A Ticklish Brainworm: A Conversation with Comedian & Actor, Cole Escola

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Jul 9

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The following interview and photo set appeared in WUSSY vol.09.
To see the full feature, order your copy at the link here.

Bach plays as a feather duster grazes floral drapes. Gloved hands discreetly remove a bottle of lube from behind a collection of 19th century porcelain figurines. A lace doily is straightened and a fruit-adorned rug vacuumed.

It looks like the preset for a production of Arsenic and Old Lace until an individual rises from below, their face strewn with brown smudges.

“There’s just nothing like the taste of poop.”

That, Marjorie, is Cole Escola, and they’re completely in their element.

The moment is from their YouTube special Help! I’m Stuck!, uploaded in April of last year and featuring a vast array of Escola’s signature characters developed over years of live performances and sketches.

The special may be called Help! I’m Stuck! but Escola is far from stagnant. They’ve most recently made waves for their role as Chip Wreck in the latest seasons of Search Party on HBO Max, where Escola kidnaps Dory, the show’s protagonist played by Alia Shawkat.

T-SHIRT-HEAVEN BY MARC JACOBS, PANTS-URBAN OUTFITTERS, SHOES- RACHEL COMEY

“I feel like a dinosaur. I haven’t really felt the need to ‘keep up.’

“It’s definitely the biggest role that I’ve ever had on a show,” they tell me over one of the Zoom calls that’s grown all too familiar in the last year. “After I filmed it, I realized ‘Oh, all of my scenes are with Alia Shawkat … I”m gonna be in this show a lot. Her character is trapped in my basement.”

When asked how they gave such a terrifying performance, Escola says, “I feel like really I only do 20 percent of that, and the other 80 percent is Alia seeming terrified. When someone’s bruised and shivering on the ground next to you, you really don’t have to do much to seem like a villain.”

Escola mostly credits the renowned Shawkat for that aspect of the performance, but their work across television speaks for itself. As Escola’s main arc in Search Party just begins to fully escalate, another memorable role of theirs concludes with the final season of truTV’s At Home with Amy Sedaris, where they play Sedaris’ unstable, fiery-haired neighbor, Chassie Tucker.

“I’m obsessed with [Sedaris]. I think the world of her and I think she likes me too, and so I think that’s why we have so much fun.” Elaborating on their chemistry with the comedy legend, Escola says, “She likes to be really mean, and I like to be really mean as well. I think that comes from having siblings.”

Television embraced Escola, but it’s their self-engineered digital comedy that initially got them noticed. The first video on their YouTube channel—Joyce Connor Survives the Heat—features a suicidal New Yorker lamenting the sweltering city and alluding to Sharon Stone’s “lady envelope” moment in Basic Instinct.

“I don’t even remember making that video,” they say through laughter.

“I think that’s when I was really lonely and didn’t have friends in New York, so I was, like, suicidal. And then I got the idea that what if there was someone who wanted to commit suicide but she was planning it like something she was looking forward to? And she kept having to change the date of the suicide cause of logistical things … ‘I’m expecting a package on Saturday, so I can’t do it then.’”

Jackie would become one of Escola’s signature characters, with them describing her as a “release valve” and a “comfort” in the face of those lonely times.

As YouTube emerged into a digital playground for indie comedians in the early 2010s, Escola uploaded sketches with fellow comic and eventual Search Party co-star Jeffery Self. Their uproarious videos featured Angels in America with a laugh track and Escola puking pennies into Self’s outstretched palm.

As usual, queers were ahead of the trend, and the videos evolved into Jeffery and Cole Casserole, which ran for two seasons on Logo.

With digital comedy now a mainstay on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, Escola doesn’t feel pressured to obsess over the still-evolving medium.

“I feel like a dinosaur. I haven’t really felt the need to ‘keep up.’ I definitely find TikTok enjoyable now that my algorithm knows what I like, but I don’t have the hunger that I had in my 20s to ‘find my way in.’ I’m ready to retire,” they joke.

The sentiment tracks with what’s motivated Escola’s comedy from the start—not a means towards notoriety, but a means for expression.

“[The characters] all represent different explorable aspects of myself that I feel unable to explore in my real life. … They’re just all parts of me that I magnify for fun, or hopefully funny purposes.”

Escola’s dozens of characters almost always feature costumes and wigs, but the idiosyncrasies making each performance real enough to be funny are what truly bring them to life.

“It usually starts with a brainworm. Sometimes it’s a gesture, sometimes it’s a word, or a phrase or the way to pronounce a word. I don’t know if it’s inspired by my subconscious or some other thing that I picked up out in the world, but it usually starts as a brainworm, a ticklish brainworm that I then shift my focus to that and let it snowball.”

“I want to visit Olivia de Havilland’s grave and bring something of Ryan Murphy’s to burn on it.”

Escola recently announced to their Instagram followers their use of they/them pronouns in a brief but impactful post.

“I mean, I still think of it more as a clarification than a coming out, because I’ve always felt non-binary and sort of feel as though I’ve behaved non-binary, whatever that means. But it was more just that I was getting tired of people asking me questions like ‘Why do you play females so much?’ as if that was the end, rather than the means, to tell a story. … It’s just closer to how I feel than ‘male’ or ‘female,’ so right now, it’s the closest I can find.”

A recent profile on Escola by Meredith Blake of the LA Times rightly hailed them as part of “comedy’s queer new wave,” but much of their inspiration isn’t new—it’s timeless.

Escola hailed the Turner Classic Movies channel as their go-to quarantine watch, as they treasure the panache of old Hollywood.

DRESS AND HAT - MARC JACOBS

“I just love melodrama, and I love heightened storylines and dialogue, but still real performances. Just because the things they’re saying are ridiculous—like ‘don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars’—it’s still Bette Davis, one of the greatest actresses of all time saying it and it’s still connected and real. I just think that’s so much more interesting than, like, Meryl Streep doing civilian drag in August: Osage County.”

When asked which person they’d like to metaphorically chain to a chair in their basement—a la Escola’s obsessive Search Party character—it’s no surprise that their mind goes once again to old Hollywood.

“I mean, she’s dead now, but I guess Olivia de Havilland was probably the closest. I went to Paris a couple of years ago, I went outside of her house and just walked around a few times to be like, ‘wow,’” they laugh.

The star—who died last year at 104 years old—lit up the screen in films like Gone with the Wind and The Heiress. In the last years of her life, de Havilland sued the FX Network for Ryan Murphy’s use of her likeness in the series Feud: Bette and Joan.

This is what comes to mind when Escola talks of what they’ll do once the shadow of the pandemic finally recedes: “I want to visit Olivia de Havilland’s grave and bring something of Ryan Murphy’s to burn on it.”

But they have much more to do before they and de Havilland can be together in Paris again.

“I’m developing an animated show with the Big Mouth team that I’m excited about. Jeffery and I shot this pilot presentation last year that Bridey Elliot directed … I’m writing for [comedian Ziwe Fumudoh]’s show for Showtime currently and that’s gonna film soon, so that’ll be fun.”

Escola may be busy, but their advice to those creatively frustrated isn’t to force content. “Don’t create anything. Just consume. … Consume books or movies or TikTok or whatever you find enjoyable.”

Thankfully, Escola’s own work has allowed hundreds of thousands to do just that.

Photos by Ryan Duffin
Styling by Joanne Henriquez

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