♪
Oh, hello. [Laughs]
Welcome to "Off Script with The Hollywood Reporter."
I'm your host, Yvonne Orji,
here at the beautiful Georgian Hotel
in sunny Santa Monica, California.
Now, normally five comedians is usually a pretty long show.
Six, and you're pushing it.
Today we are definitely pushing it.
But the good news is there are no tickets,
no drink minimums, and definitely no hecklers.
Oh, unless you count the comics heckling themselves.
But today we are gonna hear from...
Mike Birbiglia of "The Old Man and the Pool"...
Alex Edelman of "Just for Us"...
Jacqueline Novak of "Get on Your Knees"...
Jenny Slate of "Seasoned Professional"...
Taylor Tomlinson of
"Have It All" and "After Midnight"...
and Ramy Youssef of "More Feelings."
♪♪
So sit back and relax as our panel goes on the record
but just a little Off Script with The Hollywood Reporter.
They're all yours, Lacey.
Thanks, Yvonne.
Hi, and welcome to the stand-up roundtable.
I'm Lacey Rose. And thank you all for being here.
I'm gonna start with a question for everyone.
You're standing on stage. You look out at the audience.
Describe the audience member that you dread the most.
A man!
[Laughter]
Sorry. I had to. I couldn't resist.
Look. I've changed.
Nothing's changed in me since joining a roundtable.
It could be, uh, someone that's drunk.
It could be someone you know.
I mean, it could be any number of things.
The figure in the joke? Person in the joke?
I've had that experience before.
You're telling the joke.
The person the joke is about is in the crowd,
and you're just like, "Oh, God."
And you go for it anyway.
I mean, you have to.
I think "anybody you know" is a really good answer.
Like, I've had people from high school come and sit
in the front row, and you're like, "No, please. Not there."
Why do they do that? They love that.
They love that.They think they're supporting you.
They do. And they are. And we appreciate it.
But it's --Do we, though?
I mean, I do. I'm just like, "Sit like halfway back.
Right when the darkness starts at midway point in the audience.
And any, like, folded pair of arms in the front row.
I think, no matter who they're attached to,
you're kind of like, "Let's unfold those over the course of the night."
People you know is not who you want
in a stand-up comedy audience.
Jacqueline and I toured together for like a few years,
and we always compared it to
if you were an exotic dancer or a stripper,
where it's like -- you don't really want
your friends to be there when you're stripping.
Your non-comedy friends.
Yeah, your non-stripping friends or whatever.
Right. You're non-stripping friends.
Maybe they tip more, though.
-Ooh! -I think it's a seduction.
It's embarrassed to be seen in a seduction. Absolutely.
We used to talk about a business voice or whatever.
-Right? -Oh, my God. Yes.
Someone catches you on the phone with your doctor's office
being like, "I'm around on Tuesday,
but if Wednesday works, that could work, too."
It's like your business voice.
If someone catches you doing your business voice,
you're like, "Oh, I'm so ashamed."
Yeah. It's a little bit of that.
But, Jacqueline, I feel like I've read
you used to actually look at who was coming to the show
each night, and that would --Like a pervert.
I wasn't going to say that,
but that does feel like --Not every night.
I will say the journalists pushed that towards hyperbole.
Got it, got it, got it.
[Laughter]
You know what I did do the night before?
Like, uh, opening my show at, uh, Cherry Lane --
very, very nervous.
I started looking at the names, the ticket sales.
Just like -- Literally. I'm a log-in girl.
You know, I like to get into the back end and see it all live.
-That's -- -Terrifying!
And I just went through and I just -- Names I didn't know.
Let this be a warning to all future comedy audience members.
-We're watching you. -But I love it.
I would never look at the list!
Well, that's what I was gonna ask. Who else has looked?
And have you been rattled?
Whether it's an ex. Whether it's an idol.
Do you look at the list? Do you actually want to know?
And has it ever sort of rattled you in real time?
For logistical reasons sometimes.
Like, my cousin -- Because sometimes my cousins are coming.
I have a lot of cousins, apparently, and my mom would be like,
"Nancy was there and you didn't say hi!"
And I'm like, "Well, I didn't know she was coming."
And she was like, "She told you on the family WhatsApp."
And it's like, "Well, I forgot."
So my emcee will sometimes go through
and pick anyone with the last name Edelman
or any of the other associated names, and she'll be like,
"Does this person belong to you?" Yeah.
But it's weird when an idol comes to see your show.
It's like, how did anyone ever, like, kill Lincoln?
Because the entire audience is watching the famous person.
I was like, "Wasn't at that show."
Everyone's like, "Is Lincoln enjoying this?
Does Lincoln think 'Our American Cousin' is good?
Is he? Is he? Oh. Oh, no. Shit. They're..."
Like, you know, that's how I felt like any time,
like, a famous comedian came. People would be like,
"What does so-and-so? think of that joke?
Does so-and-so think that punchline is...?"
But are you doing that, too?
I mean, from stage, are you also --
I try not to look at them.
