The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Romesh Ranganathan was a math teacher before devoting his life to stand-up comedy in 2012. Since then, he has found great success in the UK, nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013, and with TV appearances on Live at the Apollo, many panel shows, and his own BBC series for two years, Asian Provocateur. For his next trick, Romesh came to America to see if he could duplicate his comedy success in the States and filmed it for a new TV series, Just Another Immigrant, which premieres in June 2018 on Showtime. Of course, he's not just another immigrant, but he wanted to show us what it'd look like if he were, uprooting his wife, three kids, and Sri Lankan mother from West Sussex to Los Angeles. So let's get to it!

This is a special edition of Last Things First, recorded live during Clusterfest 2018 in San Francisco. Comedy Central was kind enough to ask me to host a series of Clusterfest panels for the media that they called fireside chats. In this session, I welcomed Jim Jefferies, Rachel Feinstein, Nikki Glaser and Sam Morril, and we quickly got into the headlines of Roseanne Barr and Samantha Bee making public apologies, whether comedians should ever have to apologize, and how comedians can work together. All that and more in this episode of The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First, so let's get to it!

Nemr grew up in San Diego and then moved back with his family to Lebanon, where he almost singlehandedly introduced the Middle East to the idea of live stand-up comedy. He definitely introduced many American comedians to Middle Eastern audiences over the past decade and more, and he has since toured both there and here in the States as a headliner. You may have seen him on CNN and Comedy Central's The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and NEMR put out his first American stand-up special, No Bombing in Beirut, in 2017 for Showtime. He sat down with me at ShowBriz Studios to talk about growing up in two completely different cultures and starting comedy scenes from scratch. So let's get to it!

Joshua Jean-Baptiste and Edson Jean met as students at New World School of the Arts in Miami, where both learned how to become multi-hyphenates in this new world of show business, as actors, playwrights and filmmakers. Jean's college thesis, the short film The Adventures of Edson Jean, was licensed by HBO, and he has appeared in TV and film projects including Moonlight, War Dogs, Ballers and Bloodline. With Jean-Baptiste, the duo pitched a digital series about Haitian-Americans growing up and living in inner-city Miami called #Josh. They won Adaptive Studio's first Project Greenlight contest for a digital series, and the product, GROWN, debuted in late May on Complex.com. So let's get to it!

Mark Viera has entertained audiences around the world with stories of growing up, getting married and raising kids in the Bronx. Viera has released a Showtime special, "Tales of a Nuyorican," opened on tours with singer Marc Anthony and comedian Gabriel Iglesias, and performed everywhere from cruise ships to the Leathernecks of the U.S. Marine Corps. Viera sat down with me to talk about his career, about the ups and downs of selling and reselling a network sitcom based on his own life, and about Laff Mobb's Laff Tracks on truTV, where you can see his comedy stories brought to life. So let's get to it!

Who is Nell Scovell? She's the creator of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, first staff writer hired for SPY magazine, second woman ever to write for The Simpsons, and one of only a handful of women to ever write for David Letterman. Scovell's other TV credits include Murphy Brown, Coach and The Muppets. She also wrote jokes for President Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and co-authored Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's memoir, "Lean In." Now Scovell has written her own memoir, "Just the Funny Parts...and a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking Into the Hollywood Boys' Club." So let's get to it...Get me Nell Scovell!

Jim Florentine rose to fame with his bestselling recordings Terrorizing Telemarketers and by voicing the wildly popular character Special Ed for Comedy Central's "Crank Yankers." Florentine has won an Emmy for his work on HBO's "Inside the NFL" and had two Billboard top-ten comedy albums within a single year. He used to co-host That Metal Show for VH1 and continues to host the Metal Midgets show on Ozzy's Boneyard channel on SiriusXM Radio. Jim released two comedy specials in 2016, I'm Your Savior, and A Simple Man. Now in 2018 he has a new book out, "Everybody Is Awful (Except You!)." So let's get to it!

Jim O'Heir is an Emmy-winning actor and comedian best known for co-starring as Jerry Gergich on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. He's a Chicago guy who trained at Second City in the 1980s, then thrived in an independent improv and sketch group called White Noise, which took him out to Hollywood. O'Heir enjoyed tons of small guest-starring roles on TV for the past two decades before landing his big break with Parks and Rec. Now he's hosting "Lullaby League," an a cappella singing competition that debuted this April via YouTube and PopTV.

Louie Anderson won an Emmy Award for his performance as Christine Baskets in FX's Baskets. He previously won Emmys two decades earlier for his voiceover work in his own animated series Life of Louie. He's also hosted Family Feud, made a memorable early splash in the Eddie Murphy movie Coming To America, and was part of Rodney Dangerfield's 9th Young Comedians Special. He just released his latest stand-up special, Big Underwear, as well as a new book: Hey Mom: Stories for My Mother, But You Can Read Them Too. There's a lot to talk about, so let's get to it!

Brandon Rogers is a YouTube star with four million subscribers and one Streamy Award to his credit. He has starred in two webseries, Sam and Stuff for Facebook, and Magic Funhouse for Fullscreen. Brandon was a New Face at Just For Laughs in 2017, and he stopped by my studio while he's on his first live comedy tour this spring. So let's get to it!