Busy Philipps On Redefining Late Night, And Why L.A. Is ‘The Best'

The actress, best-selling author and instagram star on redefining late night, and why L.A. is ‘the best'.

- Stephanie Paterik

By 11 a.m. in Los Angeles, Busy Philipps has seen her daughters off to school, hauled herself to a LEKfit dance workout, met with her team on the set of her new E! talk show and worried about how her chin looks. After we talk, she’ll pick out a new iPhone (blue) with her husband, discover that refrigerator lights are great for selfies, don a pair of horse-shaped earrings by local jewelry designer Irene Neuwirth and meet up with friends at The Grove shopping mall.

And that’s just what she posted on Instagram. The second-screen queen, well known for roles in Freaks and Geeks, Dawson’s Creek and Cougar Town, reached a new and surprising-to-her level of fame last year after she began using Instagram Stories, the social platform’s feature that lets you post photos and videos for up to 24 hours. Feeling stalled in her career, she picked up her phone one day in 2016 and talked until 300,000 people were tuning in and she was earning more money from brand endorsements like Michaels on the social network than from acting.

“I was just kind of lonely and looking, like so many people that turn to social media,” says Philipps, whose memoir, This Will Only Hurt a Little, became a New York Times best-seller last month. “I started doing the Stories, and people started really responding to them and watching them.”

The New Yorker likened her Stories to a sitcom—“Imagine I Love Lucy mixed with a modern lifestyle guru.” But Philipps realized she had a talk show on her hands, and partnered with Tina Fey and E! to create Busy Tonight, a 30-minute late-night show that debuted Oct. 28. The network is banking on Philipps to succeed where other talk shows recently failed, including The Break with Michelle Wolf and The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale, which lasted mere months on Netflix.