Hannah Berner on We Ride At Dawn, Facing Reality Tv Vitriol and Using TikTok as the Ultimate Open Mic Night
Words: Emma Loffhagen | Photographer: Emma Craft | Stylist: Tabitha Sanchez | MUA: Dani Parkes | Hair: Sky Kim | Digi Tech: Will Wang | 2nd Photo Assist/PA: Aly Kula
Make it stand out
For the first twenty years of her life, Hannah Berner doesn’t think she ever once had fun. It is an unexpected admission from a woman best known for her stand-up comedy, unfiltered “girls’ girl” TikTok persona, and multiple acerbically witty podcasts. Take a cursory scroll through Berner’s social media pages, and it is a matter of seconds before you’ll encounter a video of her in fits of uncontrollable laughter, either on stage or with her best friend and Giggly Squad podcast host Paige DeSorbo. And, this summer, she added a Netflix stand-up special to her already glittering CV. In fact, nowadays, it looks as though 33-year-old Berner has carved a career for herself based precisely on the objective of having as much fun as possible.
But before charming the masses online, Berner was in the belly of an entirely different and much more ascetic beast – as an elite tennis player.
“I come from a sports family, and my whole life was about becoming the greatest tennis player I could become,” she tells me over Zoom from her hotel room in Florida, where she is on tour with DeSorbo. “I definitely put all my anxiety into it – it was my whole ego. I was like a machine.”
Berner competed for a while on the pro tour as a teenager, before going on to play for the University of Wisconsin. (Years later, she ended up hooking up with the mascot: “that was full circle for my career, shout out to Bucky”). Talented and driven, she was excelling despite her reservations about the toxicity of the sport. But one morning, while walking to training before a potentially career-defining Big Ten tournament, all of that came to an abrupt halt.
Top: FLEUR A | Skirt: CHOPOVA LOWENA | Shoes: CROCS
Sweater: Nicklas Skovgaard | Skirt: Nicklas Skovgaard | Shoes: ROGER VIVIER
Top: GIGI LA | Skirt: LUCILA SAFDIE
“It was like six in the morning, I was walking to weights and I was miserable,” she says. “It was zero degrees in Wisconsin. Some guy in a car didn't see me walking because I was in a big black parka, and I didn't see him because I had my hood on.”
She stepped into the road, and the car ploughed into her side, leaving her with severe muscular bruising. With hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise.
“It wasn’t a career-ending injury, but I took it as a sign from the universe,” she says. “I was 20, and I was like ‘I just feel like there has to be more to life than whatever I’ve been doing for the last 15 years, like, beating bitches down on the court.’ I knew there was a creative, funny side to me that I’d been suppressing since I was little.”
JACKET - LAPOINTE | PANTS - LAPOINTE | TOP - STELLA MCCARTNEY | SHOES - CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
“I wasn't meant to do tennis forever because I'm so not a machine,” she continues. “I'm a giggling, ADHD, overthinking person, which made me a fun teammate, but it didn't make me an ideal tennis player.”
The trajectory to finding that happiness was far from linear. After quitting tennis, Berner’s early twenties saw her cycling through various unfulfilling jobs – cold calling (“pretty good at it, but I was miserable”), a stint in marketing (“quit that quickly”), sports modelling (“I booked an Adidas campaign for my foot, I was like, this is success!”) – before securing the first gig she really enjoyed, as a video creator for digital media company Betches, to the tune of $300 a week.
“I don't know if I ever had fun before that,” she says. “It was like, wait, being goofy is all I want to do.”
It provided a launchpad for Berner’s first real foray into the public sphere, after a scout for Bravo reality TV show Summer House discovered her videos, and recruited her for the show in the summer of 2018.
“I remember just thinking like, ‘I'm 26. I'm single, why not?’” she says. But despite the undoubtedly useful exposure, the saga soured after Berner’s character was shoehorned into a villain arc, forcing her to exit the show after three seasons.
“I’m ultimately grateful for the experience, but I don't like the energy of [reality TV] at all,” Berner admits. “They have characters in their head that they want to find…especially misogynistic, stereotypical female roles.”
DRESS - Nicklas Skovgaard
Burnt from the public vitriol, what followed was a period of soul-searching – and a realisation for Berner that she did want to be in front of the camera, just on her own terms. And so in 2021, like many aspiring creatives her age, she reintroduced herself to the world via TikTok.
“I’m ultimately grateful for the experience, but I don't like the energy of [reality TV] at all,” Berner admits. “They have characters in their head that they want to find…especially misogynistic, stereotypical female roles.”
“I remember sitting down and being like, ‘Okay, I'm going to post three times a day for six months. It's a non-negotiable’,” she says. “And it was therapeutic to be seen authentically through my own content. It’s hard to admit that you like the camera, especially as a woman.”
In the years that followed, skits like her “Hannah on the street” videos – clips of Berner asking strangers and fellow comics about their sex lives and personal antics, led to her collaborating with amongst others, Jennifer Lawrence, the Jonas Brothers and Jennifer Lopez. She launched multiple podcasts which flew up the charts, particularly Giggly Squad, co-hosted with her Summer House castmate Paige DeSorbo (“we trauma bonded on the show”). She also married a “zaddy”, fellow comedian Des Bishop in 2022, after a whirlwind romance that saw them engaged within six months.
In many ways, Berner’s transition from online to in-person comedy was accidental. Where most comedians spend years working the circuit and building up to a five-minute set, shortly after the first season of Summer House, a friend dared her to perform 10 minutes of stand-up in front of a few hundred people in New York.
“I delusionally just didn’t follow any of the rules, and I'm glad I didn't because otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you right now,”
“I delusionally just didn’t follow any of the rules, and I'm glad I didn't because otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you right now,” she says. “As a woman, the stand-up comedy scene is hard for women to break into because it's really like going to bars late at night with a bunch of drunk dudes.
“You can't go through the traditional hoop of waiting for an old comedy club owner to choose you,” she continues. “TikTok was able to be an open mic for me to practice jokes, and through the algorithm, I found this community of like really funny, hot smart girls and gays.”
After making the prestigious Just For Laughs “New Faces” list in 2022, whose alumni include Shane Gillis, Kevin Hart, Amy Schumer, and Variety’s Comics To Watch the following year, Berner caught the attention of Netflix. Her 50-minute special, We Ride At Dawn, released in July, immediately catapulted her into the streamer’s Top 10 most popular shows.
“I always joke that my wedding was great, but the best day of my life was shooting my Netflix special,” Berner says.
“TikTok was able to be an open mic for me to practice jokes, and through the algorithm, I found this community of like really funny, hot smart girls and gays.”
While her tennis playing days are long behind her, Berner still credits her time on the tour with the resilience required to thrive in the public eye, particularly when it comes to navigating the still lad-laden comedy circuit.
“I feel like that's my purpose a little bit to like go into male spaces and find an understanding and show that it can be disrupted.”
