The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

A comedian, actor, and writer, Patton Oswalt has been making people laugh professionally since his late teens. He first became known to millions as Spence on the sitcom The King of Queens , and brought the alternative comedy scene to the screen thanks to The Comedians of Comedy tour, which begat a 2005 movie produced and distributed by Netflix, and a Comedy Central series. Since then, you've seen...

Erin Jackson had quite the 2020, starting it by performing on Late Night with Seth Meyers , and ending it by filming a set for Netflix as part of the second season of Tiffany Haddish Presents They Ready , alongside the likes of Tony Woods, Dean Edwards and Godfrey. Jackson came out of the D.C. comedy scene in the early 2000s, had Ellen DeGeneres encourage her to quit her day job, and previously ap...

How are we supposed to make any sense out of this year in comedy, 2020? There's only one way I know how…that's by reuniting with Jason Zinoman of The New York Times , the Siskel to my Ebert in comedy criticism, to hash out 2020 and give some shout outs to the most valuable players in comedy…so let's get to it! Among those shouted out: Dave Chappelle, Conan O'Brien, Eddie Pepitone, Beth Stelling, M...

Michael Kosta is a Senior Correspondent on  The Daily Show with Trevor Noah . Prior to  The Daily Show , Michael co-created, produced and starred in the E! network's  The Comment Section , guest-hosted G4's  Attack of the Show  and co-hosted  Crowd Goes Wild  on FOX Sports with Regis Philbin. He also served as a correspondent on  The Soup  spinoff series  The Soup Investigates . Kosta has made the...

Kansas native Jeremiah Watkins trained at both The Second City and The Groundlings, and has become a fixture at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles as part of several trademark shows; among them, he was one-third of "The Wave" for Roast Battle as it developed and grew from late-night Tuesdays to multiple seasons on Comedy Central. He's still the bandleader for Monday's Kill Tony. And for more than a d...

Colin Quinn seems to have his finger on the pulse of stand-up comedy and America just about as well, if not better, than almost any other comedian in America these days. His most recent solo stand-up special, 2019's Red State Blue State , poked holes in how united Americans could be in this digital era where everyone's opinions can carry equal weight, no matter how outlandishly crazy or off-base t...

Sam Reich was 21 when CollegeHumor hired him as its first Director of Original Content in 2006. In a few short years, the success of in-house webseries such as "Hardly Working" and "Jake and Amir" got Reich and CollegeHumor a sketch comedy show on MTV. While that show didn't last, Reich helped executive produce, write or direct several others. Among them: Adam Ruins Everything for truTV, Hot Date...

Negin Farsad began her comedy career while advising campaign finance policies for the city of New York, and over the course of the 2010s, she has mixed social justice and comedy on stage and on the road. She made and performed in a road-trip documentary across America in 2012 called "The Muslims Are Coming!" She has delivered multiple TED Talks, one based on that documentary, and another on her bo...

Melinda Hill moved 27 times as a kid before making her biggest move from Kansas to Los Angeles to make it as an actress. She studied with The Groundlings, where she performed as a tooth fairy alongside Kristin Wiig. She starred in a Creed music video. She competed on America's Got Talent . She performed on Adventure Time, Lady Dynamite, The Late Late Show , and Reno 911!  She made a webseries for...

J-L Cauvin is a native New Yorker who started his stand-up comedy career in Washington, D.C., while going to law school at Georgetown. His first big break came in 2007 when he performed on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, but J-L has found many more fans and followers thanks to his uncanny impersonations, whether they're of people he has been told he looks like, which includes Barack Obama,...

So much has changed in the world since the last time I caught up with Lewis Black in September of 2016. But last things first, obviously: Black managed to film his last live show before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down live stand-up comedy, recording his March 13, 2020, performance at Four Winds Casino in Michigan and releasing it in October 2020. It's called, appropriately enough: "Thanks For Risk...

Adam Conover is a comedian and writer best known for the truTV series Adam Ruins Everything, which   he created and hosted from 2015-2019. Conover's comedy career began while still a student at Bard College, where he was part of the sketch comedy group, Olde English, along with future Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Olde English performed at the HBO Aspen comedy festival in 2007, and...

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down everything in March of 2020, thousands upon thousands of comedians suddenly experienced the existential dilemma that comedian Mike Birbiglia had depicted in his 2016 movie, "Don't Think Twice." Birbiglia himself didn't think twice, however, quickly starting a nationwide fundraising campaign called Tip Your Waitstaff, with proceeds going to the employees of come...

