The Slow And Sudden Rise Of Marc Maron

With his role on the Netflix hit GLOW and one of the toppodcasts in America, the once-struggling comedian is having a mainstream moment. Don’t worry, he’s still a mess.

- Mary Kaye Schilling

MARC MARON IS TELLING ME ABOUT HIS NEW YORK City day. He lived here, on and off, for nearly 30 years, before settling in Los Angeles in 2009, where he hosts his podcast, WTF With Marc Maron, out of his garage. Back in the city briefly, to do press for the Netflix series GLOW, he indulged in some local favorites: the Whitney Museum; an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the West Village—one of the first he attended 20 years ago; a slice of pizza at Joe’s on Carmine Street; and lox and bagels at the old-school café Russ & Daughters, where he jotted down an idea for a new bit.

“As a Jew, sometimes you just spend the day smelling like fish and onions,” he says, offering one of the grins—almost a grimace—that punctuates his funny observation. “It’s part of our history. It’s part of our culture. Some days, we’re just going to smell like fish and onions.”

Does he feel more Jewy in New York? “Sure, definitely,” he says, and he misses the city, but he doesn’t want to live here anymore. L.A. traffic drives him nuts (“It makes you not want to go anywhere”), but he loves living in a house. “So you build a life where you live.… You have to love your house. That’s a rare possibility in New York. The idea of loving your apartment? Back when I lived here, you wanted to spend as much time as possible away from it.”