“I Have To Be Like The Main Character In A Zadie Smith Novel”: Leo Reich On Documenting The Rigmarole Of His 20s In It Gets Worse

Will Darren Aronofsky call? Which famous person should he sleep with next? Will there be a second series? There are many questions that come with being TV and comedy’s shiny new It boy. Thanks to his perfectly pitched, hilarious debut small-screen creation It Gets Worse, those are the very junctions Leo Reich finds himself at. Thankfully, he’s got his favourite comedian Simon Amstell on hand to talk it through.

“You’re about to become at least somewhat famous,” Simon Amstell tells Leo Reich. “Well, I don’t know that that’s necessarily [true],” Reich ponders. “I’ve said ‘somewhat’; you can take ‘somewhat?’” Amstell proffers. If anything, Amstell’s prediction is a conservative one. Reich’s first TV baby, existential A24 comedy It Gets Worse, in which he serves as creator and star, is releasing in the UK ten days after the pair sit down for Man About Town. With a cast list that includes Andrew Scott and Lena Dunham – not to mention a narrator in Zadie Smith – it will then go international, meeting audiences in Australia and North America in the days and weeks that follow.

As it happens, however, Reich is already somewhat accustomed to the travails of life in the spotlight. He found himself in A&E a few days before his conversation with Amstell after a minor run-in in his kitchen with a bread knife. “Two gay guys recognised me [there],” he recounts. “So if that’s not being famous…” He had discarded his blood-splattered clothes at home before a dash for medical attention at the behest of his mum. “I was wearing my youngest sister’s tracksuit bottoms and a crop top. There’s something really devastating about that.” Those clothes would be “too small for you, presumably,” Amstell enquires. “Way too small for me, Simon. She’s about two feet shorter than me.”

Reich has had some time to try on fame for fit since he first careered onto TV with 2023 HBO comedy special Literally Who Cares!? – a bombastic one-man satire mining the trepidations and identity performance that lace Gen Z existence. Then last year came a memorable turn in Dunham’s Netflix romcom Too Much, as boundary-blind advertising employee Boss Gibbons. 

Dunham’s own name-making account of twenties misadventure Girls has long been an inspiration for Reich. It is also the work It Gets Worse seems to have been most compared to. However, Reich’s take on a maladjusted twentysomething – Ethan – and his dysfunctional but irreplaceable friendship group is imbued with a very Gen Z strain of hopelessness.“From conversations with friends, I just got a sense that there is not much belief that [life] will work out,” Reich explains of its foundational mood. 

He says it’s not trying to be an all-encompassing profile of his generation, although, as in Girls, age-old growing pains of young adulthood remain front and centre. There’s a boyfriend who stands in the way of the group’s longstanding unity, a love interest who is classically illegible, and disorientation for Ethan when he finds his mother has filled his childhood bedroom with a lodger. 

Like Girls, It Gets Worse is also brimming with sex in its most unwieldy forms. Ethan is, as Amstell puts it, a “gay sex guy”. He is getting plenty of it, even if the quality of his encounters is variable. In the weeks running up to the show’s release, a scene from its opening episode in which Ethan simulates a therapy session with an unnamed therapist-cum-hookup – played by Scott – goes viral. Scott’s subsequent line, “You’re just a hole for Daddy,” becomes one of the year’s most internet-grabbing TV quotes, weeks in advance of the show’s debut. 

From Dunham to Scott, Reich has acquired a habit of bagging co-signs from industry predecessors. One of the first was Amstell, who asked Reich to support him on his 2021 stand-up tour Spirit Hole. The comedian, writer, filmmaker and actor first found himself on the radar of British kids of Reich’s generation as the host of anarchic T4 music show Popworld. But for Reich, it was Amstell’s stand-up that first made him a fan. “I really remember the moment I decided I liked stand-up was watching you on my computer at my family kitchen table,” Reich tells him. He had a poster of Amstell on his wall as a child, and still does – albeit an updated one, from their time on the road together. 

Today, that fandom is evidently reciprocated. Amstell laughs liberally throughout their conversation, which is slotted into a day off from his own run of gigs for latest show, I Love It Here. They sit cross-legged on Amstell’s sofa, a digestive tea in hand, discussing Gen Z despair, incoming fame, following up success and the potential for Reich to recruit some Heated Rivalry “hunks” for Season 2. There’s much to digest. 

Leo wears fashion by Dior

Simon Amstell: Hello, Leo.

