Danielle Perez is Here to Have Fun
In town from LA, we met at the Chelsea Hotel.
By the grace of god herself, I met Danielle Perez during her Pride weekend in NYC. We’d just been at the same show, and we hit it off on a rooftop. You can’t miss her — a bright smile with a laugh that carries gracefully. People throw around the saying “knows no stranger,” but with Danielle, it’s just true.
Of all things, we broke the ice talking about how to use credit card points and our S-Corps... okay, random! Danielle is warm, she’s funny, and I noticed she has a knack for asking thoughtful questions. It’s genuinely delightful to talk with her.
You’ve seen her in Overcompensating and Curb Your Enthusiasm — and as you’ll see, she’s just generally a girl about town in LA.
We got to squeeze in a ONE HOUR PHOTO session before she flew home that evening. We met at the Chelsea Hotel, per her request. I’m so happy to call her my friend — here she is:
Does the Chelsea Hotel mean anything to you?
It’s iconic. It’s New York history. Andy Warhol is haunting this place, obviously.
Favorite food?
Thai. [Groans.] This is a groundbreaking interview, right? I love a toro hand roll. I love sushi. And fresh rigatoni, with a really simple pasta sauce.
Have you always been bougie?
Yes.
What does the perfect day look like for you?
Honestly? Something close to this. Wake up in a fabulous city. Sleep in. Meet up at a historic, spooky hotel. Martini, French fries, get interviewed, get photographed, fly home to LA.
What’s your airline of choice?
Delta One. Period.
What made you want to do stand-up in the first place?
I saw a really unfunny man do it. My best friend’s roommate was an actor living in Hollywood who also did stand-up, and he invited us to a show — The Comedy Store, we figured, must be legit. It was so bad. I still have the text I sent her afterward — something like: hey, how do we do stand-up? Because he’s doing it, and we’re actually funny.
Do you remember what it actually felt like — the first time you got up there yourself?
It just felt fun. That first open mic was kind of a lightbulb moment. I remember thinking: I need this for the rest of my life. Nothing feels better than this.
What did you talk about?
Dating. I’d just been on a date with a little person, and every single server in the restaurant kept stopping by to check on us, like we were the it-couple of the bar. Everyone was like, “are you guys okay, do you need anything?” I genuinely don’t know if they thought we were punking them. He scooped his salad onto his fork with his hand.
So there wasn’t a second date.
There was not a second date.
And then he turned up at my thirty-second birthday party. This man shows up, with his girlfriend, then proceeds to make-out with her the entire time. She had polka-dot tattoos on her legs. I remember thinking: this clown-ass bitch.
The last time you did your hour in New York, something happened right before you even got on stage.
Yep! I got a concussion right before I went on.
Where was this?
Union Hall. The green room has these dumb little side tables. I was trying to navigate out from underneath one of the tables, turning to go deeper into the room, and my wheelchair got caught on the table legs. I tried to pop it up — do a little wheelie — to get over it, and it didn’t work. I hit the table hard, flew back, and my head slammed into the corner of a locker, then onto the floor. My friends ran back — what day is it, what year is it — and I answered all the questions. So I went up and did my hour.
The next day someone was like, wait, is something up with your wig? And I said, “babe, I don’t wear a wig.” She thought my “wig” looked lumpy, because the welt on my head was so big my hair was sitting up at a weird angle.
How did the show go?
I don’t remember! But people said it was fine. Good, even.
If you were a professor and had to build a syllabus — what’s required watching?
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. Clueless. The Comeback. Paris Is Burning. Basically a Pride playlist. There’d also be a whole unit on the Free Britney movement and what we did to her in the early 2000s — a genuinely important cultural moment. We’d cover Lindsay, Britney, Paris, the Porsche on the way to the Chateau. The Bling Ring and Pretty Wild. Very specific, very early-2000s pop culture, but it matters to me personally.
Mount Rushmore of musicians?
Mariah Carey. Stevie Nicks. Cardi B. Lauryn Hill.
Tell me about a time you felt completely in your element.
Shooting Curb Your Enthusiasm. It was the first thing I booked in the pandemic, off a self-tape, and it’s Larry David. Huge.
A year before I auditioned for Allison Jones and completely bombed a producer’s session with Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. Allison told me “you’re very pretty” which is not what you want to hear when you’re doing comedy. She gave me another shot with Curb and I killed it.
When I got to set, I was so calm, in a way I’m still trying to get back to. I just trusted that this wasn’t an accident — nobody’s being nice to you, nobody made a mistake, you’re here because they chose you, and they trust you. Before we shot the director came up to me and just said, here’s the scene, have fun. The set was small, because of COVID, but I got the sense it’s usually small anyway. The show’s been on for eleven seasons, everyone is so dialed in, there’s trust that everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Maybe that energy is what put me at ease. Like, “oh, this is normal. It’s normal to be on set with Larry David.” It was one of the best experiences I’ve had on a set, genuinely. Flow state. Just in the pocket, trusting myself and my own abilities.
What’s the hottest thing a person can be?
Funny. Genuinely the most attractive thing to me. You can look like a troll and if you’re funny, I’m interested — I have slept with so many trolls, unfortunately, purely because they made me laugh. I’m trying to break the pattern, but it’s hard when you meet someone who looks like an actual Greek god, and there’s absolutely nothing else going on. It doesn’t matter how good looking you are, if I can hear the wind blowing between your ears, pussy is dry.
What’s your advice to your suitors?
Step it up… Reach out! Slide into the DMs. New Yorkers shoot their shot — they come out of the woodwork to say they’re into you, which I respect.
What do you care about?
Having fun. I know that sounds basic. But life is short, you only get one, and it’s objectively very bad out there right now — the SAVE Act just passed, which isn’t “saving” anything, it’s enshrining voter suppression. Vote-by-mail restrictions, ID requirements that don’t account for married name changes or trans people’s documentation — it’s all just authoritarianism with a nicer name.
Part of having fun, for me, is being a genuinely good person: showing up for friends, being part of a community, celebrating other people’s wins, going and looking at beautiful art.
Developed and scanned in partnership with Nice Film Club
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