Comedian Louie Anderson, a proud 'Midwesterner through and through,' had a love for Wisconsin

Editor's note: Comedian Louie Anderson died Friday at age 68 of complications from cancer. In a 2018 interview with the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the native Minnesotan talked at length, and with great humor, about what he loved about Wisconsin, Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings fans, the hardiness of Midwesterners, why he set "Life with Louie" in Wisconsin and "good gloves" in cold weather.

Don’t worry, Louie Anderson won’t be wearing his Vikings hat when he takes the stage at the Meyer Theatre on Friday.

The comedian wore it to great effect when he made his entrance at SF Sketchfest in San Francisco a couple of Sundays ago for a panel discussion with his “Baskets” co-stars Zach Galifianakis and Martha Kelly and show co-creator Jonathan Krisel. It was the same day the Vikings pulled off the thrilling “Minneapolis Miracle” touchdown on the final play to beat the New Orleans Saints in the divisional round of the playoffs. A giddy Anderson got word via text message just as he walked out onstage, hat on head and a hearty “Go Vikings!” to the crowd.

It was the single best Vikings moment in the Minnesota native’s lifetime.

“Getting Brett Favre was fun, but in a different kind of way,” he said during a phone interview two days after the game. “This was like, ‘Oh, I wish I could tell my dad about this.’ You know what I mean? I wish I could be giving my mom and dad a big hug about the Vikings.”

But football fandom — including the hand-knit Vikings booties and hat given to him by fans at his annual New Year’s Eve performance in the Twin Cities — is like comedy. Timing matters.

The Vikes have since blown their shot at Super Bowl LII in colossal fashion with a loss to Philadelphia, and Anderson is on his way to the heart of Packers country, where fans are still smiling about their rivals’ fate.

Any visible signs of purple aside, the self-described "Midwesterner through and through" expects he’ll fit in just fine.

“I do love Aaron Rodgers, and I love the organization, and I love the people in Wisconsin. They’re Minnesotans, except for the border,” said Anderson, who has a sister and brother who moved one state over. “Good people. And they have cheese, and I’m a big cheese fan. With Vikings fans, it’s hard to put a lutefisk on your head.”

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Anderson even set “Life with Louie,” the 1990s Fox animated series based on his childhood, in Wisconsin. Truth be told, that move was done begrudgingly at the urging of his lawyers, who were concerned people in his home state would claim show characters were them and want compensation.

“Like an idiot, I listened to them,” Anderson said. “Now listen, I didn’t have any problem with it, because I like Wisconsin. We just have that one Packers thing where they beat us silly all the time.”

An episode that featured the Packers playing the Chicago Bears was the first time the NFL granted permission for a cartoon to use those logos. The show later found a fan base of 300,000 people in Turkey, Poland and Romania, some of whom posted on Facebook or sent thank yous to Anderson.

“And they occasionally have a Packers hat. I just laughed. Like in Turkey or Romania, they have a Packers hat!” he said.

Since making his national television debut as a stand-up comedian on the “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” in 1984, there isn’t much Anderson hasn’t done. He’s starred in movies (“Coming to America,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”), hosted a game show (“Family Feud”), written best-selling books (“Dear Dad: Letters from an Adult Child,” “The F Word: How To Survive Your Family”) and jumped off the high dive on reality TV (“Splash”).

At 64, one of Comedy Central’s “100 Greatest Stand-Up Comedians of All Time” is hardly slowing down.

He’s back for the third season of “Baskets,” the FX comedy series in which he plays family matriarch Christine Baskets, a role that earned him his third Emmy Award in 2016. “I have not always been a very good man,” he said during his acceptance speech, “but I play one hell of a woman.”

Earlier this month, he completed his first live workshop performances of his one-man show, “Dear Dad,” based on his 1989 memoir of the same name. He just shot a new comedy special, “Big Underwear,” that he hopes will be coming out soon. (“I try to stay out of that stuff, because it can drive you a little crazy,” he said .) His next book, “Hey Mom: Stories for My Mother, But You Can Read Them Too,” will be out in time for Mother’s Day.

“I’m just having a blast, having a blast,” he said.

He comes to the Meyer with his Midwestern roots proudly showing in his stand-up material. In other words, expect some cold-weather jokes.

