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The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Last Things First asks comedians and funny performers about the historic lasts and firsts in their lives as their comedy careers have blossomed.
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Now displaying: 2020
Apr 16, 2020

Dan Whitney had a pretty good comedy career, including a TV appearance on A&E’s An Evening At The Improv. But Whitney’s career as Larry the Cable Guy has been far more lucrative and longer-lasting, going on some three decades since he first started calling into radio stations as the character who still says, Git-R-Done! Larry became the breakout star from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and its subsequent TV series, becoming the top Billboard comedy artist and touring act of the mid-2000s. He got his own Comedy Central Roast in 2009, hosted three Christmas specials for VH1 and CMT, starred in four movies as Larry, voiced a tow truck in the two animated hit Cars movies for Disney/Pixar, and hosted a History Channel show for three seasons. He continues to co-host a SiriusXM comedy channel on satellite radio with his comedy pal Jeff Foxworthy, and they put out a joint Netflix special together. He and his wife also have run the nonprofit Git-R-Done Foundation since 2009 to benefit childrens’ and veterans causes. Dan sat down with me from his kitchen in Nebraska to talk over Zoom about all of that and more, including his newest solo stand-up special, Remain Seated. So let’s get to it!

Apr 9, 2020

Maysoon Zayid is an actress, comedian, and disability advocate, who has attracted more than 16 million views to her 2013 TED talk, “I Got 99 problems…palsy is just one.” A decade before that, Zayid co-founded the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. Her past credits include contributing to MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, appearing in the Adam Sandler movie, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and headlining the Arabs Gone Wild comedy tour. In 2019, she recorded an Audible original audiobook, “Find Another Dream,” and she recently fulfilled her lifelong dream by landing a gig as a recurring character on the longtime ABC soap opera, General Hospital. She connected with me via Zoom during the coronavirus pandemic to check in, so let’s get to it!

Apr 1, 2020

Lane Moore is a comedian, writer, actor, and musician. She hosts the show Tinder Live, swiping through dating profiles and baiting potential suitors, with a panel of funny people and a live audience to guide her. She also fronts the band, It Was Romance. And as a writer, Lane Moore has published jokes in The Onion, and offered sex and relationship advice as an editor for Cosmopolitan magazine, where she won a GLAAD award for expanding the magazine’s queer coverage. In 2018, Moore released her first book of personal essays, “How To Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don’t.” I sat down with Moore for a conversation over our respective laptops during the first month of the coronavirus quarantine to talk about her life and career, how we’re adapting to a world without traditional comedy stages, and what it’s like for many millions of us to suddenly learn how to be alone. So let’s get to it!

Mar 23, 2020

Comedic actors Jonathan Braylock, Jerah Milligan and James III host their own podcast, Black Men Can’t Jump (In Hollywood), examining the problems of racial diversity in show business through reviewing movies of the past which featured actors of color. They also have firsthand experience with the topic. In 2014, they became part of the first all-black house team at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City. Their comedy troupe, Astronomy Club, was named one of Comedy Central’s Comics to Watch in 2016, and produced a digital sketch series for Comedy Central in 2018. In December 2019, Astronomy Club debuted a six-episode series on Netflix with executive producer Kenya Barris and showrunner Daniel Powell. I sat down with Jonathan, Jerah and James in North Hollywood in February 2020, back when they still thought they were participating in a regular “pilot season,” to talk about how some things had changed while others hadn’t. So let’s get to it!

Mar 16, 2020

Tammy Pescatelli lost her agent and manager back in 2016 after she spoke out about joke stealing and parallel thinking, but that’s not the first time in her career that Pescatelli did something her reps disapproved of — years earlier, Pescatelli continued performing in comedy clubs and theaters while more than eight moths pregnant, long before it became popular for women in comedy to do so. But Pescatelli is a funny woman of a certain age — she competed on seasons 2 and 3 of NBC’s Last Comic Standing, and after the birth of her son, she starred in her own reality series on WE tv called A Stand Up Mother. Since then, she has featured in Jenny McCarthy’s Dirty Sexy Funny special for EPIX, and formerly co-hosted Stuttering John’s Podcast. In March of 2020, Pescatelli has two new specials available for streaming or purchase. She’s part of Showtime’s MORE FUNNY WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE – headlined by Caroline Rhea and also featuring Carol Leifer, Carole Montgomery, Julia Scotti, and Thea Vidale. Pescatelli also stars in her own hourlong stand-up, The Way After School Special, filmed at her old high-school gym in Ohio. Tammy and I get into it, so let’s get to it!

Mar 9, 2020

Justine Marino is a comedian who joined The Groundlings shortly after moving from Denver to Los Angeles, and found herself working as a tour guide at Universal Studios while also performing stand-up at night. Her first big break came in the Jenny McCarthy comedy special, “Dirty, Sexy, Funny” which came out on EPIX in 2014 and also featured a then-unknown Tiffany Haddish. Later that year, Marino got New Faces at Montreal’s Just For Laughs Comedy festival. More recently, she developed a live comedy dance competition with Heidi Heaslet at The Comedy Store called Stand Up 2 The Streets, which has been developed into a TV series for E!. The Funny Dance Show debuts in March 2020 on E! I sat down with Marino in Los Angeles to chart all of her comedy and dance steps, so let’s get to it!

Mar 2, 2020

Born in Taiwan to Taiwanese and Japanese parents, Atsuko Okatsuka is a stand-up comedian, actress and writer. Since putting out her first hour comedy special in 2018 as part of Hulu’s Comedy InvAsian series, she has made the shortlists of comedians to watch by both New York Magazine’s Vulture site as well as Time Out LA. Atsuko also has written for two different series on Adult Swim, The Eric Andre Show and Soft Focus with Jena Friedman. She’s the creator and host of “Let’s Go, Atsuko!” a woke Japanese game show that’s a hit with live audiences as well as a podcast, and she’s developing it as a potential TV or streaming vehicle, too. Atsuko released a new stand-up album in 2020, “But I Control Me,” via Comedy Dynamics. She sat down with me in her Los Angeles home to talk about making it in America as an immigrant, twerking with her grandmother, and so much more. So let’s get to it!