Leo Reich: [Laughs] My God, you’ve got proper printed questions. 

SA: I have written some questions. First of all, how are you today and generally? [Laughs]

LR: I'm good today. And generally, I’m a bit stressed. The show comes out in [a week and a half].

SA: How are you feeling? 

LR: You must have had this – we’re in the weird limbo period where you’ve made it, you can’t change any of it, it’s like telling a joke and then having to wait a year for a laugh. 

SA: Are you confident that the laugh is coming? 

LR: No [laughs]. I think some people will like it, and that’s all it should be. 

SA: Your person suggested that we start by saying something about how we know each other. Do you want to do that? 

LR: Yeah, I can do that. Simon Amstell is my favourite comedian, famously, as I say to you and to the world whenever I can. And by coincidence, you were going on tour, and you needed someone to do tour support. And I think specifically for that show, you were quite keen on it being a gay comic because it was quite a gay show. 

SA: [Laughs] I did also talk to a straight man. 

LR: And how’d that go? [Laughs]

SA: Terrible. 

LR: Really, was it bad?

SA: No, it was okay, but there wasn’t the same vibe as when we spoke. Okay, so we’ve done that bit. How are you coping with show business so far? 

LR: I would say it has high highs and low lows. I was quite lucky in having a really intense experience really early because the first stand-up show I did turned into a TV special, which was such a weird, unexpected thing. So all of the illusions that I might have held for longer in a more damaging way were just smashed up immediately. Like the idea that things would make you happy [laughs]. It was like, ‘Oh, you got an HBO special, and it solved absolutely none of your problems.’ 

SA: And was that even a problem? 

LR: No [laughs]. You’re like, ‘It’s lovely to have this, but it was fine not having it.’ 

SA: I remember the first time I was recognised, I didn’t feel anything. And I thought, ‘That’s weird, because all I wanted since the age of 13 was to be famous.’ There's a continual reminder that there’s nothing more joyful or satisfying than making the thing.  

When we were on tour, I think I said something about how it’s really difficult not to take stuff personally because I really am myself on stage. And you said, and I found this to be incredibly wise, ‘Well, that’s why you should change your name to Lady Gaga.’ 

LR: [Laughs].

SA: ‘Because then there is this separation between this character that’s being played on stage and the human being in the costume.’

LR: Stephanie. 

SA: Stephanie, yeah. And so I thought, ‘God, of course, that would be easier if I was Lady Gaga.’

LR: [Laughs]. Everything would be fine.

SA: In your stand-up special, there’s a character being played, and you can really feel your love for people like Kate Berlant and John Early. You can feel that slightly detached, ironic, cynical tone. What you’ve done with It Gets Worse is something much more revealing and vulnerable. And I wonder if that was a choice or if it was just the show that came out of you? 

LR: It’s funny because when I started doing stand-up, it was quite earnest and confessional. The stand-up show was meant to be about people who can’t cope with being vulnerable. When we were making it, me and the director would always be like, ‘It’s confessional through irony.’ He thinks he’s confessing one thing, and actually, what he’s confessing is a different thing about being lonely and detached, which is fine for an hour of stand-up, but I think when it’s a whole TV show that’s in that mode, I find that really exhausting.  

SA: But you could have maybe done a sketch show.

LR: I think I maybe just got to a point where I was like, ‘Let’s dig a bit deeper.’ 

SA: Let’s find out who Lady Gaga is? 

LR: Let’s find out who Stephanie is [laughs]. 

SA: Did the voiceover come quite early?

LR: It was always there, pretty much. We tried it a lot of times without it [during] script-writing. 

SA: And it felt like it lost something?

LR: Yeah. There’s like a storybook quality to it. I find it funny that it seems to be elevating these really mundane, embarrassing humiliations to the status of something that is novelistic or existential. And also [viewers], with their own lives, have to go, ‘What did it mean when I sucked that guy off under a bridge? What does that mean about life?’ And obviously the answer is nothing. But that’s at least how I, as a delusional narcissist, think about experiences in my early twenties or late teens. When I get blackout drunk and say something awful. If it means nothing, then what are we doing? I have to be like the main character in a Zadie Smith novel, which is why we asked her.

SA: While you were saying that, I remembered that [in one scene] you’re on the street after you attempt to go out together and [one of the characters, Abi] says, ‘We can’t just stay in our 20s forever.’ And you scream, ‘But we’re in them right now.’ I really laughed during that bit, and I really felt it. 

