Big Panties, Netflix Series & Just Getting Started: Leanne Morgan Enters The Arenas

It was the bikini wax.

For Leanne Morgan, the 59-year old comic, New York Times best-seller, latter-day YouTube favorite and brand new eponymous Netflix series sensation, moving around the Knoxville exurb where the empty nester lives with her husband was no big deal.  Even when her comedy bits – including a hilarious riff on aging rock stars and the people who go see them based on Def Leppard – went viral (see below), she remained one more blond lady at the Costco.  

Then Netflix’s “Leanne Morgan: I’m Every Woman” special was followed by the “Leanne” series, produced by Chuck Lorre (“Two and a Half Men,” “Big Bang Theory,” “Young Sheldon” and so much more), which has lived in their Top 10 since debuting July 31.

“People have always pretty much left me alone,” marvels the everywoman whose “So Yummy” special garnered more than 50 million YouTube views. “But I went to get a bikini wax the other day, and they treated me different. They’re always so busy, but I could feel the buzz. People get excited when you’re on TV….”

The statuesque blond, currently defying every show business rule, better get used to it. Since teaming with manager Judi Marmel of Levity Live, the trope-shattering entertainment force, Morgan has emerged as the Springsteen of real women happily recognizing their actual lives in her material. Keeping it real about stuff no one seems to acknowledge or discuss de-stigmatizes with a sense of collective recognition.

It’s not that Morgan is a crusading feminist determined to thrust perimenopause, honoring where one is in the realm of a woman’s life (“I used to be so cute”) or big panties into public consciousness. Never the avenging Southern housewife, she’s more the best friend you need, who can pour a cup of coffee and get you giggling about what nobody tells you.

“What’s amazing is the multi-generational women coming out,” says Marmel, who navigated the build-it-to-the stratosphere rise of Sebastian Maniscalco, Taylor Tomlinson and Bert Kreischer. “You’ll see an 80-year-old grandma bringing her 55-year old daughter, who’s bringing her 30-year old daughter.

“Or groups of women, all coming together, having a girls night. Where they used to go to lunch and a movie, no one’s making those movies, so Leanne’s filling a real void. We started doing 3 o’clock matinees to speak to it.”

“They have families. They have careers,” offers her agent Nick Nuciforo at UTA. “They go to games on the weekend. They like country music. Leanne is authentic, speaking about her life experience, her marriage, raising her children, menopause. It’s all real and unfiltered. She’s very familiar to her audience, because not only does she look and sound like them, she’s one of them.”

And like many women, almost no one saw her coming.

As a young mother married to a driven, frugal mid-20-something, she’d moved to Bean Station, Tennessee, for his business refurbishing and selling trailers. Feeling isolated, she started doing jewelry parties to “meet people and make a little money to get my hair highlighted and buy my baby cute little outfits.”

Stories about breastfeeding, a husband who couldn’t hear that baby crying and hemorrhoids struck a chord with attendees. Spinning yarns out of her life, people clamored to book her jewelry parties; but when one attendee laughed so hard, she literally wet the couch, the parent company booked Morgan to speak at their national convention.

Morgan, who decided at “9 or 10, I was going to Hollywood and be on TV or in the movies,” loved the attention. Having visited LA’s Comedy Store with her husband on a trip before they were married, she was fascinated by the experience.

After the convention, she started driving to Nashville’s Zanie’s, the closest comedy club. She met Bryan Dorfman, Outback Concerts co-owner, who immediately recognized Morgan’s originality, the joy she packed onstage – and the audience’s response.

“Her charm, the openness, her welcoming vibe, you wanted to listen,” he recalls. “She’s unreal onstage, and the jokes were more than set-up/punch, set-up/punch. She was actually talking to people, pulling them into her life and letting them recognize their own. That relatability is so much more than just jokes.”

It was the ‘80s. After her audition, he sat her down, “and asked, ‘Are you going to leave your babies in green rooms?’ I’ve been in the business a long time, and knowing her husband was on the road, how would that work? It was never a matter of whether or not she was funny, but the reality of how the business worked back then.”

Dorfman continues, “Comics were the disenfranchised. Back then, nobody got into this as a business or a career.”

He continued hiring her to open shows, put her onstage when she wanted to come over. But a move to San Antonio provided regular spots at a local club, as well as Margie Cole at Austin’s Cap City, who let her headline and saw Morgan really gel.

“She had a child the age of my middle one, so she recognized the humor,” Morgan recalls. “She moved me to headliner, something they really didn’t do. It worked.”

To an extent. The comedy festivals – Aspen, Just for Laughs, Toronto – weren’t booking her; Comedy Central didn’t get it, either. Dismissed as “Mom Comedy,” Morgan kept working where she could, telling her stories and creating fans from people who didn’t really “do” comedy clubs.

“In the beginning, Leanne’s core fanbase came from what can be considered an underserved marked – women largely over the age of 35, living in the heart of the country, often the suburbs,” explains UTA Nashville-based agent Amy Lynch, who first saw Morgan at Atlanta’s Center Stage. “But her appeal is universal. She’s a mother, wife, sister, daughter, grandmother – but also your neighbor, your friend.

“I’ve heard people say, ‘I may not be her target demographic, but she’s hilarious.”

Marmel is quick to stress: Morgan doesn’t bash men, doesn’t do jokes that diminish other people.

“She tells the truth about her marriage: talks about Sunday morning sex and only taking one leg out of her pantyhose, and all the women know what she’s talking about. She talks about the blouse she bought with her Kohl’s Cash, and they know. She’s very open about her faith, too, talks about caring for her elderly parents.

