“Feeling cool, calm, and collected about this,” tweets Abbi Jacobson, about her upcoming book. However, the title, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff (Grand Central, Oct.) hints at the opposite. Whatever it is, Jacobson (who with her partner in biting comedy, Ilana Glazer, is a cocreator, executive producer, and star of Comedy Central’s critically acclaimed hit Broad City) will parse it out in conversation with comedian Chris Gethard this afternoon.
Jacobson is thrilled to meet up again with her mentor. “Gethard was one of my most influential teachers when I was coming up in comedy,” she says. “He taught me improv. He’s a really talented and special guy, and I have no idea what we’re going to talk about. I imagine we’ll talk about solo road trips and anxiety and comedy, and trying to make your own work as best you can.”
I Might Regret This was born during a solo drive she made from New York City to L.A. “I was feeling really overwhelmed with work,” she explains. “My life was feeling really unbalanced, and I needed a shift. I found myself with a few weeks in between the end of editing Broad City and when I had to be in L.A. for a new project. I made a plan to skip town for a beat, and try and find some space.”
Ironically, instead of calm and silence, she found her head crowded with random thoughts. “I have a hard time not creating projects out of everything, so even my attempt to try and get away from work for a moment turned into work,” she says. “I’d been wanting to try my hand at longer-form writing for a while, and this felt like a perfect opportunity to dive into that and illustrate things along the way.
“I’m always looking for ways to combine the different mediums I like working in,” she adds. “The resulting collection is ultimately about me exploring me and my surroundings, and sharing it—which is most of what I tend to try and do these days. This goes a bit deeper, though, more personal. It crosses between memoir, travel essays, and sketchbook.”
Jacobson has created two coloring books, Color This Book: New York City and Color This Book: San Francisco, for Chronicle, and wrote and illustrated Carry This Book (2016), which looks at the world through the contents of what people, both real and imagined, carry in purses, pockets, and other holders of stuff.
And no, she did not stop off at any Phish or other jam bands along her route. Thanks for asking.