I scan the audience like...
Do you blur your eyes at the audience?
-I look right into the light. -You gotta engage.
-Really? -I can't.
I play to each section of the... Really?
Like it's tic-tac-toe. You got to...
Then you section them. You don't have a leader?
I cater to the pockets that aren't laughing
and try to sort of, like --
Desperately try to tickle them from below.
Or sometimes I go "They're not laughing because I'm looking at them."
So I look at the other side. I'm working the --
Do you tickle them from below? Like, I just...
[Laughter]
I don't want us to move off that phrase
because I saw you trying to get away from it, Jacqueline,
and now I'm like, "I want a little bit more."
-I was hiding my pride. -I love it.
How do you actually define a bad show?
Like, there's got to be some memorable disasters
in this bunch because everyone has them.
It's always kind of nice
when you don't get what you want from a show,
because then the next show is better.
That's kind of the only way I ever wrote material,
was just having really bad shows.
But how do you define that?
What does that actually feel like in real time?
For me, it just feels like not connecting
with the people who were there.
So sometimes if I walk off and I'm like,
"Oh, I was just saying what I had in my head before I got up there,"
then it wasn't really effective, you know?
So if I'm just saying things I could have said to myself
in my hotel room, it's a pretty bad show.
Like, I didn't connect with who was there.
Edelman: So, like, at the Comedy Cellar,
sometimes a bad show is a show where you fucking crush.
Sometimes you go up there and you destroy
and you come off, and people are like, "Great set."
You're like, no, I wanted to try new stuff,
but I tried a sort of half-new joke and it didn't work,
and I lost a little faith, so I was like, well, here's 15 minutes of, you know...
Here's 15 minutes of stuff that I know is gonna do well.
And so, like, if I plan on going down to the Comedy Cellar,
which is where you have to do well,
but also, like, really work stuff out
and I go on stage and I lose my nerve
and I do really well with the audience,
but I don't come away with anything, that's a failure.
That's a big mistake because it's still a service industry.
But you also have to progress as an artist.
And sometimes those two things are --At odds.
Oh, my gosh. I was just sitting here listening to Alex going,
"I'm so glad I didn't tackle this bad-show question."
Because Ramy and Alex had these very artistic answers,
and I was like, "Acoustics!"
[Laughter]
A high ceiling? A nightmare!
Like, ooh.And you're not wrong.
Not wrong.When you crush, it can be a bad show.
I was like, "Oh, no!"
That is such a humblebrag.
[Laughter]
Well, since we all share and sharing is caring,
the person that I was always most scared to see
in the audience was my mama.
I mean, she would just be sitting there all mad
'cause technically I was wasting all the money
she spent on college tuition to tell jokes.
But she's good now. I think. I hope.
Anyway, more with our panel after the break.
No, she's really good. I promise.
Oh, she's great. She loves it. [Chuckles]
Oh, it's gonna be a long Thanksgiving.
Anyway, see you soon.
♪
Welcome back to "Off Script with The Hollywood Reporter."
Now, in stand-up, how do you know
when you're having a bad show? That's easy.
No one, and I do mean no one, is laughing.
But is that always a bad thing? Hmm.
Let's hear what these comics have to say.
There are places that audiences will go with you,
and there are places where you can sort of feel
perhaps they won't. I feel like, Taylor,
I've heard you talk about sort of earlier in your career,
there was sort of darker material,
whether it had to do with your mom or something else,
where you could feel audiences didn't want to go with you.
I'm curious sort of -- what does that feel like,
and when does that shift for you?
With that specific material,
I mean, I just started really young.
I started in high school, so watching a 19-year-old
do stand-up at all is very uncomfortable.
And people are already scared for you
and nervous about the show.
So I don't think I had the maturity as a performer to pull those jokes off.
But what does it look like when it's not working?
How do you know that? How are you --
Oh, people aren't laughing.
And it's devastating. Oh, it's so bad.
It's what I would call a bad show.
For other people, it's when people are laughing too much,
and you're like, "No, none of this is new."
Uh, no -- I really like --
Yeah, when people are sad and uncomfortable
and looking at you like, "Are you almost done?"
Like, yeah, I think that's what's so great about stand-up,
is you know pretty quickly if something does or doesn't work.
Like Alex was saying, you just go up wherever you can
and you try out the same material in front of
as many different audiences as you can,
whether they're there for you or not.
I think that's important to go up in front of people
who aren't there to see you specifically,
like you were saying, so that you know it is going to work,
if not everywhere, most places,
so that when it does get on a big platform
like Netflix or HBO,
that people who aren't familiar with you
will hopefully be converted into fans.Sure.
Are there subjects that you feel like your audiences
were at any point sort of uncomfortable going with you?
Mike said something to me. "Birbigs."
Said something like, you know,
"There's your agenda and the audience's agenda
or the booker's agenda," or whatever.
And something along the lines of, like, "Work your agenda."
Right? So, for me, that meant working on my show or like,
"Okay, I'm gonna put it up in New York or whatever."
