Even as a comedian, Shlesinger says motherhood and this time in her kids’ lives feels “sacred.” Iliza Shlesinger’s very first Netflix special, War Paint, was the first stand-up set that made me, a young millennial woman, feel like I was in on the joke. Shlesinger’s comedy centers women’s thoughts and experiences with a unique incisiveness I’d never witnessed before (or since, for that matter). The fact that our personal timelines have very closely aligned — from dating and going out with friends to getting engaged, wedding planning, and having kids — means that her comedy has always felt incredibly relevant to my life.
She’s usually delivering precisely the punchlines I need to hear, right when I need to hear them most. Scary Mommy sat down with Shlesinger for the first time since we profiled her in 2022, when her daughter Sierra was just months old. Now she’s a mom of two: 4-year-old Sierra and 2-year-old Ethan.
She’s also the face of a new Pampers campaign, lending their latest launch her signature comedic stylings. And much to my delight (but not my surprise), she is every bit as hysterical and insightful in conversation as she is on stage. Scary Mommy: Let’s talk about your recent partnership with Pampers.
They’ve relaunched their wipe packaging with a new opening that actually dispenses just one wipe, instead of a chain of like, six at a time. And they did it because enough moms cited it as a daily frustration. Iliza Shlesinger: Part of why I wanted to do this Pampers campaign was because I've actually experienced the thing where you grab the wipe and there's multiple wipes just connected to each other.
And when they pitched it to me, I was like, "Oh, I am that mom." And they're like, "We fixed it.” Life isn't supposed to be hard. In a world where everything is met with an AI chatbot and you cannot get someone on the phone, the fact that a whole corporation listened and they were like, "We're going to make it easier," because it does feel like a lot of time the whole objective is to make parenting as hard as possible and to make life for women as hard as possible. So I think as a woman, I'm just like, "The fact that someone listened meant everything." Now, if only children's furniture companies would also listen to us because I cannot read these Dutch instructions and use an Allen wrench one more time.
SM: What are some other unexpected little frustrations about parenting that have irked you along the way? I think there's this weird pull of wanting your child more than anything, thinking about them, of being obsessed with them, being so in love with them, and yet really not wanting to be around them. Parenting is having your heart broken and split open and being in love with someone and being like, "I just need someone to take you every 15 minutes from me." So it is this really strange push-pull of the second I'm with them, I'm like, "Can you just go watch TV because I need to check my phone?" Yeah, I've never been so deeply obsessed.
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