Sarah Lowe, Rebekka Johnson & Kimmy GatewoodTalking with The Apple Sisters is like being invited to sit with the cool kids at lunch; I started geeking out as soon as I arrived. The dynamic trio of Kimmy Gatewood (Cora Apple), Rebekka Johnson (Candy Apple), and Sarah Lowe (Seedy Apple) were in the midst of one of their epic all-day work sessions. After rattling off an agenda that included writing their latest podcast, finessing their Thanksgiving show, working on a pilot presentation, revamping the Christmas show, shooting a music video, and composing for their next album, Rebekka cheerily pronounced, “That’s all on the docket today.” These are seriously the hardest working gals in comedy.
The debris from their morning was scattered throughout Kimmy’s dining room: two laptops, half-filled coffee mugs, a bag of jelly beans, and a french press the size of a Super Big Gulp. Whether it’s from their superhero endurance or a ton of caffeine and sugar, they were fresh and feisty as we discussed their upcoming Thanks for Stuffing show, and their creative process.
Magnolia Scotch (MS): How did you all meet?
Kimmy Gatewood (KG): We formed the Apple Sisters on February 14, 2007, so this year will be our 5-year anniversary. We were all performing at the People’s Improv Theatre in New York. Somebody suggested that Rebekka and I do a show together, but Rebekka was already working on a show with Sarah, so she thought, why don’t we all meet and see if we can do a show together.
KG: There was a war, we were in a depression of some sort. You realize that the parallels are so strong.
RJ: We wrote a new show every month for 14 months, so you need new material. You just start looking at the connections.
Sarah Lowe (SL): Originally, we thought we would just host a variety style show where we would get to do stuff but we would have friends come in. When we did that, people said, “You don’t need the extra bits, you guys are really funny with what you’re doing on your own,” and we thought, alright, let’s try that. It was almost a gift. We can really play with what’s happening in this day and age, because we have on our pretty dresses and our 1940s accents.
KG: You can capture satire in the 1940s so much easier then hitting it over the head today. It’s always 1940 in our world, so we can really satirize anything.
MS: What’s the writing process like? I see it happening right now…
KG: Snacks.
RJ: Usually 2-3 pots of coffee. No matter where we are.
SL: We go through buckets.
KG: We’ll brainstorm, we’ll outline, we’ll pitch songs, kind of like a writer’s room would for a sitcom, and then we decide what we want and what the story is and then split it up, write it, discuss, rewrite, discuss, rewrite again, and we do a lot of that over Google Docs and Skype. For an old timey show, we have the most technologically advanced writing process.
MS: Speaking of savvy, tell me a bit about how you devised your character…
A large garbage truck rumbles by, making conversation almost impossible.
KG: Sorry, it’s 1 p.m.
RJ: In three hours, it’s wine time!
MS: I like the sound of wine time!
SL: If left to our own devices, we would totally be like, “Bloody Marys, everyone?” But we know ourselves well enough to know that we literally have to set a time. We thought, 4 p.m. sounds reasonable because, by then, we’ve worked really hard up until that point.
KG: Because we start at 8:30-9:30 a.m. —
RJ: And then we go until midnight or 1 a.m. If we start at 9 a.m….
MS: It would go downhill.
RJ: Yeah. Oh, you asked us how we came up with our characters before the crazy trash can truck. Mine is inspired by Rosie the Riveter, but because she’s a feminist icon, we take it a step further and make her a closeted lesbian.
MS: But she does have a husband named ‘Cheryl.’
RJ: He’s at war. It’s like when nerds say they have a girlfriend in Canada.
SL: Some of the first jokes that we ever wrote were about our characters. For the first show, everyone’s in on the idea that my boyfriend’s going to ask me to marry him, and I’m so excited about it. But it turns out to be an April Fool’s joke. So, after that, I just started to date God.
MS: He’s much more steady.
SL: He’s very good to me.
