--- title: Chonda Pierce 'Girl Talk': Comedy Best-Seller, Outsider description: Chonda Pierce, who's often billed as comedy's answer to a country musician, got her start impersonating her forebear, the country comic (and Grand Ole Opry... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7115636/chonda-pierce-how-the-top-selling-female-comedian-ever-is-still-an-outsider/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-12-17T17:06:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-25T05:53:39.191Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Chonda Pierce 'Girl Talk': Comedy Best-Seller, Outsider og:description: Chonda Pierce, who's often billed as comedy's answer to a country musician, got her start impersonating her forebear, the country comic (and Grand Ole Opry... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7115636/chonda-pierce-how-the-top-selling-female-comedian-ever-is-still-an-outsider/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf71719b09aabf881/698a8db8b21a9c7a7d50f916/131213-chonda-pierce.jpg?branch=production&width=673&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 673 og:image:height: 379 og:image:alt: 42nd Annual GMA Dove Awards - Show og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Chonda Pierce 'Girl Talk': Comedy Best-Seller, Outsider twitter:description: Chonda Pierce, who's often billed as comedy's answer to a country musician, got her start impersonating her forebear, the country comic (and Grand Ole Opry... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf71719b09aabf881/698a8db8b21a9c7a7d50f916/131213-chonda-pierce.jpg?branch=production&width=673&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Chonda Pierce: How the Top-Selling Female Comedian Ever Is Still an Outsider > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Dec 17, 2013 5:06 PM UTC  performs onstage at the 42nd Annual GMA Dove Awards at The Fox Theatre on April 20, 2011 in Atlanta City. The show airs on GMC on Sunday April 24th 2011. performs onstage at the 42nd Annual GMA Dove Awards at The Fox Theatre on April 20, 2011 in Atlanta City. The show airs on GMC on Sunday April 24th 2011. Rick Diamond—2011 Getty Images by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Dec 17, 2013 5:06 PM UTC Chonda Pierce, who’s often billed as comedy’s answer to a country musician, got her start impersonating her forebear, the country comic (and Grand Ole Opry staple) Minnie Pearl — and she still makes use of Pearl’s bits of industry wisdom. “Minnie Pearl taught me that you could be clever and funny and have a country twang and people will still love you,” Pierce says, in her own Southern twang, during a visit to the TIME office. And people do: earlier this year, the Recording Industry Association of America certified Pierce as the top-certified female comedian, in recognition of her eight gold and four platinum DVDs. Her next DVD, _Girl Talk_, arrives in stores Dec. 17, has emblazoned across its case the blurb “RIAA’S BEST-SELLING FEMALE COMEDIAN OF ALL TIME!” But Pierce also knows that, despite her sales numbers, she’s in many ways an outsider to the comedy world. Search for her name on a comedy site like [Splitsider](splitsider.com) and you’ll come up with a blank — but she’s okay with that. “I used to stand and lament and say ‘Wow, I wish I could get into the Ice House,’ in L.A, when I’d just finished a show at the Kodak down the street and filled it up,” she says. “There’s always that thing we think we’re not getting to do that must be better than where we are. At this stage in my career, where I am I’ve become very very content with and I like it.” (**MORE**: [Meet the Comic Who Performed 1,000 Nights of Stand-Up in a Row](http://entertainment.time.com/2013/09/18/stand-up-guy-this-comic-is-performing-1000-consecutive-nights/)) At a time when pop culture can [seem monolithic](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the%5Fmusic%5Fclub/features/2013/music%5Fclub%5F2013/music%5Fclub%5F2013%5Fbeyonc%5Fs%5Fsurprise%5Falbum%5Fand%5Fwhat%5Fit%5Fsays%5Fabout%5Flistening.html), Pierce’s story is helpful reminder that there are actually several monoliths going up at the same time. Just as it would be possible for a pop-music listener to miss almost all of what’s going on in [country music](http://topics.time.com/country-music/), with a few exceptions in crossover hits — not to mention all the other genres — it would likewise be possible to be completely unaware of country comedy. But, while comedy often seems to orbit around famous hubs like the Largo, the Upright Citizens Brigade, _Saturday Night Live_ and _Louie_, it has another life elsewhere. Pierce lives in Nashville, not New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. Her material is 100 percent clean and strongly influenced by Christianity. (Her upbringing was so conservative that she had to hide her radio; she says her inability to dance was how she wound up telling jokes instead.) The big ad for her new DVD on her [website](http://www.chonda.org/index.html) specifically mentions that it’s for sale at Christian bookstores and at [Walmart](http://topics.time.com/walmart/). She’s open about her own struggles with an abusive father and, later in life, [depression](http://topics.time.com/depression/); her shows tend — on purpose — to end on a note that’s more church and less Comedy Cellar. But, according to Pierce, it may well be that the very thing that has kept her out of the mainstream comedy spotlight is what has helped her sell so many DVDs and albums. “I was asking these wonderful people from the RIAA who gave me this award for being the most female comic whatever, how that could be because there are so many great comics out there,” she says. “They said that a lot of people don’t _buy_ comedy. You see a show, you like it, you laugh, you go home. But one of the things that I think has been a big selling point of my career is that I leave my audiences with a little bit more than just laughs.” _Girl Talk_, true to form, is not just about the things girls talk about (Spanx, going to the bathroom in large groups) but the things that she and her mother, who died recently, talked about. Its message is about the importance of saying “sorry” and “I love you” while you still have time. And even though it can take a bit longer for her rapport with audiences not used to “country comedy” to set in, Pierce has a saying for that situation too: “A laugh in Nashville’s just as good as a laugh in New York City. It’s just that here sometimes people are laughing _at_ me instead,” she says. “But Minnie Pearl said, ‘You’ve got to love them — and they’ll love you back.'” (**MORE**: [Patton Oswalt on the Unsavory Business of Joke Theft](http://entertainment.time.com/2013/06/20/patton-oswalt-on-the-unsavory-business-of-joke-theft)) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7115636/chonda-pierce-how-the-top-selling-female-comedian-ever-is-still-an-outsider/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7115636/chonda-pierce-how-the-top-selling-female-comedian-ever-is-still-an-outsider/"},"headline":"Chonda Pierce: How the Top-Selling Female Comedian Ever Is Still an Outsider","datePublished":"2013-12-17T17:06:47.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-25T05:53:39.191Z","description":"Chonda Pierce, who's often billed as comedy's answer to a country musician, got her start impersonating her forebear, the country comic (and Grand Ole Opry...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7115636/chonda-pierce-how-the-top-selling-female-comedian-ever-is-still-an-outsider/","keywords":["Comedy"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf71719b09aabf881/698a8db8b21a9c7a7d50f916/131213-chonda-pierce.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf71719b09aabf881/698a8db8b21a9c7a7d50f916/131213-chonda-pierce.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"42nd Annual GMA Dove Awards - Show","caption":"42nd Annual GMA Dove Awards - Show","creditText":"Rick Diamond—2011 Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7115636/chonda-pierce-how-the-top-selling-female-comedian-ever-is-still-an-outsider/","name":"Chonda Pierce: How the Top-Selling Female Comedian Ever Is Still an Outsider"}}]}] ```