The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

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 . Martin...

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...

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...

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...

Kyle Kinane is a comedian who was the voice of Comedy Central for a decade. Kinane released his first album, Death of the Party , via AST Records, followed by a half-hour and two hours on Comedy Central, and another half-hour on Netflix. His most recent hour, Shocks & Struts , was released on YouTube in March 2023 via 800 Pound Gorilla Media. Kinane sat down with me while on tour to support the ne...

Ryan Williams was a segment producer and talent booker for all eight-plus years of The Late Late Show with James Corden , booking all of the stand-up comedians on that show. Before that, Williams held similar jobs at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Show with David Letterman . Williams joined me over Zoom during his first week of unemployment after the end of Corden's show to talk a...

Jamie Loftus  is a comedian, Emmy-nominated TV writer, animator and podcaster. She's worked as a staff writer on  Teenage Euthanasia ,  Robot Chicken , and  Star Trek: Lower Decks , and wrote and starred in her own web series for Comedy Central. She has written and hosted several popular limited-run podcasts — among them, "My Year In Mensa" (2019), "Lolita Podcast" (2020), "Aack Cast" (2021), and...

Jeff Hiller is an American actor and comedian. He currently co-stars in HBO's Somebody Somewhere as Joel, who welcomes Bridget Everett's Sam back to their Kansas hometown and becomes her best friend through thick and thin. Hiller is originally from a small town in Texas, but has made his home in New York City since 2001, when and where he quickly found his comedy family at the Upright Citizens Bri...

When you hear the words Tape Face, what do you picture? Sam Wills began his comedy career in his native New Zealand as a teenage clown in training, complete with a diploma from a circus school in Christchurch. But after an initial foray into stand-up comedy, his friends challenged him to stop talking so much — so he became The Boy With Tape On His Face. He received a Best Newcomer nomination at th...

Sarah Marshall is the co-creator and host of the award-winning podcast, You're Wrong About ,  Podcast of the Year at the 2022 I Heart Radio Podcast Awards. You're Wrong About revisits what we think we know about history and cultural events that have lodged themselves into our brains, and how that compares with what actually happened. Marshall sat down with me to talk about how she got into podcast...

Carmen Christopher wrote for and performed on The Chris Gethard Show , eventually hosting the first episode of "Chris Gethard Presents" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Christopher's other early credits included appearances on The Special Without Brett Davis, At Home with Amy Sedaris, High Maintenance, Alternatino with Arturo Castro, Shrill, Joe Pera Talks with You , and Search Party . He curren...

Millions of people recognize Scott Rogowsky as the original host of HQ Trivia, the daily live trivia app that became massively popular in 2017 before fizzling out in 2019. CNN looked back on that phase of Rogowsky's life in the 2023 documentary, Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ Trivia. But I first met Scott when he was barely out of college, one of the young upstarts in the downtown New York comedy s...

Tara Schuster was a 25-year-old working at Comedy Central who'd worked her way up from interning at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to curating Jokes dot com when she hit an emotional rock bottom. She then began learning how to reparent herself, which she turned into her first book, "Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies." She did that while rising to become a vice president of talent and development at...

Matt Knudsen is one of those character actors with a face you can't quite place, which is why the memoir he's writing is called, "Have I Seen You In Anything?" One of Knudsen's first big breaks in show business was playing Jesus Christ as a therapist to Bryan Cranston's character in Malcolm in the Middle . He has since been seen in episodes of Boston Legal, Big Love, Men of a Certain Age, Key & Pe...

Marcella Arguello is a stand-up comedian, writer and actor originally from Modesto, Calif., who has made a name for herself in the Los Angeles comedy scene by standing tall and true to herself. Her regular show, "Women Crush," started as a weekly showcase at NerdMelt, and is now monthly at the Hollywood Improv. Arguello has performed stand-up on HBO's 2 Dope Queens , Night Train with Wyatt Cenac ,...

Comedian and storyteller Gabe Mollica's one-person show, "Solo," begins with the declaration that upon turning 30, he realized he had no friends. Wait. Was that true? Is it still true today? After taking his show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022, as well as Winnipeg, Dublin and Dallas, Mollica's show has settled in for a second limited-engagement run at the SoHo Playhouse in New York City....

It's the end of 2022, which means it's time once again for my annual year-end check-in with Jason Zinoman, critic at-large for The New York Times . Jason and I talk about the top trends we saw in comedy this year, the best up-and-comers in stand-up, the craziest ways comedy intersected with politics. And after all that, could we determine a Most Valuable Performer for the year? It's our Comedy MVP...

Mike Bridenstine is based in Los Angeles, was raised in Iowa, but it was his time in between in Chicago that helped form him and his friendships as a comedian. Bridenstine has written a book about the rise of the alt-comedy scene in Chicago in the early 2000s, which included his role in starting up a stand-up and video collective called Blerds — among them: Kumail Nanjiani, Kyle Kinane, T.J. Mille...

Kenice Mobley is a comedian from North Carolina, now based in Brooklyn, NY, whose star has been on the rise since the start of the pandemic. Mobley landed on Vulture's Comedians You Should and WiIll Know list in 2021, made her late-night debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon , and performed at the Netflix Is A Joke Festival in 2022 as part of the "Introducing…" showcase. She also launche...

Billy Wayne Davis is a comedian who has performed on Conan, Last Comic Standing and Comedy Central, lent his voice and producing skills to  SquidBillies , hosted a travel doc for CMT, Morgan Spurlock Presents Freedom! The Movie , opened for Sturgill Simpson, and worked with Sacha Baron Cohen on both Who is America?  and  Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Davis has just released his second stand-up comed...

Jeff Dunham is undoubtedly the most successful ventriloquist comedian of our lifetime. The 60-year-old from Dallas made his first appearance on  The Tonight Show  back in 1990, competed in disguise as "Pi-Rat" this fall on  The Masked Singer , and in between, he has released 10 comedy specials. Six on Comedy Central starting in 2006, followed by a primetime NBC special, two Netflix specials, then...

Kurt Braunohler started performing comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City in 1998, and took an experimental filmmaking improv group to the Edinburgh Fringe long before meeting Kristen Schaal — with whom Kurt would start a variety show called Hot Tub, win awards and kudos at festivals from Aspen to Australia, and eventually begin his own solo career as a stand-up comedian and actor...

Frankie Quiñones is a stand-up comedian and actor best known for his character work. Frankie stars as Luis on the Hulu series, This Fool , which was just picked up for a second season. He also co-starred in a web series that got bought by TBS, The Dress Up Gang , put out his own stand-up and sketch special on HBO Max, Superhomies , has begun recurring as cousin Miguel on the FX on Hulu comedy, Wha...

Born in China, Jioaying Summers first came to America for college in Kentucky speaking no English, then went to Hollywood looking for stardom. Summers has found it so far already on TikTok, where she has gained more than 1.2 million followers, and has created her own stage, The Hollywood Comedy, where she and other aspiring comedians can develop their voices. Since the pandemic, Summers has releas...

Mike Farah was the first producer hired at Funny or Die, and he has been a vital part of the upstart digital production studio since 2008, when Funny or Die was still known only as an online comedy video platform. The company has produced the critically-acclaimed Brockmire for IFC, Emmy-nominated Billy on the Street , the Peabody award-winning American Vandal for Netflix, the Emmy-nominated Sarah...