Chloe Fineman

Ideas of Order

In this episode of Ideas of Order, host Jeremiah Brent sits down with actress and comedian Chloe Fineman to explore the intersection of crea

Key takeaways

• Chloe's childhood in Berkeley was defined by an environment that encouraged extreme artistic expression and 'flowery' creativity.
• She describes the fundamental difference between New York as a place for 'hustlers' and Los Angeles as a place for 'dreamers.'

Main topics

• Creative Identity
• New York vs. Los Angeles

Notable quotes

LA is like the city of dreamers and New York is hustlers.

Conclusion

A thoughtful exploration of how our environments and histories shape o

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) One of the many joys of movies and TV is that feeling of wanting to live in those spaces. The first time my boyfriend came to my— I was living in Silver Lake, and he was like, this looks like an HBO set of a girl comedy. Speaker 3 (0:17) Welcome to Ideas of Order, a California Closets podcast about the true meaning of home. It's not just the spaces we live in, but the rituals, the memories, and the quiet moments that really speak to who we are and how we move through the world. I'm Jeremiah Brent, and today I am sitting down with someone who has built a career around transformation, observing the world around her and finding humor, humanity, and connection in the details most of us miss. Chloe Fineman is an actress, a comedian, and one of the most recognizable cast members of Saturday Night Live. But beneath that comedy is something so much deeper, a fascination with identity, self-expression, and the many versions of ourselves we inhabit throughout our lives. Today, we're talking about creativity, observation, performance, and what it means to create a sense of home when your work requires you to constantly become someone else. Speaker 3 (1:14) Clay, what are you drinking? What's your drink of choice over there? Speaker 1 (1:18) Okay, so I'm in LA and the Sprout Spice opened a Clatch coffee. Speaker 3 (1:24) I cannot believe you can drink a cold brew that size. Speaker 1 (1:28) He brewed it in front of me. I just want the concentrate and he added so much water. Well, thank you for doing Speaker 2 (1:33) this. I really appreciate it. Speaker 1 (1:34) Of course. I Speaker 3 (1:36) was half hoping you'd be standing in front of your closets built out. It was so beautiful. I Speaker 1 (1:41) basically copied you. I did a deep dive. Yes, this is true because you had viliprene. Is that what it's called? Speaker 3 (1:49) Yeah. But Speaker 1 (1:49) yeah, I looked at the closets you had done and then like all the ideas started percolating. And I have so many screenshots of that closet you did. And I was like, how can we copy this? I Speaker 3 (2:01) had Speaker 1 (2:01) no Speaker 3 (2:01) idea. That's so crazy. You're Speaker 1 (2:03) my muse, babe. Same. Done. Speaker 3 (2:06) That's so wild. How long have you been in the village for? Speaker 1 (2:09) In that apartment. Five years, going on six. And then the village, I went to NYU, so I've lived there on and off for like 20 years. Do Speaker 3 (2:18) you prefer New York over LA? Speaker 1 (2:19) I like both. Where LA, where we are is so boring, but I think that you need that from New York. It's so overstimulating. Speaker 3 (2:28) Yeah, I hear you. I want to kind of do a little deep dive and go back a little bit before we talk about like where you're at now, but I had no idea you had grown up in Berkeley, which I love. Really? Yeah, I love Berkeley. Speaker 1 (2:44) Really? Speaker 3 (2:44) Yeah, I went to college in San Francisco and Berkeley was where you went to have a good time. USF. Yeah, but Berkeley was like the best. It was so fun and so rowdy. And at the time, I mean, I was not cool. We'd go to Berkeley to watch acapella concerts. So that's just kind of who I was. But Speaker 1 (3:02) that's very Berkeley. We love the arts. It's very flowery and artistic. Speaker 3 (3:08) But from what I understand, you grew up with a family that really seems to have kind of celebrated individuality and creativity. It sounds like a space for everybody to kind of... Did Speaker 2 (3:19) you say freaks? Speaker 1 (3:20) Yeah, totally. I mean, my mom is a painter and then my dad is obsessed with improv, but he did like the very Bay Area biotech thing. And my sister is a painter and my grandma was a painter. My grandfather was a painter. So it's very... artistic. The Bay Area, you really go to the beat of your own drum. But also, I think like any creative outlet was really encouraged in my house, from my mom especially. So I got really lucky. When Speaker 3 (3:48) you