KG: I’m Cora, who’s kind of like a Marilyn Monroe, dumb, sexy, blond type, mostly because I have blond hair.
RJ: No, it’s because you’re sexy! When we started, we got a bunch of guys to rate us from 1 to 10 and Kimmy got the highest rating, so she got the sexy character. I got the lowest, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll be the butch lesbian, and…’
SL: I’ll just fall right in the middle. That way I don’t have to be touched.
RJ: The pope likes Sarah.
KG: What’s fun is we got to cast ourselves and write parts for ourselves, and I feel so lucky that we get to play it on our own terms.
SL: There are elements of us in them. But also not. Kimmy’s actually the brain of all our efforts. She’s…
RJ: She’s the braintrust.
SL: She gets us out of situations, which is what Cora, even though she’s dumb, can do. And Rebekka likes to play pranks, although she’s not a lesbian. She’s a happily married woman.
KG: It’s been great seeing how Seedy’s character represents the Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmanns of the world. And it’s been so fun to have that character as one of our sisters that we can play off of when we perform.
MS: You guys just always seem to be one beat ahead.
KG: Oh yeah, one beat ahead. In 1944.
RJ: We still need to write a song where we each get a million dollars…
SL: In one show, we wrote that we all twisted our ankles, and right after the show, Rebekka literally twisted her ankle. And then, there was a show where I was to wear an eye patch…
RJ: She’s the pirate for the Lord.
SL: …And I actually poked my eye really badly.
KG: She poked her eye out with a stick (laughs).
SL: I wasn’t that dumb … but I was. Bad depth perception.
RJ: During that show, it was really weird, because people said, “So that’s why you wrote that into the show,” and we were like, “No.”
SL: We keep having this happen and saying we need to write our million dollar song, but…
RJ: I think we’re not ready to be millionaires. I would probably just spend it frivolously. I have to be a little more fiscally responsible.
KG: It’d have to be in 1940s dollars. It’s worth a lot more then.
MS: What do you guys have coming up for the Thanks for Stuffing show?
KG: This show is something we started in 2007 and revamped.
SL: It’s so fun for us because we get to do jokes you can only do this time of year.
RJ: With the podcast, we used to write our stuff all together, but now what’s fun is we each take a song and come up with a theme. It’s a new fun incubation process. We’re taking one old song and doing a twenty minute podcast. And we’re writing all these new bits that can translate onto the stage. Like we’re recording our Christmas podcast tomorrow, and we’ll take some of the bits we wrote for that and put it in our Christmas show. It’s a fun way to get new jokes.
MS: Recycle, reuse.
KG: Recycle, reuse, revamp!
RJ: It’s a very green show.
MS: Tell me a little bit about the new album. Is it the same label?
KG: We’re hoping to release the album in March right after our 5-year anniversary. We’re going to record it in January.
RJ: We’re actually independent.
KG: If it inspires others, we do everything ourselves. We’re lucky to pick up awesome people along the way who just want to be a part of it and we’re so thankful for them, but everything we do is completely independent.
SL: My mom is a casting director and at workshops, she’ll bring in our postcards and say, “If you are trying to make it, one of the best things you can do for yourself is create your own show, create your own way to get yourself work. And then she’ll show our postcard. And this is one of the ways my daughter’s doing it.” The show came out of us wanting to do a show together because we want to be on stage all of the time, but also we wanted to create work for ourselves. It just happens that this has become something that we can’t get enough of and would gladly have this be our only job for the rest of our lives. We constantly keep it going.
KG: There’s been no other place where I’ve been able to use all of my talents, even craft talents I didn’t know I had, like becoming a better dancer, learning how to write music better, communicate with musicians better, stuff like that. I feel like this is the best thing ever. In a town where everyone says no, everything goes here.
Check out the Apple Sisters’ Thanks for Stuffing show this coming Monday, November 14th at the Elephant Lab Lillian Theatre. You can also follow The Apple Sisters on Twitter and *Like* them on Facebook.
