“Every now and then, you get to see a legend at the absolute peak of their game,” a voice booms at the start of Robby Hoffman’s Netflix special, Wake Up, as she’s introduced to the stage. That’s high praise—especially since the voice belongs to top US comedian John Mulaney, who directed the special and clearly believes this 36-year-old New Yorker is one of the hottest talents around.
He’s not alone. Over the past year, Hoffman’s star has risen at an incredible pace. She’s currently on TV in Rooster, a college campus comedy starring Steve Carell, and in the fifth season of the critically acclaimed sitcom Hacks. This is only her second season playing talent agency assistant Randi, but last year the role earned her an Emmy nomination.
“Last week, I was a Hassidic Lubavitch Jew living in Crown Heights, New York,” was Hoffman’s first line as Randi. “Now I’m in LA, I’m gay and probably an atheist.” Hoffman’s own life has taken a similar turn after being thrust into the spotlight. Randi—a role created for her by writers Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky, drawing on Hoffman’s own background—has been “a life-changing part,” she says on a video call from the Los Angeles home she shares with her wife, reality TV star Gabby Windey. And meeting Carell, one of her childhood heroes, on the set of Rooster was “really good. I mean, he’s a doll.”
Hoffman herself seems like a bit of a doll too, which might surprise those who’ve seen her comedy sets, where she takes on a rude, constantly annoyed persona. Wake Up includes jokes about “disgusting” women (“always the hottest ones are the sickest”) and abortion (“we raise the age of abortion till 10, we got a lot of well-behaved kids on our hands”). Not to mention the jokes about pedophilia.
But even though her punchlines make some audience members uncomfortable, “I just don’t get to choose my thoughts,” the comedian says. “I’m just sharing them with you. I wish I didn’t know some of these things. I truly wish pedophilia wasn’t something I was introduced to or heard about. I think it’s more fair that I joke about everything, you know?”
Although Hoffman insists she isn’t trying to offend (“I do think a lot of my jokes are misinterpreted”), she also doesn’t think being offended is the worst thing: “Being poor is.” She speaks from experience: she grew up in a family that relied on welfare, the seventh of 10 children.
In her early years, she lived in Brooklyn, where her parents were part of what they’d call a Hassidic Jewish community and what she’s described in her comedy as a cult. “But I’m also loose about what’s a cult,” she says. “I’d definitely say it was a fanatic religious sect.” She hasn’t spoken to her father since her early 20s, and even before that, he hadn’t been a big part of her life for some time. Her mother divorced him and moved back to her native Montreal with the children when Hoffman was in grade school, sometime between ages five and 11 (she’s fuzzy on the exact timing).
Home life in Montreal was chaotic, living in a house that was “so packed with so many people,” Hoffman says. She would often get into physical fights with her brothers and “cried every single day… sometimes I was kicking and screaming on the floor.” She got out as soon as she could, at 17, when she started renting her own place and took on a part-time job to support herself through Cégep, a type of pre-university program.A type of college that’s unique to Quebec. After that, she says, “I almost stopped crying forever. It takes so much for me to cry now.” Despite the challenges, Hoffman says her childhood was “somewhat” stable, thanks to her mother, who woke up at 5:30 a.m. every day to cook, clean, and take care of her kids. Even though she was “emotionally absent,” she was “definitely physically present, which is incredible,” Hoffman says. “No matter what, she was there.” Today, Hoffman helps her family by using half of her earnings to support her siblings and her mother.
The comedian often calls women—including herself and her mother—”bitches” as part of her rough onstage persona, and that carries over into our call, where she’s otherwise much calmer and more thoughtful. Sure, she doesn’t follow the typical Hollywood script of fake self-deprecation. Instead, she unapologetically backs herself and often talks about how great it is to be rich. But you get the sense that this is a deliberate awkwardness, a parody of convention rather than plain rudeness.
“I come in hot,” Hoffman admits—especially on stage. But she’s not pretending to be something she’s not, unlike, she says, supposedly “kind and nice” figures like Will Smith, who was banned from the Oscars after slapping comedian Chris Rock, or Ellen DeGeneres, whose talk show was canceled after allegations that junior staff were bullied. Off stage, “you’ll see that I’m a delight,” she says. I can’t argue with that—though I can’t actually see her, since she refused to turn on her camera for our call, saying she just woke up after traveling back from her latest tour date.
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‘I feel so, so lucky to have met her’ … with her wife, Gabby Windey. Photograph: Cindy Ord/VF26/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
Hoffman is endearingly grateful for her success. “Am I not living one of the greatest lives you’ve heard about?” she said during her recent appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “I really do feel that,” she says. When she started out in comedy, pursuing a career with no promise of financial stability felt like “such a risk.” “It’s becoming harder and harder to go from no money to money, so when one of us makes it, it always feels miraculous.”
She wishes it weren’t so miraculous—Hoffman is a Bernie Sanders supporter and believes “everybody’s entitled to dignity.” She resents being held up as someone who “made it” out of poverty through talent and determination. “You shouldn’t have to be this special, you shouldn’t have to be this talented,” she says. (I told you, she backs herself.) Throughout her teenage years, she was “so sick of being poor,” so she focused on working hard at the Jewish private school where her grandfather helped her win a scholarship, then pursued a degree in accounting. She briefly worked for the consulting firm KPMG after finishing her degree at McGill University in Montreal, before swapping accounting for comedy and TV writing.
“Comedy was thrust upon me, like Moses or something,” she says. (She makes several references to religion and God in our conversation, though these days her only belief is that “there’s something larger than us.”) She was soon rewarded for following her calling, winning a daytime Emmy in 2019 as a writer on the children’s TV series Odd Squad and recording her first standup comedy special, I’m Nervous, that same year.
