‘Giggly Squad’: Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo on Being in Your 30s, Writing a Book and Their Huge Podcast: ‘We Are Not Professional’
Podcasters Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo — of “Giggly Squad” fame — held a live session of their podcast for UCLA students on Sunday.
The show, sponsored by Uber One for Students, followed their podcast’s typical carefree, comedic style. They sat on a decorated gold stage, from which they dished out their opinions on current events, such as convicted felon Anna Delvey on “Dancing With The Stars” and Brad Pitt and his girlfriend photographed looking not-so-happy in Italy. DeSorbo and Berner also picked each other’s best and worst-dressed moments, which generated a lot of laughs from the audience, and an unexpectedly adorable segment on “Is your boyfriend trash?” where they singled out a boyfriend in the crowd and quizzed him on some dos and don’ts.
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DeSorbo, 31, and Berner, 33, became friends while working at a New York City media company, and then started their television careers in 2019 as castmates on Bravo’s “Summer House.” They created “Giggly Squad” during the pandemic, and it now ranks in the Top 20 in comedy podcasts in the United States. Berner’s first Netflix comedy special — “We Ride at Dawn” — dropped in July. And their U.S. tour, “The Giggly Squad Live: Club Giggly tour” kicked off earlier this month, and will go on through January 2025 ending at Radio Music Hall in New York City.
Paige, my editor needs to know about the season of “Summer House” you just filmed, and your opinion about Lindsay Hubbard being pregnant and coming back.
Paige DeSorbo: Love a pregnant woman. It’s that beautiful thing that females do, so I’m very supportive. It was obviously a different situation — we’ve never had a pregnant woman in the house when there’s, like, five blackout-drunk guys running around, but she was great. She like made it work. She went to bed early; she did all the things that pregnant women do.
She’s said “pregnant women can still party,” right?
DeSorbo: Some can, and she did. I would have fallen over.
Is it difficult to constantly come up with content?
Hannah Berner: I honestly feel like if we didn’t have chemistry, this would be impossible. We enjoy being out there, and I just want to keep trying to make Paige laugh. It like, comes to me. Like, the way I build my stand-up hour is literally trying stuff on her, and if she doesn’t laugh, I’m like, “That’s not good enough.” So it’s really our friendship that pushes it through, because if you’re just doing it to get views or likes, it’s not sustainable.
DeSorbo: I don’t think we’ve ever referred to each other as, like, “co-hosts.” Other podcasts have co-hosts. We don’t.
Berner: We are not professional.
You both talked today about turning 30. How do you feel being in this stage of your journey, looking back?
DeSorbo: I don’t know if we ever thought, like, this is the road that we would go down. Because we started “Giggly Squad” during the pandemic, and really just on Instagram Live. We didn’t even think about creating a podcast until the world opened up. So I think we’re, like, so thankful.
Berner: Our 20s, for both of us, were pretty chaotic. I feel like we have to normalize that your 20s are scary, and stop putting so much pressure on, like, doing all these things. Like I went from sales to podcasting to reality TV to stand-up. My 30s is — like, you start to realize what brings you joy, and life is too short to not be yourself.
DeSorbo: That was great.
Berner: Yeah, I just try to be Brené Brown.
Any tips and advice for the girlies who are just graduating and learning to adult?
DeSorbo: I think just giving yourself overall grace, that you’re not gonna get your dream job right out of college. You’re not even probably gonna get it, like, three jobs down the line. I think it’s just like about being nice to yourself, and knowing that you’re going to figure it out at some point.
Berner: Adding onto what Paige said, being nice to yourself was, I think, something that in my 30s I started to do — which is like a cheat code in life. I feel like in your 30s, you actually go back to what you were like as a kid, like whatever brought you joy. I loved performing as a kid, but I kind of lost the plot because I was thinking about what everyone wanted me to be. So it’s like, use your 20s to be honest about what you like to do, and the money will come. I love to blab.
What are you guys planning for the future? Any new projects?
Berner: Well, we have our book coming out in April, and we’re in the intense editing process of it now.
DeSorbo: Which honestly when we got the email, I thought it was a spam. Not real. It was a very fun process, and very reflective of our 20s, and how we got here. We’re very excited for it to come out.
Berner: I think “Giggly Squad” has never been strategic. And I don’t mean that in an unprofessional way, but you can’t force what’s next. It’s very natural to us to be, like, I guess we want to meet the Gigglers on the road: We started touring. We wanted to write more; we wrote a book. So we kind of don’t have, like, strict plans. We just go on, what’s making us happy? Because the Gigglers know if we don’t love what we’re doing,
How was the change in medium with your book?
DeSorbo: You know it’s funny, because I’ve had, like, other people that we know that have written books, and they’re like, don’t worry about it. You get a ghostwriter and you’ll be fine. So I was under the impression like, “Oh, we’ll just talk to someone. They’ll write it down.” And because, like, we do comedy, they were like, “No, you guys have to write this.” So I was like — sorry, I can’t.
Berner: I was very not about getting a ghostwriter, because I was like, what makes us “Giggly Squad” is our specific voice. I think a book is a really nice mix of, like, us opening up about personal stuff, while also having really funny, straight comedic parts. I want it to be a book where, like, you could open up to page 47 and get a Giggle. It’s not a novel by any means. It’s just like a fun book to relax and get your mind off your own problems.
Where did the idea for this style of a girl talk conversational podcast come from?
DeSorbo: When we started the Instagram Lives, it was COVID, so everyone was kind of like, what is going on? And it really started because we were bored at home — but also it was really therapeutic for us. So the Gigglers will say when they listen, they feel like they take a break from life. But that’s how we feel when we record. So it truly is us, like, taking an hour of the week and forgetting about everything else. Just, like, talking to your friend about what’s going on. But we just happen to record it.
Berner: I also have to give credit to reality TV, because we were always filming, and I felt like we saw a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor of us being funny that didn’t match, like, the storyline. And I was like, I feel like all that stuff is the girls would like to see, like, who we really are. So it was kind of like us trying to show that girls are more multifaceted than like, what they show on TV sometimes.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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