The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Kimmy Gatewood is a comedian, actress and director whose newest project is directing the 2026 movie Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, the fifth installment in Disney’s musical cinematic universe following the teenage children of classic Disney villains. She previously has directed episodes of Ghosts, Girls5Eva, Going Dutch, and Sesame Street, the latter …

Michael Cruz Kayne is a comedian, actor and writer based in NYC. He wrote for the last six seasons of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he’s an Emmy nominee again in 2026. At the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, he co-wrote and starred in Terrible Babysitters, a 2013 webseries …

Jourdain Fisher is a Brooklyn-based comedian who has written for 50 Cent’s BET sketch comedy series, 50 Central, appeared on After Midnight, and performed stand-up on both Comedy Central and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. His debut self-produced hour Bits & Pieces premiered exclusively on 800 Pound Gorilla’s new streaming service, Gorilla Comedy+, in May …

Kelly MacFarland is a stand-up comedian with TV credits on NBC, Comedy Central and AXS Gotham Comedy Live. MacFarland also has performed at Denis Leary’s Comics Come Home at Boston’s TD Garden, and more recently put out a half-hour with Dry Bar Comedy and a set with Don’t Tell Comedy. …

Named one of Variety’s Top 10 Comics to Watch in 2025, Joe Dombrowski first broke through in 2017 when he went viral for pranking his fourth-grade students and landed multiple appearances on Ellen. Now with more than 1.3 million Instagram followers, and another 1.6 million on TikTok, Dombrowski released his …

Troy Walker is a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live! who also wrote for Kimmel’s turns hosting the Oscars, but he came up through the Denver comedy scene while also graduating from law school and working in money laundering compliance. Walker returned to Denver to record his debut comedy album at …

Maggie Winters is a South Side Chicago comedian who came up in improv with iO and as a stand-up through Lincoln Lodge’s FemCom program, and she first found a wider audience online with millions of views for her front-facing character videos on TikTok and Instagram. 2023 was a breakthrough year …

Mark Vigeant blends clown, improv, physical theater, and multimedia to create interactive comedy shows such as The Best Man Show, which he took to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024 and 2025, and released as a special on Dropout in February 2026. Vigeant is based in Los Angeles, but started his …

Jamie Lee is an Emmy-winning writer and producer on Apple TV’s Ted Lasso who began her comedy career in the press office of Comedy Central. Her first break in front of the camera came via panel shows, most notably MTV’s Girl Code, as well as performances on both Conan and …

Matt Koff is a Brooklyn-based stand-up comic and Emmy-winning TV writer who has spent more than 13 years writing for The Daily Show. His own stand-up was featured on Adam Devine’s House Party on Comedy Central, and earned him the title of New York’s Funniest in 2023. In addition to his …

Steve Sweeney is a comedian and actor from Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood who has performed on big stages and bigger screens for more than four decades. His newest project is Townie, a documentary-style stand-up film making its North American premiere at the New York Comedy Film Festival in February 2026. It’s …

A dozen years removed from his debut stand-up special, Beta Male on Comedy Central, Kumail Nanjiani’s fans can finally see him in a new hour, Night Thoughts, which premiered in December 2025 on Hulu and Disney+. In between, he and his wife Emily V. Gordon received an Academy Award nomination for their …

It’s the end of 2025, which means it’s time once more for my annual December to remember the year in comedy with my friend and colleague in comedy criticism, Jason Zinoman from The New York Times. Which funny people met the moment to become Comedy’s Most Valuable Performer for 2025? …

Mike Bridenstine appeared on this podcast three years ago in Episode 417. Since then, he has written and published his second book about comedy, “Kansas City Comedy: The Unbelievable True Story of Stanford & Sons, Its Outlaw Owners and the Most Infamous Stand-Up Sets of All Time.” Brido also has …

Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland met in high school in Maryland and have been making magical two-handed theater shows ever since. Now based in New York City, they have taken three shows to the Edinburgh Fringe since 2022, winning The Scotsman’s Fringe First Awards for writing for each of them: …

Jono Zalay began his stand-up career in Boston while simultaneously earning his Doctorate in Neuroscience, where his research work included giving cocaine to rats. Since dropping his science hobby to pursue comedy full-time, Jono has done standup for The Late Late Show on CBS, Netflix is a Joke, and LMAOF …