By the time she joined the cast of Hacks, she had built a devoted following—not just through her standup, but also through the podcast she co-hosted with comedian Rachel Kaly, Too Far, and her high-profile relationship with Windey. The pair have become darlings of theThe LGBTQ+ community shared images of their 20-minute wedding ceremony all over the internet after they got married in Las Vegas last year. The whole event had a stylish, rebellious feel, including Windey’s Instagram announcement post captioned: “Husband and wife!!”
Even though Hoffman identifies as a woman, she has had top surgery—a breast removal procedure usually associated with transgender men and non-binary people. Using they/them pronouns “would have been a viable option for a person like me,” she tells the audience in a set she recorded for Netflix’s Verified Stand-Up series, before joking at length about the non-binary community.
She’s gentler on the topic when we discuss it, though she stands by her jokes (“If I can’t talk about it, who can? It’s crazy. You’re only going to let Joe Rogan talk about this shit?”). She says she respects her non-binary friends and uses their chosen pronouns (“of course”); when it comes to her own identity, she’s “definitely in a genderqueer space.” She’s mostly happy being a woman, although “something is off,” she says, because “most girls don’t want to cut their tits off.” For her, the decision to have surgery came down to preferring a “boyish physical appearance. I’m a lot more comfortable this way.”
When she feels it’s important, Hoffman isn’t afraid to speak out, as she did in 2023 when the Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced a strike to get higher pay for writers, better job security, and stricter rules on artificial intelligence. At the time, the WGA said major studios’ behavior had “created a gig economy” that risked turning writing into an “entirely freelance” profession. Hoffman questioned that decision after looking through the union’s financial statements with her accountant’s eye.
“I said: hey, hey, hey, have you sued? Why aren’t we? We should be paying for lawyers and fighting every step of the way. The idea of going on strike before we’ve tried all other legal options really felt like a slap in the face.”
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With Megan Stalter and Paul W Downs in Hacks. Photograph: Sky
Months into the strike, WGA members started paying attention to her view. “I had so many people, hundreds of people in my DMs, saying: hey, what were you talking about? Or where can I see this information?” But her questions weren’t well received at the WGA’s first meeting—she was booed—and she now says that “maybe my timing was autistic and off.”
Hoffman has described herself as autistic before, but she doesn’t have an official diagnosis. “But I will say that my wife and I watch Love on the Spectrum, and she feels like she understands me better with each episode.”
Toward the end of our call, I hear Windey’s distinctive vocal fry on the line; she’s come to tell Hoffman there’s avocado toast and orange juice ready for breakfast. “That is so nice, love. Thank you,” Hoffman says, her voice softening into a more tender tone.
The comedian had been single for a while before she met Windey three years ago outside a bar in LA. “It was a small bar, but it was having a dyke night and I missed most of it because I was out doing standup,” Hoffman says. “But I went at the end to meet a friend, and people were kind of leaving. And I said: let’s bum a ciggy.” So she and her friend went outside, where Windey was waiting for an Uber: “I met my match.”
After some chatting, “I said: listen, I’m not going to beat around the bush—pun intended at the dyke bar—but I gotta get your number,” Hoffman recalls. It must have been surprising to see the former star of The Bachelorette, who had identified as straight before meeting Hoffman, at a lesbian night, I say. “She said she was exploring,” Hoffman says.She laughs and says, “I’ve heard that one before.” Then she adds, “I feel so, so lucky to have met her. We love being together. We love living together. We’re not having kids – she is my family. She is my life and I am hers, and we love it.” That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. “We’re not going to be in a relationship where we never hurt each other’s feelings,” she explains. “And that’s okay. Let’s deal with it.”
Hoffman’s refreshing honesty is likely a big reason why audiences can’t get enough of her. She’s added 10 more dates to her tour and has a TV show in the works. “All of us are going to live a life of happiness and pain and suffering and joy and all of it,” she says. “I just don’t think it’s my job to spare anyone from anything.” So what does she see as her job? “My job is just to be me. I’m trying to allow myself to be as ‘me’ as possible.” Hacks is available in the UK on Sky Atlantic and Now.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the quote and the premise of Robby Hoffmans controversial comedy style
BeginnerLevel Questions
Q Who is Robby Hoffman
A Shes a Canadian comedian and writer known for her brutally honest often shocking standup She grew up in a strict Hasidic Jewish community in Montreal and later left to pursue comedy
Q What does she mean by Being offended isnt the worst thing Being poor is
A Shes saying that while words or jokes might hurt your feelings that pain is temporary Growing up in poverty she experienced real lasting hardship She believes that actual material suffering is far worse than someone saying something you dont like
Q Is she saying its okay to be offensive
A Not exactly Shes arguing that the fear of offending people has become more important to society than solving real problems like poverty She thinks we should be tougher about taking a joke and focus more on fixing serious issues
Q Why is this quote so controversial
A Because it directly challenges the modern idea that emotional safety is the highest priority Many people believe that preventing offense is a moral duty Hoffmans quote suggests that this focus is a luxury that poor people cant afford
Q Is this just a mean or edgy joke
A Its a joke but its also a core part of her philosophy She uses her own life storygrowing up poor in a strict religious communityas evidence Shes not just being mean shes making a point about priorities
AdvancedLevel Questions
Q How does her background in a Hasidic community shape this point of view
A In that community life was about survival and strict rules There was no room for complaining about microaggressions or hurt feelings When she left she saw the outside world obsessing over being offended which felt absurd to her compared to the real suffering she experienced
Q Whats the main criticism of her poverty vs offense argument
