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[upbeat music playing]
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A NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL
[crowd cheering and applauding]
♪ Saturday night ♪
♪ It's Saturday night ♪
[crowd cheering]
♪ It's Saturday night ♪
[music fades]
[panting]
[crowd laughing]
I won't make it to 40.
[laughter]
Good evening. Come on, clap for me!
[cheers and applause]
Clap like you would if I was naked.
[cheering, applause]
Wow, such warmth! Such joy!
It feels like 2019.
[laughter]
Let me introduce myself: I'm tall, slim,
and with a foreign surname that suggests charisma and mystery.
Yes, it is really me.
Emily Ratajkowski.
[laughter]
If you'd ordered her on Wish, this is what you'd get.
When I die, I want her photo on my tombstone.
I'll be dead anyway.
Who is she gonna sue? The kids I don't have?
I'd love to have sons.
I'd love my sons to be bewitched by me,
totally obsessed.
Like those men who look at their partner after sex and say…
[breathing heavily]
"You'll never be like my mother."
[laughter]
But daughters? Never!
I wouldn't want a thinner version of me without mental health issues
to say to my husband,
"Daddy, can you buy me this?"
"Go to work, you freeloader!"
"Even though you're five."
Let's hear it for female solidarity!
[applause]
Anyways, for those of you who don't know me,
those who lack good taste,
I was born in Rome on the 28th of July 1987.
Have you heard of Rome?
The city where we solve our issues by setting them on fire.
[laughter]
Buses.
Old bridges. Rubbish.
People who want to use contactless payment for everything. "Can I use my card?"
[inhales] "If you want to…"
[growls]
[laughter]
I've done TV, film, the Internet.
I've been everywhere, besides in jail.
But it won't be long.
This year I finally signed up for VAT. I'm living the dream.
Financial police. Living the dream.
I've worked my way up the ladder.
I've tolerated sexual harassment and I have harassed too.
[laughter]
And, finally, I reached some of my goals.
I was featured on the list of 100 most successful women by Forbes Italia.
[cheering, applause]
Now, you'd say, "Wow, Michela, not bad."
"You should be proud. No?"
"Now you're famous, I bet your life has changed."
"You finally turned a corner."
Nope.
When you become famous, your life doesn't change.
You're still the same piece of shit but now everyone knows it.
Your life changes if you wake up and you're a cat.
Thank fuck your life has changed!
-Now you shit in a tray! -[laughter]
It's a different lifestyle.
I'm still doing the same things I always did.
Every morning, I wake up, and I check my profile in the mirror
to see if the size of my belly
now resembles a Fiat Qubo.
[laughter]
I'm still doing the same things,
but I have many new problems.
I don't know, if I'm waiting in a deli
and there's an old lady
who's taking 40 minutes
to buy some gorgonzola cheese, and I'm there…
She goes,
[high-pitched] "I'd like some gorgonzola."
"Then also a little ham
for my grandson."
"Also, a Pfizer booster."
"And some more gorgonzola!"
[normal voice] For fuck's sake, lady!
Leave some gorgonzola for the rest of us!
We want some too.
If you want to scream like Robert Plant, go sing "Whole Lotta Love" outside
and fuck right off.
But if I say something like that, the day after, news websites will claim
that I invented the Holocaust.
[laughter]
"Elderly people: watch out for COVID and Michela Giraud."
[laughter]
[sighs] I hope nobody got offended here.
Are there elderly people here?
[silence]
Are there…
any Robert Plant's fans?
[soft laughter]
Is Robert Plant here?
[laughter]
Great, so I didn't offend anyone. Great.
At least you're not like Demi Lovato's fans. Ah!
[laughter]
[applause]
When you're always in the media,
you have to watch what you say.
I speak from personal experience.
It was the month of May, 2021 AD,
and I read this story.
"Demi Lovato, 'I am non-binary. I want to be addressed as 'they.'"
Now, I have no clue what "non-binary" means.
I could google it,
but my fierce comedic brain turns on
and starts thinking about that magician guy on TV.
[laughter]
Maybe you know him.
The Divine Otelma has several Humanities degrees,
he refers to himself by saying "we" and he's a magician.
Like anyone with a Humanities degree.
[laughter]
So I come up with the following joke,
"Demi Lovato wants to be addressed as 'they' like the Divine Otelma.'"
I tell myself, "This is genius."
You're a genius.
You so deserve that satire award you received in 2020.
Of course, I could have googled "non-binary",
but I have won awards. Oh!
Oh! Oh!
Are you crazy?
Of course…
[applause]
I mean, I could…
I could have checked an online dictionary,
but I have an award on my wall
right between the crucifix and a naked poster of Tom Hardy.
Oh!
Do you get me?
So in the end I write this joke,
"Demi Lovato says she wants to be addressed
as 'they' like the Divine Otelma."