But I'm doing it at the Juke Box in Peoria
and, like, I know it's not gonna --
Some people might find it kind of interesting or whatever,
but there is no sort of pleasing them.
I am planting my feet and saying the words,
and I'm kind of maybe burning my chance in the room.
You know what I mean?
I did it at the Punch Line in Philly.
Chris, my boyfriend, was like,
"You know, the way you went up in Philly and just, like, bombed."
And I was like, "I bombed?" You know?
I was like, "What do you mean?
I mean, I stood up there doing my art."
It was almost the delusion. The required delusion.
But this phrase, like, "my agenda,"
really helped me almost, you know,
not listen to the crowd kind of
and go, like,
"I gotta just -- I gotta do what I think I gotta do
and trust that what I'm saying will find its audience."
And so I had to block almost the crowd reaction.
I mean, it doesn't matter.
Tonight everyone in this room might hate me.
This club will never hire me again.
I had a lot of bad nights, like, you know,
and those nights where I had to stand there
and say my words and get them in my head.
Thanks, Birbigs.
But you're getting at something, right?
The thing is trying to get somewhere.
Like, you can't just rehearse in a space.
I've heard stories about some comics who have.
Who just run their set and empty a room?
Run their set in a carriage house filled with mirrors.
-What? -Who does that?
-Chris Rock. -Chris Rock. Yeah.
I thought that was a metaphor. I was like, "That's beautiful."
No, but he actually built mirrors, yeah.
Built mirrors and, like, did that for I think --
Before "Bring the Pain."Yeah. Yeah.
And, by the way, how embarrassing
that Lacey knew that and none of the...
I read an article once. I don't know.
I remember it now that you said that.
No, he absolutely did that....beautifully phrased.
No one else has a mirrored room in their house?
No, stand there with a hairbrush and the thing.
But, like... I think you gotta --
You have to get on stage, and there is a goal.
And the goal is growth. And it's also a service thing.
So, like, what do you do?
How do you show up for both?
Sometimes I'll go on stage, material that I know works,
and then graft it onto it very carefully
new material, and the material I know works,
and then grafted onto it very carefully new material.
"Oh, and that's working. I'll follow that path. That didn't work."
Here's new material grafted onto, like, a thing...
That's so pro.
That, to me, is like a discipline
that I don't always have.
I kind of like -- You know, I'm like,
"Let's drive it into the ground!"
You know, sort of these big swings of -- I don't know.
Well, sometimes you get desperate.
Sometimes if a big new show
where you need a lot of new material is approaching,
you go, "Well, tonight can't be service night.
Tonight is kamikaze night." Right.
And you just go out there with all this stuff.
And then some nights you're like,
"I've got a couple months till that show
that needs to be ready, and so here's a little more."
Risk-averse. X, Y, and Z. So that you kill.
But it's like a...Yeah.
What felt at the time like the riskiest bit?
I did a show called "The New One."
It was on Netflix, and it was about having a child
and about the darkest feelings
because I never wanted to have a child,
and it's all the reasons why I never wanted to have a child
and about how I had a child and all the ways
that I was right and then I was wrong.
And it's kind of an emotional turn.
And there's a moment in it where I say, you know,
"At my darkest moments,
I thought, like, 'I get why dads leave.'"
And there's a --
You know, comedians laugh at that.
Humans don't.
[Laughter]
You know, it's more of a dramatic turn.
An emotional moment in the show.
But there were times early in the process of that joke
where I really felt
that the audience felt almost betrayed by the show,
that I had led them down a comedic path
and then all of a sudden I'm saying essentially
my deepest, darkest,
um, "Dark Night of the Soul" confession.
And I even had a reviewer, a prominent reviewer,
said, "He lost me when he said, 'I get why dads leave.'"
-Oh. -Very prominent reviewer.
See, I smiled when he said that.
Yeah.Because I'm like, "That's cool, Mike."
I'm proud of you for that.
-Yeah. -I'm really proud of you,
like, for losing them because you know how to get them.
You know what I mean?
I'm like, "Yeah, keep it coming, baby."
There's enough to see, right?
Like, you have to see what --
Sometimes you just don't care about the thing as much,
and then you say it and you're like, "Why did I even say that?
I don't even care that much about it."
Like, I had the thing --
I think, like, after I had my baby,
I was, like, trying to talk about the changes in my body,
but I didn't want it to sound cliché
like "after-the-baby body" material.
But, also, there was, like, some stuff
that really weirded me out about my own body,
and, like, it was really hard to do the material
because it was uncomfortable.
And sometimes I would do it, it would hit the right spot,
and sometimes it would just seem like I didn't like myself
and I was, like, asking people to be like,
"Yeah, you're ugly and your body sucks, as well!"
It was like this terrible focus on --
And I was like -- And I couldn't figure it out.
And eventually I gave up.
And I really regret it now because there's, like, one joke
that I liked that I, like -- But I was so afraid to, like --
I didn't want that feeling of, like,
feeling like such a -- The word that comes up for me
is, like, "abomination."
