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Claudia Oshry Channels Joan Rivers’ Jewish Comedy in “Disgraced Queen”

“I’m so proudly Jewish,” she told The Journal. “It’s so much a part of my shtick and who I am.”
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June 25, 2020
Comedian Claudia Oshry performs her special at Bergen Performing Arts Center on January 23, 2020. Photo by Jen Maler

Pre-millennials may not be familiar with Claudia Oshry, but to the generation that has grown up on social media, she’s a superstar, with thousands of loyal followers on Instagram. Having parlayed a college blog into an influential brand that also includes the YouTube show and podcast “The Morning Toast,” she launched a stand-up comedy career two years ago and hit the road, with great success. Her debut special, “Disgraced Queen,” recorded in January in Englewood, N.J., will be released digitally on June 30.

Oshry, 25, clad in black pajamas and unicorn slippers, expounds on pop culture, reality TV icons, partying, sex and (over)sharing raunchy stories. She occasionally bursts into song and makes lots of Jewish references throughout the 75-minute show. Like her idol Joan Rivers, she’s self-deprecating, sharply funny and makes herself the butt of the joke — sometimes literally, as her anatomy is a big part of her act. All topics are fair game.

“I like to joke about things that I think most people can relate to. I joke a lot about my weight because I think people can relate to it and, as a Jewish woman, I’ve been on that struggle bus for quite a few years,” Oshry told the Journal. “It’s hard to toe the line between being funny and not being offensive, but if I’m making fun of myself, no one can really get offended by it.” 

Oshry expected to see young millennial fans in her audiences — those as obsessed with “The Bachelor” franchise and “Bravo-lebrities” as she is — but was surprised to find a wider age range. She knew that audiences in New York, New Jersey and Boston would appreciate her Jewish jokes and references, but she didn’t delete them when she played to crowds with few Members of the Tribe. “I’m so proudly Jewish,” she said. “It’s so much a part of my shtick and who I am.”

Raised in a Modern Orthodox home, Oshry grew up in a “Jewish bubble” in New York, attending a Jewish school, camp and visiting Israel many times from eighth grade to last year. She fondly recalls her bat mitzvah as “the best night of my life.” Per a DNA test, she’s 99.9% Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish. “I’ve always had a deep connection to my heritage and Jewish ancestry,” she said. 

“It’s hard to toe the line between being funny and not being offensive, but if I’m making fun of myself no one can really get offended by it.” — Claudia Oshry

During the Holocaust, her relative Rabbi Ephraim Oshry wrote about keeping Jewish laws and practices alive while imprisoned in ghettos and concentration camps, burying his notes. He survived, unearthed them and published “Responsa From the Holocaust” after the war. “We learned about him in school,” she noted. “I was so proud.”

Today, Oshry and her husband, Ben Soffer, a creative marketer for influencer and branding campaigns, keep a kosher home. “I feel very connected to Judaism in a very spiritual way and it’s hard sometimes for me to apply that in terms of the practices,” she said. “I am always trying to better myself and do more, observe more Shabbats. My husband is more religious than me and keeps us on track. He’s always pushing me to learn more and observe more and I love that.” The couple, who’ll celebrate their third anniversary in September, first met at a college party. “He was a few years older and knew my sister. We went out and it took four months to trick him into falling in love with me,” Oshry said.  

The third of four sisters who were close and remain so, she nevertheless “had a case of self-diagnosed middle child syndrome. I think my craving for attention came from being one of so many,” she said. “I was always trying to make people laugh. I would sing and I would dance. I genuinely thought that I was giving everyone the gift of my talent. But when I look back at that time, I think that everyone thought that I was annoying, not talented.” 

Still as energetic but more self-aware and with greater perspective by the time she enrolled at New York University, Oshry started to blog about her terrible internship as @GirlWithNoJob, promoting it on Facebook and later Instagram, where it became a sensation and provided her with lucrative branding and other opportunities.

Although she knew she was funny, she hesitated to try stand-up. “The thought of getting on stage and telling a joke and people not laughing scared me into not doing it,” Oshry said. But a test gig she booked at Caroline’s in New York sold out, leading to more shows and nearly two years on the road. She ended it before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and doesn’t plan to tour again till 2021. “I’m very much a homebody, so being stuck in my house is not the worst thing in the world,” she said, confiding that despite her outsize public persona, “I’m very introverted and shy in a lot of social situations. I’m really pretty calm. Maybe it’s just that I’m tired from being a lunatic all day.”

Oshry’s future plans definitely include having children. Beyond that, she’s open to trying everything, including TV, movies, music and books. “I will do anything that doesn’t include nudity,” she said. “If you asked me five years ago if I’d like to do stand-up, I’d probably have said no. But doing stand-up and going on tour has changed the course of my career forever, so I don’t say no to much. I just want to make sure that whatever I’m doing, I’m contributing positively to the world, making people laugh, taking their minds off things for a while, being a positive light.”

“Disgraced Queen” will be released June 30 through the Comedy Dynamics network via Comcast, Amazon Prime Video, Spectrum, Apple TV, Dish, Google Play, DirecTV, Vimeo YouTube and more.

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