Lisa Lampanelli has punched away at life.
Her comedic style propels insults and dives into raunchy material.
She embraces the label of “spiritual gangster” as an apt description of her forceful drive toward self-betterment and service to others.
Lampanelli brings her full-throttle persona to The Venue at Hammond’s Horseshoe Casino for an 8 p.m. Saturday show.
“When I say I’m going gangster, I’m working really hard at something,” Lampanelli said in a phone interview this month.
“I just really work hard on myself every day,” the 54-year-old comic said.
She noted that much of her energy has been channeled toward “bettering myself and trying to be a better person and trying to be less angry.”
Lampanelli considers herself a spiritual person.
“I have for a long time; I just never talked about it until a year and a half ago,” she said.
Her father died of cancer in May 2014.
His death helped spur Lampanelli’s spiritual gangster approach to life.
“It made me more service oriented, because I helped take care of him,” said the resident of New York City’s Upper East Side. “Once he died, I felt very sort of empty in that regard. I was, like, ‘Wow, I don’t really have anybody I’m helping.'”
She has come to view her stand-up comedy as a tool for good — a tool that can benefit audience members in a more personal way.
“What we do as comics can be a service to people,” Lampanelli said. “It can make them laugh and take their mind off their problems for a few minutes.”
She described her thoughts about a fresh approach to her profession: “I can really serve the audience instead of making this about me and about serving myself and my pocketbook.”
Lampanelli’s professional journey has been a rich one.
In 2009, she fueled her rising success with “Long Live the Queen,” an HBO comedy special.
The same year saw the release of “Chocolate Please: My Adventures in Food, Fat and Freaks” — her autobiography.
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In regard to writing, Lampanelli was a monthly writer for the Women column in Playboy magazine.
On the cinematic side, Lampanelli appeared in “Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector” (2006).
According to the comedian’s official biography, she played a more maternal version of herself in 2008’s “Drillbit Taylor,” which starred Owen Wilson.
On the TV front, Lampanelli went prime time when she joined a cast of other stars for the fifth season of NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” — starring none other than Donald Trump.
A current Republican presidential candidate, Trump has garnered a reputation as a blunt and bombastic politician, but Lampanelli’s relationship with him was not confrontational.
“He always treated me with a lot of respect because I think I was the one on the show who he might have identified with a little bit, in that we work really hard,” the Connecticut native said. “I was an older person on the show, and I think he kind of respected that I worked so hard when I was there. I have nothing but good things to say about him as a person.”
As in the case of Trump, there is a hard-edge aspect to Lampanelli because she has gained fame as the “Queen of Mean” who stalks the realm of insult comedy.
There was an evolution to that particular stand-up style.
“I got really addicted to talking to the audience,” she said. “I just loved connecting with them and talking with them. Then I found I really liked doing the insults, because they didn’t get offended. Ninety-nine percent of people liked being included, had fun with it. And I’m like, ‘OK, I really like the roast format,’ and it just kept sort of unfolding in that direction.”
One of her comedic heroes is insult-comedy trailblazer Don Rickles, whom Lampanelli has met.
“He was such a gentleman,” she said.
In regard to new projects, Lampanelli has written a play called “Fat Girl Interrupted” that is targeted for a 2016 opening.
Lisa Lampanelli
Where: The Venue at Horseshoe Casino, 777 Casino Center Drive, Hammond
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Tickets: $39, $49, $59; must be at least 21 years old to attend
Information: 219-473-7000, www.caesars.com/horseshoe-hammond