Hannah Berner Talks Unconventional Ascent to Comedy Fame : “My Dream Was to Win Wimbledon”
As Hannah Berner gets set to receive the rising comedy star trophy at the Just For Laughs Festival on Friday, the former TikTok creator and reality TV star-turned podcaster and stand-up comedian reveals an unlikely start for an unconventional path to the top in comedy.
“My dream wasn’t to be a stand up. My dream was to win Wimbledon,” Berner tells The Hollywood Reporter while in Montreal for the marquee comedy festival. That’s an unlikely path to Hollywood fame because, traditionally, TV sitcom and feature comedy stars had first to pay their dues on the comedy club circuit before getting a chance to leap to the small and big screens.
Berner insists her life in college and professional tennis until she retired at 22 years of age served her well in breaking into TikTok, reality TV, podcasting and the stand-up comedy worlds after she put aside her tennis racket with little in the way of future prospects.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a living, but I always had a creative, goofy side that I’d always get in trouble for. My coaches were telling me I was being too silly all the time. I didn’t realize I could actually monetize that,” Berner adds.
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The former tennis player also had a competitive streak and an incessant need to perfect her game that survives in comedy. “I’m obsessed with practice. I’m obsessed with technique. I’m obsessed with just working towards goals. I’m obsessed with getting better, that’s what I always did as a tennis player. So when I got the stand up bug, it was game over for me,” Berner says.
And early on playing male players on tennis courts helped a young Berner eventually make her way in the boys world that were cramped New York City comedy clubs she first performed in. Tennis also taught the breakout comedy sensation how to perform in the moment in front of audiences, rather than just against an opponent on the other side of the net.
“There are so many similarities. I didn’t always like beating up on someone, where stand up I feel less pressure. I’m just performing, I don’t walk off the stage like a loser, or not,” Berner adds. Tennis, where like stand up a performer is alone on a stage, also helped the 33 year-old comedian deal with audiences, or tamp down nerves or anxiety to perform her best five minutes or longer comedy specials.
But perhaps most surprisingly of all as she looks back, Berner insists she never really had a plan to make it in comedy, which might have stood in her way had there been one. “I was just figuring out ways to eventually do what I love. I didn’t know I’d fall in love with stand-up. But it ended up what I felt most joy doing,” she adds.
And taking the less travelled road in comedy also helped her avoid common industry pitfalls, while also going from the Bravo reality series Summer House to a giant following on TikTok as a content creator, to doing the Giggly Squad podcast with friend and one-time Summer House castmate Paige DeSorbo, and then from comedy clubs to her first Netflix special, We Ride at Dawn.
“Stand-up ended up being the medium that I didn’t have to be picked, I didn’t have to wait for someone to choose me. I could be an entrepreneur and make my own money doing it. So I’ve just kind of been hustling my little butt off touring for many years now,” Berner reveals.
The Just For Laughs comedy festival continues through to Sunday.
