YAP Therapy with Jake Shane
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Photography: Krissy Saleh
Creative Direction & Production: Molly Apple
Styling: Sydney Lopez
Grooming: Jaime Maloney
Styling Assistant: Angelina Vita Arena
Production Assistant: Aubrey Salita
Words by Amy Mazius
Pass that puss, and possibly the Lexapro…
JAKE SHANE IS ON HIS WAY TO EUROPE, PHONING IN FROM THE AIRPORT LOUNGE, WHICH EXPLAINS WHY HE’S SLIGHTLY SOFTER SPOKEN THAN THE JAKE SHANE I KNOW FROM THE INTERNET, A PLACE WHERE SHANE IS EITHER COMPLETELY CANDID DECIDING IF HIS HAIR CHANGED COLOR OVERNIGHT OR COMPLETELY INSIDE A COMEDY BIT, PLAYING PLUTO GETTING KICKED OUT OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. EVEN WITH THE VOLUME TURNED DOWN, SHANE IS NO LESS WARM. WITHIN MINUTES OF MEETING WE BONDED OVER OUR BIRTHDAY’S BEING ONLY ONE DAY APART, BOTH SCORPIOS; WE BOTH HAVE ADDISON RAE ON LOOP; WE BOTH LOVE GLEE; WE BOTH AGREE MAKING OTHER PEOPLE LAUGH IS BETTER THAN THE BEST DRUGS.
““I will never take my own advice. I can’t.””
Shane is a certified Yapper. YAP, in the Your Ambition Pays way, is happening in real time for Shane, “I'm doing what I've always dreamed of doing.” What could be better than that? “Now that I'm doing this, I really can't imagine doing anything else, which I know I'm very lucky to say. I love entertaining.” And entertain, he does. Shane, whether he’s in your airpods or on stage, is funny in every medium, producing the kind of laugh that only a long-time best friend can elicit, the kind of laugh that makes you forget why your day sucked. And the best part is, it’s a two-way street.
Shane says, “Making a funny joke and hearing a room full of people all collectively laugh in real time is the most addicting, incredible, euphoric feeling.” Shane says, “If I was able to act in something every single day, I'd be the happiest person alive, even on the weekends.” And so would we. The comedy emerging from Shane and his contemporaries in the new class of creative comedians has a nostalgic quality, a “that’s so me” feeling seeping out of the pores, with shows like Overcompensating, Adults, and Shane’s unforgettable Social Media Manager role on Hacks. We intrinsically know that person.
We are that person. Which is what makes it all the more cozy for us, the audience, that Shane is suddenly everywhere, delightfully yapping in Poppi and Walmart commercials, delivering zingers in TikTok crossover videos, and sidling up to A-listers in his podcast clubhouse. Therapuss is establishing its voice as the new late night boasting a lineup of celebrity guests (who are clearly Shane’s friends, in the best way) like Lorde, Jay Shetty, Glenn Powell, Saweetie, Snookie, Charlie XCX, need I go on?
Friendship is the thread stitching every morsel together. The background laughter trickling in and out of Shane’s short-form “pocket content” puts you in the room, it makes you, the viewer, feel like you’re there, amongst friends. “I just don’t post anything if my friends don’t think it’s funny. So when I’m filming with them and they laugh, I’m like ‘ok, thank god this is funny.’”
Guided by the laughs, “I've been auditioning a bunch. I've been writing a bunch. I've been figuring out the last few episodes of Therapuss to close out the season. I want to just put my head down and work in the fall–it’s very very against my nature to put my head down.”
Best mantra or words of wisdom that help you keep going when you feel down?
“Nothing. When I’m feeling sad, nothing can pull me out of it except for Taylor Swift.”
Having an all-access pass to Shane means a room full of his soft padding; his team, who he is very close with, comprising day-to-day and PR, all there to provide support. And the wider team, absent from the room, includes therapists, plural. Therapy, a word synonymous
Like ships in the night, they just keep missing each other. ”I love her to death, but I think we need to do a reset. I constantly miss our sessions. The therapy I love the most is exposure therapy for OCD. That's my favorite therapy. [My OCD is] the most miserable part of my life, and it also makes me who I am. I’ve had it since I was 7 years old. It’s not just rituals, I [also] hyperfixate and spiral out of control. It’s so beyond debilitating that I have to let people know what’s going on so they don’t think I’m going insane. I’ve been on meds for years, but they don’t really work anymore. I know I need to switch my meds and start exposure therapy again…I just always put it off because it’s not debilitating enough to ruin my life.”
Non-prescription meds that do work for Shane include “listening to Carly Rae Jepsen and Lorde and walking on a treadmill, and watching myself on television for the first time in my favorite show, Hacks.” In the end, we hope Shane is reading this in one of his favorite two Yap locales: “On my couch in my living room and then also in the south of France with a glass of wine and a cigarette,” Shane says with a laugh, like the true icon he is.
Where to get the best Puss?
“Angelini in Los Angeles”
How important is alone time for you?
“I say it’s important, and then I’m miserable, so I don’t know.”
What do you need on tour?
“Freshly popped popcorn, Twizzlers, and Celsius.”
Shane says, “[My inspiration comes] from consuming media. If I ever feel like I'm in a dry spell of jokes or ideas I have to watch four or five shows, understand the current landscape of comedy and come back.” There’s also always weed, kind of. “I was smoking every single day; I kept trying to go on mini breaks. Nothing was working. And then right before I put out this comedy album called Puss & Poems, every time I got high, I was like, I don't want to put this out. But I only felt that way when I smoked. So I just stopped for a day. The day became a week, a week turned into two, three, four weeks, two, three months, and now it's been six months. I feel a lot lighter. But I do miss it, I really want to reintroduce it eventually.
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