I post it on Facebook and people are like,
"You're awesome." "Genius!"
So, with such solid backing,
I post the joke on Twitter.
[nervous laughter]
Yes, my friend.
I posted it on Twitter.
[laughter]
And after that, I did something incredibly smart.
I turned my phone off.
[laughter]
And I went out.
I enjoyed the real world.
I thought, "The sun is out. The kids are playing."
"There's that old lady with her gorgonzola."
"The world is wonderful!"
I catch my train,
I turn the phone back on…
A barrage of insults.
Like I was…
Britney Spears's father.
"You deserve to die!"
"You fucking straight piece of shit!"
By CutePie96.
"Just die, you loser!"
"I'll dance on your straight grave!"
By CakeLover2001.
Some of these people wrote incredibly heavy stuff,
but had super cute profile photos.
[laughter]
In the end I thought, "Okay,
maybe I put my foot in it."
[laughter]
"Let's just check the meaning of 'non-binary.'"
So I…
After the fact.
[applause]
And I find out that the term "non-binary" is something to do with the LGBTQI world
and not, like I thought, some Scientology-like thing
or a fad diet, like the Dukan.
I went from your fun-loving, slightly mental Michela
to the serial killer from the film M.
[laughter]
I unwittingly made a joke that offended the LGBTQI community
on the eve of the release of a movie about the LGBTQI community that I was in.
[laughter]
Let's just say I got a call from the press agency saying,
"Hello? Is this Giorgia Meloni?"
[laughter]
They wanted to remove me
and digitally replace me with a less compromised actor,
Kevin Spacey.
[laughter]
-[sighs] -[applause]
Who, me?
I've always dreamed to be a cross
between Madonna, Lady Gaga, and RuPaul riding across a rainbow.
[laughter]
After quite a long three hours, I think,
"Michela, be your usual bright self."
"You wrote so many amazing jokes in your life…"
[silence]
[laughter]
"You wrote so many amazing jokes in your life…"
[crowd cheering]
"You didn't know that this one would hurt people."
So I delete the joke. And I must say…
Another barrage of insults.
Like I was Britney Spears' mother!
Deleting the tweet didn't solve anything,
and I pissed everyone off.
This will end up being on my tombstone,
"She pissed everyone off."
Underneath Emily Ratajkowski's photo.
I get messages like,
"Shame on you, Michela! You coward! You suck!"
"You bowed to the culture of the politically correct."
"What would the great satirists say? And Aristophane? And Lenny Bruce?"
How do I know? Lenny Bruce is dead.
"Hello, Michela? Hi."
"Fancy doing an Instagram Live with Alessandro Zan,
the guy you hate,
about his bill against homo-and trans-phobia?"
I'm not like Pillon.
Fine, I wrote a joke.
I didn't only put up an Insta post supporting the Zan bill.
No!
I did a lot more than that!
I posted a video with "Zan" written on both my hands.
A double Zan!
Oh!
Could I be more supportive?
But that's not all. Then they said,
"Don't you worry, Michela,
we'll always support freedom of speech." Signed,
L'Europa con Salvini party.
[crowd] Oh!
It was like that time I read the comment, "Michela, you rock!"
written by my ex's new girlfriend.
He cheated on me with her while I had COVID.
People still stop me in the street to ask,
"Michela, remember when you went right-wing?"
I am living proof of the Andy Warhol saying,
"Everybody will be a fascist on Twitter for 15 minutes."
But it was fun to be a fascist for 15 minutes.
Black shirts are very slimming
[laughter]
However…
[applause]
I did find out something else too.
I found out that being defended was worse than being attacked.
It's like getting a bukkake
as you're having lunch with your parents.
It's a cool thing, but at the wrong time.
[laughter]
Being at the center of a Twitter shitstorm is quite the constipating experience.
It's like being on a FlixBus with no brakes
with a reggaeton-loving driver.
And you're forced to sit there and listen to,
♪ Loco loco, loco loco Loc-loc-loco loco ♪
♪ Loc-loc-loc-loc loco! ♪
Enough!
How loco can you be?
If you're loco, you're clearly out there already.
But no, being loco just once isn't enough.
You want to be loco loco.
You want to go beyond loco reiteration.
What could you do that is so loco?
Will you help Grandma with her digital ID?
Pay your taxes?
Go to the Residents Association meeting without a weapon?
What? What?
[audience member] You go!
However…
[applause]
However…
[applause]
I've got to say,
fame does have its positives.
You see, that is, in the way that…
you get given free stuff such as… [exhales]
…T-shirts, moisturizers, slimming teas…
[laughter]
Not that I need those.
[laughter]
Also, you get invited to be a guest on TV shows
with very flattering emails.
Once I remember I got this email, "Hi Michela."
"We are totally in love with your work,
we adore you, you're such a role model."