Feb 24, 2020

In 2020, Tom Papa released his fourth stand-up comedy special, and first for Netflix, called You’re Doing Great!. And Tom Papa is doing great. He’s a regular performer on NPR, starring in his own segment on the weekly syndicated show, Live From Here, as well as a recurring role on the panel for NPR quiz show, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! He also has a weekly SiriusXM show and podcast featuring his funny friends called Come To Papa. That’s not to be confused with the NBC sitcom he once starred in called Come To Papa, or his former NBC reality show with Jerry Seinfeld called The Marriage Ref. Or Papa’s current weekday SiriusXM talk show he co-hosts with Fortune Feimster for the Netflix is A Joke radio channel, What a Joke with Papa and Fortune. Did I mention Papa’s bread-baking show for the Food Network, or his books? His second book, You're Doing Great!: And Other Reasons to Stay Alive, is available for pre-orders and more online now. Papa sat down with me at SiriusXM’s Los Angeles offices to break it all down, and build us all up. So let’s get to it!

Feb 18, 2020

Lizz Winstead is a Minnesotan through and through, even though she has spent the better part of the past three decades in New York City. Winstead first moved to New York to pursue her stand-up comedy career, became a segment producer for The Jon Stewart Show in 1995, and while that talk show ultimately didn’t last long, Winstead found herself getting offered her dream gig by Comedy Central a year later. That gig? Co-creating The Daily Show. She later pivoted to radio, serving as the original program director for Air America Radio, where the 2004 lineup included Marc Maron in the morning, Janeane Garofalo at night, and Al Franken at midday — Winstead, meanwhile, co-hosted a show from 9 to noon with Public Enemy’s Chuck D.. and a previously unknown radio host from Massachusetts named Rachel Maddow. Since then, Winstead has mounted a live parody of morning TV, written a book of essays called “Lizz Free or Die,” and came out of that process realizing she could be even more activist in her comedy. Her book tour begat a new organization, first called Lady Parts Justice League and now known as Abortion Access Front, or Abortion AF for short. Winstead is currently touring towns and cities across America with her Feminist Buzzkills of Comedy Tour. I caught up with her during a break between tour stops, so let’s get to it!

Feb 10, 2020

Derek Gaines grew up outside of Philadelphia, and moved to New York City with his “6 Foot Nothing” crew after cementing his status as one of Philly’s Phunniest. After performing as a New Face in Montreal at Just For Laughs, Gaines began scoring TV credits, hosting MTV’s Broke A$$ Game Show and delivering jokes on cable outlets from truTV to VH1 to AXS-TV.  Since 2017, Gaines has steadily appeared in higher-profile roles and series, starting with the revival of Will & Grace on NBC, where he plays Sean Hayes’s boss, and also including The Last O.G. with Tracy Morgan on TBS. In 2020, you can see Gaines on the big-screen in his former roommate Pete Davidson’s movie, “The King of Staten Island,” and you can hear Gaines on his first comedy album, Fuccboi Ground Zero. Gaines sat down with me to talk all about it, so let’s get to it!

Feb 3, 2020

David Wain has been on the cutting edge of digital comedy since the turn of the century, making short films for his live comedy shows with Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black, debuting a webseries (Wainy Days) on the streaming platform My Damn Channel in 2007, helping Rob Corddry take his webseries Childrens Hospital to TV with Adult Swim and winning multiple Emmys for it, and adapting his first feature film, 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer, into two separate spin-off series (a prequel and a sequel) for Netflix. He’s directed multiple feature films amid all of that, including The TenRole ModelsWanderlustThey Came Together, and A Futile and Stupid Gesture. His most recent trick he pulled off? Getting the funny folks of Childrens Hospital out of the hospital and around the world on an action-adventure caper called Medical Police. The ten-episode season debuted in January 2020 on Netflix. I sat down with Wain before the series premiered to find out how he has adapted to all of the ways TV has changed in the 21st Century. So let’s get to it!

Jan 29, 2020

Joe Pera is a Buffalo native who studied film and began his stand-up comedy career at Ithaca College. After college, Pera moved to New York City, where he started a regular showcase with his childhood friend Dan Licata and Charles Gould called the Dan, Joe and Charles Show. Pera’s comedy voice made the leap to late-night TV in 2016 with the animated Adult Swim infomercial, “Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep.” Adult Swim liked it so much they’ve kept bringing Pera back, first with the Christmas special, “Joe Pera Helps You Find the Perfect Christmas Tree,” and two seasons of “Joe Pera Talks with You.” You also may have seen Pera on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert or Late Night with Seth Meyers. I sat down with Pera in a diner near his Brooklyn apartment to talk about his life and career, and what may come next. So let’s get to it!

Jan 20, 2020

In an email to me on Jan. 3, 2020, Chloé Hilliard proclaimed “This is the YEAR of CHLOE!” and she may well be right. Hilliard already kicked off 2020 by releasing her first stand-up comedy album, “Big Dick Energy,” and has followed that up with the publication of her first book, “F— YOUR DIET: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me,” from Simon & Schuster. Hilliard, whose TV credits include The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Last Comic Standing, tells me about her previous life as a culture and entertainment journalist for for EssenceVibe, and The Source, how she decided to make a break for it as a comedian instead, and why she wanted to write about society’s relationship with food, and what it means for us. So let’s get to it!

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