HE DOESN’T EVEN GO HERE
“I have a real job it’s called gay icon, who cares if Lindsay Lohan is in Dubai?!”
The 2021 spring comedian performance was a banging success. This year Daniel Franzese, who played Damien in Mean Girls, came to campus on April 26th. The show took place for an intimate sixty-person audience in McKinnon.
“We approached this event the same way we approached past shows, the only change was adapting to COVID-19,” says Emily Sanderson ‘22, the current president of the Student Union Board (SUB). “This meant finding viewing location spaces, setting up technology to stream to those spaces, and following physical distancing guidelines.”
The show was live-streamed to upstairs Lakeside and Moseley 215 to give an in-person experience while adhering to campus COVID-19 protocols. Viewing the show in the main area adhered to six-feet apart guidelines.
Franzese walks on stage and immediately did not disappoint. The Mean Girls star comes out holding a big Elon sign and says he was so glad to be at “Elon Musk University.” The crowd laughs. He exclaims that he’s so excited to be here even during a “Pandemi Levato”
Daniel makes it clear that everything is always described with the adjective “AMAZIINNNGG.” Did you have that class? It was AMAZIINNNGG! When you’re from Brooklyn everything is “PHENOMENAL.”
The self-proclaimed “Italian and loud” comedian started off his show by asking his audience to cheer if they are part of the LGBTQ+ community or if they are a weirdo. He encouraged the audience to explore themselves sexually in college, joking that, “it’s still early in the school year.” His show was inclusive and very personal.
He even opens up questions to the audience and made the audience feel as if he was in the audience with them as he had full conversations with members of the audience. It was so fetch!
And, in case you’re curious, great drag names according to Daniel: Mani Petty, Lincoln Bio, Hunter Pus, Harmonica Lewinski, Genocide, and Trya change.
Of course, he jokes about the Mean Girls film but most of his act is centered on his “publicist that has no chill,” aka his mother. Franzese says, “my mom’s language is called ‘Momese’ and I’m the only one who can translate.” Here’s an example: everyone knows Olaf from Frozen, except Daniels' mother! He was at a pool with his mom and niece and his mom says, “‘get the Zoloft towel she’s shaking!’ Now everyone at the pool thinks my niece has anxiety.” He also shares that he is not as close with his dad when he says he brought, “pasta and toxic masculinity from Italy.”
The limit to our love for Mean Girls does not exist. Of course, Franzese dedicated some time to his claim to fame.
“Mean Girls was a big movie, who thought that would happen?!” Franzese says that he was not expecting a lead role. The best part about the role was that he could be gay and cool and later he found out that his character Damien had impacted many people around the country to come out and be confident being gay. He tells a story about a fan who had reached out to him a while back and told him how much his character helped him and how after the movie came out, the cool girls at school approached him because of Damien.
He explains how representation in the media is so important, you never know who you can be impacting. Franzese says that the, “biggest question I get is if I’m friends with the cast. It’s just really hard to be together but we do stay in touch.”