"We'd like to have you discuss something you care about."
"We'd like you to come on the show to talk about the fact
that, even though you're not stick-thin,
you keep living your life and doing your thing."
When I read this email, in my head
I heard it spoken out loud with the sender's local accent,
this show's writer…
I love her accent and the city she comes from…
"Hi Michela! Whoo! You're the top!"
"Would you like to come on our show
and talk about how, even though you're a ball of lard,
you refuse to shoot yourself in the head à la Kurt Cobain?"
"Whoo! Top!"
[clapping]
"Listen,
hey,
not to worry, if you come on our show
we have a buffet."
"And it's free, with all the stuff you eat down in Rome,
all those carbs."
"Just to be sure we're on the same page,
here's the photo of a colleague of yours, Bombolo!"
You see…
I don't hold grudges,
[laughter]
so I emailed back, "Grazie, dear Maria Grazia."
"I'd be delighted to come on your show
to talk openly about my struggle…
my dress size."
"But you see, in spite of this disability,
I do so many other things."
"I get out of the house without feeling shame."
"Every now and then,
I even wear T-shirts
with short sleeves."
"And I can fit through the door."
[laughter, applause]
"Sure, occasionally, I might have obstructed
the Suez Canal, inadvertently."
[laughter]
"But there's one thing,
when I'm at home alone, at night,
I do a little dance, and thanks to my rubbing thighs,
I can light the fireplace."
"Yippee-yi-yay, Maria Grazia."
[laughter, applause]
[as Maria] "Top! We love your fire trick."
"Come on Italia's Got Talent!"
"No, thank you. I'll go back to my friends,
the cast of My 600-lb Life."
[laughter]
I do thank her, though.
She described me as "not stick-thin"
rather than using a term that I hate,
which is "curvy."
I imagine it's pronounced like this.
[breathlessly] "Curvy."
[exhales deeply]
"Curvy."
[exhales]
[breathily] "Lock your fridges."
"The curvies are coming."
[imitates pounding footsteps]
[laughter, applause]
Curvy is to fashion
what the last season of Game of Thrones is to the whole series.
[laughter]
The term "curvy" represents
everything that fashion really would rather forget, like Crocs
and the assistants beaten up by Naomi Campbell.
Once I went to an outlet. But I did many good things too.
I remember the sign "Curvy" was written in bright red letters,
flanked by torches. You could hear drumroll.
[imitates drums]
Jurassic Park-style. Jurassic Curvy Park.
It was full of curvy people who walked around looking at the floor.
And on the other side of the fence
you could see some stick-thin moms
saying to their perfect offspring,
"Look at them."
"They move in packs."
[laughter]
And the curvies…
[roaring]
"Mom!"
"Are all those ladies pregnant?"
"I'm scared!"
"No, my child, They are not pregnant. They are curvy."
"Look at them. Look, they're being fed."
"The staff will lower down a goat
and a rider with a Humanities degree."
"No! Please!"
"I haven't finished my PhD
about the link between Manzoni and Zerocalcare!"
"No! No!"
[applause]
And then,
these curvy ladies were forced
to hand themselves in to a sales assistant and say,
"I'm legally obliged to declare that I am a US Size 14."
"Sure. Go that way. Where dignity goes to die, yes."
"Yes, where no fashion can help you."
There is a real division, you know.
It's like the Acheron for hot chicks.
On one side you have normal women, stick-thin girls who have rights…
Okay, this is Italy… Some semblance of rights.
On the other side, curvy girls are forced to follow rituals
such as going back and forth from changing room to mirror
while uttering motivation mantras they don't even believe, such as…
[flatly] "I like myself anyway."
[laughter]
"I have a great personality."
"My dream is to play the hot girl's friend
in a TV series."
"I'm the fat one with a nice face
who geeks out on IT and Marcel Proust."
[laughter]
Curvies never have normal names anymore,
like Serena or Luciana. No!
Their names have to somehow represent their size.
So we have Big Luciana, Big Serena, Big Maria Vittoria,
Big Michela, Big Manuela.
And they have to stand still
while other characters, tax fraudsters or killers
but always stick-thin, stop by and say,
"You like food, don't you!"
[laughter]
The properly stick-thin women are terrified
they'll end up being curvy just by eating a slice of pizza.
It's like, pizza…
Whoa…
Boom!
Just like Minos, Dr. Nowzaradan appears,
"Giulia!"
"You're two chocolate bars away from the curvy zone."
[laughter]
"But, Doc, I am 170 cm and 70 kg!"
"How much longer do you hope to live?"
[laughter]
"Do you want to end up like that non-stick-thin actress
who earns a living by rubbing her thighs on Italia's Got Talent?"
"I'm gonna prescribe you a protein-heavy diet,
with spirulina and lichens
and other green things from high school books."
