Julia Scotti Shares Love for Comedy and LGBTQ Support

Steve Adubato talks with comedian Julia Scotti about her passion for making people laugh and uplifting the LGBTQ community.

12/8/16 #1928

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Hi, I'm Steve Adubato. This is the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The beautiful NJPAC in Newark, New Jersey. We are honored to be joined by Julia Scotti Hello! A comedienne from Fairview, New Jersey originally? Originally. Yeah? Now I live down on the shore. Now you live down on the shore. Yeah. Yeah, but how long have you been at this comedy business? I started May 31st, 1980 at the Jade Fountain restaurant in Paramus The Jade [unintelligible] But the Jade Fountain Oh my God. That was the very first Jersey gig for comedians. There wasn't anything before that. Hold on... When you performed there... Yeah? Were you Julia Scotti? No, I was [laughter], I was actually Rick Scotti back then. You were Rick Scotti. Rick Scotti. Yeah. I'm transgendered. There was Rick Scotti for 20 years of my career from... And you were funny then. You're funny now. Yeah, but I'm funnier now I think. What makes you think you're funnier as you transitioned or through... What makes you think you're funnier. When I was Rick, I was headlining all over the world. Not all over the world. Come on Julia! Yeah, you had me. I asked around... You headlined. Go ahead. I did. And then I took the ten years off and came back. And I think the two things I wanted to accomplish truly is I wanted to be fearless up there and honest, which I wasn't as Rick. I was always sort of looking over my shoulder that somebody might figure out that something was wrong with me. "Wrong". Really? Yeah. Let me ask you this. Just, Jersey... Italian... Northern New Jersey... some correlation between that and "something's wrong with me" [laughter] cause we're a bit provincial let's just say. [laughter] and Catholic I would think. Oh! I forgot! The other thing we have in common! Yeah. Is there something about that whole mirror view? Just this massive amount of guilt that... Are you trying to say we're not open minded people?! And we're not worthy for anything! That was it. I mean you know the area I grew up in. Just a little bit Can you imagine coming out to anybody in there? No. No. You learn if you're not tough to pretend to be tough just so people wouldn't kill you! Isn't that funny? And that's no joke. Yeah. I know. I know. No joke. Wow. "Back in the day" is an expression to some. For you, it's very real. So this is so interesting. By the way, talk about funny, one of the top five transgendered comediennes, 2013 say some people. Who says that by the way? Advocate Magazine said that. Yeah. When you think back then there was only six transgender comedians in the whole country, that's pretty good. No, come on..."