photos by Noah Berhart
When I arrive at a Bedstuy cocktail bar a few minutes late, comedians Carly Kane and Maddie Silverstein already have mocktails in front of them, so I grab a non-alcoholic beer from the bar and join them at a coveted table where Carly is wrapping up a story about an ex. I urge her not to stop on my account, so she doesn’t. She provides all the details for Maddie and me to weigh in on until she finally feels affirmed in how she handled the situation. Next up is Maddie, who has an ongoing arrangement with a long-distance ex, and needs a quick survey on whatever’s going on with them.
The table turns to me, the only one left who has not divulged some exciting information about an ex. I’m boring and have been in a relationship for two years with no Ex Drama to report. But I remember I recently caught up with an ex over brunch and actually do have some fairly enticing updates from that. So, I offer that up to the eager lesbians sitting in front of me, and they kindly accept.
Here’s the thing. Before I finish my story, both Carly and Maddie already know it. They just don’t know that I was the other half of that equation. They heard it from the other side.
Don’t you just love how small the queer comedy scene is in NYC? It’s great! Everyone is hooking up and dating — even the ones who swear they do not date other comics — and the ones who aren’t are for sure crushing in silence. Naturally, my curiosity got the best of me, and I wondered: Have Carly and Maddie ever kissed?
Read my interview with Carly and Maddie, who are hosting an all-queer comedy, drag, and burlesque show Will They Kiss? in Brooklyn on June 21, to find out.
Maddie: I’m quoted in Autostraddle already as a power bottom, so…
Motti: Wait, really? For what?
Maddie: They did an article about power bottoms in 2022, and I just submitted my little quote.
Motti: How would you define a power bottom?
Maddie: Well, that’s what the whole thing was about.
Carly: Yeah, I want you [Maddie] to define a power bottom.
Maddie: I feel like it’s like, I feel like I’m getting railed a lot, but it’s also like I’m in charge, kind of.
Carly: Are you a switch though?
Maddie: Like yeah, I’m not a Pillow Princess.
Carly: No, I know that.
Motti: I need someone to define that for me, too, because you’re literally laying there and not doing anything? I feel like that takes away from how good verbal cues are in sex?
Maddie: I have no idea. I mean, I think it’s all open to interpretation. But I think like…
Motti: So you’re doing things but you’re not doing THE THING?
Maddie: I’m doing things sometimes. But you just take charge when you’re on the bottom.
Carly: Are you like a brat? I feel like you’re like bratty.
Maddie: I’m not a brat. I don’t know what I am. At the time, the article was just exploring, I feel like “bottom” can have a negative connotation within, especially I feel like, the lesbian community. Everyone’s like, “you better be vers or grow up.”
Motti: Booo! That’s so annoying.
Carly: [unprompted] I’ll go on record and say I’m a switch.
Maddie: But I’m like, no, I’m like doing stuff, but I may be laying down for a lot of it.
Motti: There’s a lot you can do while laying down.
Maddie: There’s so much you can do while laying down.
Carly: Speaking of laying down, that’s what we do at our show. Kind of.
Motti: Before you tell me about the show, tell me how you two met.
Carly: We met in Chicago comedy actually, years and years and years ago.
Maddie: It was a fall day in Chicago, evening rather. No, I moved to LA and I would come home and do shows in Chicago. We were both on Ladylike together.
Carly: Yeah, we were on a storytelling show together in 2017.
Maddie: Carly was a big hotshot in Chicago. She was. I mean, always a hotshot, but I don’t know, you were running a famous mic in Chicago, and we just liked each other and we started following each other on Instagram.
Carly: Yeah, just always stayed friends. Anytime that Maddie was in Chicago, we would hang out–
Maddie: –in a comedy way.
Carly: In a comedy way, where it feels like we’d be friends if we lived in the same place.
Maddie: Then, when I moved to LA, we were each other’s reply guys, for sure.
Carly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the tension actually has been building up until this moment of the show.
Motti: Were you both out queer people back in 2017?
Carly and Maddie: Noooo, no.
Carly: Wow, that’s good… Yeah, this is fun.
Maddie: We were both bi at the same time, too.
Motti: You progressed together.
Carly: We kind of progressed together.
Maddie: No, I was very closeted in 2017.
Carly: Me too.
Motti: Yeah, same.
