Everybody Needs to Calm Down — Comedian Laura Ramoso Says She Can Help With That

Whether you follow her or not, the image of Laura Ramoso is likely familiar to one of your feeds. The 31-year-old comedian become a regular on TikTok and Instagram scrolls for her character work — particularly impressions of her Italian father and German mother, the latter always in a black turtleneck, hair pulled back, glasses inexplicably atop her head.

It’s funny. It’s charming. But these quick hits may undercut the body of work that the 31-year-old is building. Her fifth show, Calm Down , is not just a reference to the catch phrase of one of her characters or a catch-all for what most desire in this punishing news cycle from which there seems to be no escape. It’s a culmination of a craft that melds sketch, stand-up, crowd work and, yes, clown. And after cultivating a devoted live audience in Europe, Canada and Australia, she’s about to perform Calm Down in Los Angeles, Oct. 17, on the tail end of her largest U.S. tour to date. Related Stories News Patton Oswalt, Michelle Wolf Call on Sebastian Maniscalco to Reverse SiriusXM Channel Takeover TV 'Trailer Park Boys' Actor Michael Smith Has Sexual Assault Charge Dismissed

“Hopefully you do calm down after the show,” she says. “But the title and the show are a bit about where I am at right now. I need to calm down. We all need to calm down. That’s the motto that I’ve adopted this year. It’s not working, but it’s nice to put it out there.”

Ramoso is speaking over Zoom, with a bit of cold, from what appears to be a haunted Airbnb in a Gold Rush town I’ve never heard of. She insists the experience is pleasant, and her resume suggests she is a game traveler. Before globetrotting for work, she was raised as the altruistic equivalent of an army brat. The Italian-born Ramoso, who now lives in Canada, had childhood stints in Cameroon, China and Vietnam care of her mother’s work with the World Health Organization. Ramoso was never at risk of, say, proximity to Ebola, but she did see some real shit. In Baku, Azerbaijan, her school commute coincided with one punctual butcher’s punctual (and very public) 7:40 a.m. cow beheadings. “I think I was being taught a lesson,” she says. “Life is fickle. You might get your head cut off at 7:40 a.m.”

Sharing nuggets like these used to make her uncomfortable, she says, but she notes over the course of our conversation that Calm Down is her most personal work yet. But she’s muscled through the weird feelings, because her largely sold-out pivot appears to be working. “That direct line between myself and the audience, versus my characters or sketches, has been clearer than ever,” she says. “I’m really enjoying that, but that only came this year. I used to be terrified.”

You have audience participation during your shows. As an artist and consumer of art, do you think there should be a disclaimer when that’s on the table?

No. I think audience participation gets a bad rap from a history of really horrible examples. I try to foster an environment where you can say “no” if you don’t want to, and people do. And I just move on. But what I’ve found is that 99 percent of the time people are open to what it could be.