"She made us eat shit with her," you know?
Like, "We thought we were invited to a party with cake!
And she shat and she made us eat her fucking shit!"
It's like -- [Gasps] "Oh, my God. I did not.
I just wanted to talk about how, like,
my nipples used to be for sex, and now they're not.
And, like, I don't know. It got ruined."
And everything collapsed and, like --
I can't even go in that area anymore and, like --
But it's really hard
when you're like, "I'm interested in it,
but it might just show actually where I'm, like, sick."
Not that I am, but maybe. Right to camera.
I'm, like, right down the barrel. "Maybe."
I think that's why, like, comedians
like spending time with other comedians
because, like, you and Chris, your boyfriend,
were on the road with me when I was developing that.
And it took comedian friends saying, like,
"No, no. Go towards that."Yeah, yeah.
Because audiences often won't tell you to go towards that.
Audiences will be like, "Yeah, easy on that."
But it's people who are your --
who are comedians who are usually most likely to be like,
"No, no, say the thing that's, like, really deep in your subconscious."
Then on the other end of figuring out the joke,
the audience is so happy that you figured it out.
But there's that middle of the --
growing out your hair where you're like --
Just that middle where it's just a little, like --
A little, and then it's like, "Oh, yeah, I like that."
You know, there's that bit that I think is --
Comedians will tell you, "No, no, no. Keep going.
You should do that." That's why it's so fun.
Hearing comics discuss comedy so seriously
is a little funny -- I can't lie.
[Chuckles] But it really is a science.
We'll get back to this lesson in chemistry right after the break.
I mean, I'm just saying.
Setup, punchline, okay?
But you got to make sure the punchline is funny,
because, if not, you're gonna get punched in the face.
Afterwards. They will wait for you by your car...
♪♪
♪
Welcome back.
Now, usually, stand-up can be lighthearted as it should be,
but it can also go to some serious places.
Let's hear our panel weigh in
on how they handle delivering, hm, heavier material.
Is there a clear third rail for each of you?
I don't do jokes about people in my family
or friends of mine
or people I'm dating without running it past them
because I just don't think it's worth
destroying your relationships for 90 seconds.
Have you always done that?
Probably not. No, Not when I was 21.
I'm like, "Burn it all down to be a legend!"
But, yeah, then you get older and you're like, "Oh, I'm alone."
-Uh-huh. -So, yeah.
Lonely legend.Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
I always have to be kind of dragging myself into it
if I'm talking about somebody else.
Like, it's never really about anyone other than myself.
And I think that's kind of a solo act of it.
So even pulling in, like, uh, you know --
You mention a celebrity. You mention this.
I don't like doing jokes atpeople.
I'll mention them, but it's really kind of like,
oh, because I'm also kind of jumping off the same cliff with you.
Like, we're gonna do it together.
And also everyone here is just as, you know --
is guilty of the same exact thing.
And the whole thing is like --
how do you offer something about yourself
that actually would make someone feel less afraid or less alone?
But then it gets like, really messy on the way to do that.
But I just -- I can't, like, point at someone else
and say, like, "That's a mess." It's like, "No, no, like, I know that mess
because it's literally the same one that I have
or I have a version of and --"
And so, yeah, third rail would be, like,
if I'm not -- I wouldn't even do it.
-You wouldn't go there. -it wouldn't even be fun.
Yeah, yeah. But topic --
There's not a single topic you can't talk about.
Does anyone that you have spoken about, that you have joked about --
Do you hear from people after? positively or negatively.
I try to obscure.Yeah. That's wise.
I try to turn real people into archetypes for, like, you know,
obvious reasons, and I also don't talk about people that I date.
It bothers me that I talk so much about my family sometimes,
only because I speak very lovingly about my family always.
And so people still sometimes come up to my parents
and they're like, "Oh, he really got you!"
And I'm like, "What? By saying my dad is, like,
really nice and smart and thoughtful?
And my mom is very cool and collected?"
Like, I speak really well of my family.
But in terms of, like, third-rail topics,
like, it's tricky because all the power is in the third rail.
-Totally. -There are all these things
you can't talk about anymore.
And I'm like, "It's actually kind of more exciting."
There are more tensions, more interesting tensions --
Comedy's about the buildup and release of tension.
You have free tension. Deal with the new ones
and try to release them or find tension in a topic
that no one thought there was tension.
So third rails are a big part of it,
but what Ramy's talking about is elegance.
You want a degree of elegance. You want a degree of personalization.
It's another thing I picked up from Birbigs
when we started sort of chatting in earnest,
was sometimes Mike would be like,
"The joke's good, but it's not personal enough to you yet."
Even if it's about something random.
And so it's a really -- I don't know. I think about this topic a lot.
October 7th happened, and I think you called your producer,
one of your producers and said, "I don't know
if we should -- maybe we cancel these shows."
I think I heard you say, "Who can dance in the slaughterhouse?"
You obviously didn't cancel the show,
so I'm curious if it actually felt that way once you got back on stage.
