She was the first woman to ever win Last Comic Standing. She has seven stand-up specials. She has performed for troops on three continents and an aircraft carrier. So why do so many people still say, “Wait, who’s that?”
Iliza Shlesinger is a stand-up comedian, actor and writer who grew up in Dallas, Texas. In 2008 she became the first woman, and the youngest comic, to win NBC’s Last Comic Standing. She has released six Netflix specials and a 2025 Prime Video special, A Different Animal. She wrote and starred in the Netflix film Good on Paper and the 2026 Sundance film Chasing Summer, and she launches her Free Nights and Weekends Tour in January 2027.
- She won Last Comic Standing in 2008 at 25, the first woman to do it.
- Her specials: War Paint, Freezing Hot, Confirmed Kills, Elder Millennial, Unveiled, Hot Forever and A Different Animal.
- She has toured with the USO since 2012, from the Arabian Sea to Afghanistan to Okinawa.
- She writes her own movies, including Good on Paper (2021) and Chasing Summer (2026).
- She’s married to chef Noah Galuten, and they have two young kids.
Christmas Eve at Bagram
On December 24, 2017, at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, a blonde comedian in a holiday sweater stood in front of an American flag the size of a building. She threw her head back, gripped the mic like it owed her money, and went all in on a bit for a room full of service members who were spending Christmas a long way from home.
Most of the people in that crowd probably couldn’t have told you her name before the show. That has been the strange shape of Iliza Shlesinger’s career. She has broken records, sold out theaters and released a stack of specials, and she still gets the “Wait, who’s that?” treatment from people who have never stumbled onto her on Netflix.
If you’re one of those people, here is who she is, and why the comics who know her take her seriously.
Who is Iliza Shlesinger?
Iliza Shlesinger is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer and host. Her comedy is loud, physical and character-driven. She’s famous for switching on a dime into growling voices and exaggerated characters to act out how people really behave at parties, on dates and in group chats. A lot of her material is about the gap between how women are expected to act and how they actually think, an idea she later turned into a book, Girl Logic.
She grew up in Dallas in a Jewish family and was funny for an audience early. At the Greenhill School in Addison, Texas, she was on the improv team, and she performed with ComedySportz Dallas as a teenager.
How did Iliza Shlesinger get started in comedy?
The path wasn’t straight. She spent a year at the University of Kansas, did a Semester at Sea, then transferred to Emerson College in Boston, where she majored in film and joined a sketch group called Jimmy’s Traveling All Stars.
After graduating she moved to Los Angeles to do stand-up, the way thousands of comics do, which means late-night sets in small rooms for not much money. In 2007 she won Myspace’s So You Think You’re Funny contest. Around the same time she was hosting The Weakly News, a comedy news show she would host through 2012.
Why does her Last Comic Standing win matter?
In 2008, Shlesinger won season six of NBC’s Last Comic Standing. She was 25. She was the first woman to win the show and its youngest winner.
That matters because Last Comic Standing was a big deal in the 2000s. It was one of the few network shows that could take a club comic and put them in front of millions of people in a single season. Shlesinger went from the open-mic grind to a 63-city road tour with the show’s winners almost overnight, and she became a headlining touring comic in her mid-twenties.
What are Iliza Shlesinger’s comedy specials?
She has released seven hour-long specials, six of them on Netflix:
| Year | Special | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | War Paint | Netflix |
| 2015 | Freezing Hot | Netflix |
| 2016 | Confirmed Kills | Netflix |
| 2018 | Elder Millennial | Netflix |
| 2019 | Unveiled | Netflix |
| 2022 | Hot Forever | Netflix |
| 2025 | A Different Animal | Prime Video |
Where to start: Elder Millennial is the easiest way in. The title alone hit home for a lot of people stuck in the strange spot between Gen X and Gen Z. Unveiled is built around her wedding, and A Different Animal, recorded in Salt Lake City and released March 11, 2025, shows where her comedy is now, as a mom in her forties.
The side of her career most people never saw
Here’s the part of the Iliza story that almost never makes it into a highlight reel. Since 2012, she has kept going back to perform for U.S. troops with the USO.
In December 2012 she performed for sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the Arabian Sea.
In October 2014 she was back in Afghanistan, sharing a stage at Bagram with Jay Leno and Craig Robinson on The Today USO Comedy Tour.
In December 2017 she joined the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s USO Holiday Tour, a nonstop run through Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Afghanistan, Iraq and Poland over six days. That’s the trip that put her in front of that giant flag on Christmas Eve. In July 2023 she toured U.S. bases in Japan, and in December 2024 she headlined her own Okinawa comedy tour at Camp Hansen.
Comics rarely talk about these shows in their act, and there’s no special to sell afterward. It says a lot about someone when they keep showing up for a crowd that can’t buy a ticket.
What movies and TV shows has Iliza Shlesinger been in?
Stand-up is the engine, but she has built a real screen career around it:
- Host: The Weakly News (2007–2012), the dating show Excused (2011–2013) and her own Freeform late-night show, Truth & Iliza (2017).
