“When somebody hits it in their 50s, there's an aura of gratitude and joy and humility that's precious. It doesn't happen when you hit it at the age of 22.”
Dinner’s on Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson · Food & Beverage · October 2026
Lorre is talking about a stand-up comedian called Leanne he made a show with, after visiting her and her family in Knoxville. He says she spent 15 or 20 years on a hard road to get where she is. At 22, he adds, you may think success is simply supposed to happen and always will.
Transcript
She's amazing. She's truly amazing. And one of those wonderfully rare stand-up comedians who isn't threatened by other people's words. She's not threatened by it. She comes to the whole thing with gratitude. And, you know, she's the real deal. Yeah. She knows how to make people laugh.
Did you feel secure going into that relationship? Did you... Yeah.
I got to spend time with her and her family. I went to Knoxville and hung out with them. When somebody hits it in their 50s, there's an aura of gratitude and joy and humility that's precious. It doesn't happen when you hit it at the age of 22. You may think this is supposed to happen. It's always going to happen. I'm forever blessed by God. I could see why you'd think that, but no. And when somebody like Leanne comes along who really hard, it's 15, 20 years of hard road to get to where she got. Did you happen to see the documentary about Steve Martin? It was honestly. I had no idea. But I don't know why I was surprised, but the years and years of experimentation, trying different things, trying to find his voice. It was really, it was reassuring to know that I completely agree. Whatever the medium is,
we all have our own journey.
There's a journey to it, yeah.
Yeah, and it's so different from an outside perspective. I mean, even just having this conversation with you today, like hearing you elaborate on, you know, your journey and how you got to where you are today, like, it's so different from how I vision, how I see it. And it is reassuring to know that, you know, we all have our ups and downs, our struggles, and it's just very encouraging to see that with all that, you can end up in a place where, like, where you are now with a memoir that is so informative and entertaining, and a show that is so wonderfully realized and so different than anything you've done before, and you are still growing and working on yourself as an artist. I think it's really inspiring. Thank you. Yeah, you include three pilot scripts in your book, which I love. I told you this yesterday when I saw you. You include the pilot of Kaminsky Method, Big Bang Theory, and of Two and a Half Men. And Big Bang Theory, you preface it by saying, I'm even embarrassed to include this second. Draft. There's so many things I would change in it. And I love your annotations and the margins of all these scripts, but they're written more in Big Bang Theory and they're X's and there's things like we had to cut this, this didn't work. I'm sorry about this. So many apologies to that whole thing. And it's just, it surprises me that what ended up being your most long-running success thus far, you never know, was something that started with still so much uncertainty even after a second chance.
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