Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Owning It’s Nikki Levy

Nikki Levy is a storytelling maven who loves nothing more than amplifying the voices of others. It’s been the key to her successful Don’t Tell My Mother! brand and four Audible Original Pride specials.

This past June, Nikki teamed up with Alexandra Billings (Transparent) and six fabulous storytellers as they share true tales about owning their queer identities for Owning It, a Pride special airing exclusively on Audible.

Pop Culturalist had the pleasure of catching up with Nikki to chat about Owning It, how she built trust with everyone involved, and what she hopes listeners take away.

PC: You have a new special out on Audible. Tell us about Owning It and what listeners can expect.

Nikki: We recorded Owning It a hundred percent in people’s closets, except Alexandra Billings, who was on Transparent, The Conners, and is returning to Broadway in Wicked. She and I got to record our hosting in a real place together in a real studio, but everybody else recorded elsewhere.

It’s a different special than the one that we did last year. The special has amazing queer icons telling stories of queer joy and awkwardness—that’s the gist of the special. I love Alex. She was actually an acting teacher of mine, then we became really good friends, and she was in my special two years ago.

This year, we have people like Harvey Guillen from What We Do in the Shadows and Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. He was nominated for a Critic’s Choice Award. He’s brilliant. He tells the fabulous story of going back to Mexico as a kid for the first time, and he got called a mariposa, which is a derogatory name for someone who’s gay. He didn’t know that because it also means butterfly, and he loves butterflies. He goes on a journey to figure out who he is and how to love himself. He talks about the fact that we get to change and grow, which is the point of the special.

Then, we have drag icon Bianca Del Rio, who is a pistol and tells a hilarious story of getting stranded in Madison, Wisconsin for a drag show after winning Drag Race with no luggage and basically had to create a drag costume at Walmart.

We have Chase Strangio who is the first-ever non-Hollywood person we’ve had. He’s a trans lawyer at the ACLU who fought and won the first-ever trans Supreme Court case during the pandemic, which gives all of us LGBTQ+ the right to work and not worry we will be fired, the right to housing and not to worry that we’re going to be evicted.

Then, we have Diona Reasonover from NCIS, who is also great. She’s a good friend. She tells a great story about how she never thought she could get married. Then, gay marriage passed. Her girlfriend was like, “Let’s do it!” She was like, “What? I didn’t think this was possible.” It’s really cute and funny.

Then, Shakina Nayfack from Transparent tells a great story about being a Christian coming out as trans, which is super interesting.

Finally, we have Jen Kober, a brilliant comedian who’s coming out with Black Monday on Showtime. She’s this amazing lesbian comic from the south, and she tells a hilarious story of falling in love with a girl at a Jewish summer camp in third grade in the eighties.

It’s joyful and it allows us to celebrate ourselves, but also pokes fun at ourselves—that collective outsider-ness that we all feel as queer people, but when there’s enough time that passes, we’re able to find the humor and celebrate it. It’s become really good material. At first, it’s like, “Shit,” and then it actually becomes funny in hindsight. We get to say, “Wow, I did fall in love with that straight girl at summer camp, and I really did want her to be my first dance and my first kiss, but that’s okay because I got something else out of it.” It’s a joyful experience of stories celebrating who we are for pride.

PC: You have a fantastic track record with Audible. How are you able to create magic time and time again?
Nikki: God, I don’t even know. Working with people to tell their stories is what I love more than anything else in this world; it doesn’t feel like work. I love to listen. I work with everybody on their stories. We get to figure out what the story options are. I love finding stories that are funny—funny is great. Everything can be digested with a bit of sugar, but it should also have an arc. It doesn’t always happen, but I always try to think of them as movies with a three-act structure, but in ten to fifteen minutes. It’s about the person telling the story, like Jen Kober—Jen is my hero. I’m on the seat of my pants saying, “Is she going to end up with Jennifer B or not? Will this love be requited or not?”

I love stories that make me care about the person and make me wonder what happens next. I love working with actors because they know how to tell a story; they do it for a living. But I do talk to a lot of people before we decide who’s going to be in the special each year. We go through a lot of rounds of notes like, “How do we bring out the emotion somewhere? How do we make that the most important part of the story?” I almost think it’s like trimming a bonsai tree. We only have ten to fifteen minutes, so what do we want the audience to remember? What do we want the audience to hear? What do we want the audience to feel?

When things happen to us, we feel it hard, especially as queer people. We feel like outsiders or like we’re doing something wrong, or we’re just doing something different, and we shouldn’t do it that way. I love to tell stories where we start from that place, but we find it becomes a superpower that we’re on the outside of things. We felt hurt, but now we understand how other people feel hurt. I get to empathize with other queer people. There’s a reason we are often so talented, in the arts, and such wonderful storytellers, because you have to be an outsider to be able to tell a good story that affects a lot of people.

PC: How are you able to build trust with all these artists that you’ve never met before?
Nikki: Thank you for asking that. It’s something I take so much pride in. I really appreciate it. It almost makes me emotional. I really love what I do. I’m really interested in what they have to say. I want to know their stories.

I tell every single person that I work with on the special, “I need to know a hundred percent of the story and twenty percent will end up in the special, but let me know what I’m working with.” I’ve been in so much therapy that I probably just know how to listen. [laughs] But honestly, I really care.

I want to be able to share their stories, but in a way that feels safe to them. I don’t ever want to push someone to say things they don’t want to say; it’s about sharing the parts that they’re comfortable with. Something that happens in the conversation, which is so cool, is that they remember things, or they feel things that they didn’t even remember were there.

Harvey, in this story, cried during the recording. We were all on Zoom and he cried. He cried remembering how badly he felt there in Mexico being so excited to visit his abuela and see his family for the first time, and then getting treated like he’s some pariah. People know when you actually care about what they say.

The truth is that the person telling the story should feel better about themselves afterward. I really hope someone listening feels better about themselves afterward. If those things don’t happen, I’ve not done my job well. I don’t always do it.

I mean, believe me, storytelling and knowing how to craft things is tough, but the goal is always to tell the best story that’s revealing and empowering, but never, ever ask someone to share things that they haven’t processed yet—that’s not the time to tell a story. That’s why so many of the stories happened so long ago because the perspective is actually what gives us the comedy.

PC: What do you hope listeners take away after they hear Owning It? Has the special taken new light given the year we’ve had?
Nikki: We can all use laughter right now. We have the six stories, Alex, and me. I hope everyone can see themselves reflected in these stories and storytellers. I hope there’s at least one story that they can relate to or make them feel a little bit better about themselves.

It’s not just for queer people, either. If you don’t identify as queer at all, these are just great stories. In this time, I hope we’re all trying to learn more about other groups that we’re not a part of, and we can fix our blind spots a bit. It’s great listening to learn about the experiences of these eight LGBTQIA+ folks.

To keep up with Nikki, follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Listen to Owning It today.