Well, folks, I caught the COVID. And not just any type of COVID, mind you. The really scary kind. The kind that kills people. But somehow, after 99 days in a medically induced coma in ICU on a mechanical ventilator, I lived to tell uncomfortable jokes about it. Luckily, dark humor is kind of my thing. Let’s rewind the tape to when this grease fire of a year kicked off. It was late February, and I was a 31-year-old comedian struggling to pay rent on my shoebox Manhattan apartment. While visiting my parents in Massachusetts, I developed flu-like symptoms and ended […]
Comedy
22 posts
Lewis Black is the only Daily Show contributor to appear alongside every host past and present: Craig Kilborn, Jon Stewart, and Trevor Noah. “And whoever they want to bring in next,” he jokes on this week’s episode of The Last Laugh podcast. The comedian has delivered his signature “Back in Black” segment hundreds of times over the past two and a half decades, most recently roasting New Yorkers—like himself—who have escaped the city during the pandemic. Currently, Black is holed up in North Carolina and driving himself stir crazy. It’s been just about seven months since he last got on stage […]
As Saturday Night Live prepares for its Season 46 premiere on October 3, things will be very different from the norm. Although the venerated sketch show will return live—a departure from the remotely produced “At Home” editions launched earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic—everything about its production has been overhauled to ensure the safety of its cast and crew. “We don’t know that we’re going to be able to pull it off,” Lorne Michaels told the New York Times. “We’re going to be as surprised as everyone else when it actually goes on.” On-site rapid COVID tests are now […]
“I also was quite surprised,” Joe Lo Truglio admits when I ask how in the world he ended up getting cast as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Showtime’s The Comey Rule. For one, the Brooklyn Nine-Nine star is almost entirely known for comedy and the new two-part series—based in part on former FBI Director James Comey’s book A Higher Loyalty—is deadly serious. On top of that, Lo Truglio is about a quarter-century younger than the septuagenarian Alabama politician. “You know, it’s not like I’m super good looking, but I’m also not 70 years old,” the actor jokes on this week’s […]
https://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/105554/85/1055548574_0:300:5760:3540_1200x675_80_0_0_898d67d7fae0a984f9519c3740e1c8d4.jpg Sputnik International https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png Sputnik https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png https://sputniknews.com/art_living/202009211080521443-virtual-emmy-awards-schitts-creek-wins-all-comedy-categories/ The coronavirus pandemic prompted organisers of the show to search for modern solutions, so this year the event is taking place virtually, with no guests on the red carpet. The 72nd Emmy Awards is underway in the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, hosted by comedian James Kimmel, who presented the awards last year. In his opening speech, Kimmel ensured viewers he is “alone” in the audience, taking a shot at President Donald Trump for his “Make America Great Again” rallies. “Of course I’s here all alone. Of course we don’t have an audience. […]
The first indie comedy set entirely at a shiva, the Jewish commemoration of the dead that, at least in North America, has evolved into a ritual that is half-family reunion and half-nosh fest, Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby is intermittently amusing. Like many movies of its ilk, Seligman’s flirts with edgy material but swiftly defuses its transgressive potential. After debuting at SXSW during its swiftly constituted pandemic edition last spring, the film, which had its Canadian premiere this week at this year’s pared down Toronto International Film Festival, is being hailed as a “homecoming” for the Canadian-born Seligman. Shiva Baby’s premise […]
The first time we meet Martin Short’s character on The Morning Show, he’s playing a spry game of tennis with Steve Carell’s disgraced TV anchor Mitch Kessler. When the two men sit down together for a post-match drink, we quickly learn that they share a unique bond. Short’s Dick Lundy is also a recently exposed #MeToo predator. The role, which just earned Short his 18th career Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, represented a rare opportunity for him to show off a darker, more menacing side to his far more familiar comedic persona. “I’ve never been in […]
