The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Actress and comedian Sasheer Zamata may be most familiar to comedy fans from her four years on Saturday Night Live, but she has kept busy on-screen since then, too — co-starring for two seasons on Hulu's WOKE, and for the past three seasons on ABC's Home Economics. She's also due to co-star alongside Kathryn Hahn in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe series, Agatha: Coven of Chaos, for Disney+. Sasheer sat down with me earlier this summer before the actors went on strike, talking about her early days and nights improvising with Nicole Byer, working for Disney as a mascot in college, how her SNL time prepared her for what has come next, including her decision to release her second stand-up comedy special, The First Woman, with 800 Pound Gorilla Media and YouTube.

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Courtney Pauroso is an LA-based actor, writer and comedian, who traveled the world and the United States as the child of a military family. She co-wrote and appeared in Two Pink Doors, a series of 5-minute shorts for FX, directed by Dr Brown, and has appeared onscreen in projects such as Jackass Forever, Reno 911, Key & Peele, and 2 Broke Girls. She's also a former member of the Groundlings Sunday Company and Washington D.C.'s Synetic Theater. After bringing her clown show, Gutterplum, to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019 for a sold-out run, she returned in 2023 with something even more ambitious, Vanessa 5000, a show about a sex robot gone rogue. Courtney sat down with me between shows to talk about her life and career.

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Jared Freid is a stand-up comedian based in New York City whom you've most likely heard on one of his two highly popular podcasts — U Up?, a dating and relationship series he co-hosts with Jordan Abraham of Betches; and The JTrain Podcast, where he welcomes fellow comedians to help him answer questions and give advice to listeners on all sorts of topics. Since appearing as a New Face at Montreal's Just For Laughs festival in 2017, Jared has performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, hosted shows on both Snapchat and Spotify, released a stand-up album in 2019, as well as a half-hour stand-up special on his own YouTube page in 2021. His debut Netflix special, 37 & Single, premieres in August 2023. But first, he spoke with me over Zoom about how he carved his own path in comedy through writing columns, what it's like hosting live-streaming shows from The Comedy Cellar, and how he's already living his comedy dreams.

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Martin Urbano is a comedian who grew up in southern Texas on the border with Mexico, but he's based now in New York City, where he has found much of his success since being named a New Face for Montreal's Just For Laughs festival in 2017. That includes performances on Jimmy Kimmel Live and The CW's annual Howie Mandel Gala, and Will Smith's comedy showcase for Roku, This Joka. Urbano was part of the 2019 revival of National Lampoon Radio Hour: The Podcast, and has written for both The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon as well as Danny's House on Viceland. He also has hosted such projects as "Comedy Amateurclass" for Chris Gethard Presents, and his own brands of game shows, "Who Wants $2.69?" and "Why Would You Ask Me That?" He also played a featured role in This Fool on Hulu as the other Julio. His latest gambit is an "Apology Comeback Tour," where he somehow manages to cancel and redeem himself onstage within the same hour of jokes. He's taking the show to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023, but before that, he sat down with me to talk about his life and the state of comedy today.

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Kiran Deol is a comedian and actress whose show business career began auspiciously enough when she followed up her college thesis with a documentary short, Woman Rebel, that was shortlisted for the Academy Awards. As an actress, she co-starred in the 2019 NBC sitcom, Sunnyside, and before that, chalked up numerous guest-starring roles on shows such as Modern Family, The Mindy Project, How to Get Away With Murder, New Girl, The Newsroom, Weeds, and Grey's Anatomy. As a comedian, she co-hosts a weekly show Thursdays in Los Angeles called Peacock, and has performed on Gotham Comedy Live and Hulu's Coming to the Stage. She's also a regular on the podcasts Lovett or Leave It and Hysteria. She joined me to talk about her latest project, a one-person show called Joysuck that follows the aftermath when a stranger tried to suck the joy out of her life by smashing her face with a bottle. Deol is taking Joysuck to the Edinburgh Fringe, but first she's talking to me about it, as well as why Hollywood has sucked the joy out of being a working writer or actor enough for both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA to go on strike.

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As president and chief distribution officer of Hartbeat Productions, Jeff Clanagan runs Kevin Hart's LOL! Network — which includes radio programs and podcasts on SiriusXM, as well as short-form content, TV shows and movies with partners such as Peacock, Roku, Tubi, and PlutoTV. He's also a producer on projects such as Die Hart, Hart to Heart, Olympic Highlights, So Dumb It's Criminal, and tours such as Nick Cannon's Wild 'N Out Tour and Kevin Hart's most recent Reality Check tour. Clanagan was previously CEO of Codeblack Films and Codeblack Digital, which is where he first began working with Hart as he transitioned from Comedy Central specials to concert films Laugh At My Pain and Let Me Explain, the latter of which earned more than $32 million at the box office. He sat down with me following Hartbeat Weekend in Las Vegas, where they hosted live recordings of Laugh Out Loud Radio shows and filmed tapings for the revival of BET's ComicView stand-up showcase series.

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Christina Catherine Martinez is a writer, actor, art critic, comedian and Los Angeles native who was named in 2020 to Vulture's Comedian You Should Know as well as TimeOutLA's Comic to Watch lists. Martinez has performed on FXX's late-night showcase, Cake, and has written for Adult Swim's The Eric Andre Show. She is the creator and host of the live comedy talk show Aesthetical Relations. Martinez sat down with me to talk about how she got involved in LA's burgeoning clown community, and how she separates her outer selves, the art critic from the comedian, and the comedian from the clown.

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Sophie Zucker was the youngest writer on staff at The Daily Show when she started in 2023, only to find herself and all of her colleagues out of work this summer due to the ongoing Writers Guild strike. Zucker got her comedy start in New York's Brooklyn scene, forming a sketch collective called Ladies Who Ranch. She picked up her first gig onscreen in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and followed that up with parts in The Other Two and the film Late Night. But she really broke through as both an actress and writer playing Abby on Apple TV's Dickinson. Zucker spoke with me about her climb up the comedy ladder, how she and her colleagues felt at the beginning of the strike and what she might hope to see at The Daily Show when she returns, as well as her preparations to take her one-woman show, Sophie Sucks Face, to the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe.

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Morgan Jay is a first-generation American, the son of an Italian man who was a famous pop star in Argentina before Morgan was born. Morgan got his start in comedy upon arriving at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and eventually dropped the normal set-ups and punchlines for a guitar, crowd work and improvised songs. He has built up a following of about 1 million on TikTok, and he released his newest special, Live At The Village, at the end of May 2023. Jay spoke to me about overcoming the stigma against musical comedians as well as becoming popular on TikTok, what it's like to receive a DM from Nick Cannon while you're performing in Scotland, and his experiences performing on TV shows such as NBC's Bring The Funny and MTV's Wild n' Out.

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Allison Raskin is a writer, director, comedian, YouTuber, podcaster, and mental health advocate — she's perhaps best known for her collaborations with Gabe Dunn, which began with their YouTube channel, "Just Between Us," and has included co-writing a New York Times best-selling novel, "I Hate Everyone But You," and developing TV series with MTV, FX, YouTube Red and Netflix. Raskin sat down with me to talk about her early career with BuzzFeed Video, her work alongside Dunn, going back to school to get a master's degree in psychology, her new book, "Overthinking About You: Navigating Romantic Relationships When You Have Anxiety, OCD, and/or Depression," and how she navigates her own mental health as a content creator of videos, podcasts, books and essays.

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