[laughter]
This is the curvy world.
Then you have the body-positivity nightmare.
You have to like yourself no matter what,
even if you're spherical,
otherwise you're stupid, superficial, you're a traitor,
you deserve to drink hemlock and die.
[applause]
I mean,
life is not so black and white.
It doesn't work like that.
You cannot like yourself all of the time.
Sometimes you feel like Beyoncé, sometimes like Magalli.
Ah!
This is the joke that made me famous
in all the gulags worldwide.
And guess who didn't take offense?
Magalli.
He knew it was a positive comparison.
Let's get rid of this curvy thing.
It's just a label, and a lame one too.
Do we all have to conform to a fixed ideal?
Let me ask you,
who defined it?
Do you want to define me?
Fine, be brave.
Call me fat, but don't treat me like an idiot.
Then I am entitled to beat you up.
[woman] Seems fair.
Totally fair. Right?
Yes, lady. Let's beat them all up.
When you finally get rid of this label,
you get a different one.
I don't know, they call you "tough."
Every time a woman achieves something, she is tough.
Why is it? What is she, cardboard? A cookie?
What does a tough woman do?
Does she kick a door without crying?
Can she find the keys in her bag?
Can she go to the toilet alone?
She's a good thing not in a small package?
Every time I read news such as,
"This is Caterina,
a tough girl who went after her dream of being an entrepreneur,"
then I see the photo of this poor girl with no surname
sandwiched between the recipe of the day
and Lotty, the cute seal that sings La Marseillaise by flapping her fins.
[fart noises]
Damn competition!
[laughter]
To recap, it's not easy to be a girl in today's world.
Another thing I hear every so often,
"How did you get to do this job
even though you're a woman?"
What's with the pity? Who do you take me for, a beggar?
Alright, give me five euros so I can buy some cotton period pads.
I'm a VAT-registered 34-year-old.
I earned my right not to have my bum become red raw.
Don't you think? Don't you?
I mean…
[applause]
Alright…
Enough talking about women.
Am I right?
What do women want anyway? The right to vote?
Oh.
Really, Merlin?
Aim lower.
Let us discuss a group of people who have a far tougher life.
A group of people who live on the fringe of society.
A category who really doesn't have any power anymore.
Let's give them their voice back.
White straight men.
[laughter]
[man] The very few ones left.
[laughter]
[woman 2] The very few.
Where are they?
[applause]
Are there any here tonight?
Raise your hand.
I'm not Michela Murgia.
[laughter]
Two hands?
Are you worth double?
Were you in Chernobyl?
[laughter]
Let's count them.
One, two, three…
[woman 2] I told you!
Guys.
What happened to you?
Poor little lambs.
You are this big.
You matter so little.
How? You used to rule the world.
You had an empire on which the sun would never set,
like Charles V.
Now you're disappearing.
You're like Prussia.
Like dinosaurs.
Like Blockbuster.
[laughter]
[man 2] Almost extinct.
Exactly. They'll place you in nature reserves.
Then they'll make a TV series,
The Walking Straight.
[laughter, applause]
Where…
The Walking Straight,
where you approach women like this.
"Listen to my podcast!"
"You're quite fuckable, actually."
"Everybody gets so easily offended!"
[moans]
[applause]
They'll put you in a reserve with a little sign,
Straight White Men.
The first one to come forward will be a brave soul,
Marco Montemagno.
[laughter]
"I woke up one day
with something huge under the sheets."
[laughter]
"It was my ego."
"So I came here to experience the thrill of a new experience,
being wrong."
[laughter]
But don't worry, guys. This will end.
They will soon start writing articles about you,
"This is Marco, a tough guy,
he goes to work every day without catcalling women."
[laughter, applause]
Another label I am often slapped with is "young comedian".
I'm 34 years old.
Quite the oxymoron.
There, nothing but crickets.
But I'm happy I've found fame at 34
because when you're my age, you're more responsible about money.
You buy painkillers,
supplements,
orthopedic slippers.
I have high arches.
[chuckles]
If you become famous at 20,
you blow all your money on Negronis.
I do Negronis with valerian and anti-inflammatories.
But to be honest,
adjusting to life as a famous person hasn't been easy,
mainly because of my family.
Being born in a middle-class, military, Catholic family
brings you many advantages, like sobriety.
Class.
Good taste. Decency.
[silence]
[laughter]
But there are others,
such as anxiety, panic attacks, Catholic guilt, impending sense of doom.
Basically, the Vatican but without my favorite things,
like indulgences, money,
the robes you can piss yourself in without anyone knowing.
[laughter]
And those sci-fi halberds the Swiss guards carry.
[applause]
But going back to my family,
the reason I didn't deal well with my newfound fame is
that there was only one rule:
the fear of God.
That was our key word.