look back to that, what do you remember the most? Speaker 1 (3:51) I feel like I was just like so indulged. We had like a rose garden and I played flower fairies. Any craft I wanted to make, my mom was like, yeah, let's do it. Yeah, any interest, if I want to take like scarf, like I did a lot of scarf dancing and that was totally normal. And Berkeley was so amazing. Like most kids I know go to like sport camp or like horse stuff. And we did art camp and there was this amazing place in Berkeley, which honestly, I can't believe existed. It was like a woodshed. And basically kids were allowed to like. build stuff with like hammers, nails. We'd like be covered in splinters. It had a funny name and it was like in the Berkeley Marina. And like all of us were like injuring ourselves all the time. It was like a wood, like giving like knives and wood. And that was like what we all did after school. Speaker 3 (4:45) Only in Berkeley. Speaker 1 (4:47) Only in Berkeley. Speaker 3 (4:48) Do you feel like comedy was always the destination or was kind of performance the thing that you were chasing? Speaker 1 (4:55) I think. performance comedy came really late in life like i don't think i really i mean not late in life i sound so annoying but like i didn't 12 Speaker 2 (5:04) 12 Speaker 1 (5:05) um but at 25 was when i took my first like improv class and then snl at 30 berkeley was very we had the berkeley rep we had act so i was really into like really prestigious drama, the more like snobby, the better. Mary Zimmerman. Yeah, yeah. Angels in America was like the most important work of art of all time, still is in a lot of ways and is funny. But everything was very serious and very pretentious. And then I went to NYU and became even more pretentious. And I think when I graduated. In college, also, like my friends were really funny growing up and my dad's hilarious. And I think it was really just like missing my childhood friends that I moved to L.A. and was like, I need to make friends. And comedy people reminded me of who I grew up with. So I don't think had I not had this little friend group, I don't think I'd be in comedy. Speaker 3 (6:04) That's so interesting. When you made that decision to move across the country to study acting in New York, it's a big deal. It's Speaker 1 (6:11) a Speaker 3 (6:11) big move, especially growing up there. What do you think leaving California taught you about yourself in reflection? Well, Speaker 1 (6:19) for one, like New York, I think is one of those places like if you set foot in New York and you're like. I'm home. Like live there immediately. I think most people who choose to live there have that. We had Coleman Domingo host this year and he said my favorite thing I've ever heard, which is living in New York is living on a dare where it's like, I dare you to have rats. I dare you to see this man expose himself on the subway. I dare you to wait in line for 45 minutes. So I like. You really have to love it. And so I just loved New York immediately. But then coming from California, I definitely, I am a California girl. Like I needed to wear color. I really missed produce. Speaker 1 (7:02) free spiritedness of San Francisco. Like I didn't quite, you could kind of feel it in the East Village. But yeah, there's like a dreaminess in California in general. Like LA is like the city of dreamers and New York is hustlers. So yeah, like I do feel like I come back to California a lot to get back in touch with like my sensitive, dreamy self that I completely like. push all the way down to get through a day in New York. Speaker 3 (7:28) Do you still consider like California home? Speaker 1 (7:31) Yeah. Northern California, like when you're in Marin on a mountain looking out, I can't think of anything prettier or more like centering. But I think New York's made me really cunty and I don't know how to not live in New York. The pace at which I want things, the hustle, like California is too slow. Speaker 3 (7:51) I know. I'm like, you know what the fuck I can get done in 10 minutes on two blocks in New York. It's really, that's what drove me crazy. We moved back to LA briefly and I felt like a fancy house cat there. And I was like, I can't spend three hours going to CVS to get a toothbrush. I'm going to kill somebody. We're in New York and anything you can postmates, it's dark, which you can get accomplished. Speaker 1 (8:13) Yeah, I know. And then I come back here and I'm like, I was like postmating. nail polish remover yesterday. And I was like, we can't do that here. That's that's we could drive. It's like a minute drive. Yeah. Speaker 3 (8:24) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you