Jamie Linn Watson is an NYC-based actor and comedian. You may have seen her as Joanna Roscoe in season 5 of What We Do in the Shadows, a judgy church girl in Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, or as the Sprintern in many national commercials for the …

Saaniya Abbas grew up in New Delhi, attended an all-girls Catholic school in the Himalayas, and only discovered herself once she found herself divorced in Dubai and starting a new life as a stand-up comedian. She amassed a half-million followers on Instagram hosting live videos in the pandemic, and as …

Lou Wall is an Australian comedian whose two most recent shows were both nominated for Most Outstanding Show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.  Wall has appeared on Australian TV panel shows, and also appeared in the ABC Australia and Netflix series, Fisk. I’ve seen and reviewed all three shows …

Chanel Ali is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actress based in New York City. You may have seen her on MTV’s Girl Code, TruTV’s Laff Mobb’s Laff Tracks, Starz’s Night Train with Wyatt Cenac, or two showcases she did for Comedy Central in partnership with Refinery29. She also released a …

A San Fransisco native who’s based in both New York City and Los Angeles, Dylan Adler is a musical comedian who performed and wrote for The Late Late Show with James Corden. Before that gig, Adler was named a Comic to Watch by the New York Comedy Festival and a …

Britt Migs is a stand-up and sketch comedian based in New York City who was named a Creator to Watch at the 2024 New York Comedy Festival for characters such as her Italian publicist for the Pope. Migs manages Cracked magazine’s social media and runs the Cracked Comedy Club showcases. In …

Grace Helbig is a legendary YouTuber, etched officially into the VidCon Hall of Fame earlier in 2025. The comedian and actress who began documenting her daily life in 2007 through solo videos, two-hander sketches with her college bestie and Brooklyn roomie Michelle, and then DailyGrace on MyDamnChannel, eventually went on …

Ismael Loutfi is a comedian and TV writer currently working on the animated series Mating Season from the makers of Big Mouth. His previous credits include writing for After Midnight, Ramy Youssef’s #1 Happy Family USA, and Netflix’s Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. As a stand-up, he has a half-hour on …

Tamara Yajia’s family immigrated to America from Argentina twice before she became a teenager, and the second time prevented her from becoming potentially Argentina’s version of Britney Spears, for better or for worse. Yajia documents it all in her new memoir, CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA: My Life as a Failed Child …

Originally from Caracas, Venezuela, Veronica Osorio moved to New York City after spending her teen years clowning and acting in South America. Once in America, she joined the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, where she performed on house sketch teams with Kate McKinnon, Nicole Byer, and Natasha Rothwell, among others. In …

I spoke with comedian Nimesh Patel when he thought he had licensed his new hour, Instant Karma to Netflix. Shortly after our chat, Netflix decided to film a brand-new hour with Patel instead later in 2025. So our chat found him at a crossroads — Patel had just filmed an episode …

The comedian James Tom now jokes about having told they/them pronoun jokes as far back as 2013 quote-unquote “before most non-binary people were born.” Back then, Tom felt alone in the world and in the comedy community. But now, living and performing as a gay trans man, Tom told me …

Rory Rosegarten started his career as a comedy manager by the time he was 20 with a whopper of a first client: the already legendary Robert Klein. More than four decades later, as founder and still president of The Conversation Company, Rosegarten manages a small but highly successful comedy clientele — …

Mike Drucker is an Emmy-nominated and WGA-winning writer and comedian living in New York. Drucker’s comedy career really began with an internship at Saturday Night Live, where he later contributed to SNL’s Weekend Update as well as The Onion before leaving the city and the East Coast for a gig writing for …

Fooling media outlets into thinking she created the Netflix series “Emily in Paris” may have won the comedian and Fordham grad Abby Govindan plenty of new followers on Twitter in 2021, but it didn’t go a long way in making her the pride of her Indian American family back home in Houston. It’s just …

Brad Alexander composes music for television and musical theater, whose notable works include the music for  See Rock City & Other Destinations, which won the 2011 Drama Desk Award, Richard Rodgers Award and BMI Foundation’s Jerry Bock Award, and more recently served as lead composer for the PBS/Amazon animated series, …

What’s in a name? Since its launch in 2016 by comedy managers Ryan Bitzer and Damion Greiman, along with founding members Ian Adkins and Anthony Leo, 800 Pound Gorilla Media has grown from a small record label into a king kong of comedy distribution, working with everyone from Kevin Hart’s …

