The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Caitlin Barlow, Katy Colloton, Cate Freedman, Kate Lambert, Katie O’Brien and Kathryn Renée Thomas met in various Chicago improvisational theaters, and with a shared name and a dream between them, formed The Katydids. They’ve sold a sitcom to NBC and a feature film screenplay, but none of that might have been possible if their independent web series hadn’t caught viral fire first with the right people at the right time. Teachers led them to a deal with TV Land, an executive producer in Alison Brie, and showrunners in Ian Roberts and Jay Martel. Teachers begins its second season on TV Land in January 2017, and The Katydids met up with me in Viacom’s brand-new Hollywood office complex to share their journey.

So let’s get to it!

This episode of Last Things First is sponsored by The UCB Show on Seeso.

Colin Quinn is the godfather of contemporary New York city comedy in more ways than one. After his first TV break as the sidekick on the 1980s MTV game show, Remote Control, Quinn helped usher other comedians onto TV as host of Caroline’s Comedy Hour on A&E, then a generation later as host of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn on Comedy Central. In between, Quinn wrote for In Living Color, co-wrote and produced the movie Celtic Pride, and became one of only a handful of comedians to anchor Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live. More recently, he’s hit Broadway and HBO with his show, Long Story Short, played Amy Schumer’s dad in the movie Trainwreck, ran a coffee shop on the HBO series Girls, starred in his own webseries, Cop Show, written a book, blew up Twitter and created two more critically-acclaimed one-man shows, Unconstitutional and The New York Story, both available on Netflix. He’s just filmed a new TV pilot and is hard at work on his next stage show.

So let’s get to it!

Laurie Kilmartin produced one of the best stand-up specials of 2016, “45 Jokes About My Dead Dad,” streaming exclusively on Seeso.com. Kilmartin is a writer on Conan, a former finalist on Last Comic Standing, and the New York Times best-selling author of “Sh*tty Mom.” You can hear her on the Nerdist podcast, The Jackie and Laurie Show, with Jackie Kashian, where they talk about their lives as working comedians. But right now, you can hear Laurie talk to me in-depth about working through motherhood, tragedy and everything else.

So let’s get to it!

Jason Zinoman is the comedy critic for The New York Times, and has written a new book about David Letterman which will come out April 2017 (pre-order Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night now!). But first, Zinoman joined me once again to close the book on 2016. Who was the Most Valuable Performer in comedy in 2016? Who were the stand-out stand-ups? Who’d win the Humor Heisman? We discuss the year’s work by Amy Schumer, Kate McKinnon, Jeff Ross, Maria Bamford, Tig Notaro, Donald Glover, Reggie Watts, Chris Rock and Louis CK, plus stars on the rise such as Rory Scovel, Kate Berlant, and John Early. And Zinoman also challenged me to define whether our current comedy boom is still booming, or whether the bubble is ready to bust.

So let’s get to it!

Nina Conti is the only child of actors – her father, Tom, is a Tony Award winner and Oscar nominee. As for Nina, she began her career as an actress at the Royal Shakespeare Company before her mentor Ken Campbell convinced her to become a ventriloquist. Nina won the BBC New Comedy Award in 2002, best show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2008, and has performed in many British TV shows since, as well as the HBO comedy series, Family Tree, with Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Chris O’Dowd. She’s made two documentaries, Clowning Around where she trained as a clown performing in a children’s hospital, and Her Master’s Voice where she took her mentor’s puppets to the official Vent Haven Museum in Kentucky. She spoke to me about vocal and theatrical acrobatics, which she puts on full display with great charm in her new improvised show, “In Your Face,” at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City for a limited time only.

So let’s get to it!

There’s only one Sinbad the Sailor in fictional lore, and only one Sinbad worth knowing about in the funny business. There really is nobody quite like him, and we’ve seen it since he broke through in a big way on Star Search in the 1980s, through his role on the NBC Cosby spin-off sitcom, A Different World, through hosting It’s Showtime at the Apollo, through four separate HBO specials in the 1990s, and even through a short-lived reality series on WE TV and even a round with Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice more recently. He seems to be winging it up there onstage, but always crushing. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say he’s been jingling all the way. Sinbad sat down with me between shows at Carolines on Broadway to keep it 100 and then some. What does he have to say about Cosby, Trump, Redd Foxx and more? So let’s get to it!

A photo posted by Sean L. McCarthy (@thecomicscomic) on Nov 19, 2016 at 7:59pm PST

This episode of Last Things First is sponsored by Casper.

Kevin McDonald is one of the original founders of The Kids in the Hall, the legendary sketch comedy troupe that started in Toronto, then became internationally famous over five seasons in the late 1980s and early 1990s thanks to HBO and later CBS. McDonald’s recurring characters included The King of Empty Promises, and Sir Simon Milligan, the host of the horror-themed TV show, The Pit of Ultimate Darkness. McDonald has guest-starred in many actual TV shows over the past two decades, reunited with Kids in the Hall for multiple tours (most recently in 2014), toured as a duo act with Scott Thompson, and gone solo as a stand-up, sketch comedy teacher and all-star guest improviser. He now has his very own podcast, a variety show called fittingly enough, Kevin McDonald’s Kevin McDonald Show.

McDonald reveals to me the true origin of Sir Simon Milligan, talks about what makes great sketch comedy great, finding your role in the group dynamics of a sketch comedy group, and how KITH will reunite for a special reading of Brain Candy at SF Sketchfest in January 2017.

So let’s get to it!

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 De Niro 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 this fall guest starred 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!

She also has a brand new podcast with her comedian Frank Liotti, all about food addiction, called Fat Pig. Stay tuned for that!

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.

Carvey talked impersonations with me, of course, but also about the concept of knowing when to walk away from show business, and when to come back. He told me how close he came to hosting Late Night on NBC in 1993 — when Conan O’Brien would merely have served as his producer — as well as how he feels to have mentored so many great comedians, and what he’s looking forward to accomplishing in his next stand-up special.

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 Original movie from Awesomeness Films, We Love You. It’s out Nov. 22.

So let’s get to it!

For background, here’s Erakat’s acceptance speech at the 2016 Streamy Awards:

Here’s the trailer for We Love You, out Nov. 22, 2016, on YouTube Red, and Dec. 6 on iTunes, where it’s available for pre-order already:

“When best friends Noah (Justin Dobies) and Ford (Yousef Erakat) realize they’ve both fallen for the same girl, neither of them want to give her up. But when free-spirited Callie (Lele Pons) agrees to date both of them, it seems like they’ve stumbled on the perfect relationship.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oH8cKs86WQ

This episode of Last Things First is sponsored by Audible.