LR: I see me and my friends have the experience of just wanting, quote-unquote, youth to be over. Because it’s too scary and complicated.  Or wanting it to go on forever. I think my character is going, ‘These 10 years have a romantic quality to them that we will lose really soon. So it would be a shocking waste of our lives not to take every moment.’ And the other one’s going, ‘That idea of being 24 is terrifying. So I’m going to decide that I’m 31.’

SA: And then [another character] goes, ‘Well, they’re adults...’ And you go, ‘What did you call us?’ It’s really funny.

SA: Why was it devastating [to be recognised by two gay guys in A&E]?

LR: I don’t know, even in the soft womb of A&E…

SA: You felt exposed or unsafe?

LR: No, it was quite nice.

SA: [Laughs].  

LR: But it was a weird day because that morning I’d had therapy and there’s this clip that’s gone round of Andrew Scott playing a therapist who I’m having a hookup with and he spits on my mouth and he slaps me on the face. And my therapist at the end of our session goes, ‘Oh, and I saw the clip. What do you feel about the fact that I’ve seen it?’

SA: Your therapist is male or female? 

LR: Male. 

SA: Who is this therapist? [Laughs]. And what did you say? 

LR: I said, ‘I don’t know, really.’ But I think the fame thing… people think people are famous like they were in the ’80s, which no one is [anymore]. So even if you're the most famous person in the world, it’s not quite the level where you can’t go anywhere unless you’re the guys from Heated Rivalry. But the thing with the therapist [made me think]: ‘Oh, so you can’t control what spaces this element of your life will invade.’ 

SA: You’re talking about fame as something that is either happening or not happening depending on the person that you’re interacting with.

LR: It's not an element of a person. If the other person knows who you are from TV, then you’re famous in that room. If they don’t, then you’re not famous. I love that. 

The strange thing for people who spend their life writing or performing is that part of the attraction of doing that is about control. Being a stand-up and controlling the room when they laugh and when they’re quiet. If they know you as the person who’s in control, then that’s the person they want to meet in real life. And that’s not how that works at your family barbecue. I’m not funny at all to be around. 

SA: [Laughs]. Come on… 

LR: One of my friends recently went to me, ‘It’s so funny that your job is a comedian, because you’re probably one of my least funny friends.’ 

SA: [Laughs].

LR: It’s true. 

SA: It’s not true. I just laughed twice in the last 30 seconds. Are you excited about sleeping with other famous people? 

LR: Well, what’s amazing about being gay is that a like on Instagram from a famous gay celebrity is so openly, ‘I want to have sex with you.’

SA: Oh, just a like? 

LR: I think so. Well, maybe I’m reading too much into it.

SA: [Laughs].

LR: But when you’re followed out of the blue by a random gay actor… 

SA: Don’t you think they like your comedy?

LR: The show’s not out, though. All I’ve done for the past year is post pictures of myself at events.

You must have had sex with famous people? Famous people are not very good at having sex. It’s a third-person interaction. It’s like, ‘Where’s the camera?’ 

SA: But what about the excitement of… when I first started doing stuff on TV, I remember meeting somebody at a party who I’d seen years before on TV, and I thought he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. And then this guy, before I’deven seen he was at the party, came over and asked if I wanted to go for a drink with him. 

LR: Wow. 

SA: And then we went on a date... And then we had sex. And it was amazing, because partly, I just couldn’t believe that this person from the television was now in my… 

LR: [Laughs]

SA: And now I have to stop talking about it [laughs].

LR: Well, I’ve never had that, I don’t think. I’ve met lots of famous people now, and I would say the vast majority are really, really tricky to talk to. And there’s something non-sexual about it. In the same way that you watch a superhero film and everyone’s so ripped that they actually become not sexual at all. Sometimes I find a famous person so suave and self-possessed and immaculate and gorgeous that I’m like, ‘Well, I feel like this is unerotic, this interaction.’

SA: You need someone a little messier?

LR: I want someone who has stains on their T-shirt and who will fall over, and it won’t ruin their day.

SA: [Laughs]. You should go to showbiz parties and trip people up.  

LR: I intentionally spill things at showbiz parties to show people that it’s okay. If I go to one of those things, my role is to remind people that you can be really drunk and fall over and no one’s gonna die. 

SA: My next question was: Who would you most like to do that with?

