'Broad City's' Abbi Jacobson 'Stalked' Samantha Irby To Jumpstart TV Collab

By Rachel Cromidas in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 31, 2016 1:46PM

The teaming up of Broad City's Abbi Jacobson with Chicago storytelling titan Samantha Irby to make a TV show for FX is a match made in our wildest comedy-duo dreams. So when Irby, one of our absolute favorite writers, and Jacobson detailed how they met during a book talk in the packed Senn High School auditorium on Friday, we paid rapt attention.

Jacobson, who was in Chicago to promote her new illustrated book, Carry This Book, says Irby first got on her radar after actor and comedian Janeane Garofalo gifted Meaty, Irby's celebrated memoir about her life in Chicago, to Jacobson and her comedy partner Ilana Glazer after guest starring in a Broad City episode with them.

"I was like, who the fuck is this?" Jacobson said. "I thought, this person's voice needs to be a show. I'm laughing out loud, I'm crying, I'm like, all over the place."

That was our reaction when we read Meaty, too. Seriously, go get the book and read it, and then come back to this article. We're guessing it was Garofalo's, too. And because she performed alongside Irby at the Paper Machete, a mainstay local variety show, in 2013, we're choosing to believe that the Paper Machete played a key role in turning Meaty into Garofalo's go-to gift book.

Jacobson said she was worried someone else interested in producing Irby's book into a TV show would get to her first, so "I didn't tell anybody," she said. "I was like, no one on the West Coast shall know about this!"

"I wrote her an email, very vague, saying 'I'm rationing your book because it's so good.' And this bitch didn't email me back for like, six months," Jacobson said.

"It makes me seem like an asshole, like I was so busy. But I was like, eating Lean Cuisines over the sink," Irby replied. "I hadn't seen Broad City."

More months passed, and Jacobson said she became more direct with Irby—she said she was coming to Chicago in November 2015, wanted to take her to breakfast, and wanted to collaborate on a show.

"She got on a plane, it was like, When Harry Met Sally," Irby said. The pair met for breakfast at Little Goat Diner and discussed their early ideas for the show.

Deadline reported that the show will follow Irby through “failed relationships, taco feasts, her struggles with Crohn’s disease, poverty, blackness and body image.”

Irby and Jacobson were light on new details on the show, which they are creating for FX with Jessi Klein as a comedy based on Irby's memoir, which is set in Chicago. They're working on a pilot now for the network, which bought a script earlier this year, so the show is still a ways from becoming a reality. But if and when it airs, Irby says one thing will be certain:

"I'm not going to be in it," she said. "Once you're on TV you can't like, eat what you want, and fuck that."