It was a complicated moment. It remains a complicated moment.
It certainly does.
Ramy was one of the first people to call me,
and we had a really amazing, like, really fulsome,
helpful-for-me conversation.
And just really appreciated that.
It was -- It was -- It was hard.
And it's made me more mindful of the fact
that it's still hard. After a while,
you get inured to human suffering
because that's the way the thing works.
But, like, it's been -- Been constantly reminded not to,
which has made it difficult.
Yeah, getting on stage -- Again, another conversation
I had with Mike after, like, what --
How to -- What do you do? Do you change the show?
And I thought that the best thing
to do was make the show conversant with the moment
that we're living in but still an escape from it.
I think the best comedy is conversant with the tensions that we live with,
but it makes me sad.
So, at some point, going on stage and talking about not that
feels like a real problem.Uh-huh
So I'm glad we didn't cancel the shows.
I went -- Right before I went on stage in San Francisco
for that first show after October 7th,
I was standing in the back of the room
and I just saw a thousand people on their phones
watching a war, and I was like, "Okay.
Maybe this is a better thing to do
than not getting people away from a war for an hour."
An hour and a half -- Like --
But I wrestled with it all the way through,
whether or not this is right, whether or not this...
I put some new lines in to, like, talk about this feeling,
but it didn't change the whole show.
But like, yeah, something I wrestled with all the way through.
And, Ramy, I feel like you would go up --
You were on stage, you were on tour in those weeks after,
and you would talk at the top of the show
about this very thing,
of is this the right thing to be doing right now?
I'm curious sort of what you learned about yourself
and your audience in those experiences?
Well, I think my audience has always been kind of open
for these conversations, and it's kind of why, like,
I don't think -- I've never felt stand-up is actually that risky,
because I've kind of always been in conversation with an audience
that has, like, a really global perspective as to tragedy,
I think, and suffering.
And so there is a way to kind of go at it
that, you know, leads with connecting hearts,
you know, because I think that the news is very much, like,
talking heads and people just like -- It's literally mental.
And what we get to do gets to be emotional.
And so it's really liberating
because we're not -- We don't need to kind of --
I don't know. Anytime anything gets too factual
or anything gets too, even, historical,
um, overtly, it feels very like -- I'm just like,
"This stopped being comedy."Right.
And so I kind of try to, you know,
center the emotional piece and -- and --
Yeah, so for me, like, it's interesting
because my special is much different
than what I thought it was gonna be.
You know, even the special that I just put out,
I probably left like 30, maybe even 40 minutes
of other material on the table because I kind of felt like,
"Oh, there's actually something..."
Back to what we were talking about before.
If I'm actually present with the moment and with the audience,
there's something totally different
that they should be hearing that they want to hear.
Alex -- I went and saw his show, and he has a diverse audience,
but also a really Jewish audience, which was really cool.
-What?! -Yeah. Yeah.
And, like, you know, it's, like, really cool.
And that was also really fun, too, for me because I do think,
like, there would be a bunch of Orthodox Jews
who were like, "Yo, dude, I've seen you.
I've seen your show."
Because we pray a lot on my show.
Orthodox Jews like praying.
Three times a day. We're obsessed.
"We do a version of that."
But then, you know, same thing with my audience.
Obviously there's a lot of people who come out who are Muslim.
And so I've always kind of felt that there is a space
to have where you're talking to people
who need to hear a specific thing
they can't hear somewhere else
and also challenging them to hear something
that they probably might not want to hear...
and getting to play with that.
And I think that is kind of what's fun about it.
It's, like, the very little thing that we could do.
I constantly contend with how important that piece is.
And I also think, like, a lot of the language around that
can feel a little -- a little hard for me to stomach
when there's people who are -- who really,
you know, put themselves on the line
to kind of try and help the world.
Because I'm always going for the joke.
So it's my space -- The space I want to have in the conversation
is really, really small.
-Small? -It's really small.
I want to be like -- I want to be like the doorman,
like, letting people into a room
where there are actual interesting things happening.
Like, I am the valet. Like, there is nothing --
This is not, like, about this philosophy thing.
Like, this is truly just a little bit of
the -- with the grease
that makes the door not sound so squeaky
so that, like, the people can kind of walk into a room
and actually process real things.
And so I'm really aware of, you know, kind of, of that.
So, guys, we've learned that comedy
can either be therapeutic or the reason you go to therapy...
or start a habit.
More of this free session after the break.
♪♪
♪
One might think that the goal for a comic
is to just make people laugh,
but actually the goal can change from night to night.
Mm-hmm. Let's have our panel explain.
Stand-up comedy is one of the rare art forms
where it's one person speaking to a group of people.
There's no studio, there's no network, there's no filter.
So you do have a sense when you're watching somebody speak
that that's roughly what they're thinking about.
And it's so raw.
And it's the reason why I love watching comics.
I just love comedy because it doesn't
feel like it's processed.
There's a lot of conversations
around sort of truth in this moment.
But I'm curious, like, do you worry about sort of
your comedy being fact-checked in this moment,
which is this ridiculous thing to say?
