I nearly spat out my coffee (and I told her that too) when Colleen showed up in my TikTok feed. It only took a few days to realize that I wanted to interview her. And not because she’s Canadian like me, but because she speaks to us women looking for some relatable and funny commentary on the everyday stuff at this age!
If you’re a woman over 40 on TikTok, you need to follow her! With nearly 200k followers and 5.2 million likes, she’s obviously entertaining many. She’s a masterful storyteller with heartfelt wit! And the sniff at the end of all her videos is what everyone’s just waiting for too. “Everything’s fine,” she says. Sniff.
Check out her TikTok profile here!
Not only is Colleen a comedian, but she’s also an author of several books.
Here’s her bio on Amazon:
Colleen Landry is a humour writer whose articles have appeared in Canadian Living, The Globe and Mail and The Irish Times. She is also one of the co-authors of Follow the Goose Butt, Camelia Airheart! and Take off to Tantramar. Her humour blog One Hot-Flashin’ Mama focuses on menopause and family life in the Maritimes. Colleen lives in Moncton, NB.
Colleen, it was so nice (and fun) to get to know you and learn more about what goes on behind the TikTok scenes for you. Are you always this hilarious? Well, let’s find out!
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started as a comedian on TikTok.
During Covid, I posted on Facebook some comedy videos showing people how to accessorize pajamas since we were all living in them. I was surprised by the positive response and I kept it up until people started getting dressed and venturing out. Then I ran out of ideas but it planted a seed. Fast forward a few years, as I got closer to retirement from my teaching career, I was searching for something to fill my days. I’d tried stand-up comedy a few times and it went fairly well but the shows were too late for me (9:00! Um…that’s my pre-bedtime nap on the couch time. Imagine.) not to mention it’s a lot of work and terrifying! I had an inkling that there was something else out there for me in the comedy realm. I’d experimented with TikTok and Instagram off and on for a year or two but kept giving up and starting again. Finally, I committed to posting a video/day for six months. Around April (when I was about to call it quits for the umpteenth time), I posted a video that took off—my ‘inferior’ designer had left a ball cap and a dirty sock on my coffee table and I decided to publicly shame him. Haha. Apparently, it resonated with a lot of women and my very fun comedy community was born!
For those who don’t know, you wrote two books (Miss Nackawic Meets Midlife and co-authored Follow the Goose Butt, Camelia Airheart). Can you tell us more about those? They look so darn funny.
Thank you! The Camelia Airheart series (We have four books now!) was created by two fellow teachers and I. It’s about a Canada Goose with no sense of direction because she has a faulty GPS (Goose Positioning System). So far, we’ve written three early chapter books about three of the Canadian provinces and one picture book (Take off to Tantramar). We injected lots of humor into each book (kids looooove the word ‘butt’). I also wrote a humor book, Miss Nackawic Meets Midlife, which is about finding my purpose after raising our sons. It started out as a blog over a decade ago when they had the audacity to graduate and leave the perfect nest I’d made for them in search of wider horizons. How dare they? All of those books can be found on amazon.ca and nimbus.ca (Nimbus Publishing).
I love that you can poke fun at yourself! Something more of us should do. What feeling does creating funny and relatable short clips on life as a ‘midlifer’ evoke for you? Have you always been funny?
It feels liberating and pretty wonderful. I’ve always loved making people laugh and I believe there is comedy gold in everyday truths and stories. I think women my age are tired of seeing so-called perfect lives on social media. I’d rather post videos about the funny reality of travel, marriage, motherhood, aging etc. With age, comes the freedom to not care as much what people think and that makes it easier to poke fun at myself—self-deprecating humor is my go-to.
It may be too difficult to choose, but do you have a favorite clip/series of clips (i,e. Your trip to Italy!) you’ve done?
I’m partial to the interior designer/home décor clips that got this whole thing started but I was happy to branch out and create different content while on vacation. I was thrilled that my followers enjoyed them. I also like doing the pretend phone calls to my grown sons. There’s always a kernel of truth in my videos but I love adding a dollop of exaggeration and delusion.
As an aging lover of lighthearted good feel fiction genre myself, could you be a little open with the label “HenLit”? After all, we are older. Smarter. And still fun.
Hen lit is a new term to me but I’m a fan of having a niche market for older, wiser and fun middle-aged women that we are. We finally have time to read and having a category just for us makes it easier and gives us a sense of belonging and community…which we also have time for now!
Tell us what a typical day looks like especially when it comes to entertaining all your fans? (Please answer this one! LOL) And how do you come up with your material?
I just retired from teaching so this is the first time I’ve not been working every day—I’m still in the early stages of creating a new routine and I’m loving every second of it. In terms of entertaining my (very funny and supportive) followers, I post a video every day, usually in the morning. If I have ideas, I might make a few videos in one day so I have a few in the pipeline. I’m always thinking of content and ideas often come to me when I’m out for a walk so I hurry home and scratch them down. Also, I secretly use my friends as guinea pigs (shhhh….) and if I make them laugh, I make a note of it and turn it into a video. My ideas all stem from everyday annoyances and observations.
Besides getting lost in creating funny videos, what else do you love to do?
I write a monthly humor column for saltwire.com so I’m always tinkering at that—my goal is to compile all of my columns into a book one day. A perfect day is filled with coffee, a good book, writing, long walks and yoga. I love going out for lunch/coffee/wine with friends or to a movie with my inferior designer where we share popcorn and M&Ms (He says I eat more than half. Not true). No day is complete without falling asleep on the couch watching Netflix. When I finally drag myself to bed, the piece de resistance is reading four pages of my book before nodding off again. As you can see, I’m very boring.
Who are some of your favorite authors/comedians and why?
Regarding authors, I’m partial to David Sedaris and Gary Janetti—their writing makes me laugh out loud. I still say Erma Bombeck’s humor writing holds up. When it comes to comedians, I’m a big Ellen fan. John Mulaney is another favorite—he’s a brilliant writer and I love his delivery. Leanne Morgan is hilarious and an inspiration—her rise from a stay-at-home mom to a world class comedian is the stuff dreams are made of. Sebastian Maniscalco’s annoyed diatribes fill me with joy too. So many funny comedians out there!
Any advice you’d like to give to aspiring Tik Tokers in the comedy world these days?
Let’s start by saying never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be on TikTok much less giving advice about it. The internet is a mostly wonderful thing, isn’t it? I guess I’d suggest finding the one you really want to share with others and then persist. I had tried to break into TikTok and Instagram a few times and had no luck until one of my videos took off. There is room for all kinds of content so simply be authentic and put yourself out there without worrying about the outcome too much.
For your loyal fans, is there anything in the pipeline you can tell us about?
My fans certainly are loyal…and supportive…and very funny! They crack me up and they feel like friends at this point. It thrills me (more than it should if I’m honest) to announce that I’ll soon be having merch available! I hope they will love it (and buy it so I can pay for my trip to Paris and Italy… and the roof that I didn’t even want. Whatever.)
Do you think there’ll ever be a day when you’ll want to stop creating Tik Tok videos and why?
I do sometimes wonder (fret, panic, worry) that I’ll run out of material but so far, the ideas are flowing. For now, I’m having fun with it and I want to stay connected with my funny followers so I hope to continue making videos they enjoy. If my content leads to something else, I’ll be open to that as well. My main goal is to create a community that likes to laugh with (at?) me and I’ll do that any way I can. I’m having the time of my life.
You can connect with Colleen and find out more about her here on Linktr.ee.
