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About Town<br />
PERSON OF INTEREST<br />
Who Does<br />
Whitney<br />
Cummings<br />
Think She Is?<br />
<strong>The</strong> prolific TV star/creator helms<br />
her first feature, <strong>The</strong> Female Brain<br />
By Lacey Rose • Photographed by Coral von Zumwalt<br />
W<br />
hitney Cummings was right around<br />
30 when her mother and father suffered<br />
strokes within two years of<br />
each other. Desperate to understand<br />
what went wrong, she began devouring neurology<br />
books, which led her to Louann Brizendine’s<br />
<strong>The</strong> Female Brain. While it would do little to aid<br />
her parents, the book profoundly changed the<br />
comedian’s understanding of herself. “I remember<br />
feeling an overwhelming sense of relief,” she<br />
says, “and a lot less crazy.” Now Cummings, 35<br />
and a prolific TV creator (2 Broke Girls, Whitney),<br />
has spun the tome into a rom-com (out Feb. 9 via<br />
IFC Films), enlisting Neal Brennan (Chappelle’s<br />
Show) to co-write and lining up Sofia Vergara,<br />
James Marsden and the NBA’s Blake Griffin to join<br />
her onscreen. That her directorial debut, a film<br />
centering on empathy between the sexes, arrives<br />
in the heat of the Time’s Up moment isn’t lost on<br />
the D.C.-reared Ivy Leaguer, also a showrunner<br />
on ABC’s Roseanne revival. Though the movement<br />
has Cummings reconsidering some of her early<br />
experiences in comedy (“Because of the rejection<br />
you get and how tough you have to be … I<br />
didn’t realize some sexual harassment I had dealt<br />
with”), she says stand-up remains “the only place<br />
I’m comfortable. It’s where I oxygenate.”<br />
People, Places, Preoccupations<br />
HAIR BY DAVID STANWELL FOR DOVE HAIRCARE AT THE WALL GROUP, MAKEUP BY KATHLEEN KARRIDENE.<br />
Your financier, Black Bicycle’s Erika Olde, had to<br />
persuade you to direct <strong>The</strong> Female Brain. Why?<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are tectonic plates moving in our business<br />
Hear about Cummings’ tsunami experience on set at THR.COM/VIDEO<br />
“One of the big conversations I’m trying<br />
to have onstage right now is that to be<br />
pro-woman, you don’t have to be anti-man.<br />
Saying all men suck makes you look like<br />
an idiot,” says Cummings, photographed<br />
Jan. 26 at Harlowe in West <strong>Hollywood</strong>.<br />
Styling by George Kotsiopoulos<br />
Wolk Morais jacket, vest, trousers,<br />
shirt and tie, Christian Louboutin shoes.<br />
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER<br />
23<br />
FEBRUARY 7, <strong>2018</strong>
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