We did it, comedy fans. We withstood another year of craziness, hundreds upon hundreds of comedy specials, and have gotten my friend and colleague in comedy criticism, Jason Zinoman from The New York Times, to join me for another December to Remember and try to make sense of it all. …

Kelly McCaughan is an actor, writer, comedian and clown whose show, Catholic Guilt, was nominated for Best Newcomer by the 2023 ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards, and then brought back the following Fringe, where her show received a Best Show nomination from the 2024 ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Originally from outside …

Chad Daniels is a Minnesota stand-up comedian with more than a billion streams to his credit, and in July 2024 released his 10th comedy special and first for Netflix, Empty Nester, marking his freedom from raising two kids as a single dad in small-town Minnesota. Daniels sat down with me over Zoom …

Kyle Ayers is a comedian from Missouri currently based in Los Angeles who hosts the popular podcast and live show, Never Seen It, where comedians rewrite famous movies and TV shows they’ve never seen. You may have seen Ayers perform his stand-up on Conan or on the OnlyFans comedy showcase, …

The state of the comedy industry, like most everything else in 2024, feels very much in flux. Danny Frenkel and Alex Dajani have seen firsthand how technology and social media have changed the relationships between performers and fans in the 21st century, and have set about finding a better way …

Ashley Gavin is a comedian from New York City who studied computer science and helped craft the curriculum for Girls Who Code, before deciding to embark on her own path in comedy in 2012. Gavin says she became Carnival Cruise Line’s first openly gay performer later that decade, and when …

I spoke to Sam Reich on this podcast back in the fall of 2020, when he was in his first year running Dropout, the subscription-based streaming platform he founded as a follow-up to CollegeHumor where he had worked for much of his adult life. Four years later, Reich and Dropout …

Hank and John Green began influencing online viewing long before we tied the word influencer to social media, launching their Vlogbrothers YouTube channel on Jan. 1, 2007, 17 years, 3.77 million subscribers and almost a billion views ago. Three years later, the brothers founded VidCon, the first and largest global gathering of …

At the age of 49 — three decades removed from an FBI drug bust that sent him to prison, and 24 years into his career as an ex-con turned stand-up comedian — Ali Siddiq was still seeking his big break in show business. His debut special, It’s Bigger Than These …

Zoë Coombs Marr is an Australian comedian who won Best Newcomer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2012, then returned four years later to win Best Show in Melbourne and receive a Best Show nomination in Edinburgh in 2016 for Trigger Warning, which she performed in drag character as …

Janine Harouni is a Staten Island native who began her stand-up comedy career in earnest only after moving to London, England, in 2012. Harouni experienced her first viral success as one-third of a sketch group called Muriel whose YouTube fame prompted deals with both the BBC and Quibi, and she’s …

Dave Merheje is an award-winning Canadian stand-up comedian and actor who co-starred in the Hulu series, Ramy, and recently co-starred on the big screen opposite Daisy Ridley in the film, Sometimes I Think About Dying, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and is available now to buy or …

Neal Brennan’s first big claim to fame came two decades ago when he co-created, wrote and executive produced Chappelle’s Show with his friend Dave Chappelle (with whom he’d previously collaborated on Half Baked). Since then, Chappelle has become both the biggest stand-up comedian in the world and a lightning rod for criticism. Brennan, …

Rob Haze is a comedian from Atlanta who currently makes his living in Los Angeles performing stand-up and writing for comedy shows on TV — among his credits are Sherman’s Showcase, the ESPY Awards, Kevin Hart’s year-in-review specials for Peacock, sketch comedy for Bleacher Report, stand-up on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy …

Cara Connors grew up in Chicago but began her comedy career in Toronto, where she studied with The Second City, created and starred in original series for CBC, provided social media humor for the series Workin’ Moms, and earned herself a New Faces slot with Just For Laughs. Since moving …

Caitlin Peluffo is a New York City-based comedian who played soccer in college and explored a degree and career in the art world before diving into stand-up comedy. A decade later, Peluffo has performed on three different late-night shows on CBS — The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Late …

Bill O’Neill is an actor and clown from Los Angeles whom you may recognize most readily from his frequent appearances in commercials as a Wendy’s employee. But O’Neill’s career goes back to his early teen years, when he scored a major speaking role in the 2008 film, Drillbit Taylor. A member …