Amy Sedaris is a New York City treasure. She moved here in 1992 and lives in the West Village with her rabbit Tina. As an actress, she is a master of the comic character, having been in over 40 movies and some 100 television shows, specializing in fierce but somehow clueless characters. She’s written plays and is a best-selling author of I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, which displays her razor wit and quirky domestic obsessions, with a deep tap root into the craft and cooking-show culture of America. She has also sold cupcakes and cheeseballs out of her kitchen.
Her crowning glory is her Emmy-nominated show “At Home with Amy Sedaris,” which she created and writes with her longtime collaborator Paul Dinello, a cooking, craft and holiday-celebrating show which is packed so tightly with dark wit and biting social commentary that one can barely take it in all in one viewing. It is by turns menacingly demented, psychologically hilarious and so subtly subversive you barely notice you’ve been sliced into, wrapped as it is in literal confections of over-frosted cakes and film-genre take-offs, and always edged in ric rac.
Sedaris says, about living in New York, “I’m a small town girl in a big city and when I’m home I look for community and am not so adventurous.” But she’s been to every state in the U.S. except for North and South Dakota, and travels often with her brother, the writer David Sedaris, and his partner Hugh Hamrick. As a friend and neighbor I am lucky to live two floors below her and don’t think she recognizes how brilliant she is.
When the pandemic hit, Sedaris stayed in the city where she continues to walk miles every day, one of the pleasures of New York not thwarted by COVID-19.
You stayed in New York during the pandemic while many in your neighborhood left. What was that like? I felt like the little resident girl who’s being left behind while everyone loads their moving vans, or someone who has polio and they sit at their window and watch people come and go because they can’t go outside and play. Now, noticing when homeless people get their haircut, I realize how long I’ve been here.
What did you do with yourself during the last six months? I would walk up to the Upper East Side to see my brother David and his partner Hugh. I’m not afraid to take the train, but you can just walk everywhere.
Do you always take the same route? No, I zig-zag. I go to Fifth, I might head over to Madison. My acupuncturist told me to do that: “change up your route,” so I keep that in mind when I walk up there because it can get pretty boring. I usually choose a place to walk to every day. A juice place called Bomberi Mart on 11th past Bleeker with all natural stuff. Or Murray Hill to Kalustyan’s to buy tahini. I’ll walk to Eataly which was nice and empty for a while, but not anymore, and buy nuts to feed the squirrels, or get my fish. Or I pick a plant store I’ve never been to, like Green Fingers on the Lower East Side. It gets me out of the house, and walking four or five miles a day.
Why do you choose to live in New York? I like living in the city because I need the outside stimulation. I like seeing and being surrounded by the fortunate and the unfortunate, because it keeps me on the right track. I see homeless people and I feel for them, and also know I don’t want ever to be homeless so it reminds me to reach for the highest star. I also like diversity. I like the East coast and am glad I was raised here. I love nature and appreciate the mountains and the beach, but I need a city. I love huge buildings full of people.