"Never be happy,
never enjoy the good things you have, even if you worked your ass off,
otherwise God will see you and punish you."
Yes, He will find us in Balduina.
In Northern Rome. In the '90s.
[applause]
Picture this…
Picture God Himself.
The world's CEO says, "Alright, Seraphim,
pass me that brown folder, the one about Earth."
"Let's see…"
"Let us see…"
"'The Gulf War.'"
"Hmm. That was bad."
"But the West has its needs. Moving on."
"'The State-Mafia Pact.'"
"Not good, but it made some good TV shows. Moving on."
"What?"
"Young Michela Giraud is happy about her Math grade
and she's celebrating with a mortadella sandwich?"
"Peter, give me that whip!"
"I got you! I got you, little fatso!"
"I'll send you a lifetime of weight-loss herbal teas
and frozen balls of spinach and cheese
that your babysitter will never defrost properly
as she doesn't give a damn!"
[laughter, applause]
And…
When God wasn't enough,
my grandmothers brought on the top player,
the Holy Mary.
[laughter]
Yes, they blackmailed me using Holy Mary statues.
They knew their Holy Marys, they were Holy Mary sommeliers.
They'd say,
"Alright, Michela."
"Today you refused to practice your good posture
by balancing the heaviest dictionary on your head,
instead wearing a colander."
"It was a sin with a bitter aftertaste,
it made Our Lady of Civitavecchia cry."
[laughter]
One day it would be Our Lady of Loreto, the other it would Our Lady of Pompeii.
The more serious my sins,
the more international the statues.
Like Our Lady of Czestochowa,
or Our Lady of Lourdes.
It was Holy Mary Without Borders.
[laughter, applause]
Obviously, the Holy Mary expected us
to dress a certain way.
We were born in a middle-class Roman family.
And so my sister and I would wear super expensive pinafore dresses,
velvet blouses,
patent leather flats.
We weren't little girls,
we were two young insurance brokers.
The Virgin Mary also expected me to play sports
consistent with my main passion.
For ham.
I loved ham and playing with other kids.
Well, I didn't really play with them.
I mean,
I beat them up.
[laughter]
And as I was a fat and aggressive child,
my parents chose to enroll me in a course
that could encourage my natural talents.
Ballet.
[woman 3] Of course.
Fuckers.
[laughter]
[applause]
And after…
After many months of ballet classes,
I was still fat and aggressive, but now I wore a tutu
as I beat them up.
[laughter]
My parents wanted my sister and I
to do everything together,
but she's on the autism spectrum.
My sister says whatever comes into her mind.
She has no filter. No fear.
She tells people to fuck off, whoever they are.
She does everything we'd like to do
but only Vittorio Sgarbi does.
In conclusion,
it wasn't easy for me to learn ballet with the local kids
because they were the exact opposite of us.
They were thin, perfect, self-confident,
elegant, and super spoiled.
They were so spoiled they would react in disgust
if their mom gave them an imitation Barbie instead of a real one.
"Maria Vittoria, it's 1994. The government has uncovered lots of corruption…"
"And your mom bought you this doll."
"But she loves you anyway."
"Be sure of that."
[as child] "Mom, there's two things you can be sure of:
when I grow up I won't pay my taxes either,
and I'll lock you in an elderly facility in the Rieti province."
So…
[laughter, applause]
Can you imagine what it was like for me to grow up with these kids
who have now grown up to become…
They have become…
-[laughter] -Uh…
No. They are…
They are whores.
[laughter, applause]
They are…
whores.
Really…
whores.
[laughter]
Going to ballet classes was tricky for me.
My sister was very determined.
She was the Black Swan,
"I will be a professional dancer!"
And I was…
just rolling around.
Like a marble on an inclined table.
I didn't dance.
I performed physics experiments.
We'd often have to practice one particular drill
which involved going from A to B doing a specific step.
I called it, "My own personal Hiroshima."
This is how the other girls would do it.
[laughter]
[crowd cheering]
[woman 3] You're awesome!
And this was me…
My foot is cramping.
This was me…
[laughter]
"Miss, I can't do it!"
And the other girls…
[laughter]
[applause]
"Kevin, you're what the teacher would call les incompétents."
"My Filipino helper Mahala dances better than you."
In the changing rooms, they tried to be nice.
They could see that my sister and I were different,
so they'd say things like,
"Are you two handicapped?"
And I'd reply, "No, I just have chubby arms."
My sister would tell her to fuck off.
To be fair, if a stranger tells you something like that,
you have every right to do that.
My sister has a disability allowance but she deserves a medal.
Hashtag: Italian government, think about it!
No, scrap that. Keep sending the money.
[laughter, applause]
The point is…
things weren't great. We weren't born to be dancers.
My sister and I had as much coordination
as a cheap catalogue-bought kitchen.
For one reason or another,
our teacher told us to stay at the back,
justifying her decision by saying that we were tall.