And, yet, I think that's sort of where we are.
After the Hasan article came out in The New Yorker,
I got a lot of text messages that said,
"I hope you jump through that second-story window,"
referencing a show I did many years ago
where I jumped through a second-story window.
I heard it was a first-story window.
[Laughter]
Yeah, that was definitely, like, something
people wanted to talk to me about.
I don't know about you guys, but they wanted to talk to me about that a lot.
And I take it -- You know, I love Hasan,
and I think the intent of that writer remains very nebulous
and why they would write that. It's very confusing to me.
Yeah. It's not a thing to fact-check. Like, this isn't...
[Indistinct conversations]
I don't want to break anyone's heart.
Nobody ever fact-checked "Swimming to Cambodia."
It's not something people do.
I think you have a sense of what level of truth
the person is telling, and you take a guess.
And sometimes you're right, and sometimes you're wrong.
It's also really, like, interesting in terms of,
like, what you need to say
as, like, what's true to you
that, like, you really want people to know.
And I thought a lot about this when that article came out
because I was like, "Everything in my special is true,
but a lot of it also is about my perception."Of course!
I didn't, like, hear what the people
who decided to, you know, send me an audition
to be Pennywise actually thought when they sent that to me.
You'd have been so good.
I know. It's such a bummer that I didn't go in on that.
But like -- It's like I'm trying to show
how I felt rather than saying, like --
I mean, I guess I did end up screaming like,
"That really hurt my feelings," because that is also something
that I wanted to say, but I wanted to show,
like, how confounded I was, but also humiliated.
And so, like, I acted it out and, like, yeah,
I'm not accusing people of actually doing that or whatever,
but I just started thinking for me,
like, it would be weird if that was how my act was --
or my performance or whatever was assessed or something,
because it's so much about, like, the psyche
about, like, how you are in the world and how it feels and --
And the artistry.Yeah.
And it's like -- I'm trying to show not just --
I'm not just trying to make an impression,
but I'm trying to show what it feels like
to have an impression made on me.
I don't know.It's all about the how, though.
And I have to say this because we're in this comedy thing because it's like --
And I told you this, but the first-ever
one-person show I saw was Jenny's at UCB.
-Wait. Which one? -The one
where you were playing The Heiress, yeah.
And it was like -- It literally made me go, "I want to do that."
Aww!I think I was 17 or 18 or something.
I remember just like -- Maybe it was my first year of college,
and I remember seeing it and I just loved how you did it,
and it was just all about that raw energy.
And I think that's all that this is, so to fact-check it
is so weird because it's like --
I think it speaks to a larger --
We have an integrity problem. Like, we have a spiritual void.
Like, as a society.
Because the common person,
a politician talks, and they don't even --
They're like, "Yeah, he's probably lying.
But this comedian?" You know, so I don't care.
I don't care where Mike jumped from.
I don't care if Alex actually went to a meeting.
Like, it doesn't matter because it's all about, like,
what the approach is
and the how and the why you're approaching it that way.
And I think that it speaks to a massive integrity void
that we look at entertainers the way that we do,
that we look at stand-up the way that we do.
Because it really is -- At the end of the day,
there's nothing funnier than a fart joke,
and it remains to be, and that should tell you something
about this whole art form.Slate: I agree.
I agree. There's nothing funnier than a fart joke.
It's proven.
...falling on their head.
You mentioned the Pennywise thing,
and I'm curious, sort of, this idea of, like,
Does Hollywood know what to do with all of you?
And some of you have written your own stuff.
[Laughter]You're laughingat this.
"What to do with all of you?"
I think a hardcore "no" over here.
[Laughter]
But would we want it any other way?
[Laughter]
I don't think Hollywood knows what to do right now.
Fair....inflection point.
And I think everyone here has been really clear
as to what they want to do, how they put it together.
And I don't think that anyone here
needs to be confined to any sort of box.
I don't think there are types. There are barely even channels.
Like, everything is open for grabs.
So that -- "Does Hollywood know what --"
That's a whole other -- And no one's at fault.
Like, that's actually just a reflection
of the entire landscape of media
and how things are made is just radically shifting.
Fact-checking comedians makes as much sense
as boneless chicken wings.
I mean, it's supposed to have bones, y'all.
It's a chicken.
♪♪
♪
Welcome back to "Off Script with The Hollywood Reporter."
Let's pick things back up with our stand-up roundtable.
Mike, you at, like, 30 got a CBS sitcom pilot, right?
Which was the thing you thought you wanted.
This is like --This is great.
This is like "Jerry Maguire."
But it wasn't the thing you wanted.
You ultimately --Yeah, no, it was --
[Stammering] So...
The look on your face suggests that there's more here. Go.
Like, in my 20's, I just thought
that I wanted to be a star somehow.
Yeah, just, like, "I want to be a comedy star!"
You know? I don't even --
I don't even think in hindsight I knew what that meant.