Calise Hawkins is a stand-up comedian and writer based out of Jersey City, where she raises her daughter, Asha. You may have seen her stand-up on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC) , Russell Simmons Presents Live At The El Rey (Comedy Central), Stand Up in Stilettos (TV Guide Channel), and Nick Mom's Night Out (Nickelodeon). She was a cast member of Oxygen's Funny Girls and has written for multipl...

Beth Stelling grew up in Ohio before moving to Chicago to study with the Steppenwolf Theatre, after which she began pursuing her career in stand-up comedy. She was named best stand-up in Chicago the year before she got New Faces at Montreal's Just For Laughs comedy festival, then moved to Los Angeles. She has released two comedy albums, "Sweet Beth" and "Simply the Beth," performed on Conan and Ji...

Joe List began his stand-up career in Boston in 2000 after graduating from high school, rising up the ranks in Boston's heralded comedy scene before moving to New York City. He has toured with the likes of Louis CK and Nick DiPaolo, and since 2013 has co-hosted the popular podcast Tuesdays With Stories with comedian Mark Normand. List's singular credits include performing on The Late Show with Dav...

The world knows Stephen Glover as Steve-O, a daredevil famous for his stunts with the Jackass crew on MTV, a spin-off series Wildboyz , and four Jackass movies. It's landed him on Dancing with the Stars and a Comedy Central Roast. When I met Steve-O in 2010, he was newly clean and sober and pursuing a second life as a stand-up comedian. We reconnected in the summer of 2020 over Zoom in two separat...

Sebastian Maniscalco met Pat McGann in the early 2010s, when Mansicalco was headlining Zanies in Chicago and McGann was the house MC. They eventually became friends and working partners, with McGann warming up the audience for Maniscalco's Showtime special which taped in Chicago, and then traveling with Sebastian on the road for the past several years as his opener or feature act. All while Manisc...

Discussions of racial representation and onscreen depiction of the police both hit home for Carlos Alazraqui . Born to Argentinian parents, Carlos has spent the most time onscreen as Deputy James Garcia on Reno 911!, which aired from 2003 to 2009 on Comedy Central, spawned a movie in 2007 and has returned to mobile phones courtesy of Quibi in 2020. You may recognize his voice from a multitude of a...

Jamie Kennedy still may be best known for playing Randy Meeks in the big-screen Scream franchise, but Kennedy has enjoyed a wild and varied acting career since he broke out of background work in the late 1980s. His credits include Romeo + Juliet, Bowfinger, Enemy of the State, As Good As It Gets, Three Kings, and his own vehicle, Malibu's Most Wanted. On the small screen, he recurred on both the d...

Smosh became the first popular YouTube channel in 2005 and has remained among the most popular channels on YouTube ever since. It would take almost 15 years, however, before Smosh followed other YouTubers by embarking on its first live tour in February 2020, which ended just as the coronavirus pandemic was sweeping the globe. As of June 2020, Smosh had earned more than 25 million subscribers to th...

Greg Warren grew up in St. Louis the son of a wrestling coach, and enjoyed a successful high-school and college wrestling career himself before he discovered stand-up comedy while still a student at the University of Missouri. Neither stints at West Point or Proctor & Gamble could sway Warren as much as stand-up has, a career he has pursued, consistently touring comedy clubs on the road for the pa...

Ramy Youssef is the son of Egyptian immigrants, growing up in New York and New Jersey, who jumped into sketch comedy as a teenager. It paid off for him initially with a role on the Nick at Nite sitcom See Dad Run . Youssef took what he learned there, as well as his work on shows such as Mr. Robot, and friendships with the likes of truTV's Friends of the People and NBC's The Carmichael Show , and a...

Rhys Darby is an actor, writer, podcaster and stand-up comedian from New Zealand. North American audiences first got to know him as Murray the manager from  HBO's Flight of the Conchords  and more recently as Nigel the guide in the Jumanji movies. His other film and TV credits include Y es Man, The X-Files, Wrecked, What We Do in the Shadows , Hunt for the Wilderpeople . His sound-effect skills an...

When I sat down with Fred Willard in February 2020 inside his home in Southern California, he was noticeably weak — I held his microphone for him throughout our conversation — but his mind and his sense of humor was quite intact, and he was still working. In fact, Fred received a phone call during our interview inviting him to the Modern Family wrap party, and talked to me about being ready and wi...