Legendary voice actress Grey Griffin talks about her venture into stand-up comedy and new Amazon comedy special

Voice actress Grey Griffin has a long list of accomplishments including a Grammy, leading roles in ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’, ‘Powerpuff Girls’, ‘Rugrats', ‘Scooby Doo’, and countless other television shows, movies, and video games. Griffin’s newest accomplishment to add to the list is her own stand-up comedy special available on Amazon Prime.

After a small stint in stand-up over 20 years ago after moving to Los Angeles, she ended up finding her success in the voice-over world and didn’t take the stage again until about a year ago.

While it takes most people years to find success in stand-up comedy, due to Griffin’s background and knack for being on stage, she has come further than many comedians do in a lifetime.

Griffin’s newest accomplishment is her stand-up comedy special, “My first Comedy Special”.  Originally the special was meant to feature just her, however after seeing how much talent there was in Los Angeles, she decided to open up the stage featuring several other comedians in addition to herself.

“The thing is, I was just going to do it for myself but I kept meeting people that were way too talented to not be performing. I have seen so many people that have specials where I didn’t laugh one time. So, I found all of these unknown people that are hilarious so I thought, I have the space, it’s already decorated, I’ve got the film crew. I was going to do just little snippets to be able to give them good tape, but then I thought…why not just put them in it and make a longer show?”

So that is exactly what Griffin did, giving herself and three unknown comics (Lisa Delarios, Sebastian Corley and Haley Hoffmeister) a chance to shine on one of the biggest streaming networks in the world.

Not only is Griffin hilarious, but she also really has an eye for talent, as the three comics she chose were all extremely talented and funny. While it was merely coincidental that two out of three of her comics were women, there is something to be said about the uniqueness of having a regular, non-gender-themed comedy special that features more women than men.

“When I was first finding comics to be on my special, there were originally three men and three women, but only one guy made the cut and two women. When people noticed it was predominately female comics in my special, I said ‘I know, but I didn’t plan it like that all!’  We weren’t trying to make a ‘female comedy special’ we just happened to pick the funniest people and two out of the three were women,” she said.

Even though Griffin’s stand-up career is somewhat new, she has, of course, been in the entertainment industry for years. As we all know, the entertainment industry isn’t always a safe place for women, and sadly Griffin has seen the same trend in the comedy world.

While there are more and more women featured on lineups, it’s still far fewer than men. Griffin shared some interesting thoughts on the struggles she has encountered as a woman, but also the precautions necessary to make it in the stand-up comedy world.

“Women are already begging to get up on stage and a lot of times they are only going to book one woman per show, so we have to be careful of what we say and do. And, if we ever find the need to stand up for ourselves as women, the first thing a man will say is, ‘Oh, have a sense of humor!’ I feel like as a comic it's hard to walk that line of being a curmudgeon and standing up for yourself. I don’t want to be this uptight woman where you can’t make a joke in front of me but I also don’t want to be groped or disrespected. That said, we are catching up to men in the comedy world, we really are. Even joke wise, there are jokes that would have worked years ago that you just can’t do now, people aren’t going to stand for it.”

With Griffin’s impressive background, talent and tact, she is exactly the kind of woman stand-up comedy needs right now. To find out more about one of the most powerful female voices in comedy, check out her Amazon Prime special and make sure to follow Griffin on Twitter to see where she will be performing next!