If it seems like you’re seeing Hannah Berner everywhere these days, it’s because you probably are.
Maybe you saw her on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon doing the worm for the crowd (she didn’t practice or warm up for that by the way, she just went for it). Or maybe you saw her on Amy Poehler’s new podcast Good Hang, chatting with the iconic comedian about her “nonsexual marriage” with podcast co-host and bestie, Paige DeSorbo. You’ve seen her on TikTok, and on the bestseller list, on podcasts, and on Instagram Reels.
In short, Berner’s career has never been so hot. After years of grinding away at comedy clubs as a standup and working on projects with DeSorbo (their podcast Giggly Squad, which they started in 2020, has turned into a national tour and the aforementioned bestselling book, How to Giggle), the 33-year-old former D1 collegiate tennis player now has nearly 5 million followers combined on social media and is preparing for her second national headlining comedy tour, titled None of My Business, this fall (her first tour became a Netflix special, We Ride at Dawn, in 2024, and Berner says she hopes to repeat the feat with this one as well). She’s diversified so much, she says, that a lot of her fans have no idea she once appeared on the Bravo show Summer House for three seasons and hosted the network’s talk show, Chat Room, for one.
The life Berner is living now, she tells me over lunch at a diner on New York’s Lower East Side, is one that she could only dream about when she was abruptly fired from both shows in 2021. She got the call when she was sitting in a car in Missouri. Suddenly, she realized she didn’t have a job anymore. It was scary, but in the moment, she remembers thinking that she was going to use her pain to motivate herself in her comedy career, to work toward the ultimate goal of getting a Netflix special. Three years later, she did.
“I hope it’s inspiring to anyone that the universe sometimes gets you out of certain places you don’t belong,” she tells me. “I’m proud of myself for dealing with adversity.”
Now, Berner’s a little more open to letting the world back in with None of My Business, which she says is the most personal of her comedy sets yet.
“I think my main inspiration is always honesty,” she says. “I always try to get to the core of how I’m actually feeling, what I’m actually scared of, what I’m actually embarrassed about. I will talk a little more about my personal life. I think after reality TV I closed up a bit. But with this tour, I talk about my marriage, I talk about my post-tennis life, of feeling lost and not knowing what to do. Now people know me, but now I’m delving a little deeper.”