“Come on, we are able to personal that it’s been vibey,” Garfield mentioned.
“It’s been vibey to the purpose the place you’ve been avoiding me for 2 years, as a result of the vibes had been an excessive amount of so that you can deal with,” Dimoldenberg shot again, in undermining-girl-boss mode.
The following ten-minute battle of wits had a screwball power that Preston Sturges would have appreciated.
“I’m not going to be who you need me to be on this second,” Dimoldenberg provided.
“I’m not asking you to be something however what you might be,” Garfield mentioned, shifting round in his chair. “I’m simply holding a mirror up.”
“Yeah, and I look good,” Dimoldenberg retorted.
Later, Garfield requested, “Do you suppose this”—he gestured towards the cameras and the mikes—“has fucked up the truth that we may even have gone on a date sooner or later, possibly?”
“Yeah, since you’re afraid of it,” Dimoldenberg mentioned, popping a French fry between completely glossed lips. The episode, which aired late final 12 months, has been seen greater than ten million instances.
Within the decade since launching “Hen Store Date,” Dimoldenberg has tried to diversify her comedian output. Amongst different issues, she launched a YouTube present during which she cooked alongside friends—the gag being that she can’t cook dinner. Most of her earnings now comes from sources apart from “Hen Store Date,” together with her red-carpet work and one-off appearances or movies. However none of those tasks has had the resonance or the authenticity of her first present. Dimoldenberg, being within the joyful place of proudly owning the present outright, is writing and producing a romantic comedy set in what she describes as “the ‘Hen Store Date’ world.”
Every episode prices solely about six thousand {dollars} to make, although Dimoldenberg now has three workers—a artistic producer, a social-media supervisor, and a private assistant—on her payroll. As a result of “Hen Store Date” seems simply as soon as a month or so, she is selective about her friends. “It must be an natural match,” Dimoldenberg instructed me. “I must be a fan of them and their work. If I fancy them, it helps, too. It’s a courting present, in spite of everything.”
“I not too long ago came upon that I like a Pinot Noir,” Dimoldenberg mentioned the primary time I met her, as she settled right into a low armchair on the Dean Avenue Townhouse, a restaurant in London’s Soho neighborhood. It was every week into the New Yr, and Dimoldenberg was not observing Dry January, however she had plans for a primary date the next night with somebody who was. She defined, “I used to be Googling ‘Issues to do whenever you’re sober,’ and I discovered it so humorous. It was, like, ‘An escape room.’ ‘A horse-drawn carriage across the park.’ ‘Indoor mountaineering.’ ”
So what plan had they settled on? “We’re going to go to the pub, clearly, and have Weight-reduction plan Cokes.”
For “Hen Store Date,” Dimoldenberg likes to decorate up, normally in an outfit that has some curiosity across the neckline or the arms, on condition that she and her visitor are seen solely from the rib cage up. This night, she was dressed much less flamboyantly, in stylish black pants and a black prime. She ordered roast rooster—it’s truly her favourite meal, she mentioned, not simply an on-brand alternative. “However I’ve to ask what a part of the rooster it’s, as a result of I solely like breast,” she instructed me. (On “Hen Store Date,” she eats solely nuggets and cringes at wings.) When the waitress got here, Dimoldenberg politely requested to have the rooster leg left off the plate, although not earlier than asking me if I would really like it. “I’m not going to eat the leg, so I’d slightly give it to another person,” she mentioned.