“All those ladies who shop at Chicos? They roar.”

Marmel pauses, acknowledges Morgan’s (G)MILFishness. “She’s really good at being flirty, but she does it with innuendo; she talks about really liking men.”

Morgan laughs about flirting with those men who show up. “I came from a small town where people raised dark fired tobacco for Skoal and Copenhagen. Adams, Tennessee, is where the Bell Witch is. So, to me, all those men in their quarter zip pullovers, they look like they’ve made it.”

She laughs saying this, warm and wide open. She graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in child and family studies. “I thought if I didn’t make it in Hollywood, I could be a counselor. Turns out I put it to use observing everything around me, from birth to death, sexuality, adolescence, the elderly, how it all fits together.

“It set me up to talk about all of it. I was a mama talking about mama things: who pooped on the ball field, while wearing Capri pants and a kitten heel… What I went through with perimenopause, my body, the hot flashes? All true.

“I was the first person on Netflix talking about menopause.”

Morgan is laughing again. She sees the humor in real life everywhere she looks. Famous for vamping – “If I’m in Nebraska, I’m talking about Johnny Carson; if I’m in Traverse City, Michigan, I’m going to talk about Kid Rock” – and being in the spur of the moment – a joke about Taylor Swift wanting in on the Kelce family “because she knew Donna had browned that roast on both sides before putting it in the crock pot” – create a definite coziness.

People responded. Even before the mother of three teamed with Marmel and UTA, Dorfman signed her up to headline real tours. “Her (then) team thought I was crazy. But I remember telling her: cancel every club. We’re going to start playing you in theaters.’ She was still playing one-nighters in comedy clubs – and we signed her to a seven figure deal.

“There are no guarantees, but you just know.”

Even in the years when things weren’t going her way, there were glimmers. Two TV shows nearly happened. One requiring an audition at LA’s Laugh Factory, where the marquee proclaimed “Sultans of Comedy Night” – and Morgan charmed a largely Turkish audience with jokes about Weight Watchers, not liking low-rise jeans, family dynamics.

“Tom Warner, who’d done ‘Roseanne’ and ‘Cosby’ and all these shows, had NBC, CBS, Fox all out there, so you know you just need to get up there and do it. What I realized after is everybody has families, insecurities. I had one of those nights where it all went my way, people laughed. When I was done, Tom agreed, saying ‘You just happen to have a Southern accent.’”

Marmel saw it was special. She knew Morgan required a different approach. “A lot of comics have a podcast; they do specials. I knew Leanne was something else. When she hired a social media team, the algorithms started picking up her clips; she started to take off. We started doing doubles, a 3 or 4 and a 7… We kept the tickets $35 at the low end, high end $75.

“We’ve been building this very intentionally. In September, she’s playing the American Airlines Center (in Dallas, 20K-cap) on her “Just Getting Started Tour.” We added a second show.”

Her other arena dates include Simmons Bank Arena (18K-cap) in Little Rock. Recent top grosses, according to Pollstar Boxoffice reports, include a $975,653 gross over two shows this past July at Fishers Event Center in Fishers, Indiana, where Morgan sold 12,296 tickets and $879,484 gross at Propst Arena in Huntsville, Alabama, in June 2024.

Nuciforo recognizes the passion driving these box-office successes. “Leanne’s fans aren’t your typical comedy fan. In most cases, Leanne is the only comedian they’ve gone to see live. Primarily married women, they don’t frequent comedy clubs or actively consume stand-up.”

Yet Morgan, who calls it a conundrum, knows the fans have favorite bits. When she guested in “You’re Cordially Invited,” alongside Reese Witherspoon and Will Farrell, the Nashville-raised Oscar winner kept asking for her competitive cheerleading joke. “Half the people who’ve seen whatever it is want it, the other half thinks you don’t have anything new. But, you know, if you’re going to see the Eagles, you want to hear the hits…”

Dorfman can’t say enough about how hard-working and curious about the business Morgan remains. Marmel speaks of her blinding charisma and smile, as well as the binding reality of comedy that hits home. Nucifero cites the 10,000 hours logged almost unseen by the larger audience.

“She didn’t take the traditional route of moving to New York or Los Angeles,” Nucifero notes. “She did it her way and won. She became a master in the craft of comedy. She was living in Knoxville. No distribution of content, comedy special or way to grow a fan base. She did the work. Now she’s transitioning from selling out multiple theaters per market to playing arenas… Leanne’s fans are rabid. They’re so passionate about her comedy, they evangelize for her and bring their friends out in packs.”

Morgan doesn’t know about all that. After all these years, she’s ready to dig in – and really deliver. She explains, “I’ve thought, ‘Hallelujah I didn’t hit this at 30!’ I’d’ve been so insecure and not ready.

“Reese said to me, ‘You got to raise your own children,’ and that’s true. Plus, having the pressure of trying to keep that kind of success up at that level? I don’t know. People expect so much out of an artist.”

Asking if there’s additional pressure that comes with having her multiple-camera, old-school TV series, she considers the question. “Well, every time I drove up to that soundstage, I’d think, ‘Huh, someone else has my name…’ when I’d see my parking spot.

“Judi warned me, when it happened, it was going to happen fast. So I’m showing up, ready. Really, Chuck (Lorre) came to Knoxville to meet with me, to see my world. I was more worried about what I was going to serve him for lunch.”