Minnesota Comedian Denise Winkelman Celebrates Her First Special

UNDATED (WJON News) -- A Minnesota native has hit the comedic big time with her first-ever special now streaming. Denise Winkelman’s comedy special Bougie on a Budget dropped on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and YouTube in August. Winkleman grew up in the small Northern Minnesota town of Northome. She says even at an early age, she knew she wanted to live in California and do comedy:

“I always wanted to do something entertainment-wise, wrestling ended up being kind of the calling at first, my buddies were into it, I thought it was cool, it was so hot at the time, and moved to Cincinnati and did that, and then moved to Denver and lived in Denver for several years and that’s where I started stand-up.”

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Winkelman says she started doing comedy full-time in 2017 and self-produced Bougie on a Budget. She included a heartfelt message at the end because she thought it was important to encourage others to fight to be themselves.

“Sometimes we just get caught up in day-to-day life or we’re in the struggle, and whatever is going on politically, that I think it’s easy to lose sight of who you are and I wish somebody would have told me, hey, as long as you’re not hurting anybody, it’s okay.”

Winkelman says the reaction to the special has been positive, and she made some great connections during the process of making it. Winkelman was a professional wrestler and fitness model before becoming a stand-up comic. She says having her special on major streaming platforms has been exciting:

“This is a lot of work coming together, we’ve put a lot of time into it but so ,so, so excited and I self produced it and then shopped it after and the fact that Comedy Dynamics, which is awesome, picked it up, it just allows me to put everything I have on lay away and buy it back (laughs).”

 

What all went into getting her special ready?

Winkelman says it took a while to get Bougie on a Budget ready, between getting all the material ready, putting together the financing, and then shopping it around.

She says it has taken a lot of perseverance to get to this point in her career, and it is great to see all the hard work paying off.  She hopes to go on tour in support of Bougie on a Budget in the coming months and make a stop in her home state.

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