Maria Bamford stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night and talked both about her critically acclaimed Netflix series, Lady Dynamite, and her personal life — both in the realm of online dating, and in her experiences being treated for mental illness, both of which also happen to play big parts in her comedy series. Speaking about the show, Kimmel noted its surrealism, and Bamford talked about off-setting the usual cheery, bright tone of the show in the scenes in the psych ward, describing what her actual experience of one was like:
Psych wards are as if an art director came in and said, ‘let’s break some more chairs, let’s take pieces of a puzzle out of all the puzzles, and let’s put a line of six people waiting for a little sack of graham crackers in electric green gripper socks.’
She spoke of an experience in which a person who recognized her from comedy saw her in the psychiatric institution and told her she’d keep it “confidential.” Bamford’s response was:
I’m in a county-stamped gown in a pair of electric green gripper socks that are now my own; you tell whoever you want.
She told Kimmel that the title is partially a joke about the fact that she doesn’t “have very much energy now that [she’s] properly medicated.”
In a second clip also posted YouTube (you can watch both below), Bamford discussed the most recent big thing in her personal life: getting married to artist Scott Marvel Cassidy — who she met on OKCupid — in 2015. When Kimmel expressed surprise about the online dating platform choice, Bamford discussed her dealings with other sites: “I did E-Harmony: pricey and a lot of Christians.” On OKCupid, she noted how she thinks changing her profile name from FunnyandThoughtful to Hogbook was “the kicker,” saying, “I like those two words together and I like the idea of writing a book about hogs and just calling it HogBook.”
Watch her on Kimmel: