Riki Lindhome
Plucky acoustic songs that smuggle in heavy doses of medical despair.
1 special · 2016
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Riki Lindhome sits with an acoustic guitar and plays bright, plucky folk music about physical failure and clinical despair. She maintains a stance of sunny optimism, singing sweet melodies about invasive medical procedures and using a literal smiley-face and frowny-face emoji scale to rate her own tragedies. She will deliver a devastating update from a fertility doctor in the exact same cheerful register she uses to tune her instrument.
Specials
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Trying to Be Special with Kate Micucci & Garfunkel and Oates
A meta-fictional concert film fueled by kazoos and raunchy folk songs.
Vimeo · 62 min
On stage
For years, she was half of the musical comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates, playing satirical, expletive-heavy pop songs about modern indignities. Her solo work, anchored by her stage show Dead Inside and the album No Worries If Not, narrows that focus to her own decade-long fertility struggle. While many solo shows lean into harrowing trauma confessions, Lindhome actively works against the form. She designs her hour to let the audience know early on that her story ends happily, granting them permission to laugh without guilt at the string of miscarriages and failed IVF cycles that follow.
She treats jokes not as a way to access sadness, but as a rigid shield against it. The songs are dense with medical specifics and unsentimental observations about aging, but she never slows the tempo to ask for sympathy. Instead, she relies on her natural sweetness, grinning through the darkest stretches of her life and daring the room to keep the beat. Her television acting brings people to the theater, but on stage she operates strictly as a musician determined to get to the next chorus.
Turning points
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Formation of Garfunkel and Oates
Lindhome teamed up with Kate Micucci to form the comedy folk duo Garfunkel and Oates, establishing a prolific musical comedy brand across stage, screen, and albums.
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Emmy Nomination for Trying to Be Special
The Vimeo comedy special Garfunkel and Oates: Trying to Be Special earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for the song Frozen Lullaby.
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Debut of Solo Stage Show Dead Inside
Lindhome debuted her first solo musical comedy show Dead Inside at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, candidly recounting her personal fertility journey.
At a glance
Fans also like
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Kate MicucciMicucci is Lindhome's longtime partner in Garfunkel and Oates, sharing the same musical comedy sensibilities, quirky delivery, and songwriting chemistry.
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Natasha LeggeroLeggero co-created and co-starred with Lindhome on the period satire series Another Period, displaying a shared penchant for dark, satirical high-concept comedy.
Podcasts
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Making It with Riki Lindhome · host
Riki Lindhome interviews figures from across the entertainment industry about their careers, creative journeys, and rises to prominence.
Also on screen
- Million Dollar Baby
- 2008–2017
- The Big Bang Theory
- 2015–2018
- Another Period
- Knives Out
- 2020–2022
- Duncanville
A clip to start with
A clip of Riki Lindhome