The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Jamie Morton was working behind the scenes of British television when his father emailed him a link under the name Rocky Flintstone, a link that revealed an erotic novel actually written by Morton’s father. A horribly written novel at that. And more where that came from. Morton and his good …
Rich Vos might not have expected to make it to 60 the way he was living his 20s, addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine. But Vos made it out, and celebrated 33 years clean and sober in 2019. Along the way, he became the first white comic to perform on …
Born in Britain, raised in both Jamaica and New York City, and now based in Los Angeles, Ian Edwards has been a successful comedian and TV writer for two decades, dating back to The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show in 1998. Since then, Ian has written for Saturday Night Live, black-ish, …
Sara Schaefer is a critically acclaimed stand-up comedian, writer, and producer currently based in Los Angeles. She was the co-host of MTV’s late-night show Nikki & Sara Live, which was born out of a podcast she started with Nikki Glaser in her Brooklyn apartment. Sara has won two Emmy awards …
Kansas City native Chris Porter caught his first big break just months after moving to Los Angeles with a gig competing on NBC’s Last Comic Standing. He finished third that season. Since then, Porter has recorded two comedy albums, a half-hour special for Comedy Central and an hour available on …
Hampton Yount has already seen the past, present and future of cinema, as spoken through the character Crow T. Robot he voices on Netflix’s new edition of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Before that, Yount had emerged from the DC comedy scene with a job writing and performing on MTV’s long-running …
Trae Crowder grew up in rural Tennessee and worked for a federal government agency while harboring dreams of becoming a famous stand-up comedian. Crowder didn’t expect it’d happen thanks to videos he filmed on the back porch as the “Liberal Redneck.” But he went viral in 2016, seen by millions …
Jill-Michele Meleán’s mother’s Irish, and her father’s Bolivian. But she grew up in Miami surrounded by Cubans. All of which makes her White Latina, the title of her first full stand-up special, out now via Comedy Dynamics. Jilly talks to me about catching her first break by standing in for …
Liza Treyger is a New York based stand-up comic by way of Chicago, who grew up in nearby Skokie after immigrating from Russia when she was 3. Treyger has her own Comedy Central half-hour special and album, GLITTERCHEESE, and a more recent half-hour special on Netflix as part of The …
Yakov Smirnoff got his big break in America thanks to Mitzi Shore, who not only put up the Soviet immigrant in her home behind The Comedy Store in 1977 but also gave Yakov’s father a full-time job, too. Smirnoff himself became a big star during the Reagan years, starring opposite …
