Leanne Morgan Is Just Getting Started

In the world of entertainment, landing a television show that bears your name is a feat that not many people have achieved.

Then again, Leanne Morgan is not your typical comedian.

Morgan is a comedy sensation who has captured the attention of mainstream media with her Southern charm, astute observations, and down-home sensibilities.

And right now, she’s everywhere.

Her new sitcom, Leanne, premiered on Netflix in July and was preceded on the streaming platform by I’m Every Woman, her 2023 stand-up comedy special. She’s a New York Times bestselling author, headlines sold-out shows across the country, and appears on podcasts with stars like Oprah Winfrey and Amy Poehler.

Photo of Leanne Morgan by Joseph Llanes

While her success may seem to have happened overnight, the East Tennessee grandmama has had her nose to the comedy grindstone for 25 years.

Growing up, Morgan had her sights set on Hollywood, a far cry from her tiny hometown of Adams, Tennessee, and the meat processing plant her father ran behind their house.

Then life happened.

“My little Mama and Daddy told me I could go to college or the military. I was too sissy for the military,” Morgan jokes. “I wanted to go to college, and I was proud to say that I was going to the University of Tennessee, but I knew I was going to go to Hollywood someday too.”

She began building her sense of perseverance as an undergraduate student at UT. While Morgan flourished socially, she struggled academically and dropped out for a short time before coming back to finish what she started.

“It was my ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ moment,” Morgan says. “I thought, ‘Nobody’s gonna keep me down.’ It may take a lot, but I can do it.”

She majored in child and family studies with an eye toward becoming a family therapist and helping people should her Hollywood dreams not come to fruition.

Morgan says she loved her professors and her degree because she learned about people from birth to death and how to be observant—a skill that is foundational for smart comedy.

Leanne Morgan and her mother embrace following Morgan’s graduation from UT.

“I’ve got elderly parents that I tend to. I remember my children going through adolescence. I got so much personally to help in my own life,” she says. “But I also could make jokes about human behavior as it relates to these things.”

When it came time for her to graduate, her future husband, Chuck Morgan (MBA ’91)—whom she more often than not calls by his full name—asked if she was going to walk in her graduation ceremony.

“I told him, ‘I’m going to wear that cap and gown.’ And my little Mom and my grandparents and everybody came and cried their eyes out,” Morgan says. “And I did that for myself.

“Getting that degree is one of the most important things that has happened to me in my life.”

Selling Jewelry & Making Jokes

After earning her degree and marrying Chuck, Morgan moved with him to Bean Station, Tennessee. Soon after, the couple had their first child, a son named Charlie. To get a little extra spending money, Morgan began selling jewelry at small parties at people’s homes. It was at these gatherings that she first began honing her observational comedy chops, joking with the other women about shared experiences like taking care of a husband, raising babies—and getting hemorrhoids.

Word spread through the jewelry company about her selling tactics, and she was asked to perform at the organization’s convention.

For Morgan, it was the beginning of 25 years of taking care of her growing family. Baby Charlie was soon joined by Maggie and Tess—all while she was pounding the pavement performing stand-up comedy in the evenings and on the weekends.

Those years of experiences became the roots for a comedy act that helped her establish an audience, many of them women who often felt unseen and underrepresented in the world of entertainment and who appreciated Morgan’s jokes about the things they were going through every day.

During those years she played comedy clubs, went on a short tour with other Southern female comedians, and came in second place on Nick at Nite’s Funniest Mom in America television show.

A couple of times, she thought her big break was coming, like when she was approached about doing a television show, but the timing never seemed to be right.

So she continued raising her family in Knoxville and getting her children through high school and college. Her middle daughter, Maggie, followed in her parents’ footsteps and attended UT, graduating with a degree in communication studies in 2018.

Breaking Through

Still from the movie You Are Cordially Invited, courtesy of Amazon

Morgan was still doing a lot of live stand-up shows but said it wasn’t the kind of work she wanted. And she was on the verge of quitting.

“I was in my early 50s, and it was the first time in 20 years doing comedy that I just didn’t feel like I could go on. And I said to my husband, Chuck, ‘I think I’m gonna open up a hardware store and have a cheese wheel and sell candy,’” Morgan says jokingly.

She didn’t buy that cheese wheel, but she did make one last-ditch effort and hired a couple of social media experts who knew the best way to blow up in pop culture was on Facebook and Instagram.

Morgan’s breakthrough came in 2019 after her standup clip comparing concerts in your 20s versus your 50s went viral. The clip was inspired by a concert she and her husband had recently been to on UT’s campus featuring 1980s bands Def Leppard and Journey.

“Everybody there looked sick and had plantar fasciitis,” she deadpans. “Journey was on stage, and nobody cared. Everybody was lined up at the snack bar getting a big bucket of popcorn.”

Still from the first season of Leanne, courtesy of Netflix

The comedian then began selling out comedy clubs all over the country, which led to her 100-city The Big Panty Tour, followed by the debut of I’m Every Woman, which has remained one of Netflix’s top stand-up specials since its release. Morgan’s comedy special caught the attention of famed television producer Chuck Lorre, who has helped create hit shows like The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men.

Morgan recalls Lorre flying to Knoxville and sitting on her back porch with her family, holding her new grandson, and eating a lunch she made.

“I still worry if that bread was stale,” she says.

Stale bread or not, Lorre asked Morgan if she would do a television show with him. And she happily accepted.

The pair pitched a show to Netflix and landed a deal, which was possibly clinched when Morgan made a spur-of- the-moment joke about having a weak pelvic floor.

Netflix had long wanted to bring back the multicamera sitcom and thought Morgan was the person to do it. They offered her a 16-episode deal—practically unheard of in today’s entertainment landscape.

In fall 2024, with a crew of 250 people on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank, California, Morgan began filming Leanne.

While based on her comedy, the series doesn’t mirror her life. For example, Morgan remains happily married to Chuck after more than 30 years, while her character has been left by a cheating husband. However, it does portray something she and many other women her age can identify with—finding a second chapter in life.

“I named my second comedy tour Just Getting Started because I feel like I’m just getting started at 59 years old,” she says. “I have women say to me all the time, ‘If you can do this at your age, then I can go back to school or I can start a business.’”

Still from the first season of Leanne, courtesy of Netflix

The show is a throwback to sitcoms like Roseanne and Seinfeld that were built around stand-up comedians with big personalities and large followings. Leanne quickly jumped to Netflix’s number one comedy, staying in the top 10 for three weeks.

In September, the show was picked up for a second season. And her second stand-up special for Netflix, Leanne Morgan: Unspeakable Things, will
premiere on November 4.

For Morgan—a rural farm girl, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother—it’s the culmination of many years of hard work, perseverance, and her continued refusal
to compromise her identity for anyone else.

“I think that it’s important to stay true to who you are and be proud of where you came from, and I think that will draw people to you.”

In August, she stood on the stage at the famed Grand Ole Opry in Nashville at a special celebration of her show and spoke about how she nearly quit comedy.

“I prayed about it. And God did not shut the door. It blew up, and it’s bigger and better than anything I’ve imagined,” she says. “And it’s never too late. Dreams never die.”