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    How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived
    How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived
    How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived
    Ebook177 pages2 hours

    How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived

    By Leslie Jordan

    4/5

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    • Personal Growth

    • Friendship

    • Humor

    • Family

    • Travel

    • Fish Out of Water

    • Coming of Age

    • Overcoming Adversity

    • Rags to Riches

    • Mentorship

    • Redemption

    • Coming-Of-Age

    • Coming Out

    • Odd Couple

    • Power of Friendship

    • Southern Culture

    • Self-Discovery

    • Hollywood

    • Acting

    • Lgbtq+ Experiences

    About this ebook

    New York Times and USA Today Bestseller

    Viral sensation and Emmy Award-winner Leslie Jordan regales fans with entertaining stories about the odd, funny, and unforgettable events in his life in this unmissable essay collection that echoes his droll, irreverent voice.

    When actor Leslie Jordan learned he had “gone viral,” he had no idea what that meant or how much his life was about to change. On Instagram, his uproarious videos have entertained millions and have made him a global celebrity. Now, he brings his bon vivance to the page with this collection of intimate and sassy essays.

    Bursting with color and life, dripping with his puckish Southern charm, How Y’all Doing? is Leslie doing what Leslie does best: telling stories that make us laugh and lift our spirits even in the darkest days. Whether he’s writing about his brush with a group of ruffians in a West Hollywood Starbucks, or an unexpected phone call from legendary Hollywood start Debbie Reynolds, Leslie infuses each story with his fresh and saucy humor and pure heart.

    How Y’all Doing? is an authentic, warm, and joyful portrait of an American Sweetheart— a Southern Baptist celebutante, first-rate raconteur, and keen observer of the odd side of life whose quirky wit rivals the likes of Amy Sedaris, Jenny Lawson, David Rakoff, and Sarah Vowell.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 27, 2021
    ISBN9780063076211
    Author

    Leslie Jordan

    Leslie Jordan is one of the most consistently recognizable faces in popular entertainment. His journey towards stardom has provided one of the quirkier, impressive, and varied career trajectories of the past few decades. Through it all, Leslie Jordan has remained constant, relevant and – above all – funny! His ability to take it all in stride has kept him moving onward, upward but never straight. Leslie Jordan is the prestigious Emmy Award winner in 2006 for “Will & Grace”. Soon to be on television again in Fox’s Call Me Kat, Leslie Jordan has conquered the international stage and remains an in-demand mainstay as a performer, voice-over artist, fundraiser, spokesperson, out artist, equal rights activist and all around Southern Baptist celebutante.

    Read more from Leslie Jordan

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    Reviews for How Y'all Doing?

    4/5

    97 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      As a big fan of Leslie's Instagram, this was a no-brainer for me to pick up. Written in his unique conversational style, this is a collection of short stories about his upbringing, career trajectory, friendships, and more than anything else his thoughts on any and every little thing he experiences. Are you a fan of Southern style slang and humor? Like hearing celebrity gossip? Enjoy irreverent tales? Leslie's your man!
    • 4/5
      Quick read from Leslie Jordan about his past. He has some good stories. I could hear his voice as I was reading. He is funny. What you read and see is what you get with him. He does not shy away from the truth. He tells it all. This is a quick read and enjoyable. Perfect for the beach.
    • 5/5
      A wide-range of emotions. You'll laugh at the fun, silly stories and tear up with the heartstring-pulling memories shared by the author. There is no voice like Leslie Jordan's. Highly recommend the audiobook, but any format you choose will transport you into this tales.
    • 3/5
      Cute and quick, quirky and candid.
    • 3/5
      Leslie Jordan's autobiography was super cute. I enjoyed hearing all about Truman Capote, straight man standoffs, and reclaiming joy post-Pulse. Jordan shares highs and lows from a life well-lived indeed. Beverly Leslie will always be one of my favorite television characters.
    • 4/5
      Fun, easy listen (just won a best humor audio book award!)
      His accent, voice, and expression alone were worth the listen.

    Book preview

    How Y'all Doing? - Leslie Jordan

    Contents

    Cover

    Title Page

    Introduction

    How Y’all Doing?