In April last year, opposition leader and self-proclaimed interim President Juan Guaido attempted to stage a coup in Venezuela and overthrow democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro, purportedly with support from the US government. However, the attempt was botched due to the military refusing to support Guaido. What could be worse than attempting to overthrow a legal, elected foreign government in violation of international norms? Apparently it is to fail at such an attempt, according to a recent Twitter rant by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who described Trump’s policy of “restoring Democracy” in Venezuela […]
As Seth Rogen and his production company, Point Grey, feel their way through the novel coronavirus pandemic, one thing is certain: They won’t be taking their cues from Christopher Nolan. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Rogen quipped, “I’m waiting to see what Chris Nolan does… ‘WWCND’ is basically what we’re saying at all times. ‘What would Chris Nolan do?’” THR’s interview, conducted via Zoom, happened to take place on the same day that Warner Bros. and Nolan confirmed that Tenet’s release, previously set for August, would be delayed for a third time. The decision followed widespread controversy over the film’s intended […]
When John Cleese tells people that he has a new show called Why There Is No Hope, they assume the title is a joke. “A lot of people think that I mean it humorously,” he tells me on an upcoming episode of The Last Laugh podcast, “but of course I don’t.” The Monty Python co-founder is talking via Zoom just a few days before he’s set to present the comedy performance-slash-philosophical lecture in his first-ever international live stream event on Sunday, August 2nd from an empty Cadogan Hall in London. While the darkly comic title feels especially fitting for this historical […]
Paul Feig will not let a once-in-a-century pandemic slow him down. He’s balancing far too many plates. There’s the two features in pre-production that he’s planning to direct—This Country, a U.S. remake of the famed U.K. mockumentary about rural life at the margins, and an adaptation of the bestselling novel The School for Good and Evil, a potential Harry Potter-esque franchise. Or how about the projects he’s shepherding through his production company, Powderkeg, like the Issa Rae-starring Netflix film American Princess, Eva Longoria’s directorial debut 24-7, and East of La Brea, a Los Angeles-set TV show centered on two young Muslim-American […]
After years of doubling down on racist jokes and choosing to “opt out” of critical conversations about her portrayals of people of color, Tina Fey’s work has finally caught up with her. Last Tuesday, the Saturday Night Live alum joined a chorus of Hollywood comedians and showrunners trying to rectify acts of racism and racial miscasting by requesting the removal of certain 30 Rock episodes containing blackface—four, to be exact—from Hulu and other digital platforms. While the internet didn’t seem all that interested in interrogating limp statements by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Jenny Slate and others about their past (but fairly […]
In a moment of divine comedy, a potential vandal took a major fall while attempting to climb the statue of St. Louis IX. The leftist criminal mobs have been targeting the statue of King Louis IX of France which is located in front of the Saint Louis Art Museum in Forest Park as part of their larger effort to erase our history and culture. A man attempting to vandalize the St. Louis IX statue discovers the Law of Gravity pic.twitter.com/hOgO1wnO5a — Hirsty (@realHirsty) June 29, 2020 TRENDING: MUST READ… Report: Tulsa Arena Management Sabotaged Trump Rally Attendance In a hilarious video […]
For the past decade, Chris D’Elia, one of the country’s top club comedians who packs theatres hundreds of times a year, has enjoyed the special status afforded to a few middle-aged comics who grasp and expertly deploy devices of the Gen-Z internet. The 40-year-old stand-up, who has three Netflix specials and a Comedy Central special called White Male. Black Comic, has maintained massive followings across social media—on Twitter, where he has 1.1 million followers; on Instagram, where he has 2.4 million followers; on TikTok, where he has 158,300 followers, despite posting just nine videos; and, when it was around, on Vine, […]