Way back in the last row was us two,
some dust,
the Holy Grail,
Elvis,
Bill Cosby's filmography,
and Paolo Borsellino's notebook.
[laughter]
I had the hunch things weren't going well
after some rather vague comments.
The ballet teacher
would tell my Dad, "Listen, Mr. Giraud,
I don't want to alarm you,
but your daughters are the fattest of the class."
[laughter]
"Especially Michela."
"Maybe she could try swimming,
track-and-field,
Greco-Roman wrestling,
or WWE pro wrestling."
I'm not gonna waste time talking about this,
I mean, I have my own comedy special,
we're all here together to celebrate me.
I do magazine covers. What do I care?
It's not like I'm still ruminating and holding a grudge…
But fuck you, Ms. Pina!
[woman 4] Bravo!
[whooping, applause]
Go fuck yourself.
Fuck you, teacher Pina!
[laughter]
Joder, maestra Piña.
[laughter]
Fuck you.
That's right.
Alright.
You see, it's just
I'm terrified of being judged.
By anyone.
I'm especially terrified of being judged by my mom.
[laughter]
Is she here?
I tell my mom,
"Mom, why don't you come to my show?"
"How long is it? One hour? Just you? How boring!"
"Mom, I'm on the cover of Vanity Fair."
"So what?"
[laughter]
"Mom, I auditioned for a TV comedy show. It might change my life."
"I got you the form
to apply to be a museum guard for our region
in Ariccia."
And my Dad,
"No, my love, how could she? Would she have to carry a gun?"
Every time my Dad sees me on stage, he says I'm making a joke of myself.
[laughter, applause]
That's how we were raised, in Italy.
On a diet of control and self-esteem.
Let me tell you this,
had my Mom been the Kardashian matriarch
they'd never have launched a lingerie line,
jewelry or perfumes.
They would have opened up a plain white knickers store in Molise.
My mom has this habit.
She keeps controlling me
as if she were God, or Bill Gates, or Zuckerberg.
You see, my Mom is afraid of two things:
that I die or that I get pregnant.
When I was a teenager,
once I was walking in a quiet street in Rome,
the kind of street where you only see
prostitutes and drug dealers.
I was chatting with a random hot guy
about the tensions in the Middle East.
"I could grate cheese on your pecs!"
Ring ring!
[as mother] "What time do you get back?"
I froze.
Since then, I became known as the David Copperfield of erections.
My mom would call me when I was on holiday too,
because crime never sleeps.
We used to spend the summer holidays in a resort in Calabria.
We'd get there late and exhausted
because mom would drive at a maximum speed of 40 km/h,
and positioned herself between two trucks, "to be safe."
[laughter]
Her driving
would create tension
with the truck drivers,
who would throw their prayer cards at us.
They'd take them off the window
and throw them at us.
My dad would say, "Darling, could you not go a little faster? You idiot!"
"Don't argue with him, Alfredo. He's a friend."
She'd never seen him before.
[laughter]
You see, Italian seaside resorts are populated by the wealthiest,
richest Italian kids.
Therefore, the most spoiled,
the biggest jerks.
There was Andrea, 16 years old, from Benevento,
sporting a Fendi wallet.
Vittoria, the hot chick from Verona, with hair that goes swoosh.
[laughter]
And there was me.
Frizzy hair, only one breast. Braces top and bottom.
A Picasso painting.
I felt as solid and self-confident
as any other structure built thanks to Camorra money.
[laughter]
Eventually,
it'd be time for the teen disco night.
It would start at 10:00 p.m.
I wouldn't find some semblance of courage
until 11:40 p.m.
[laughter]
At some stage, I tell myself,
"It's my time,
it's my life,
I'll go crazy
on the dance floor!"
I take my braces off.
I get rid of the sweatshirt tied around the waist to cover my ass.
Side note: it was about 100 degrees.
And after years of ballet,
I sensually descend on the dance floor.
[laughter]
I see the hottest guy in the group coming towards me.
The beefcake from Brianza.
17 years old, tall, white shirt,
gelled-back hair,
and a Nokia that could take photos. In 2004.
He was Elon Musk.
He comes towards me.
I just can't believe he's coming to talk to me
and not to Victoria, the hot chick from Verona.
I just can't!
He gets closer.
And I…
And he says, "Michela."
And I say, "Yes?"
"Your mom is here."
The DJ plays Carmina Burana.
I look up and I see her.
Mom is wearing a nightgown,
and is wielding a slipper
like Nikita Khrushchev at the UN headquarters in New York.
"What time are you getting back?"
The other teen club kids are like…
So I say, "Don't worry."
"I'll just pretend to go home, then I'll sneak out and come back."
[laughs awkwardly, sighs]
So I go home,
leaving behind a den of love, life and drugs.
