From Little Compton to the big time for comic actress Arden Myrin

“I wish I was in Rhode Island so badly. I want to be in Rhode Island right now,” said Arden Myrin in a phone interview earlier this month. Instead, the Rhode Island actress, comedian and writer was in Los Angeles, which she described as “covered in soot and COVID.”

The soot comes from the wildfires that have been consuming much of the West Coast. Myrin (pronounced like “Marine”) said that even at midday she couldn’t see more than a block down the street because of the poor air quality.

Myrin grew up in the considerably cleaner air of Little Compton, and she’s written a book about her life called “Little Miss Little Compton: A Memoir.” It’s mostly very funny, but there are a few darker elements running through it.

She wrote the book, she said, because she thought her upbringing made a good story. “When I tell stories about my town, people say ‘What? You had a milkman? There was a general store?’”

One of her inspirations, she said, is David Sedaris, who writes hilarious stories about his family that often include some very dark moments.

Myrin is a descendant of what she calls “The Hasty Decisions Club.” Her paternal grandparents got married the day after they met. Her father, Willy Myrin, married her mom, Janet, on a dare. (They weren’t even dating, but did manage to get some extra vacation time.)

Arden adored her mother, a Little Compton realtor. Her father, a CPA who later in life only worked during tax season, was another story.

At first, he is presented as a figure of fun, particularly his bizarre eating habits, consuming lots of cake and “aging” bologna sandwiches on top of the fridge for a few days. But as the book continues, Willy Myrin’s shortcomings as a parent become increasingly obvious.

He mostly neglected his two children, and often said cruel things to Arden. “He was a tough, tough guy ... I was not setting out to bash my father, but I didn’t want to sugarcoat him either,” Myrin said.

Willy Myrin died in 2017, Myrin’s beloved mother in 2019. Myrin writes about dealing with both her parents’ deaths, living on what she calls Grief Island.

But most of the book is very funny. Myrin describes the time she (accidentally!) kicked Courtney Cox in the face during a guest appearance on “Friends.” Or the time she crashed an elegant party at a Newport mansion, was handed a big gin-and-tonic (minus the tonic), threw up at the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and decided to go to sleep on the sidewalk.

The young Arden Myrin always had visions of show business. She has performed stand-up comedy, and done lots of TV appearances, including multiple talk shows, guest stints on “Shameless,” “Inside Amy Schumer,” “Insecure,” “Orange is the New Black,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and lots more.

She’s had larger roles on NBC’s “Working” and the current Netflix comedy “Insatiable.”

Myrin also hosts a podcast devoted to one of her TV obsessions, “The Bachelor,” which Myrin considers a cross between a comedy and a sporting event. “On Twitter, a lot of my comedian friends are ’Bachelor’ fans, and I thought it would be fun to get together with them and joke about it,” Myrin said. “But we’re still real fans. We root for people.”

With COVID-19 putting a halt to TV production, at least for now, Myrin is promoting her book, hosting her “Bachelor” podcast from home, and making a few socially-distant TV appearances. She was on a game show called “25 Words or Less” with fellow Rhode Islander Meredith Vieira — but Vieira was actually hosting from a studio in her Manhattan basement.

Myrin said a few TV productions are starting up again. Tyler Perry, for example, is using a “quarantine bubble” akin to the NBA’s experiment in Florida. But when the TV world, or anything else, gets back to normal, no one knows.

In the meantime, Little Miss Little Compton still has some big ambitions.

“In a dream world, I’d like to create and act in my own show, like Phoebe Waller-Bridge in ‘Fleabag,’ “ Myrin said. (Waller-Bridge won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy in 2019, while “Fleabag” took the trophy for Outstanding Comedy Series.)

“Why not reach for the stars?” Myrin said.