- Creator: the web series Forever 31 (2016) and Netflix’s The Iliza Shlesinger Sketch Show (2020).
- Actor: Instant Family (2018), Spenser Confidential with Mark Wahlberg (2020), the drama Pieces of a Woman (2020) and HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones (2023), where she played Shay Marigold.
- Writer and star: the Netflix romantic comedy Good on Paper (2021), which she wrote, starred in and executive produced, inspired by a real-life bad relationship.
She has also written two books, Girl Logic: The Genius and the Absurdity (2017) and All Things Aside (2022), and launched the advice podcast Truth and Iliza in 2014.
What is Iliza Shlesinger doing now?
A movie she wrote about home. Her newest film, Chasing Summer, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2026. She wrote it and stars as Jamie, a woman who loses her job and her boyfriend and moves back to her small Texas hometown, where the friends and flings of one high school summer turn her life upside down. Josephine Decker directed it, and the cast includes Tom Welling, Megan Mullally and Lola Tung. It pulls straight from Shlesinger’s own suburban Texas childhood.
More scripts. She says she’s still pushing to get comedies about women made, which she’s described as an uphill fight. “I have three scripts sitting open on my desktop,” she told Entertainment Now.
A new tour. Her Free Nights and Weekends Tour kicks off in Arizona in January 2027. Before that, she plays the Palazzo Theatre at The Venetian in Las Vegas on Saturday, December 12, 2026. The new material leans into what women go through at different stages of life, including being a mom in her forties.
A cooking show. In 2026, Australia’s SBS Food released This Tastes Funny with Iliza Shlesinger.
Is Iliza Shlesinger married?
Yes. She married chef Noah Galuten on May 12, 2018, in a Jewish ceremony in Los Angeles, a wedding that became the backbone of her special Unveiled. They have a daughter, born in 2022, and a son, born in 2024.
Why you should know her name
Iliza Shlesinger has spent almost two decades doing the work. She broke a glass ceiling on network TV, built one of the deepest catalogs of specials of any comic in her generation, wrote her own movies, and kept flying overseas to make tired service members laugh on holidays.
She’s not a secret to people who love stand-up. For everyone else, the easiest fix is to put on Elder Millennial tonight, and then go see her live when the tour comes through your city.
More comedy on The LA Note: Who is Kat Bird? · Why did Akaash Singh leave Flagrant?
FAQ
Who is Iliza Shlesinger?
An American stand-up comedian, actor and writer from Dallas, Texas. She won Last Comic Standing in 2008 and has released seven comedy specials, six of them on Netflix.
How old is Iliza Shlesinger?
She was born February 22, 1983, which makes her 43 in 2026.
Was Iliza Shlesinger the first woman to win Last Comic Standing?
Yes. She won season six in 2008 at 25, the first woman and the youngest comic to win the show.
Where can I watch Iliza Shlesinger’s stand-up?
War Paint, Freezing Hot, Confirmed Kills, Elder Millennial, Unveiled and Hot Forever are on Netflix. A Different Animal is on Prime Video.
What is Iliza Shlesinger’s new movie?
Chasing Summer, which she wrote and stars in. It premiered at Sundance on January 26, 2026.
Is Iliza Shlesinger touring?
Yes. Her Free Nights and Weekends Tour starts in Arizona in January 2027, and she plays Las Vegas on December 12, 2026.
Who is Iliza Shlesinger’s husband?
Chef Noah Galuten. They married in 2018 and have two children.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Iliza Shlesinger
- Wikipedia: Chasing Summer (film)
- IndieWire: Chasing Summer review
- Entertainment Now: Iliza Shlesinger on motherhood, Chasing Summer and her upcoming tour
- The Venetian Las Vegas: Iliza Shlesinger
- Detroit Jewish News, November 20, 2008
- U.S. Department of Defense and USO photo records via Wikimedia Commons (see image credits)
Image credits
- Iliza Shlesinger performs for service members at Yokota Air Base, Japan, July 20, 2023. Photo: Manuel G. Zamora / U.S. Air Force, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Christmas Eve 2017: Shlesinger performs for deployed troops at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, during the USO Holiday Tour. Photo: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Shlesinger in 2012, before a weekly comedy show at Royal/T Cafe in Los Angeles. Photo: CleftClips, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- December 13, 2012: Shlesinger performs for sailors aboard the USS John C. Stennis in the Arabian Sea, her first year with the USO. Photo: Kenneth Abbate / U.S. Navy, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Craig Robinson, Shlesinger and Jay Leno close out The Today USO Comedy Tour Show at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, October 1, 2014. Photo: Staff Sgt. Daniel Luksan / U.S. Army, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
- December 13, 2024: Shlesinger headlines her Okinawa Comedy Tour at Camp Hansen, Japan. Photo: Cpl. Thomas Sheng / U.S. Marine Corps, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bill Choudhry is a digital marketer who specializes in e-commerce, with a not-so-secret knack for the entertainment industry. He channels that passion into features and interviews for The LA Note.
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