Jessica Kirson has a captivating stage presence that bowls you over with laughter, whether you’re a schmuck in the front row or one of the so-called celebrities on NBC's Celebrity Apprentice. Kirson has a featured role onscreen and behind the scenes in the new Robert DeNiro movie about an aging insult comic called, The Comedian. She has also appeared on The Tonight Show, Last Comic Standing, The View, and Comedy Central, and guest starred this fall on the new CBS sitcom, Kevin Can Wait. I can’t wait to hear more about Kirson’s past, so let’s get to it!
Kirson also just launched a new podcast with her friend Frank Liotti, all about food addiction, called Fat Pig.
One of the all-time greatest cast members of Saturday Night Live, Dana Carvey found his comedy greatness early, winning the San Francisco Comedy Competition when he was 22, then co-starring in a sitcom with Mickey Rooney and a young Nathan Lane, and a bit part in This Is Spinal Tap. Carvey joined SNL at the age of 31 and revolutionized the show’s impersonations by becoming President George H.W. Bush. Carvey also chopped broccoli, pumped you up with Hans and Franz, played Wayne’s sidekick Garth in Wayne’s World, and was and still is the Church Lady. Isn’t That Special? Yes. Yes, it is. Carvey came back in 2016 in a big way, presiding over a comedy game show on USA called First Impressions and releasing a new Netflix special, Straight White Male, 60.
It’s my pleasure to catch up with him, so let’s get to it!
Yousef Erakat has upward of 10 million YouTube subscribers for FouseyTube and won the 2016 Entertainer of the Year honors at the Streamy Awards, and yet he said during his acceptance speech at the Streamys that he might also be the most hated personality on YouTube. And still, he reads the comments. Yousef sat down with me to talk about how he went from theater classes to vlogging to prank videos and now to movie theaters. He appeared onscreen in 2016 in Tyler Perry’s Boo: A Medea Halloween, and stars in the new YouTube Red romantic comedy, We Love You. It’s out Nov. 22. So let’s get to it!
Dan Levy started comedy at the age of 9 and was competing at the HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen while still a college student at Emerson College. Levy has toured with Aziz Ansari, John Mulaney and Whitney Cummings, and his 2012 album for Comedy Central, “Congrats on Your Success” debuted at #1 on iTunes. He co-starred on HBO’s Enlightened, and has hosted two shows in the past year, the stage show “Baby Talk” for JASH and the stand-up showcase show “Coming to the Stage” for Hulu. He’s currently a writer for ABC’s hit sitcom, The Goldbergs, and his first hour comedy special, Lion, premieres in November 2016 on Seeso. So let’s get to it!
Before we ever heard about Trevor Noah in America, Loyiso Gola was the star of his own TV satire in South Africa, Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola. He appeared in a PBS documentary in 2014 hosted by The Daily Show’s Hasan Minhaj called Stand Up Planet, and now in 2016, Gola is ready for his global close-up. His first stand-up special, Live in New York, is the first solo comedy special presented by Vimeo, and Gola sat down with me just after the New York Comedy Festival to talk about his journey and how to create your own comedy scene no matter where you are in the world. So let’s get to it!
Rory Albanese joined The Daily Show with Jon Stewart shortly after graduating from college in 1999, and rose from the ranks to become executive producer by the time he left in 2013, and was the showrunner for The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, also on Comedy Central, where you also started to see him more in front of the camera as a contributor and panelist. He released his first half-hour stand-up special in 2010. So what’s next for Albanese? I asked him, so let’s get to it!