William Peace University grad returns to Raleigh comedy scene

The Peace College graduate, who headlines Goodnights Comedy Club in Raleigh this weekend, moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to pursue a career in show business.

Posted 2:20 p.m. Aug 9, 2018 — Updated 2:20 p.m. Aug 9, 2018

Tony Castleberry

RALEIGH, N.C. — People from southern states who make it big sometimes don’t make it back home after they get a taste of life in Los Angeles or New York.

Charlotte-born, Belmont-raised Fortune Feimster not only comes back to North Carolina whenever she gets the chance, but she also bought a place in Belmont for when she wants to escape life in LA.

“It’s somewhere I enjoy being or I wouldn’t have purchased something there,” Feimster said of her home state during a Tuesday afternoon phone interview.

The William Peace University graduate, who headlines Goodnights Comedy Club in Raleigh this weekend, moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to pursue a career in show business. Feimster got her start in comedy with improvisation and trained with The Groundlings beginning in 2005.

Chelsea Handler gave Feimster one of her big breaks by making Feimster a regular on the wildly popular E! talk show Chelsea Lately, and Feimster has been working steadily in television and movies ever since. 2 Broke Girls, Workaholics, Glee and The Mindy Project are just a few of the hit shows in which Feimster has appeared.

In addition to her on-screen and writing success, Feimster and I discussed the love she feels from audience members at North Carolina venues, working with Tina Fey, why she said she’ll most likely always love doing stand-up and more.

Enjoy the interview, follow Feimster on Twitter and don’t forget The Best Tweet I Can Find in Five Minutes at the end.

Tony Castleberry: Do you enjoy coming back to North Carolina?

Fortune Feimster: For sure. I love it back home. I bought a place in my hometown so it’s nice to go back and relax whenever I can. It’s somewhere I enjoy being or I wouldn’t have purchased something there.

Also, getting to perform when I come home is super cool because people there are so nice to me and I also feel like they understand where I’m coming from. They understand my stories and the type of people I’m talking about. My view of the world is very familiar to them and I also make fun of my family in front of them and people seem to enjoy that.

TC: [laughs] Some people move away from their hometown and get established in Los Angeles or New York and they never come back. I’m glad that isn’t the case with you.

FF: Yeah, it’s a big part of who I am. Growing up, I was really close with my family and we always had wonderful friends and family friends. It’s a place that always meant a lot to me.

I think when you’re young, you’re just like, “I wanna get outta here. It’s so small and I want to see the world.” Now that I’m in the big city, I think I appreciate it more. I appreciate manners and people being nice to each other and getting to have some land and enjoy trees and things like that.

TC: There are so many things in your career you can be proud of. Are there any that maybe stand out more than others?

FF: One of the things I’m proudest of is I sold a TV pilot with Tina Fey. We sold it to ABC a couple years ago and filmed it for them. It was about me and my family. It’s loosely based on us. It’s called Family Fortune.

Annie Potts played my mom and John Carroll Lynch played my dad. It was just such sort of a surreal experience because the characters names were actually my parents’ names. It was crazy seeing my name over the production offices and scripts. It was the first time I felt like I’d really made it.

Even though it didn’t move forward after we shot the pilot, just getting that experience was so cool and it ended up leading me to The Mindy Project so something positive came out of it. That definitely was a big one for me.

Getting Chelsea Lately was also a turning point for me because it was my first big TV job. It opened up a lot of doors for me. I’m always very fond of that opportunity.

TC: Chelsea’s show is where I first saw you and got to know your comedy. She did that for a lot of comedians. She was great that way, wasn’t she?

FF: She put a lot of people on TV that other people weren’t putting on TV. She kind of saw something in us that was quirky and different. That was a time when being different was not necessarily a plus. Now it’s considered a lot more positive.

TC: You’ve had success acting and writing for TV and film. I know you can’t predict the future, but do you think you’ll always want to do stand-up?

FF: Oh yeah. I started in improv and that kind of morphed into stand-up, and those are the places where I really learned how to do comedy and connect with an audience. It’s probably my first love, stand-up and improv.

I do stand-up whenever I can because I love to travel and I meet so many fans and I feel like other actors don’t get that opportunity to really be face to face with people who watch their things. There’s just something really cool about meeting people who are so nice and say, “Our family was going through a tough time and we watched your show and it got us laughing.”

It means a lot to know that we can give people a break here and there.

I feel like I’ve been pretty lucky with audiences. People have been super duper nice to me. Of course, you get things here and there, but for the most part, people seem to be rooting me on and they want the best for me. I want the best for people too. I believe you get what you put out and I really try to focus on putting out more positive stuff in the world. I’m lucky that I get a lot of positive things back in return.

Here it is, The Best Tweet I Can Find in Five Minutes:

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