    The Time Debbie Reynolds Called My Mother

    American Horror Storytime

    The Short Journey

    Warhol Capote

    Not in My House

    Hymn Singing

    The Pony Farm

    The Mississippi Delta

    The Bride Doll

    My Last First Pitch

    Until We Meet Again

    Acknowledgments

    Photo Section

    About the Author

    Also by Leslie Jordan

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Introduction

    My dear friend and fellow reader,

    You hold in your hot little hands the paperback edition of my book How Y’all Doing? Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived. It gives me immense pleasure that you are about to read my book and I hope you enjoy it. I am doubly pleased that you have chosen the paperback edition.

    I have a long and varied history with paperback books. Call me crazy, but I love paperbacks twice as much as the hardback editions. I suppose I found that paperbacks have always taken a back seat to hardback editions. That’s unfair! I remember for years and years, I only displayed my hardback editions. They sat there on the shelf, proudly gleaming with their own self-worth. I’m sure that made my paperbacks felt ashamed. I didn’t mean any harm. It just seemed like the way it should be. Hardback editions cost more and are always trotted out months and sometimes years before the paperbacks are allowed to even see the light of day.

    But most people, if they are like me, could not afford the hardback edition. Unless you could find the book at the local library, you had to wait for the paperback to come out. Because of that, I only have a small number of hardbacks compared to the thousands of paperbacks I own. I have kept every paperback I ever bought. That cannot be said of those hardback editions. In my younger years, I moved all over the place. I went from one end of this country to another. Hardbacks I lost or left behind along the way, but paperbacks taped in boxes always seem to end up wherever I was. They would be under the bed or stacked in a garage. But now I proudly display my paperbacks next to my hardbacks because I love them both equally!

    So, my dear friend and fellow reader, have at it! Carry this paperback in your back pocket, in your purse, or your knapsack; wherever it is that you put your stuff as you move around on your daily routine. Pull it out at the bus stop, on the airplane, under a tree at lunchtime, while you’re snuggled in your bed before sleep, anywhere you want. The more dog-eared it becomes, the better, I say.

    Just please read and enjoy.

    And when you are through; when you’ve reached the last page, display it proudly amongst your hardbacks.

    I know this little dog-eared paperback of How Y’all Doing? will feel right at home.

    Love Light Leslie

    How Y’all Doing?

    "Well, shit. How y’all doing?"

    That’s how all this started.

    When I was growing up, I was not allowed to cuss. It was just not the way I was raised. So, I don’t cuss. At least, I don’t cuss too much. My mother was none too happy I garnered such success using the word shit, but that’s how it all happened—how, in ten easy steps, I became an Instagram maven.

    I had to look up the word maven to make sure I am using it right. I am not. When I was looking it up, I also learned that Maven is a girl’s name in Hebrew, but it can also be used as a boy’s name. It translates as one who understands.

    Well, I certainly do NOT understand Instagram. I’m a complete neophyte. But somehow, as so often happens in this crazy world, I amassed a gobsmacking number of followers. Five and a half million at last count. I think I need to say that again, because sometimes I cannot comprehend the magnitude.

    I have five and a half million friends on Instagram!

    I may not be the only person on Instagram to achieve that many followers in such a short time, to go from zero to well over five million in about six months, but here’s the deal: I would imagine most people on Instagram with millions of followers were already a known commodity when they started their Instagram account.

    Yes, I was on TV and in movies, but it seems that most of my followers say they discovered me on Instagram.

    That seems to be what this newfound success is all about. Whether they thought they knew me from my parts on television, my parts in the movies or my stage parts, through the magic of Instagram, they got to know the real Leslie Allen Jordan.

    Here’s how my road to Instagram fame began.

    I was working on a short-lived but wonderful series on Fox TV called The Cool Kids. The show had originally been presented to me as a pilot from the boys in a very popular TV show called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a funny sitcom about friends in a fictional bar in Philadelphia who are always willing to turn on each other for profit or personal gain.

    I thought it was so irreverent and unlike anything else on TV. Plus the three male stars, Glenn Howerton, Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, were really cute.

    Anything these boys came up with, count me in!

    On The Cool Kids, my character’s name was Sid and had originally been written as a seventy-year-old straight Jewish man from Brooklyn. I drove to the audition (and, yes, I had to audition) befuddled. I could not understand why they would even be interested in my playing the part. I can play a lot of things, but I did not think I could pull off a seventy-year-old straight Jewish man from Brooklyn.

    Oy vey.

    So, I winged it. I threw caution to the wind, walked in the door and announced to all those present in the audition room that I was going to put a different spin on things.

    I launched into my usual schtick. I made the character younger, Southern and gay. I did everything but tap-dance with sparklers and turn cartwheels. I was my usual shameless self.

