Creating her own show on Netflix was Leanne Morgan's breakthrough moment.
Her series “Leanne” was renewed for a second seasonand the comedian tells Willie Geist that she's “thrilled” to see it went so well.
“Jerry Seinfeld called me the day it came out and said, 'You have a sitcom with your name on it, which is unheard of,'” she said on the Nov. 16 episode of Sunday Sitdown.
“And he says, 'You're there with Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, Lucille Ball,'” she added.
Morgan worked as an aspiring comedian for many years. After graduated from the University of Tennessee, The comedian started a family with her husband Chuck and realized that comedy was her calling.
While selling jewelry at house parties, she joked about her life at home with her husband, whom she always calls “Chuck Morgan.”
“I talked about hemorrhoids, breastfeeding, Chuck Morgan not hearing his baby cry at night… all that stuff,” she said. “And this was my first material. People said, “You should be a stand-up.”
Morgan took their words to heart. While raising her children during the day, she would take the stage at any comedy club she was in at night.
Morgan said she faced a lot of rejection. “I just felt like I was never one of the cool kids,” she told Willie.
Everything changed when she decided to hire social media experts to start her career. At that time she was 54 years old.
“It was like gangsterism,” she said of her success. “Clubs started calling all over the United States and saying, 'We need Lynn Morgan.'
“Now, six months before, they were saying, 'She's cute. She doesn't get drunk and fight in the parking lot. But we won't bring her back. She can't sell tickets,” Morgan recalls. “And I would be so offended. And then, honey, they started selling all over the United States.”
Morgan's sold-out shows helped her land “Lynn” and her two comedy specials, “I'm Every Woman” and “Unspeakable Things,” on Netflix.
“It's like a whirlwind, my dear, and you know what people tell me all the time? They ask, “How do you do it?” she said about how she juggles her various commitments.
Looking back at how far she's come in her career, Morgan said she's happy with how things turned out.
“I look back and think it was a great time,” she said.
“I have to raise these children. I lived a full life as a mother, grandmother, my parents are still with me,” she added. “I have a full life that I can talk about, and that’s what people think about.”