And then when I was 30,
I was given my own sitcom at CBS,
and they shot the pilot, and Bob Odenkirk played my brother,
and, you know, Nick Kroll played my cousin and all this stuff.
And it was like, "Oh, my God. I can't believe it."
And then by the time it went through the factory
that is studios and networks and all that kind of thing,
it just wasn't really my life.
It wasn't my creative vision.
And it didn't get picked up to air.
And thank God. I went back to New York.
I mounted "Sleepwalk with Me."
Nathan Lane put his name behind it, um, and his reputation.
It was "Nathan Lane presents Mike Birbiglia's 'Sleepwalk with Me.'"
And it changed my life and career.
And I haven't looked back. I just make my own things now.
Although, then you did that for us, too, as well.
That's like, my favorite kind of thing,
is when comedians can have their own authentic voice.
What's the brass ring?
I feel like my generation grew up, and...
thinking "SNL" was thething.
Did you want to do it? Because I saw -- You work like --
When I think of you, you were like, always --
You were always doing it. That's why I was telling you
it's so cool that you got this show.
That's nice. Thank you, Ramy.
Um, no, I never wanted a late-night show.
Like, I only ever wanted to tour theaters.
Like, that's all I ever wanted to do,
is just tour theaters off of my stand up like Brian Regan.
And the reason I took "After Midnight" is
because they're like, "We film Monday through Wednesday,
so you could tour on the weekends."
And then everyone who's involved is just incredible.
And I wanted to work with all of them.
And, you know, once you're on tour by yourself,
you don't see other comedians that much.
So I was like, "Oh, you can just play around with
other comedians on TV for half the week? That sounds great."
But, yeah, no, it was never a goal of mine
to do a traditional talk show or anything like that.
You know, it was an hour special on HBO
like Chris Rock.Uh-huh.
I mean, that was it. That was center of the vision board.
That was the -- To me, that was the height of the form.
And I know there's now more specials than there used to be.
And, you know, that's a whole thing, right?
But it was marching around
on a big stage with confidence, I guess.
So you've achieved the --
Yeah, that was really it.
And, um, you know, I do feel some bit of, like --
Not that it's a constant question of,
"Okay, if I died tomorrow," kind of thing,
but I'd feel a lot better dying tomorrow
than I would have felt dying tomorrow five years ago.
In a different era, you might have been watered down
to like a -- your comedy might have been watered down
to a different type of comedy.
So, like, when people see "Get on Your Knees,"
they really see your brain, like, out on the table.
You know what I mean? And it's like -- That's so beautiful.
And it's -- I think partly because of the moment
that we're in where people have --
Because comedy's so ubiquitous, people have become connoisseurs.
So people found Jacqueline's comedy,
and it's become like when you ran the show at Cherry Lane in New York.
It was a phenomenon, you know?
When Alex ran his show in New York, it was a phenomenon.
It was like -- "if you didn't see it,
you're not in the know" kind of thing.
And that wasn't -- But that wasn't of the era --
When I was a door person in the 1990s,
when I was in college at a Washington, D.C., improv,
there wasn't that.
People weren't comedy connoisseurs in that way,
where they were seeking out like,
"Oh, what's different from the people
who are here for the next six weeks?"
It's so funny, though, because I was reading an interview
that Ramy did a couple of weeks ago, months ago,
and someone asked him a question that I get asked a lot also,
which is sort of about the cultural specificity
that they suppose your thing has, right?
I assume they're asking in a euphemistic way
about you being a Muslim.
And in the same way, they're asking me euphemistically
about me being a Jew.
And you said that people come up to you and go,
"Oh, I understand, because that's my family. My family is Jamaican."
Or they come to me because that's my identity
and my desire to do XYZ, but I'm, you know, from anywhere else.
And the first thing I thought when I read that was,
"That's Norman Lear."
Norman Lear always said, "I'm just another version of you."
The specific being universal.
Like, I do think that people are looking for specificity
now in this, like, very scattered media landscape
and, like, the individual in a way
that they used to maybe get from television shows.
And so, like, there's something very old-school
about the aesthetic, even as the content vessel for it is really different.
Don't go anywhere.
More of our stand-up comedy roundtable
coming right up.
♪♪
♪
Welcome back to "Off Script with The Hollywood Reporter."
Right back to you, Lacey.
We're gonna end on a lightning round.
Number-one thing on your bucket list.
This isn't an answer, but it was cool to see you on "SNL."
-Aww! -You were so good.
-Thank you. -So good.
It was really -- It was really amazing.
So that's Taylor's bucket list.
[Laughter]
That was mine. And I can die now.
-I can die tomorrow now. -See?
To see Jenny at the Comedy Cellar.
Oh, my gosh.
Was that a bucket list for you? "SNL"?
Yeah. Yeah. That was --
It'd be crazy if you were like, "Nah."
No, I mean, it was -- And it --
And I've been so fortunate, and I think everyone here has --
We've all checked a lot of bucket lists.
Even by getting to talk to you, like, it's --
You kind of have to check bucket-list stuff to get here.
Sure. But "SNL"...