    I got the job.

    I found out later that the road to being hired on this new series had actually begun on the set of Will & Grace. I had won an Emmy Award back in 2006 for my portrayal of Beverley Leslie. When the show was rebooted for three brand-new seasons, I was so excited to be playing Beverley again. On one episode, I worked with the actor Max Greenfield, of New Girl fame. We really hit it off and giggled the whole time like two little schoolgirls.

    Max is the gayest straight man I know. I mean this as the highest compliment possible. He embodies the best of both worlds and is a spectacular human being.

    And I adore him.

    He is married to Tess Sanchez, who used to be the head of casting for Fox TV. When Tess told Max about this new series she was casting, he brought my name up. They both told their friend Charlie Day that he should at least audition me for the seventy-year-old straight Jewish man from Brooklyn. Just in case they might want to go another way with the character.

    Years ago, I had been told by Barbara Miller, the legendary casting director, that when I died, on my tombstone, it should read, HERE LIES THE OTHER WAY TO GO.

    She liked to bring me in to audition for producers even though I might not have been right for a particular part. She would introduce me as perhaps the other way to go with the character.

    Sometimes it would blow up right in front of us, as the producers would just sit there and stare stonily as I auditioned, the looks on their faces saying it all.

    What is he doing here, Barbara? He’s not what we are looking for at all.

    But then, sometimes, it was magical. The producers would lean forward as I auditioned. And once again, the looks on their faces would say it all.

    Wow. We did not think of the character in this manner, but this is interesting.

    And I would book the job.

    * * *

    But the story of how I became an internet success has an even more winding road.

    When I was young, there were three female comedians whom I adored: Lily Tomlin, Phyllis Diller and Carol Burnett.

    I could impersonate all three perfectly. I knew all their routines! I would jump up and do them at the drop of a hat. That must have been quite a sight. A twelve-year-old boy impersonating female comedians.

    But I was born to perform.

    Over the years, I honed all those impersonation skills into a lifetime of performing my one-man show all over the globe.

    Sometimes I was performing in up to forty-four venues a year.

    One night, at a performance of my show in Los Angeles, I looked out and Phyllis Diller was in the front row. Phyllis Diller was there to see me! I was so overjoyed; I called my mother from backstage to tell her Miss Diller was in the audience.

    Mom, remember when I was little and I could act out Phyllis Diller’s routines? She’s here! In my audience in the front row!

    After the performance, I walked out into the theater’s audience and there sat Miss Diller, all alone, waiting for me. I could tell she had been crying, as one of her famous false eyelashes had come unglued. It flapped precariously above her eye and gave her a slightly crazed look.

    But there were other things on her mind, things she wanted to tell me.

    Young man, she gushed, that was a wonderful show. Your speech at the end really got to me, as I have tried to express the same sentiment to my children their whole life.

    At that time, I used to end my show by saying, Happiness is a choice. Happiness is a habit. And happiness is something you have to work hard at. It does not just happen.

    What a sweet, dear lady Phyllis Diller was. And tiny. Teeny tiny, like me. She was so deserving of my heroine worship.

    I then got to meet Lily Tomlin in 2007, on a series we did called 12 Miles of Bad Road. When we first met, I glommed on and would not let go. When we were shooting our first scene together and having such a good time, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who wrote the series, remarked, Good Lord, the two of you are like a couple of vaudeville comedians!

    When it comes to getting the laugh, Lily Tomlin is as shameless as me.

    She and I have remained fast friends for years now. Forget that she is a brilliant comedienne. Even more important, she is a sterling human being. She, along with her longtime partner and now wife, Jane Wagner, jumped in and helped take my one-man show to New York. Imagine, having Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner as producers on the marquee at your Off-Broadway debut.

    It was the thrill of a lifetime.

    Lily even pulled some strings and got us both on The View to promote the show. I got so nervous, I walked out, took one look at Whoopi and Joy Behar and started running my mouth. All of a sudden, one of them said we had to wrap it up and I realized I had not let Lily say a word. I was on a major talk show with a legendary comedienne and I had just silenced a legend.

    Not one single word.

    When we walked off the set with the cameras following us, Lily chased me down the hall, pretending to berate me for being so selfish as to not let her get a word in edgewise.

    Good thing I can run faster than Lily Tomlin.

    Of my youthful heroine triumvirate, the only comedienne I am sad to say I have not yet met is Miss Carol Burnett. But on The Cool Kids, I was lucky enough to work with her partner

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