Rachel Bloom’s Sharp Netflix Special Tackles a Big Question: ‘How Do You Acknowledge Death but Continue to Live?’

The creator tells IndieWire about “Death, Let Me Do My Special,” and the secret to writing a great (and really dirty) comedy song.

[Editor’s note: This interview contains very light spoilers for Rachel Bloom‘s comedy special “Death, Let Me Do My Special.”]

Two-thirds of the way through her new Netflix special, Rachel Bloom is singing about ghosts. Dealing with death intruding on all aspects of her life, Bloom puts her spin on a ghost song: “I’m a bloody bride/ holding a knife/ but I’m also proof/ of an afterlife.” Ghosts are spooky, but Bloom knows there’s nothing quite as creepy as oblivion.

The tune is sharp, memorably off-kilter, and very, very funny. In other words, classic Bloom, working it out by remixing her anxieties into the kind of catchy comedy pop tunes that “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” fans have come to love. 

Her latest project, “Death, Let Me Do My Special,” which debuts on the streamer October 15, centers some heavy shit: As she explains in the special, Bloom planned to do a light hour, but then March 2020 happened, the world shut down, she gave birth and had a baby in the NICU, and her friend and longtime “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” collaborator Adam Schlesinger died of COVID.

How was she ever going to be able to make comedy again?

“[I’m] trying to fundamentally answer the question with this show, but by extension, in my life, of, ‘How do you acknowledge death but continue to live?,'” Bloom said to IndieWire during a recent interview. “How do you not let the presence of death completely paralyze you?”

The show finds Bloom attempting to do various light comedy bits but Death — a physical presence onstage (played by someone “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” fans will be particularly excited about) — keeps interrupting, ultimately forcing her to confront the chaos he’s brought to her world. “Death being a person always made sense,” she explained, “because it felt like there was an intrusion on my life. Death is like the ultimate heckler. Death fucks with your planned thing.”

“[It] felt very cathartic, to be honest,” Bloom said of reckoning with her fears night after night for an audience. “It felt like vomiting up the bad; taking thoughts that were things I was thinking and saying them in front of an audience felt good. I’ve never done EMDR therapy, but I hear that part of the goal of EMDR is to take thoughts and trauma that are one part of your brain and make them almost spoken, so that it goes to another part of your brain. And I’m not a scientist, but that’s definitely how this felt.”

It would be easy to say that “Death, Let Me Do My Special” is a response to the pandemic and the horrors that unleashed, and while it is, it’s also aiming for something more profound: The worthy fight to make art, no matter the obstacles, as well as a human condition exploration of holding joy and darkness together at once.

Never fear: Because it’s Bloom, the production also has plenty of dirty dittys: “Under the Cum Tree” is a sonic exploration of, well, a tree that smells like cum. “First of all, with that song [written in 2019] coming off of ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,’ where we could be dirty but we couldn’t say curse words because it was a network show, it was delightful to be able to say ‘Cum,’ [or] ‘boner piss,'” she said. Naturally.

She continued, “That song just always delighted me because it’s about, obviously, trees that smell like cum, but it’s based on, I went to school for musical theater, and there’s this type of song written popular [at] the turn of the century, that were these light pastoral songs about being out in nature with your beloved. And that was like this. This song was very much inspired by, there’s a song called, ‘If You Don’t Want My Peaches, You Better Stop Shaking My Tree,’ which is a real song.”

Bloom is going to give viewers some music history with her dick jokes whether they like it or not.

“I think what’s fun about doing dirty songs, I still am delighted about taking genres that are innuendo-y, and then making them not innuendo at all,” she said. “That’s what always bothered me about some musical theater songs, especially the ones where it would all be like, implied and cute. That’s not funny!”

The actress has thought deeply about what makes a funny song tick. She first got viral attention writing and starring in YouTube comedy videos like “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” before breaking out (and winning a Golden Globe) by creating and starring in four critically acclaimed seasons of The CW’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” from 2015 to 2019. Does that kind of jump still feel possible to her for today’s creators?

“Someone once asked me, ‘What’s happened to internet sketch comedy?,'” she said. “And the answer is, nothing happened. Go to TikTok. It’s all there. It’s just a different form of internet sketch comedy, as opposed to when I was doing it. When I was doing it, I hit [at] a time when suddenly, well produced videos got to be in vogue, like CollegeHumor started making really high quality videos. … All that to say is TikTok comedy and writing are alive and well. What is not alive and well, and this was fading before TikTok, is just a sketch going viral, something where you have coverage, where you have a well-produced thing that’s like old-school sketch comedy. … I think people are really getting discovered on TikTok, because good writing is good writing, [but] I miss online sketch comedy being A Thing.”

When discussing a changing internet, there’s plenty to be nostalgic about. Like many individuals, she’s rethinking how to be a person online. From the outside, it sure seems like there’s never been a worse time to be famous. (See also: Chappell Roan.) Bloom retains a passionate fan base thanks to personal work like her memoir detailing her struggles with anxiety as well as Rebecca Bunch, her “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” character that some fans deeply identify with; the show drew praise for its depiction of mental illness, a topic Bloom movingly returns to in “Death, Let Me Do My Special.”

“I’ve become a little more guarded,” Bloom said. “I used to be kind of open book explosive, [but] the internet is also not what it was when I started doing music videos in 2010. The internet has gotten more free-for-all and less safe in many ways, and I think especially having a kid has made me guarded. But I’ve safeguarded my mental health. Basically the conclusion I have come to, and also am working through in therapy honestly, is anything I say that will go on the internet needs to be a hill that I would die on. Otherwise I will go insane if people get mad, because I am such a people pleaser.”

Her fans will be pleased by her Netflix special. Directed by Seth Barrish, it is hard to categorize; more one-woman performance piece than straight stand-up comedy. In parts, it calls to mind a really engaging, occasionally NSFW TED Talk, complete with memorable visual aids. The lo-fi theatricality and charming musical numbers feel like another step toward the full Broadway musical it seems inevitable Bloom will write at some point — with or without Rebecca Bunch.

“A stage musical [version of ‘Crazy Ex-GF’] is definitely part of the goal,” she said of future plans. “And then literally, as recently as last night, I had a dream about coming back to ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ and doing a Season 5. I don’t think it’s gonna happen, but rest assured, this is a dream, a recurring dream, that I have had ever since 2019. And then I wake up and I’m like, ‘Oh no, we’ve definitively ended the show, why would we do a Season 5?’ Probably not, but never say never. But I would think a stage musical, that’s a realistic thing.”

“Death, Let Me Do My Special” is now streaming on Netflix.