LR: Which famous person would I most like to fuck?

SA: [Laughs]. Are there any messy ones that you can think of? 

LR: I find this question really hard because when people are like, ‘Who's your celebrity crush?’, the last time someone asked me that, I said a comedian who I know quite well. And they were like, ‘That’s not the point of this game.’ 

SA: And it was me, presumably. 

LR: And it was you. No, it was Russell Howard.

SA: [Laughs]. Is there anyone you’re hoping watches this show and realises what they’ve lost?

LR: I don’t think that any of the people who need to feel that will watch the show. They’ll see it’s got me in it and they’ll go, ‘Well, no, not watching that.’ 

SA: What would you like to happen?  

LR: Such a good question.

SA: [Laughs]. 

LR: Generally? 

SA: What would you like to happen as a result of people seeing this show? 

LR: Oh my God, I’m trying to figure that out. I was speaking to someone who made a very amazing TV show, and they were going, ‘And people, since then, have kept asking me, “What am I going to do?” I made a good thing. Do you know how few people make a good thing? And suddenly that’s not enough either. You think I have more than one good thing to make? I don’t! Leave me alone.’ 

Leo wears fashion by Dior

SA: I’m now going to get into the show. Where did the idea come from? 

LR: I think it’s a mood. I think usually the core thing is a feeling, and this one was, ‘How are people coping with hopelessness?’ 

SA: Hopelessness – to do with the end of the world, that kind of thing? 

LR: Yeah. I think that there is a sensation of: ‘So I work really hard and heal myself so that I can what…? Marry someone and have kids and have a house?’ It just structurally doesn’t feel real to anyone. 

SA: Because nobody's ever going to be able to have a house?

LR: Because it just really does feel like something’s gonna go really, really wrong quite soon and everything will change. And so to make a plan for the world in 20 years feels so useless. And there’s a need on some level to detach emotionally from the things that you’re seeing happen around you. If you’re having to detach from reality emotionally, it’s like you don’t have the conviction to hope for stuff because it’s too scary and painful.

SA: It takes a lot of dedication, soul and time to make what you’ve made. I’m wondering how somebody does that if they’re hopeless.

LR: Well, I do have various mental illnesses and stuff. And to cope with them, I have to find something to believe in and hope for. And I think that I do have a genuine belief in people. And I’m very cynical about most stuff that happens and the world in general. But I don’t think I’m cynical about people as individuals. And so that was meant to be the emotional heart of the show – a quite un-cynical and sentimental perspective on the value of individual people, but funny. 

SA: But funny! Very good. What did you learn about yourself? 

LR: I think just that I really like people. I’ve always thought I’m quite cynical. And then actually when you write it down, you go, ‘Well, you’re one of the most sentimental people of all time.’ 

SA: When you were thinking about this character, Ethan, who is you to some extent, did you make a list of the things that were the same and the things that were different? 

LR: Yeah, I did, actually. You told me to do that. It was really useful. It was mainly differences in the end. And all of the similarities were maybe similarities that I don't feel like I have with the character anymore, but maybe did once have with him. 

SA: Did you discover some things about yourself that you didn’t know already? 

LR: I think it made me feel more competent than I would have felt before. I would have thought myself quite an incompetent loser. And actually, when you’re playing a really incompetent loser, you look quite good by comparison.

SA: I mean, [Ethan] can’t fill a hole in the wall with plaster. He ends up distracted by his phone. You wrote a whole series.

LR: Yes, I was quite distracted by my phone while I was doing that. But I did do it. It’s that weird thing: there are a lot of these shows where it’s people playing incompetent versions of themselves when, actually in real life, if they’ve made the show, then they can’t really be that incompetent. It’s like Fleabag or Broad City or Girls or 30 Rock, all these people playing loser burnout failures, having written a whole TV show. It’s like wish fulfilment, I think. Like what if I didn’t have a psychotic, sometimes quite unhealthy work ethic, and instead just followed my actual impulses and feelings? 

What the process of making it did put me in contact with is that sometimes I’d write a line and one of the producers or the director would go, ‘Well, no one would say something that narcissistic.’ And it would be something I’ve said.

SA: [After the show releases], there will be calls.

LR: Will there? 

SA: Yeah, there’ll be calls. I’m trying to think, who are the people? Erm… Darren Aronofsky?

LR: [Laughs].

