Comedy duo bring 'Law & Order: SVU' podcast live show to Pittsburgh

“In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous…”

That is the opening line to every episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” a show whose serious subject matter might not seem like the ideal topic for a podcast featuring two comedians.

Don’t tell that to Kara Klenk and Liza Treyger, who are 150 episodes deep in “That’s Messed Up: An SVU Podcast.” The duo delves into the true-crime inspiration behind many of the episodes and has interviewed actors ranging from the show’s stars to the witnesses, go-betweens and co-conspirators who show up during the course of their investigations.

They will bring “That’s Messed Up Live” to the Pittsburgh Improv on Thursday, and Klenk spoke with the Tribune-Review about coming up with a unique spin on the true-crime podcast genre.

This interview has been edited for length.

Q: How did you settle on this idea for the podcast?

A: I was actually talking to a comedian friend, and she mentioned how she’d seen every episode of “SVU” ten times and her friend flippantly said “Oh, that would be a good podcast.” And I remember the true-crime genre of podcasting was pretty saturated at the time, and I thought, “This could be a cool, different way into true crime, because I love the show and 80% of the episodes are based on real crimes.” And that’s how I came up with the idea. And one day Liza was at my house working on a project with me, and I remembered that we had connected about “SVU” years earlier. And I asked her if she’d be interested in this idea. We were out pitching the podcast the following week.

Q: What are you learning about how television scripts are written when you start comparing an episode to the actual crime on which it was based?

A: It’s interesting how the show borrows from true crime and puts their own spin on it. In many cases, they are picking very famous cases to base the episodes on, but we all know how those end. So the show flips the script a lot of times and has things end in a very different way. That’s one of the things we love about it.

Q: How many “Law & Order: SVU” episodes are specifically based on a real-life crime? Is there a cap on how many of these you can do?

A: At least four out of five episodes are inspired by a true crime. We’ve done about 150 episodes. There are 538 episodes of the TV show — and it’s still going — so we’ve got many years ahead of us.

Q: Given the typically-heavy subject matter on the show, do you sometimes have to fight your comedic instincts to make the occasional joke, or is that an aspect of how the podcast is presented?

A: We don’t fight our comedic instincts, we embrace them. In the first 12 seasons, the show had a lot of comedic elements. Richard Belzer was a well-known comedian, and Ice-T has great comedic timing, so it really works to tease the comedy out of some of these episodes. The show can get very dark, but the appeal of our podcast is finding a little light in the darkness. We have a lot of listeners who are survivors who tell us they love our comedic takes but also that we always respect victims, living or dead.

Q: What’s been the biggest challenge in getting “That’s Messed Up” going?

A: Many listeners have embraced us from the beginning. We had to weed out the listeners who don’t like our political opinions or say they come to a podcast for entertainment and not for politics. To us, you can’t eliminate politics when discussing a show with this subject matter, and we don’t shy away from that.

Q: Is there a particular episode discussion or guest that’s been a favorite?

A: We loved talking to Margaret Cho and Bob Saget because they are fellow comics, and it’s fun to hear how they changed their personas so much from stand-up comedians to the roles they played on the show. We also loved talking to (main cast members such as) B.D. Wong, Stephanie March and Kelli Giddish because they spent so much time on the show. But honestly we’ve loved chatting with most of our guests about not only their experiences on the show but their lives and careers. Some of our favorite interviews are not household names!

• • •

“That’s Messed Up Live” will be at the Pittsburgh Improv on Thursday. Klenk and Treyger will focus on the 2007 episode “Responsible,” where a mother is investigated for supplying alcohol to minors. Click here to listen to the most recent episode.

Tickets are available at Improv.com/pittsburgh.