Carly: I think I had just broken up with my boyfriend, and I was like, “I’m gay.” It was right around the time I think I came out.
Maddie: And then Carly moved to LA in 2020?
Carly: Mm, 2021.
Maddie: Okay, 2021. And we were both really excited that we were going to live in the same city. We started going on hikes. And then shortly after my first lesbian breakup I was like, “I’m moving to New York.”
Motti: You couldn’t be in the same city?
Maddie: No, actually she lived in New York. Which I think gave her quite a fright. She doesn’t live here anymore. Drove her out of the city, just like I always do. But then, in 2022, Carly was going to move to New York. I remember where you told me, right on Metropolitan Avenue at that weird taco place. And yeah, I don’t know, we were really excited. We just started hanging out for the first time, I feel like, for real.
Carly: We both love performing and love stand-up, and I think also — I don’t want to speak for [Maddie] — but there is something fun about taking stand-up and then adding more to it. One thing I love about Maddie as a performer is you see Maddie and you’re like “oh this hot put-together girl who’s kind of like intimidating,” and then and then she’ll just play the craziest characters on stage and is so goofy and it’s in such opposition of what I think what, at least my first impression, of you would be. And that was so fun for me to be like oh my god I think we both also have this goofy side where I want to be more playful on stage but I don’t know how, and so we both — it was sort of a fever dream — we were like “oh let’s do it.”
Maddie: My friends owned a boxing gym at the time, and I feel like anytime I walk into someplace interesting with Carly she’s like “this could be a venue.” I always just see her eyes kind of darting around, and I’m like, “I know she’s thinking it.” She was like, “it’d be so sick if we did a stand-up show at the boxing gym.” And I was like, man.
And what if we wrestled each other?
Carly: We’ve had a really slow-burn friendship, and we’ve always wanted to do something together, and this just ended up being the thing that we did.
Motti: Talk me through the actual structure of the show. What percentage of it is you guys wrestling in these muscle suits, and how much of it is stand-up?
Maddie: [thinking] Yeah, so, kind of a lot of it is us wrestling. We wanted to be like WWE, very bad WWE. That’s why we call it “wrestling-themed.”
Carly: We hosted as characters up top.
Motti: What are their names?
Maddie: Last year, we were Big Dad–
Carly: I was Kane the Pain.
Maddie: You were Kane the Pain, and I was Big Daddy Maddie, but this year we’re introducing new characters.
Carly: I’m Blonde Rumble.
Maddie: And I’m Strapping Young Lad.
Motti: Are you going to wear a strap? Oh, well, no, because you’re a power bottom.
Carly: [wide-eyed] You shooooould!
Maddie: Guys, you can strap if you’re a power bottom.
Carly: You should whip out a strap at some point. We’re really going all out this year, I will say. We also had our friends at the boxing gym help us choreograph and learn some simple moves. So, in between each performer, we would have a little bit of a script and a story throughline of two enemies that secretly fall in love.
Maddie: Yeah, I think that I fucked your mom and your sister. Is that right? Or you fucked my mom and my sister?
Or maybe both.
Carly: We were both fucking each other’s family members.
Maddie: We started with a script and went into round one of the fight, which I think I won. Next there was standup comedy. Then we came out for round two, and Carly — or Kane the Pain — won that one. Round three, after the burlesque performance, you realize our ref started trying to fight us, and then we ended up pairing up, and we were like, “whoa, we actually make a pretty great team!” and there’s sexual tension throughout the whole thing, I would say, but here’s where it became clear. And then the ref held up a sign that said “KISS!” and we kind of fought it, but we ended up kissing and a little bumping on stage. And then it ended with a drag performance.
People said that the show felt too short. Some people said it was the best night of their lives. My best friend cried. It was so fun.
Carly: It really was a special. You know when you run a show and you’re like, “oh this was special and felt good.” Not that they all don’t, but you know what I’m saying? It was really weird and fun.
Carly and Maddie absolutely gay kissed in front of me in that Bed Stuy cocktail bar. And if you want to see Carly and Maddie kiss, you can go to their show Will They Kiss? where there will be a pre-show arm wrestling contest, gay wrestling, stand-up comedy from queer comedians, burlesque dancing, and drag performances. And to make it even more delicious, the event’s ring girl is none other than lesbian Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover model Lauren Chan.
You can buy tickets here.
