Chloe Radcliffe takes on infidelity in her comedy show, coming to Tempe

Comedian Chloe Radcliffe is bringing her solo show to Tempe Center for the Arts on Saturday, Nov. 8.

The show is called “Cheat,” and it takes on one of the third rails in American culture: infidelity in relationships.

Radcliffe herself has a long history of cheating, and as she told The Show's Sam Dingman recently, the show is her attempt to figure out how and why she ended up betraying her own values.

Radcliffe talked more about it with The Show.

Full conversation

CHLOE RADCLIFFE: I desperately want to be liked. That’s sort of the point of the whole show. It’s sort of, you know, a huge amount of what animated a lot of the cheating, which is funny because I’m doing the most deeply unlikable thing.

We have more sympathy for murderers and serial killers on TV than we do for cheaters. Like, if there is a, if somebody, if you want to signal that a character is bad, you make them cheat. You don’t make them kill, you make them cheat.

SAM DINGMAN: Right, right. That’s a really interesting point, Chloe. I hadn’t thought about that, because there’s basically a cottage industry of fictional TV shows that — and nonfictional TV shows, actually — that try to humanize murderers.

RADCLIFFE: Yep. [LAUGHS] Yep.

DINGMAN: I mean, one of the reasons I was interested to talk to you is I’ve never seen somebody talk about this the way you’re talking about it.

RADCLIFFE: Yeah. And the show does not condone cheating. I think cheating is always bad. I think cheating always hurts somebody. That said, a lot of relationships do involve cheating, and I think that if we wanted stuff like this to stop, we would want people to talk about it.

DINGMAN: Right.

RADCLIFFE: And all of the nonfiction series about serial killers, they don’t make you say, “and it is OK to be a serial killer.” But they do illuminate why a person — a person who is the same species as you and me — could do something that feels so alien, that feels so inhuman.

DINGMAN: One of the things that you’re doing that I find really fascinating, especially early on, is kind of inviting the audience to consider, like, well, what do we mean when we say cheating?

RADCLIFFE: I basically ask, what counts as cheating? And that came out of a conversation with a friend where I said something about, you know, I basically made reference to what really counts as cheating. And he sort of shrugged and looked at me and was sort of in the like, “What do you mean, what counts as cheating? We all know what counts as cheating.”

And I say, “Great, let’s take kissing as the line. I think that’s the line that most people would point to.” And then I walk through some scenarios that don’t involve kissing that are, I think, incredibly hurtful.

DINGMAN: Right.

RADCLIFFE: And I think that way more people have bumped up against this fuzzy, fuzzy line than would ever self-identify as having bumped up against the line.

DINGMAN: You use this formulation in the show of Inside Chloe and Outside Chloe, and it’s this really wonderful device because it allows you to talk about your lived experience of these behaviors versus what people might assume about somebody who would do those things.

Tell me about coming up with that device of Inside Chloe versus Outside Chloe. Was that a way you thought of yourself as a person moving through the world before you wrote this, or did you come up with it for the show?

RADCLIFFE: It came up because of the show, but it was so organic, it was so unintentional. It just blossomed out of me trying to rectify, I look very different than I — and not even very, very different, but like, different enough that the world treats me differently than how I looked a few years ago.

And trying to express how I behave based on how I am assuming the world sees me from when I weighed a little bit more, when I was less put together, when I dressed a little stupider, when I didn’t know how to do my hair versus now, when I weigh a little bit less, when I know how to do my hair, when I dress a little bit cooler, when I’m a little bit more New York.

In the past, I was a little bit more Midwest, which is where I grew up. And I feel the world interact with me differently. And now I feel these expectations that from the outside that don’t align with how I see myself. Because how I see myself is rooted in the decades of childhood and formative years.

There’s such a fine line between a reason and an excuse. And I do not want to make an excuse, but I want to lay out the reasons.

DINGMAN: I find that fascinating because the show has so many moments of real self-confrontation. And if I may, one of them for me is the way that you talk about the men in your life. Because, as we were talking about earlier, you talk about being treated a certain way based on the way you looked when you were younger.

And as recently as just a few years ago in the show, you say that people called you a freak. And then in this show, as an adult, you’re talking about being attracted to men who you don’t necessarily find physically attractive. And you use these phrases to talk about them like smelly troll, small face, cricket neckbeard.

RADCLIFFE: My poor exes. I hope they never hear this.

DINGMAN: Well, tell me about that choice because I had the sense that it was intentional.

RADCLIFFE: Man, I, Sam, nobody has ever quite just pulled out the like, “So you say three really mean things about real people. What do you think about that?” And when you frame it like that, it sounds bad. It’s pretty hard to defend. Yeah, I am always trying to disarm and be as honest as possible and not romanticized.

My goal is to make a thing that makes people feel seen in a way that they had written off hope of ever feeling seen like that ever.

And I think so many people have the experience of like, my love story is not, or my romance story is not, doesn’t fit a romcom vehicle It doesn’t fit, you know, what somebody is supposed to look like. It doesn’t fit how I’m supposed to feel. It doesn’t fit who I’m supposed to be attracted to.

And I find it most interesting to talk about, you know, what happens when you don’t feel good enough about yourself to expect anything more than the bottom rung, and so you wind up with somebody who you don’t actually see yourself with, but that’s who’s there?

I think that a lot of people have that experience. And again, it’s like, I don’t really hear people talking about that, and I want to be the one to talk about it.

DINGMAN: How has this project affected you? Like, has it taken a toll? Has it increased your self-perception?

RADCLIFFE: It has uncovered parts of me to me, that I was so cocky about coming into the development process. I was so cocky that I knew myself completely. There’s stuff that I totally was turning a blind eye to. It’s like I was doing the thing that people in the audience are doing that I want to model.

It’s possible to look at the worst parts of yourself and not like, “I’m cheating more.” I’m not cheating now. I’m in this incredibly happy, incredibly monogamous relationship with a man who saw the show before we ever started dating. And he’s wonderful. And we, once a month he goes, “Are you cheating on me?” And I go, “No.”

And I love it. Like, I love, you know, it’s like, it’s, I’m so happy in my relationship now. The show certainly has made me a different partner. I am so more able to be on top of myself.