she said. ”When my mother and my aunt would go downtown shopping — it was my cousin and John that would watch us. They were, like, 16, 17 years old and we were little rug rats.”
It wasn’t until years later that she connected the TV actor to the kid from the neighborhood. And comedy didn’t strike her as a realistic career until after she graduated from Kent State — as a fashion design major because she just didn’t see comedians like herself.
When her family moved in the early ’90s from Ohio to the Quad Cities region which straddles the Iowa/Illinois border, she was working as a waitress in a comedy club and seeing at least one woman comic who ”quite frankly, I didn’t think . . . was that funny.” Pescatelli, in fact, thought she was funnier — and proved it on an open mic night. She started working the comedy circuit in 1994, with Cleveland her base from 1995 until she went to LA in 2001.
”The work was plenty. The money was not,” she said. But she had help.
”There have been a few comics in my life that I wouldn’t have a career without: D.L. Hughley, Dom Irrera, Pat Cooper — I’ve just been very blessed. George Lopez helped. People would take you on the road for a certain number of gigs [opening for them], and it was like an endorsement.”
She also met her husband on the comedy circuit, and one of the things that made them click was that he, too, had a big Italian family. Family was on her mind when she got pregnant — and with it the need to give their son a life somewhere besides Los Angeles.
”The day we left the ob-gyn, finding out I was pregnant, my husband and I walked out to our car and a man in a three-piece suit, briefcase and a Superman cape walked by,” she said. ”And that’s when we knew we had to leave.”
They settled in Meadville because it was comfortable for Pescatelli. ”We used to come here for summers,” she said. ”I have a lot of relatives near here. Meadville did mean Pescatelli had to travel to gigs — but she would have had to do that no matter where she lived. And she had another career idea.
”’The goal always my entire career — 16 years — was, I want to do a TV show,” she said. ”I co-created [A Stand Up Mother] with a friend of mine who was living a parallel life except she was a producer, on the other side of the camera. She had gotten married and had a kid and left LA with her husband. . . . There are a lot of women who are having babies late in life and don’t give up their careers, because you’ve worked too long.”
They pitched a show, which WE picked up. While WE calls it a reality series, Pescatelli thinks it’s closer to a blend of comedy and reality like Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.
”It really is a sitcom,” she said. ”We have an A story and a B story and a C story. . . . We knew where we were going, but we just didn’t know how we were going to get there. Nobody besides my husband and myself are actors. They’re our family. [But] they’re controlled situations. I have a 2-year-old. I have to [control things]. And I’m a comedian. It’s got to be funny.”
Pescatelli has made some strict rules where her son’s participation is concerned. ”We kept some of the house private, the camera will never see it. And my son is not my talent. I’m not Kate Gosselin, and it’s my uterus that made me famous. . . . You can’t do a show about me being a mom without showing my son. But he’s Little Ricky [on I Love Lucy]. He shows up and he’s gone. There were days and days and days on end when he wasn’t around when they were filming. . . . We shut down when days are rough. He had a fever, I had to take care of him, we shut down production for two days.”
And as someone who is blending work and family with an eye toward making things better in both areas, Pescatelli does not look down on people like Gosselin — jokes aside.
”People gave her a hard time for going on Dancing With the Stars. She made $100,000 in six weeks. . . . There’s not a single mother in this country who wouldn’t take the sacrifice of six weeks to make a hundred grand for her children.”
And things seem to be working out for Pescatelli. ”When we moved here, I was resigned that . . . my career is never going to get better from Meadville, Pa. And then somehow we tricked Hollywood into thinking the story was interesting.”
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com and on Facebook and on Twitter. He also does a weekly video chat for Ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
