Last Comic Standing Winner Iliza Shlesinger Talks Stand-up and Her TBS Game Show Separation Anxiety

Iliza Shlesinger is one hard-working funny woman.

In 2008, while in her mid-20s, she became the youngest and first woman to win Last Comic Standing. In addition to performing stand-up comedy all over the world, she’s appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon; her Netflix special Freezing Hot was a hit. Now she has a book deal in the works, and hosts the TBS game show Separation Anxiety.

Does she ever sleep?

“It’s never occurred to me to stop, and I think perhaps that’s to the detriment of other areas of my life,” says Shlesinger. “But even at my most exhausted, I always think it’s important to have several projects going.”

Shlesinger is determined to give everything her best and to make people laugh. “My family is funny. I think you’re born with the gene,” she says. “I’m not allowed to say which parent is funnier because then the other parent will stop talking to me.”

While growing up in Dallas, Texas, Shlesinger always had an interest in comedy. “When all my girlfriends were watching ER, I was watching episodes of Kids in the Hall,” she recalls. In the beginning of her career, she tried everything from improv to being part of a sketch troupe, but what worked best for her, she discovered while performing a one-woman show, was the power of performing alone. “I realized my comedic thoughts were better expressed in a monologue versus a dialogue,” she says.

So she gave stand-up comedy a try. “It clicked more than anything else I’ve attempted,” Shlesinger says. She describes her comedy as aggressive, intelligent, straightforward, energetic, a little whimsical, observational, personal and very honest.

Not surprising that she won Last Comic Standing. Her goal going on the show, she says, was simply not to be the first to be eliminated. At the time, she was working a day job and performing comedy on nights and weekends. Even before she won top honors on the show, she decided to quit her day job and try performing stand-up comedy full-time. “My parents fully supported it,” she says. “It’s the only part of my Hollywood story that reads like a Hollywood story—because I quit very soon after I got on Last Comic Standing, and then I won, and the rest is history,” she says.

Winning Last Comic Standing helped her career in that after performing stand-up comedy for three years, she was propelled to being a headliner. “It really is the universe saying to you, ‘Right now is when you decide if you sink or swim,’” Shlesinger says. She chose to swim.

For the last few months, Shlesinger has also hosted the TBS game show Separation Anxiety. “People think it’s a dating show,” she says. “It’s not!” The show is about relationships, but all kinds—siblings, best friends, as well as partners.

Here’s how it works: two people sign up to play an Internet game show thinking that they can win a prize of $2,500. When they get to the studio, they are separated. One person goes to play on what Shlesinger calls “the crappy Internet game show stage, which we’ve set up,” while the other person opens a door, the lights go up, and she’s there with more than 100 people. It’s then that this second person finds out that what the team is really playing for is $250,000—and this person is in charge of controlling the types of questions they will ask the counterpart.

No pressure.

“Our show is different in that it’s a format no one’s ever seen before, and the producers do a great job of delving into the contestants’ back stories,” says Shlesinger. “You really get a sense that these are real American people with real stories, and they need the money for these amazing, altruistic reasons, not just to take a sick vacation in Cancun.”

With everything going on in her life, Shlesinger keeps forging ahead. She has to. “What keeps me going is that this I all there is. I am a comedian, and this is what I do. It’s like telling a fish to stop swimming. It’ll die,” she says. “I’m not trying to be dramatic about it, but this is what I do. It’s what I’m meant to do. It’s what I’m good at.”

The Separation Anxiety season finale is 10 p.m. ET Tuesday, June 7 on TBS.