“The Rise of the Millennial Sitcom”

This chapter examines the construction and performance of millennial authorship, focusing on how millennial authors assert their identities through textual representation and authorial self-inscription both within and beyond their television shows. It focuses on the two Comedy Central productions Broad City (2014–2019, created by Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson) and Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens (2020–present, created by Awkwafina and Teresa Hsiao). Both shows star their writers/creators as fictional versions of themselves and integrate autobiographical events. The chapter first offers a close comparative analysis of the performances of Glazer, Jacobson, and Awkwafina to interrogate how they represent millennial femininity and negotiate feminist politics in their series. Second, it critically examines paratexts such as interviews, behind-the-scenes materials, and reviews to understand how these author-performers are culturally framed as stars, authors, and millennials. Through this twofold approach, the chapter argues that the shows’ self-reflexive use of “messy” and “imperfect” female characters, along with cringe comedy, satirises dominant narratives of millennial womanhood. Simultaneously, these author-performers assert creative agency through autobiographical storytelling and strategic self-inscription, blurring boundaries between the real and fictional. The chapter contends that these millennial author-performers thus occupy a liminal space between authenticity and pretence – an in-betweenness further shaped by the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and life stage – negotiated across both textual and paratextual discourses and often through the commodification of imperfection.