‘Together, Together’s’ Patti Harrison Never Expected to Be a Romantic Comedy Star

Patti Harrison is perhaps the funniest girl on the planet. A breakout of the New York alt-comedy scene known for her nasty, self-deprecating humor and bizarre characters, she’s plunged headfirst into television in the past few years, writing on raunchy hits like Netflix’s Big Mouth and I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson (on which she also appears) and landing scene-stealing supporting roles on Hulu’s Shrill and Showtime’s Ziwe. And in 2021, she became the first transgender performer to voice a Disney animated character, as Tail Chief in the Oscar-nominated Raya and the Last Dragon.

In Nikole Beckwith’s indie dramedy Together, Together, Harrison takes on her first lead film role, playing an entirely different type of woman: grounded, subtle, restrained. For her performance as Anna, a 20-something who offers to be a surrogate mother for father-to-be Matt (Ed Helms), she’s nominated for best lead actress at the Independent Spirit Awards, her first time recognized as an actress at a major awards ceremony. When the director called her about her nomination, Harrison — who’d been texting Beckwith the night before to console her about a friend in the hospital — thought she was about to receive significantly graver news. “I get a call from her at, like, 7 a.m. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, her friend died,’ ” she recalls. “I was letting it ring. I was emotionally preparing, like, ‘OK, Patti, get ready to show up for this bitch.’ I was so scared. And then I picked up the phone, and she said in a very quiet voice, ‘So, did you hear the news?’ Like, your friend died? I didn’t say that.”

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Harrison began considering comedy as a career in college, after joining an improv team as a student at Ohio University. But instead of following her peers to Chicago post-grad for formal comedy training at The Second City or I.O. (formerly Improv Olympic), Harrison quit school, came out as trans and moved back into her childhood bedroom for two years. “[I] chewed on that for a little bit,” she says. “And then I slayed for two years in my room, peeing in bottles.” From there, she moved to New York, where several years of struggle were to follow before ascending the ranks of the comedy scene.

Harrison tells THR about first receiving the script through her agent. “The logline was like, ‘a 20-something-year-old girl becomes a surrogate for a 40-something-year-old man, and their relationship unfurls from there.’ I was like, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, this sounds like shit,’ ” she says. “I was worried it was going to be a shitty rom-com where an older man bags the young girl, and that’s it. But after reading Beckwith’s screenplay, Harrison quickly changed her mind. “The script, as I read it, really addressed a lot of my expectations around it. It did it in a really sweet way, too, which I was very intrigued by. I met with Nikole, and essentially it felt like a date, in that we went to Intelligentsia and sat at this shitty table that was flopping everywhere. We just talked forever. She’s so rad.”

Still, Harrison had reservations about taking on such a new type of role: “In the original script, there was a lot of crying. I was like, ‘I’m gonna need a tear stick, bitch.’ I’ve never done that before. I’m not, like, a trained actor.” She cites both her co-star and director as immensely helpful: “[Ed] was a great scene partner [and made me] not afraid to ask questions. [Nikole] was so approachable the whole time and went out of her way to make sure we felt good about what was happening. Or, if we had any ideas about the scene, she was always excited. And that was something she laid down from the start: ‘I really like to collaborate. It’s one of the reasons why I do it.’ I was, of course, so nervous the whole time. I kept checking in with her, being like, ‘So, the tone of this is … it’s grounded. Right?’ “

At the end of our conversation, I ask Harrison about who she’d like to thank were she to win come the Indie Spirits. She responds: “Bebe Rexha. I love Rudy Giuliani — I’m thankful to him for all he’s done for me in my life. The Kratts brothers from Kratts’ Creatures. The little puppet from Zoboomafoo. Mussolini.”

This story first appeared in the March 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.