This is my bio on LinkedIn, by the way.
[laughter]
So you see, I've grown up with crippling anxiety.
I'm always scared that, out of the blue,
my mom could pop out shouting,
"I was right! You spoke for an hour! And that lady is dying of boredom!"
This is my main fear.
I wish I didn't care.
In this age of rules and labels,
I wish I could stop caring, says…
[laughter]
The young, tough, not stick-thin woman
who's not classically pretty but has a nice face,
is a self-made entrepreneur who rubs her thighs
on Italia's Got Talent."
This is not an easy life.
[applause]
I wish I had the strength of not caring about other people's opinions.
I mean, it's 2022.
But you see,
I do not have the strength.
The only one who has is Cristina, my sister,
because she has Asperger's.
I don't know how much you know about Asperger's.
I didn't know what it was,
so in 2006 I looked it up on a reliable source:
Yahoo! Answers.
Giovanna from Pordenone replied,
"Yes, my cat had it."
"It threw up hairballs for four days
while watching daytime TV, but he's fine now."
Actually, Asperger's varies
from person to person.
In my sister's case,
it manifests as having no filter.
She's like a big baby. She says it like it is.
She's scared of two kinds of people,
poor people and ugly people.
I know.
My sister is a right-wing disabled.
[laughter, applause]
You see,
when she sees poor people,
she imagines the day when my parents won't be be able to care for her.
And when she sees ugly people,
she sees ugly people, that's just it. I wish I had a better rationale.
So as you can imagine,
growing up with her was a dream
because my life went from mono to stereo.
I wouldn't be here with you, if it wasn't for her.
I wouldn't be here telling you about my own shit,
and being paid for it,
if it wasn't for her.
I would have grown up
to be a perfectly thin lawyer
with a cheating husband who tells her he loves her three times a day,
and three kids named Gianmaria.
And I'd say, "Michela Giraud is quite funny."
"She could do with dropping 20 kg."
And I'd vote for Brothers of Italy.
[laughter]
This is who I'd be.
[applause]
This person.
And…
I owe my sister everything.
But you see,
growing up with her wasn't easy.
When she wanted to ask someone, "What do you do?" at a party,
her anxiety turned her question into something like…
[chuckling]
"You!"
"You."
"What do you do?"
"I'm unemployed at the moment."
[gasps]
"Michela!"
"Why did you take me to a party
full of cheapskates?"
In true Goldoni-style.
[applause]
Very 18th-century theater.
I was…
I had to say,
"No, she didn't mean it, really."
"Believe me, she is…"
"She's just a bit nervous."
Sometimes she'd ask my best friend,
"Francesco?"
"Are you coming on the cruise with us?"
"No, this year I can't."
[gasps]
"Daddy!"
"Promise me we'll never become poor like he is!"
[laughter]
This one time,
a friend of mine, who's not exactly a Greek god,
knocked on the door and my sister went to open.
And she did this.
[laughs]
"Wow, you're really ugly!" Slam!
She slammed the door in his face.
But ten minutes later he was still there.
[crowd laughing]
My sister is very determined.
If she wants something, she really wants it.
She's like Kim Jong-un.
You could compare the atmosphere in North Korea
to the one at my house
whenever we have lunch together.
One year, for Easter, we went to this holiday farm in Tuscany.
I was so proud of having booked a secluded little spot,
basically in the fireplace.
Eventually, we come to having dessert,
still unharmed.
The place is so peaceful. And then, a child…
A fucking child
stands up
and starts singing like this.
[laughter]
♪ Tell me something, boy ♪
And the room goes, "Oh!"
This is me.
And my father.
My Mom. And my sister…
[laughs as sister]
"I want to sing."
"No. No, darling, no. There's no need to sing, really."
"You have so many gifts. She's just a child."
"You don't need to show her up. Let her sing."
And my sister, "All right."
And the child…
[continues indistinctly singing "Shallow"]
And my sister…
♪ We go to the shallows now! ♪
♪ In the shallows, shallows ♪
♪ In the sha-sha-shallows ♪
♪ In the shallows, shallows ♪
♪ We go to the shallows now… ♪
[holds note]
[applause]
[continues holding note]
[crowd cheering]
You'd think
that the room would go…
♪ In the shallows ♪
No!
People are petrified.
[laughter]
A lady behind me.
Her husband.
The roast lamb on their plate.
[laughter]
And then I became a teenager.
As a teenager, I would wake up and state,
"I'm alive!"
"Unfortunately."
My number one enemy was the mirror.
I'd look at trucks on the road
with a heart filled with hope, not fear.
[laughter]
And…
[applause]
You see, at that time,
I used to spend my summers
in a snobbish place just outside Rome
populated by cool, snobby kids with their little cliques.
While I would hide in the bushes
like some offshore bank account in Fiji.
