Silly Little Freako

The “Megan Stalter character” is its own comedy genre now. Where does the real person end and her personae begin?

- Rebecca Alter

MEGAN STALTER doesn’t mean to peek at my notes, honest. “I’m so sorry,” she says in her midwestern-nice way. “It’s just sometimes your eyes are always looking for your name. Isn’t that psychotic?” The 31-year-old comedian is fighting a laugh through her apology because my notepad actually reads, “Is Megan Stalter real?” This is indeed a ridiculous thing to see written about yourself, but Stalter knows ridiculousness. Her biggest Hollywood flex has come on HBO Max’s Hacks, where she plays the charmingly oblivious, incompetent assistant Kayla for two seasons. But, really, doing viral character work in the early lockdown days broke her first. An internal logic unites even Stalter’s most out-there creations in a common humanity, from an oversharing sex “expert” to “Drew Barrymore on the beach.” Her characters’ mannerisms are always a flimsy cover-up for base-operating levels of nerves, hostility, or unpreparedness. They pull their faces into the exact opposite of a smize and call their offscreen co-workers “girlie” through gritted teeth. The people Stalter embodies teeter between sad and funny; it’s a crapshoot of either publicly falling apart or silently screaming. Her delicate balancing act is to keep them endearing regardless.