It's really -- It's crazy.
-That, for me -- -It's crazy.
When she asked that, that was one of the first things I thought.
I don't think that's my answer, but hosting "SNL" --
I think all of us are fans to some extent.
Everyone pretends a little bit to different degrees,
but we're all fans of comedy.
We're all like -- I rarely meet comedians
who I truly believe they're not fans.
So, like, it's a thing that --
I almost was like, "What's being on 'SNL' like"?
I think that probably was my, like, bucket list.
It's weird to, like, get the bucket list and then be like,
"Oh, I guess I'm not sure
that it was what I wanted or, you know,
it just -- it wasn't the thing."
But, like, if I hadn't been on it,
I would be trying to be on it still.
And when I watch it, I still feel, like, magical about it.
What's something you guys used to joke about
that you look back on now and cringe?
People's weight. It's not really a taboo yet,
and no one's ever called me on it.
And it was never, like, "That guy's fat!"
But I would make jokes, like, obliquely.
There are plenty of things that I wouldn't say now,
not for the reason of, like, cancellation,
but because my standards are higher than they used to be.
I've made some jokes that I would just, like --
I'm embarrassed by a lot of my early stuff.
It was like -- I was not good.
When I look back on things I did early in my career,
it's not that I'm embarrassed of the word choice
or something that's out of date and time.
It's, like, that I wasn't opening up to the audience
and being honest about how I actually felt.
I was attempting to project a persona
that I thought people would like, and it's embarrassing.
And I think that what's helpful to look back on that for
is to go, "Okay, but now I can.
Now I can walk out on stage and say exactly how I feel."
Like, the best compliment I ever get is, like --
Recently, I've been touring this new show,
and people are like, "That's what you're like!"
And I'm like, "Fuck yeah."
I don't know. It's not done yet.
It'll be another year in the oven.
But, like, that's what I'm going towards.
Yeah. I'm not even Jewish.
So it's really hard to get away from that.
Alright. We're gonna end on something that's gonna feel silly,
but I feel like it is actually revealing.
What's the most used emoji on your phone?
I have the hands clapping.
-There you go. -Hands clapping.
-Yeah. -Eyes being wide open.
-Yeah. -Oh, the side eye?
-Just wide open eyes. -Yeah. The big ones?
Like that? Where he's like...?
I do use the heart a lot and...
But it's a tie. I hate it.
I truly -- It's just so like --
But a diaper, you know? Like...baby.
I use the heart a lot.
I use the heart a lot. I like it.
I just want people to know, you know? Like, I'm just like --
I don't give a thumbs-up because I feel like
that's too, um, sporty.
But I do the lightning bolt a lot, and I love it.
-Ooh. -I absolutely love it.
And I feel like when people get it, they're like,
"Oh! [Giggles]"
You know? They love that.
Really, like, "You got it. Yeah."
Like, "See you there. Pshew!" You know what I mean?
Yeah. I do the one heart and then the little heart.
-Oh, I like that. -Together.
It's a little bit of like an ellipses heart or something.
It's, like, got a little movement to it.
And, of course, the ghost. Just a classic.
-Ghost is... -Yeah.
He's a little silly, too.
Imbued with, you know, the spiritual.
Yeah. I like him.
And, yes, I gendered the ghost.
-[Laughs] -You can take it back.
-Exactly. -I refuse.
Go ahead. Apologize into the lens.
I really like the face melting.
There's a lot of ambiguity there. Uh-huh. Why?
You're not sure what what they're doing.
You're just like, "Why is there..."
Someone says something, and I don't know how to react,
I'm just like, "Ehh..."
So, yeah, that.
Take it home, Ramy.
I think I use the baby angel.
There's like two angels, but...little angel.
Because I feel like I'm always --
I don't know. I'm always in situations where I'm like,
"Let me show the the little baby angel
so we can all remember that we're here."
I don't even know what baby angel is.
He's got the face and he's got the little wings and...
Does he have a little -- Like, the -- ...halo?
It's got wings. The halo is the older angel.
But I use the baby to kind of say,
"Hey, I know I'm being annoying,
but remember we're all just babies navigating this world."
So it's just a nod to the inner child.
I couldn't even finish. I couldn't even finish it.
But I think that's -- I do use it --
I think that's why I use it.
I've never put it in these words.
But then I looked at Mike, and I was like...
There's real elegance to some of these emojis.
The one that looks like Mount Fiji,
you're just like, "Wow. That's really beautiful."
...one that's just, like, a rock.
Like, when you can find one and you're like, "This has not been used."
-You're doing work. -You feel incredible.
-Yeah, it's very nice. -I love it.
On that note, thank you, guys,
so much for doing this.
-Appreciate it. -Mike speaks for all of us.
-I dunno. -Taffy?
[Laughter]
Today's takeaway?
With all the uncertainty in the world,
one thing is for certain --
we need comedy now more than ever.
And we're not going anywhere.
Until next time, I'm Yvonne Orji,
and this is "Off Script with The Hollywood Reporter."
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