The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Al Madrigal grew up in San Francisco and worked in his family's HR business for 10 years before deciding to pursue a career in comedy. The next decade found Madrigal on the cusp of fame, starring or co-starring in a handful of network sitcoms and even more TV pilots that never made it to air. You likely first got to know Madrigal when he became the Senior Latino Correspondent for The Daily Show wi...

In the late 1990s, between the comedy booms, perhaps the hottest live stand-up show in Los Angeles happened every week on a Tuesday night. That's when Guy Torry began hosting Phat Tuesdays at The Comedy Store, introducing black comedy for black audiences into the lily-white-dominated landscape of show business — or as Torry said, he "brought the hood to Hollywood." This hip-hop comedy show was goo...

Ali Vingiano is a writer, actress and filmmaking comedian who has leveled up over the course of the pandemic. She received her first Writer's Guild Award nomination in 2022 for her work as a writer and executive story editor on Apple TV+s The Morning Show , and also stars in a largely improvised feature film, The End Of Us , which premiered in 2021 at South By SouthWest. After studying film at bot...

Beth Lapides is an actress, writer and comedic performer who has appeared on Will & Grace , Sex & The City , and Politically Incorrect . But she is best known for creating the alternative comedy show UnCabaret , which has been running off and on and mostly on since the late 1980s in Los Angeles. Lapides turned UnCab into a Comedy Central special in 1997, and then four more specials in 2012 for Ama...

Nick Vatterott grew up in St. Louis but discovered his comedy voice in Chicago. You may have seen him perform on Conan , Late Night with Jimmy Fallon , or his own half-hour special for Comedy Central. Or you may have heard him on his podcast series, Get Rich Nick , in which he and fellow comedian Nick Turner attempt every get-rich-quick scheme under the sun to teach us and themselves about capital...

Justin Spitzer is a television writer and producer who worked as a writing assistant on Queer as Folk and Grounded for Life before breaking into the writers room on The Office , where he worked for seven seasons and received three Emmy nominations. Spitzer went on to create, executive produce and showrun his own beloved NBC sitcom, Superstore . In 2021, he signed a new four-year overall deal with...

It's time once again for Jason Zinoman, the comedy critic for The New York Times , to sit down with me as we deconstruct the year that was. This time we're taking our best cracks at 2021. Was anyone bigger in comedy than Dave Chappelle? Was anyone better than Bo Burnham? We talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of everything in comedy worth talking about in 2021. Was there a Most Valuable Perf...

Russell Howard is one of the UK's most successful comedians, the writer and star of  The Russell Howard Hour  on Sky and  Russell Howard's Good News  on the BBC network. After releasing his first Netflix special, Recalibrate , in 2017, Howard prepared to embark on a world tour in March 2020, with a documentary crew filming his preparations and family life. Instead, his new wife went back to work a...

Mary Elizabeth Kelly is an actress who studied musical theater at Northwestern before moving to New York City. She didn't quite land on Broadway, although she did rack up TV credits performing on Law & Order: SVU , Alternatino with Arturo Castro on Comedy Central, and Netflix's Master of None , where she went on a date with Aziz Ansari's character. Kelly and her husband moved to Los Angeles thinki...

I first met Alex Edelman when he was just a teenager, aspiring to become a stand-up comedian while already scoring a lucrative internship with the Boston Red Sox. He achieved much throughout his 20s. A New Face at Montreal's Just For Laughs. Multiple performances on Conan . Co-founded the Off The Wall Comedy Club in Jerusalem. Wrote on The Great Indoors on CBS. Opened on tour for the likes of Beck...

Carole Montgomery racked up dozens of TV credits as a stand-up comedian during the 1980s comedy boom, with her first big break coming on Showtime's Comedy All Stars hosted by Don Rickles. After giving birth to her only child, she began a 10-year stint in Las Vegas, initially hired by Steve Schirripa at The Riviera, then eventually over at The Luxor. After returning to New York City in 2006, she pe...

Lukas Arnold is an actor and voiceover artist who graduated from Northwestern University in 2017 and decided to pursue stand-up comedy after taking a class at Carolines on Broadway. He was just starting to get gigs around New York City when the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. On March 18, 2020, Arnold posted his first TikTok video. A year and a half later, he had amassed 2.2 million TikTok...