Dimoldenberg’s onscreen character is in some ways fashioned within the modifying course of, which she supervises. Moments of standoffishness or awkwardness are emphasised with leap cuts to her face, the digicam lingering on her expressive, quizzical options. In particular person, although, Dimoldenberg is heat, open, and relaxed. “My character is equal components determined and uninterested,” she instructed me. Within the earliest iteration of the present, the comedy lay partly within the rap-world interviewees’ amusement at being requested deadpan, rapid-fire questions by a scrupulously ready however apparently clueless woman consuming fries throughout the desk. (“You’ve gotten one other identify, Murkle Man,” she mentioned to Jammer, a grime artist who was the fourth visitor on her present. “Does which have something to do with Angela Merkel?”) Dimoldenberg instructed me, “I speak extra now—I’m main the dialog now. Earlier than, it had extra staccato power, and now it’s fairly fluid.” As of late, Dimoldenberg is well-known sufficient not simply to carry out superstar interviews however to be the thing of them. Final 12 months, she ate rooster with Drew Barrymore on Barrymore’s speak present, and appeared on “Late Evening with Seth Meyers,” the place she defined the British artwork of banter: “British folks, they flirt like they don’t such as you. Make somebody suppose that possibly they really hate you, and I really feel like that’s the way you fall in love.” Having develop into a public determine in her personal proper, she performs with the equilibrium of mutual superstar for comedian ends. On a current episode, the actor Paul Mescal requested what varieties of films she favored. “I believe I’ve seen all yours,” she instructed him, then added, condescendingly, “You’ve not achieved hundreds.”
David Letterman, who started subverting the superstar interview greater than forty years in the past, is amongst Dimoldenberg’s apparent precursors. However her closest up to date friends will not be the hosts of community tv reveals however, slightly, YouTube and TikTok interviewers corresponding to Nardwuar—a personality created by the Canadian journalist John Ruskin—who stuns rappers and different musicians together with his prodigious analysis into their early lives, and the New York-based comic Kareem Rahma, who, on his on-line present “Subway Takes,” invitations comedians, influencers, or actors to supply miscellaneous critiques of social mores whereas driving mass transit. (Jeremy O. Harris: “We should always have gatekept being woke just a little bit longer.” Cat Cohen: “You may’t textual content somebody simply ‘hey’ and say nothing else.”) Like these interviewers, Dimoldenberg permits the interviewee to be in on the joke.
But when a part of the joke of “Hen Store Date” is Dimoldenberg’s insistence that each episode actually is a date, and never simply one other cease on a publicity tour, a part of the present’s success is the diploma to which the encounters generate real chemistry. “I don’t know why I wouldn’t be capable of meet somebody on the present—like, that’s how we meet, proper?” she instructed me. “However I additionally know that it’s not actual, and that the particular person I’m assembly is just not going to suppose that it’s.” Though Dimoldenberg has had one long-term relationship within the decade of creating “Hen Store Date,” she is at present single. (Of her sparks with Andrew Garfield, she mentioned, briskly, “I don’t suppose it’s going to occur, in any other case I might be going out with him already, wouldn’t I?”) She instructed me, “A part of me thinks that the explanation I’ve been single for therefore lengthy is as a result of I’ve this courting present, and it’s simpler for me that I’m single, as a result of I’m residing the character.” In her personal life, Dimoldenberg goes on the apps and has mates set her up, with various levels of success. “I am going by waves of discovering it actually onerous to satisfy folks, after which my first thought is ‘I’m so unattractive,’ ” she instructed me. “After I’m tremendous single, I simply go into this place the place I persuade myself not that I’m unattractive—like, I do know that I’m not—however extra, like, ‘Each single particular person thinks I’m ugly, however they’re flawed.’ ” Sounding like a extra self-knowing model of her “Hen Store Date” id, she added, “I do have good self-confidence, nevertheless it simply manifests differently, the place I simply suppose individuals are out to get me.”
Cartoon by Mike Twohy
Most of Dimoldenberg’s friends are acquainted upfront with the present’s format, although there are exceptions, corresponding to Cher, who made an look in early 2024. “She was instructed to do it by her godson, and he or she nailed it,” Dimoldenberg mentioned. (Within the episode, Dimoldenberg confided that she as soon as had a horrible kiss with a person who didn’t open his mouth. “English?” Cher requested, with a figuring out shrug.) When Shania Twain got here on, Dimoldenberg arrived on the restaurant swathed in leopard-print pants and an identical prime with a draped hood—an outfit impressively much like the one which Twain wore within the video for her 1997 hit “That Don’t Impress Me A lot.” Twain wrote to me in an e-mail that she was “in no way ready for it, in a rooster store of all locations.” They obtained alongside fantastically, and by the episode’s finish the singer was tossing rooster nuggets throughout the desk and Dimoldenberg was making an attempt to catch them in her mouth. Twain instructed me, “I’m unsure how the nugget-tossing started. With Amelia, this stuff simply occur.”