There’s some truth to folks in the Midwest having more of a sense of appreciation for a good laugh than audiences on the coasts, which tend to skew a little more jaded.

“First of all, the closer you get to the water the dumber people become,” Anderson said, adding that joke never goes over well on the coasts.

Honestly, the Midwest’s love for a good joke probably has more to do with the conditions in which we live — and bundle up in.

“We have to figure out how to use jumper cables, fix a tire, put chains on, survive a 30-below wind chill to get the mail. Those are things we have to deal with. If you live where it’s sunshine all the time you don’t have to think about anything. Well, the earthquakes and that, but then you won't have to think, you’ll just be gone. I do think there is something hardy and also there’s a big sense of humor,” he said.

“You’re going to live somewhere where the temperature can freeze you no matter how much you put on. If your skin is exposed, it will freeze you. There’s something funny about that. How crazy are we?”

Only in the Midwest, for example, do people know about “good gloves,” Anderson said. “Are you going out?” he asks in his mom voice. “Do you have your good gloves?”

Even with so many other projects to scratch his creative itch, stand-up remains his first love. It’s why you’ll find him trekking from one cold-weather spot to another this winter, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Canada.

“There’s no directors. There’s no scripts. It’s all my stuff. Nobody can bother me ...” he said. “There’s something so raw and so real about stand-up. I’m going to do a joke and you’re going to tell me if it’s any good. And it’s going to happen, not by committee, it’s just going to happen. Nobody has to discuss it. If it’s a good joke, it’s going to get a laugh. And if it isn’t a good joke, it’s not going to get a laugh. I love the artistry of it. I have to figure out what am I doing, what is going on, what things am I not doing right in this joke, because I think it’s a pretty good joke.”

Anderson has never been big on politics. His sweet spot onstage is something far more universal and unifying — family. Anderson, who grew up in St. Paul with 10 siblings and an alcoholic father, knows it well.

“Families are families. They’re all screwed up in their own way. My dad’s character fits into a lot of those kinds of people you might not agree with politically, but my dad was a complicated man. I think people all understand mom, dad, sister, brother ... grandma. I think people know that stuff and feel strongly about it,” he said.

“A joke’s a joke. I just had my ancestry done and found out I’m 20 percent Norwegian and 80 percent butter. I’m from the Land O’ Lakes tribe. That’s a joke, and I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat or anything, you’re going to laugh at that joke. I pride myself in trying to find the absurdity in the simplest stuff that we’re doing — the good gloves, the butter ...”

There’s also a warmth about Anderson’s material that makes people look at their own families with fondness.

“You know what I love a lot? I love to do a show that’s packed with laughs, and then I love for everyone to have a little nostalgic lunch packet to take home with them. I want them to go home and I want them to feel like, ‘Oh, that joke, that story Louie told made me feel like Mom.’ I want you to have that feeling, and I don’t want you to have it in a sad way. I want you to have it in an ‘Oh, yeah, Mom was funny that way or Dad was funny that way.’

“More people come up to me and say, ‘Hey, we used to go to your show with my dad and my mom, and you really meant the world to them, and even when my dad was sick he was watching your show. It really made a difference.’ ... That’s incredibly humbling and rewarding to me to hear that kind of stuff and to know that what I do makes a difference. Because why do comedy if your jokes don’t make a difference to you and other people?”

ON PLAYING CHRISTINE BASKETS

“Baskets” returned this week for its third season on FX (9 p.m. Tuesdays). That means Louie Anderson is back wearing a dress as Christine Baskets, mom to Zach Galifianakis’ character as a failed rodeo clown in the critically acclaimed comedy. The character is based lovingly on his mother and five sisters.

“I try to make myself disappear in that character and only let my mom and my sisters be the people you’re seeing. I don’t let Louie Anderson get involved in that. I love doing it. It’s like an homage to my mom. She gets her due,” Anderson said.

“I’m saying that great woman who raised 11 children and put up with an alcoholic husband, it’s a tribute to her every time I do it, to do it with as much humanity, love, care and kindness that Ora Zella Anderson brought to us every single day, no matter how mean my dad was to her the night before. She smiled and made the eggs and poured the oatmeal and smiled and hugged us and dressed us and made sure we had what we needed. She did the very best that any mom could in that situation, and I never can forget that.”

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Comedian Louie Anderson on Vikings, Packers, the Midwest and winter