We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katherine & Leah a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Pure & Weary, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
The most meaningful projects for us are all about growing in our community and helping people laugh, especially those who need it most. The Los Angeles organization, Homelight Family Living, provides housing, financial services and a supportive community to families experiencing homelessness. We’ve been lucky enough to work with Homelight for the last 6 years. We’ve helped with producing their live and virtual holiday programs throughout the pandemic. We also created comedy workshops for children living in the facility called the, “Channel ME News!” Children got to pitch comedic news stories from their imaginations and film their segments in front of a green screen. It was meaningful to watch the power of creativity and comedy in the face of adversity.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
We started our comedy duo in Chicago in order to write and perform the female characters we craved in the entertainment world. We found our styles complimented each other in a way that made crafting pieces swift and hilarious. Our duo name is the meaning of our first names, Pure & Weary. You can meet us (or Google) to find who is who!
We’ve performed and headlined in comedy festivals all over the country, from New York to Seattle and all the places with lower gas prices in between. A talent manager caught our show at a festival and encouraged us to move to Los Angeles. We donated our long johns, upgraded our sunblock (SPF 100, anyone?) and moved to LA in 2016. We pitched our TV show scripts to our idols, hosted variety shows and produced countless sketch comedy videos. We sold a pilot to Audible just before the pandemic.
In 2020 when the world shut down, we built up our Pure & Weary production company and started adding humor to the corporate world. We taught sales teams how to infuse comedy to their pitches through virtual workshops, made products funny by producing internal videos and continued creating our own content to keep making anyone and everyone laugh. Today, we’re building a comedy and mental health workshop by using the tools of comedy to help people feel better.
We’re proud to be making people laugh through so many different mediums. We’re also proud that we’ve maintained a strong friendship and business partnership through such chaotic times. We still bring out the best in each other and finish each other’s…burritos. Just kidding, we can each wolf down our own.
How’d you meet your business partner?
We met in college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008. We both noticed each other in the small class but never introduced ourselves. Early on in the class, Katherine was in a traumatic skiing accident and missed a month of school. Leah thought to herself, “I missed my chance to know this woman!” Katherine can’t remember what she thought to herself because she had a severe concussion. When Katherine returned to class, Leah cornered her and introduced herself. They spent the rest of college attending concerts, playing Sporcle on lunch breaks and laughing until their tears froze in the Wisconsin cold.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
It’s hard for it not to sound trite but we both deeply value kindness. We are in an industry and specific genre of that industry that is often cruel. We recognize that some people’s earliest experiences with humor are painful. Humor at the expense of others is not our jam. There is plenty of hate in this world. We’re here to spread laughter from the heart, not the hate.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pureandweary.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pureandweary
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pureandweary
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/pureandweary
Image Credits
All photos by Ed Rhee (@EdRhee) except the witch hat photo which is Boston Schultz (@bostonschulz)