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 […]
Daily Beast podcasts
8 posts
“Not enough alcohol in the world right now,” Lewis Black tweeted Tuesday night during the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Like the rest of the country, the comedian was horrified by what he was watching. He just happens to be better than most Americans at putting that horror into words. “What happened last night was unconscionable on so many levels,” Black tells me during our taping for this coming week’s episode of The Last Laugh podcast. “Every so often in my life, I’ve regretted not having children,” he adds. “But basically I feel like I made that […]
“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 […]
“I like you so much, you’re the only interview I’ve done in the last few days where I’m not playing video games at the same time,” Ron Funches tells me on this bonus episode of The Last Laugh podcast, letting out one of his signature belly laughs. The exceptional stand-up comedian was our third guest on the podcast all the way back in April of last year when he was promoting his first big hour-long special for Comedy Central called Giggle Fit, in which he talked about how losing 140 pounds transformed both his body and his comedy mind. In the […]
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 […]
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 […]
About six months before anyone had heard of the novel coronavirus, J-L Cauvin made the difficult decision to move out of New York City, where he had spent years trying to make it as a stand-up comic. “I was super depressed about getting a full-time job again and moving to New Jersey,” he tells me on today’s bonus episode of The Last Laugh podcast. “A job fell into my lap and I just said, you know what, I’ve been doing part-time legal work and road comedy for 16 years, I have to seize this opportunity at stability. I said, OK, comedy […]
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 […]