How a Sizzling Tub Tragedy Formed Rosebud Baker’s Darkish Sense of Humor (Unique)

Slapstick comedian and Saturday Evening Reside author Rosebud Baker is having a serious second, with the discharge of her second Netflix particular, The Mom Lode.

“Life’s been busy currently, to say the least,” laughs Baker, who additionally writes for SNL‘s Weekend Replace, and just lately attended the present’s fiftieth anniversary celebration occasions. However, she’s taking all of it in stride.

“I am very proud of how the particular got here out,” Baker says, which is centered round being pregnant and motherhood. “However, I do know that with any particular I make, I do not prefer it six months later. So I am simply having fun with this time that I do prefer it.”

The Mom Lode — which got here out on Feb. 18 — was filmed in two elements: one the place Baker was pregnant and one other after her the beginning of her daughter. Within the particular, she discusses subjects about being pregnant, miscarriage, being a reluctant mother, and (principally) embracing the messiness of all of it.

Baker explains that despite the fact that she loves being a mother, she felt compelled to return to her job six weeks after giving beginning.

“It was actually vital to me to get again to work,” she says. “My mother was a painter and an artist however had 5 children by the point I used to be 10, and it was unattainable for her to search out the time to do it. So it was aways vital for me to maintain working.”

Baker, who was raised outdoors of D.C. along with her siblings, had a grandfather in politics. James Baker labored as chief of workers to Ronald Reagan earlier than later turning into secretary of the treasury.

In 2002, tragedy struck her household when her youthful sister Virginia Graeme, then 7, was killed throughout a scorching tub drowning incident that made nationwide information. Graeme’s physique received trapped underwater by the highly effective drain suction on the backside of the new tub, and the accident was pivotal within the passing of the 2007 Virginia Graeme regulation, which required drain covers and pump valve releases on public swimming pools throughout the nation.

For Baker, the incident modified her life in myriad methods and positively impacted her humorousness.

“I believe having an early expertise with dying, it does definitely offer you a darker humorousness,” she explains. “A minimum of it did for me. As a result of once you lose a cherished one, all the things feels so absurd, and your actual life feels so absurd, and to me, that struck me as humorous. And I believe ever since then, it is like if it is not just a little bit unhappy, it is not likely humorous to me.”

Nonetheless, she credit working at Saturday Evening Reside with getting her to see the enjoyment in goofy issues, too.

“It has broadened my humorousness in that approach, as a result of I had such a darkish humorousness strolling in there, and the humor there’s so foolish and enjoyable that it made me go, oh yeah, one thing can simply be foolish,” she says. “You may actually enjoy that too.”

As for motherhood, she’s discovered the foolish in it as properly, however admits she was scared to dying of parenthood.

“The quantity of terror that I felt going into being pregnant and being a mother was subsequent stage,” she shares. “And I did need to seize that within the particular, as a result of I believe that there are lots of people which can be able to be mothers, or who spend their complete lives imagining being moms. And I used to be not one among them. So I wished to speak from that perspective.”

Subsequent up for Baker? She’s about to embark on a comedy tour, and probably do one other season on SNL.

“We all the time have to attend and see,” she says of not realizing if she’ll be invited again subsequent season.

“It’s extremely intimidating!” she admits of the job. “It is nonetheless intimidating. It is a type of locations the place it would not matter how lengthy I have been there, I stroll in there daily going, ‘You’ve got to convey your funniest self into this constructing daily,’ despite the fact that you are feeling much less humorous than everybody who’s ever walked by these doorways.”

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The Mom Lode is now streaming on Netflix.