My sister, however, would say,
"Guys!"
"Wanna meet my sister? There she is!"
[laughter]
"Michela! Wanna be friends with these guys?"
"Guys, my sister is super funny!"
"Michela! Did you pee yourself?"
[laughter]
Inside, I was dying. Rotting like the Tiber.
[laughter]
I'd say, "Sure."
"Hi guys, it's me. The normal sister."
At 15, I'd fake the self-confidence of a 30-something-year-old woman
even though I didn't know I had to remove a tampon's applicator.
[laughter, applause]
It's not easy having a disabled sibling.
It's like when your sibling is a rockstar.
Everyone expects you to be something special.
"All right, this one is disabled,
what about the other one?"
When I was 14, my persona was, "I never study. I'm a rebel."
"I have a Nirvana sweatshirt. I'm such a rebel."
"You failed the math test."
"No!"
Things weren't easy, in the '90s.
People didn't really get what disability was.
The only disabled people they knew were those in a wheelchair.
If you didn't have that, they'd question you.
People wouldn't ask me things like,
"Michela, you're incredibly beautiful. What's your secret?"
No, they would look at me and go like this…
[laughter]
"Your sister…"
"What's wrong with her?"
[laughter]
"Does she have it?"
"The disabled parking permit?"
[laughter]
"No, my sister can walk."
"How come?"
"If you have the disabled badge, you're part of a caste."
"You can park in the center of Rome."
"You can get the best seats at the Olimpico for the derby."
"You get first row seats to Måneskin for free."
"It's a golden ticket!"
"You're holding a golden ticket and you don't know it."
"Do you get discounts at IKEA?"
"Assembling furniture is a struggle for normal people,
let alone for those like your sister."
"Is it always Black Friday for you?"
[laughter]
"Do you get free cinema tickets?"
"Not that your sister understands movies."
"No, it doesn't work like that."
"What's wrong with her? Is she differently-abled?
"I mean, otherwise she wouldn't be like this."
"What's wrong with her? Has she got Down's?"
"Is she more up or more Down?"
"Sorry, I was trying to lighten the mood."
[laughs, snorts]
"What is she, spastic?"
"No."
-"Is she Bamboleiro?" -"What's Bamboleiro?"
"Yes, Bamboleiro!"
"Like those people who walk funny, with mangled legs."
"And you sing to them, ♪ Bamboleiro! Bamboleiro! ♪"
[applause]
"Maybe it's your parents' fault."
"Are you transgender?"
"Nothing to do with that."
"Are you curvy?"
[laughter]
"Are you Jewish?"
"Are you Romani?"
"Nothing to do…"
"But you said your dad was from Naples."
[laughter]
"Listen, don't you dare…"
"Okay, I get it,
but have you seen a nutritionist?"
"Or an exorcist?"
"Have you sent her to Italia's Got Talent?"
[laughter]
"You know what? I feel for your parents."
"They had one disabled child and they had the courage to try again."
"And you came along. You're not exactly stick-thin."
"No offense."
"I just have chubby arms!"
"Don't be so touchy! What did I say?"
"Listen,
I'm gonna confess something."
"It's such a difficult thing."
"My father…"
[laughter]
"…has high cholesterol."
[laughter]
[applause]
"Luckily, they gave him the disabled parking permit."
"But he had to insist! Unbelievable!"
I'll tell you the truth.
Yes, my sister wears a colander on her head.
When I was a kid, I never saw her as different.
But I could see it in other people's eyes.
I could see their looks.
When we went somewhere, they'd move away.
And at one stage, I started wondering.
I asked, "Mom, why are people avoiding us?"
"Why don't we get invited to parties?"
"Or to dinners?"
"Why do they look at us as if we were…
monsters?"
And my Mom said,
"Don't worry, my darling. You see…
our head is like a saucepan
and we jam in so much information."
"But your sister doesn't have a saucepan."
"She has a colander."
[applause]
And…
Since I used to play with a colander on my head,
I asked, "Mom, do I have the same syndrome she has?"
"No, you're just curvy."
[laughter]
[applause]
Okay.
I'd like to dedicate this show
to my Mom, to my grandmas, to my sister,
and to a person who did so much for me
and deserves a special mention.
Fuck you, Ms. Pina!
Fuck off!
-[mic feedback squeals] -[crowd cheering]
[upbeat music playing]
[cheering continues]
♪ Saturday night ♪
♪ It's Saturday night ♪
Thank you.
[cheering]
Thank you.
♪ It's Saturday night ♪
[music continues]
♪ Saturday night ♪
♪ It's Saturday night ♪
-♪ It's Saturday night ♪ -[cheering]
♪ It's Saturday night ♪
[music continues]
♪ Saturday night ♪
♪ It's Saturday night ♪
[music ends]
Subtitle translation by: Luisa Zamboni