When I ask Michaela Watkins how she’s doing towards the end of one of the darkest weeks in modern American history, she replies, “Oh, thanks for asking, I’m terrible.” The night before our conversation for this week’s episode of The Last Laugh podcast, the comedian and actress “forced” herself to finally watch the full Sandra Bland arrest video and couldn’t get to sleep until 5 a.m. “It was just so devastating,” she says. “I’ve always been really outspoken in this area, but something just clicked in on a cellular level. And I just don’t think there’s any way to un-know or […]
When we connected with Yvonne Orji to talk about her role as Molly on HBO’s Insecure and her first hour-long stand-up special Momma, I Made It!, airing Saturday night on the cable network, it was two days after George Floyd had been killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. Interviews in recent weeks had already been starting with awkward pleasantries owed to the shutdown, and this added another layer. “I was doing OK, and then the events of the last couple of days came about,” she said. “Even in the middle of a global pandemic, somehow black men and women are […]
If Nanette was Hannah Gadsby’s attempt to, as the Tasmanain comedian put it in the show itself, “tell her story properly,” her new set, Douglas, finds her processing its aftereffects—and expanding it even further. It’s also, perhaps, her best troll yet. In the special, which premiered on Netflix Tuesday, Gadsby wonders aloud why her audience is there—and what they’re expecting after she purged herself of some of her darkest experiences in Nanette. “Because I’m sorry, if it’s more trauma, I am fresh out!” She rails against (mostly male) comedians who spent months after Nanette’s release arguing that her show was not, […]
Few people made Jimmy Kimmel laugh harder than Fred Willard. So on Monday night, the late-night host dedicated his entire show to the legendary comedic actor, who died over the weekend at 86. “Tonight’s show will be a special show,” he began. “It will be a sad show. But we will also laugh a lot as we pay tribute to a lovely and genuinely funny man named Fred Willard.” The host told viewers that as a kid growing up in Las Vegas, one of his favorite shows was Fernwood 2 Night, in which Willard played “oblivious second banana” to his longtime […]
What’s immediately striking is the tone of his voice. No “Hey, What-the-fuckers!” No “How’s everybody doing?” No jangly guitar theme song. Just a halting, “Hey, OK, it’s Marc.” On Monday morning, less than 48 hours after his partner, the celebrated director Lynn Shelton suddenly passed away from a previously undiagnosed blood disorder, Marc Maron was there on his WTF podcast, as he always is, talking directly to listeners about what happened. The comedian’s voice immediately started to crack as he said the words, “I’m sure most of you know that Lynn Shelton died at about 12:45 a.m. on Saturday morning. She […]
With a record six Emmy awards for playing the same role—and record-tying eight acting Emmys overall—Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been the funniest woman on TV for more than 30 years. But there is one man who perhaps made her laugh harder than anyone else. The man was Jerry Stiller, who died over the weekend at the age of 92, and despite a comedy career that started on The Ed Sullivan Show was perhaps most famous for playing Frank Costanza on Seinfeld. From “a Festivus for the rest of us” to “Serenity now!,” Stiller had plenty of hilarious moments on screen over the […]
Is comedy still funny if there’s no one there to laugh? That’s the question that many comedians have been struggling to answer over these past two months—and one that was put to the test on Sunday night during the Feeding America Comedy Festival, a two-hour tour-de-force telethon to benefit that organization’s COVID-19 Response Fund. Former comic and current media mogul Byron Allen teamed up with Funny or Die to put together the night’s insanely stacked lineup, including co-hosts Tiffany Haddish, Kenan Thompson, and Billy Crystal. The special kicked off at 7 p.m. ET with the customary noisy tribute to essential workers, […]
Saturday Night Live’s Cecily Strong was portraying Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as an out-of-control drunk long before the real Jeanine Pirro appeared to actually be drunk during a live broadcast from home during the coronavirus pandemic. So the season finale of SNL at Home was the perfect time for Strong’s Pirro to join “Weekend Update” anchor Colin Jost from her home to talk about the lockdown protests happening across America. “Good evening, Colin, I hope you’ll forgive me,” Pirro began. “I had to do my own makeup while looking into a spoon.” Asked how she’s holding up under quarantine, she […]