SA: Darren Aronofsky will call, and he’ll say, ‘We need a tall guy with a biting sense of humour.’ Is that how he speaks?‘We need a biting Brit. A cutting Brit. A cutting, snappy Brit.’

LR: Will there be calls? I think when you’re playing essentially yourself in something…

SA: Let’s assume that there will at least be an availability check from Darren Aronofsky. And then there’s this film, and you’re one of the IT guys in AI. 

LR: Even in this made-up call, I play a small walk-on role as an IT guy.

SA: No, it's called The IT Guy [laughs]. Darren Aronofsky calls: ‘We want you to be the co-lead in this queer drama, and it’s you and Harris Dickinson.’ And you say what? 

LR: [Laughs] I say yes, obviously! I go, ‘I'm one of the best actors of my generation. I can’t wait to suck off Harris Dickinson in this queer IT-themed movie you’re making.’ 

SA: [Laughs] I think you’ve got the part. 

LR: Perfect. I mean, it’s a real change of pace for Darren Aronofsky.

SA: [Laughs] I’d also like to be in this film. 

LR: Well, they need a witty Brit. 

SA: Well, you’re younger. If it’s me and Harris, it’s like him with an older professor. Am I a professor? What do I look like these days? He’s like dating an older clown? 

LR: You’re in one scene, and they’re at a party, and they go, ‘That’s Simon Amstell.’ 

SA: Why aren’t I directing this film with you and Harris? I had lunch with Harris Dickinson. He was lovely. 

LR: He does seem nice.  

SA: Anyway, we can do that. Were there some defining characteristics which you held onto that separated you from the character? 

LR: I think doing it made me feel older, which was nice. I turned 27 right before we started, and then just turned 28 now. It feels like I’m actually genuinely at a different point of life. So when I watch it, I’m not like… ‘Oh my God, it’s me.’ I find myself very shrill. 

SA: What’s the most embarrassing thing about yourself that you’ve accidentally revealed in this show?

LR: I think maybe that I’m quite possessive. 

SA: Of friends?

LR: I think of myself as this very free, ‘everyone should do what they want’ [person]. I don’t think that at all. I think everyone should do what I want [laughs]. Maybe it’s from my family. We have quite a tight unit, so it’s important to do stuff for other people and not do anything that’s going to upset the balance too much. I’m saying this – my family will read this and be like, ‘Why aren’t you taking your own advice? You upset the peace the entire time.’

SA: [Laughs] And finally, any regrets?

LR: I should have been a baker or something. 

SA: Did you think at any point during this process, which must have been quite difficult at points, ‘If I could just do pottery or something, it would be an easier life?’ 

LR: Actually, no, I’ve never thought that. I actually really love doing it.

SA: Every bit of it?

LR: I struggle with the social element, the inability to control other people’s perception of me, but you can’t do that ever with anyone. But that’s the bit I find hardest. Like all these comedians who I grew up with, when I post the trailer for my show, are they all in a group chat saying, ‘He’s changed’? [Laughs]. I don’t think they’re saying he’s changed, because I was always quite arrogant and difficult. But no regrets. 

SA: Your person suggested I ask: Will there be a second series?

LR: Well, I don’t know. So that is interesting. 

SA: [Laughs] Oh. I thought you were going to say yes. 

LR: Well, maybe they want me to say that there will, so that it forces Channel 4 to. But no, I have no idea. That’s why when people are like, ‘What are you doing next?’ I’m like, ‘Well, hopefully a second series.’ 

SA: How would it be different to this one, or how would the process be different?

LR: The problems in this series are quite social. ‘I want to fuck that person.’ ‘You upset me with your tone in this way.’ And maybe the problems become a bit less easily solvable. 

SA: I thought it was striking – about halfway through [watching] I was just like, ‘I’m watching an unapologetically sexual gay guy on television.’ And I thought, ‘Things have changed.’ Even me pointing it out now feels a bit dated. Like, I’m not sure if you can even get a show on Channel 4 if you’re not gay. 

LR: [Laughs] Perfect. I guess the only thing I thought about the gay sex stuff is that [the show comes in] a real Heated Rivalry moment. There’s a lot of gay romance stuff, and I really wanted the sex to feel really awkward and...

SA: Can one of those hunks be in the second series? 

LR: The Heated Rivalry boys? They’re all gonna be in it. And no one else – no one from the first series is, including me. It’s gonna be just them.

It Gets Worse is out now on Channel 4 (UK) and on Paramount+ (US) from 6 November