Michelle Wolf of Late Night with Seth Meyers Gets Her Stride Back in Brooklyn Bridge Park

Michelle Wolf is talented. And she even has a secret talent I learned about during her photo shoot. Sure, I already knew that the thirty-year-old is a successful stand-up who writes and performs on Late Night with Seth Meyers. I was already a fan of her character Grown-Up Annie, who visits Seth to tell him all her sordid exploits in her tight red baby-doll dress that she’s just a touch too old to wear. I knew that she tours the country and shares the bill with major stand-ups at legendary rooms like the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan. But what I did not know is that she can do a mean vertical jump that looks like she’s in mid-sprint with one leg in front and the other in back. So, yeah, this is one talented funny lady.

Originally from Hershey, Pennsylvania, Michelle went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia. There, she was on the track team. But when she suffered an injury, her college sports career ended before it could take off. “I didn’t grow up with a lot of money,” she said. “So I moved to New York to make money.” After a stint working for financial giants like Bear Stearns and J. P. Morgan, Michelle discovered improv and then stand-up comedy. From there, she launched into a full sprint, left the desk job behind, and never looked back. While she now lives in the West Village in Manhattan, before that she lived in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn for three years. Every day, she’d run at beautiful Brooklyn Bridge Park. The faster and farther she ran, she explained, the faster and further her career in comedy took off.

The reason I run is that it’s the only way I can de-stress.

I’ve come here to run any time before a big thing has happened in my life. The day before I started at Late Night, I ran here. The day before I went in to my interview for Late Night, I ran here. The day before I got my first TV spot—the night before, I was running here.

You run down to the end and the city’s all lit up. It’s super dumb and sentimental, but I look out on the city and every time I felt like I was making steps further and further. Like I’m really doing this. It felt like I was progressively succeeding in the city more and more.

Track was my first love. The day before my very first meet freshman year, I got a third-degree ankle sprain practicing long jump. I never fully recovered. That was my first heartbreak. I thought I’d be a coach. I wanted to do more in exercise science—that’s what I was studying: kinesiology. I thought track was going to be something that was going to happen in my life. It never went in the direction I wanted it to, no matter how hard I tried.

Getting back into running was very hard. I wasn’t in the same shape I was before. I felt like I was too slow and fat. I was like, “This sucks; I’m not good at this.” When I started running down here, I was doing a loop that was a mile. And then I’d add another mile. And then I could do it every day.

I don’t really have much of a personal life. I do comedy. I work. I work out. And I do stand-up. I don’t date. All of my friends that I had before I started comedy, with the exception of maybe two, I’ve lost in the process. They got mad because I couldn’t go somewhere or do something.

I like to run fast because all I think about is breathing and running.

The only time I’m ever at a bar is if it’s for comedy or after a show. I don’t go out to dinner. I don’t meet up with people. Mostly because I’m working. I’d always rather be doing comedy than anything else. Maybe I’m also antisocial.

I’ve never been in a relationship. I don’t make time for it. I don’t like commitment. I’ve never really seen a relationship work so I don’t really understand the point of it. I’ve done really cool things in comedy so far, and I think part of it might be because times that other people were on dates or making time for other people, I wasn’t. Not to say that’s the better option. I’m sure those people are, like, healthier.

Brooklyn Bridge Park is where I felt like I could start to go fast again. I like to run fast because all I think about is breathing and running. So I could not think about anything else. Clear your head, you know? There’s a million different things going on all the time, plus I’m always on Twitter and looking at my phone.

I also do this weird thing when I run—I’ll say things like, “If you stop here, how do you think you’re going to make it in life? If you keep running, you can keep doing anything. If you can’t even finish this run, how are you going to make it in comedy?” I feel like this is where I got my stride back, in this park.

Even though it’s everyone’s park, it feels like it’s my park.

For so long, I defined myself by school and track. For eight years, all I cared about was track—that was high school and college. When I lost that, I didn’t really know who I was anymore. And then comedy started to get better. I started to get confident again, and I had a point of view. And running became something I could do again.

This feels like home to me. It feels like Virginia because it’s a dirt path and it’s surrounded by trees in certain places. In the spring, there’s always a bunch of lilacs, which are my favorite. It feels like I’m not in the city. As much as I love the city, I didn’t grow up in a city. Here, it’s quiet and more Zen. You can definitely see the city, it’s all there, but it’s quiet and peaceful. It’s comfortable, which was important to me.

I feel like a regular here because even though it’s everyone’s park, it feels like it’s my park. The day before [Hurricane] Sandy, everything was shut down, including the park. But I came to run anyway. It was empty. It was so dark and quiet. I felt like I was the only one there. At that moment, I felt like this is my spot.

August 24, 2015

(Photos by Phil Provencio)