Patti Harrison Had Dreams of a Tech Utopia. Silicon Valley Smashed Them

Patti Harrison, like every great comic, knows how to use her face. If you’ve seen her stealing scenes in TV shows like Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave or Hulu’s Shrill, you know that she often starts out a bit demure, or pouty, before walking audiences into the deep end. She’s a bit innocent, until she’s deranged—and you’re gasping for air.

It’s that quality in Harrison’s work that WIRED borrowed for our own rather unhinged cover concept. Harrison plays five (well, actually six) of the current masters of the universe—Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos (with Lauren Sánchez Bezos by his side). Combining her farcical sensibilities with our commentary on the man-heavy leader­ship of Silicon Valley worked perfectly—and she was happy to lampoon the people behind the platforms she used to enjoy. (RIP Harrison’s Twitter account.) We caught up with Harrison in London, where she had just finished a sold-out run of her show, Just Ironing Some Things Out!, and a week of performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

KATIE DRUMMOND: When we were putting together our WIRED Women cover, we knew we had to put the best possible woman on it. You immediately came to mind, and I can’t stress enough how much you nailed the assignment.

PATTI HARRISON: That’s such a nice intro. I want to argue with a bunch of it.

You do?

I was coming in today like, oh, I guess I didn’t really check to see what the interview was about. Then I had this natural creeping anxiety. What if this is some sort of ambush, like a transphobic takedown piece—and then it was going to launch into me having to define what a woman was.

Oh my God. Thank you for being here, Patti. You are our WIRED Woman.

I appreciate that so much. It’s very affirming.

Nor should you have to.

Right.

There is so much right now that just isn’t funny. How do you gesture to those more horrific realities of the news when there’s no punch line?

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Darpa.