Jenny Zigrino first hit my radar in 2014 via the Marlon Wayans comedy contest on TBS, Funniest Wins . Zigrino didn't win the contest, but much like her colleagues who didn't "win"  Last Comic Standing , she may just be winning the long game. Wayans cast her in his parody movie,  50 Shades of Black.  She also won a supporting role in the big-screen sequel,  Bad Santa 2 . She performed stand-up mult...

As befits her name, Joyelle Nicole Johnson is a comedian and writer who brings joy to the stage. She made her network TV debut in 2018 on Late Night with Seth Meyers , but it was her May 2021 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that made such an impression that Fallon decided to executive produce Johnson's debut stand-up special for Peacock. Her previous credits have included writ...

Ricky Velez grew up in a blue-collar family in Queens and started living a blue-collar career before he discovered comedy, roomed with Pete Davidson, and won the New York's Funniest stand-up competition. In that order. After winning that contest in 2014, Velez rose quickly through the ranks, earning a gig as a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and appearing on V...

Ahir Shah is a British comedian who was nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 and 2018. He has turned his 2019 touring show, DOTS , into his first proper televised comedy special, which debuted on HBO Max in 2021. Shah sat down with me over Zoom not once but twice, as we had far-ranging discussions about comedy, religion, the politics of satire on British televis...

After spending his 20s as a computer programmer, Will Hines caught the improv bug when he began studying and performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in 1999 in New York City. He has gone on to become one of the most respected and experienced improv instructors with the UCB in New York and Los Angeles, as well as working with corporate clients, and he turned his Tumblr, Improv Nonsense,...

You've been hearing the wit and wisdom of Harry Shearer for the past four decades. Since 1983, Shearer has hosted and produced a weekly hourlong radio program, Le Show , that mixes news reports, interviews and music that can be equal parts referential and comedic. (It's heard around the world on the radio or via podcasts.) You've also enjoyed Shearer's contributions to the monumental rockumentary,...

Sophie Santos grew up in locations around the country, moving from Kansas to Alabama and eventually New York City, where she hosts "The Lesbian Agenda," a satirical comedy show that she plans to take on the road to further her agenda. In 2021, Santos voiced roles in two Audible Original podcast series, Hit Job starring Pete Davidson and Keke Palmer, and Hot White Heist starring Bowen Yang, Alan Cu...

Niccole Thurman is an actress, writer, and the co-host of the podcast, The Scroll Down with Marcella Arguello . Originally from Kansas, Thurman studied acting at the University of Kansas before finding her place in comedy through The Second City in Chicago. She served as a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Opposition with Jordan Klepper , and you might also have seen her on such shows as Netfl...

Bill Engvall is a Grammy-nominated comedian from Texas who made up one-fourth of the mega-successful Blue Collar Comedy Tour alongside Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy and Ron White, touring from 2000 to 2006 and making a sketch comedy show together. Since then, Engvall also has starred in multiple solo stand-up specials, his own TBS sitcom, The Bill Engvall Show , made it to the finals of seas...

Julie Seabaugh grew up on a farm and discovered stand-up when Dave Attell performed during her senior year at the University of Missouri, where she earned her bachelor's degree in journalism. In 2003, after moving to New York City, Seabaugh launched her earliest independent effort into comedy journalism with the online magazine, Two Drink Minimum . A career with alt-weeklies followed, with stops a...

Tone Bell is an actor, writer, and comedian from Atlanta who began his comedy career in Dallas before going Hollywood. Since winning the NBC Stand Up For Diversity competition in 2011, he has co-starred or starred in multiple sitcoms, starting with Whitney on NBC and including   Bad Judge , Truth Be Told , Disjointed , and Fam . His film credits include Sylvie's Love, Little, Dog Days , and The We...

Michael Hartney is an actor, writer and comedian who was the final artistic director for the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre when it shuttered its New York City operations in 2020, and one of the founding members of the nonprofit Squirrel Comedy Theatre. Hartney created the roles of Stanley and Mr. Williams in the original Broadway cast of School of Rock the Musical, and on TV, he has appeared on...

Phil Wang was one of only two comedians from outside the United States to be invited to perform as part of Netflix's The Comedy Lineup series in 2018. Born in England but raised in Malaysia until he returned to the U.K. at age 16, Wang graduated from the University of Cambridge with an engineering degree and the prestige of serving as a president of the Footlights, the legendary campus comedy trou...