Chad Daniels
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Chad Daniels is a Minnesota stand-up comedian with more than a billion streams to his credit, and in July 2024 released his 10th comedy special and first for Netflix, Empty Nester, marking his freedom from raising two kids as a single dad in small-town Minnesota. Daniels sat down with me over Zoom to talk about how he balanced it all in his early years as a stand-up, what he learned from working with Mitch Hedberg as a young comic, why he resisted the pull of Los Angeles and New York City, and how landing his 2017 album on Pandora gave him both a new set of fans and placed a new set...
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Kyle Ayers
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Kyle Ayers is a comedian from Missouri currently based in Los Angeles who hosts the popular podcast and live show, , where comedians rewrite famous movies and TV shows they’ve never seen. You may have seen Ayers perform his stand-up on Conan or on the OnlyFans comedy showcase, LMAOF. Ayers also created and hosted the live comedy show, which as it name suggests is the opposite of Roast Battle, and which he adapted for the aborted streamer Quibi as Nice One! Ayers met up with me during the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe, where Ayers has debuted a new hour, Hard To Say, in which he describes his...
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PunchUp Live's Danny Frenkel and Alex Dajani
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
The state of the comedy industry, like most everything else in 2024, feels very much in flux. Danny Frenkel and Alex Dajani have seen firsthand how technology and social media have changed the relationships between performers and fans in the 21st century, and have set about finding a better way for them to connect today. Danny worked at Facebook since 2010 in various aspects of marketing and data strategies, while Alex was a software engineer at Apple and Meta — until they partnered up to launch PunchUp Live in 2023. Their platform, which had about 200,000 monthly active users when I spoke...
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Ashley Gavin
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Ashley Gavin is a comedian from New York City who studied computer science and helped craft the curriculum for Girls Who Code, before deciding to embark on her own path in comedy in 2012. Gavin says she became Carnival Cruise Line’s first openly gay performer later that decade, and when the pandemic shut down that gig, she pivoted to podcasting and social media, where she has found even greater success. First with a hit podcast, We’re Having Gay Sex, and then accumulating more than 1.4 million followers on TikTok. Gavin’s self-released special, Ashley Gavin: Live In Chicago, has garnered...
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Sam Reich, Dropout CEO
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
I spoke to Sam Reich on this podcast back in the fall of 2020, when he was in his first year running Dropout, the subscription-based streaming platform he founded as a follow-up to CollegeHumor where he had worked for much of his adult life. Four years later, Reich and Dropout are ready to graduate to the big leagues, with one of their shows already selling out Madison Square Garden for a live event months in advance, and other shows eligible for the first time for Emmy consideration. Reich talked to me this time about what it’s like seeing his name on an Emmy ballot for the first time —...
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Hank Green
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Hank and John Green began influencing online viewing long before we tied the word influencer to social media, launching their on Jan. 1, 2007, 17 years, 3.77 million subscribers and almost a billion views ago. Three years later, the brothers founded VidCon, the first and largest global gathering of YouTubers, growing since 2010 to include video pioneers, stars and would-be stars on YouTube, Vine, Facebook, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok and whatever comes next. Hank Green also co-created The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a YouTube adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that in 2013 became the...
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Ali Siddiq
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
At the age of 49 — three decades removed from an FBI drug bust that sent him to prison, and 24 years into his career as an ex-con turned stand-up comedian — Ali Siddiq was still seeking his big break in show business. His debut special, It’s Bigger Than These Bars, found him back in a Texas jail performing for inmates, but it came and went on Comedy Central after a few airings in 2018. The following summer, NBC put him in primetime where he competed against a similarly then-unknown Matt Rife on Bring The Funny (Siddiq won that round). But come 2022, Siddiq, just like Rife, found...
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Zoë Coombs Marr
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Zoë Coombs Marr is an Australian comedian who won Best Newcomer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2012, then returned four years later to win Best Show in Melbourne and receive a Best Show nomination in Edinburgh in 2016 for Trigger Warning, which she performed in drag character as a misogynistic male comedian named Dave. Coombs Marr brought Dave out of his “coma” in 2023 to comment obliviously on everything he’d missed during #MeToo and “cancel culture.” The show she did in between those efforts, Bossy Bottom, was released as an Amazon Original on Prime Video in the...
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Janine Harouni
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Janine Harouni is a Staten Island native who began her stand-up comedy career in earnest only after moving to London, England, in 2012. Harouni experienced her first viral success as one-third of a sketch group called Muriel whose YouTube fame prompted deals with both the BBC and Quibi, and she’s also appeared onscreen in a recurring role on ITV’s Buffering and a much more supporting role on the big screen in The Batman. Her first solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe, Stand Up With Janine Harouni (Please Remain Seated) directed by the late Adam Brace, earned her a Best Newcomer nomination in...
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Dave Merheje
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Dave Merheje is an award-winning Canadian stand-up comedian and actor who co-starred in the Hulu series, Ramy, and recently co-starred on the big screen opposite Daisy Ridley in the film, Sometimes I Think About Dying, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and is available now to buy or stream. As a stand-up, Dave won the Just For Laughs 2011 Homegrown Comic competition, made it to the finals of the 2013 Seattle International Comedy Competition, and won the Juno Award for Comedy Album of the Year in 2019 for his special, Good Friend Bad Grammar. He also had a special included in...
info_outlineCara Connors grew up in Chicago but began her comedy career in Toronto, where she studied with The Second City, created and starred in original series for CBC, provided social media humor for the series Workin’ Moms, and earned herself a New Faces slot with Just For Laughs. Since moving back to the states and settling down in Los Angeles, Connors has been seen on E! in the series Dating #NoFilter and launched her own queer-friendly live comedy show, Straight For Pay. That’s also the name for her one-person show that received rave reviews from me and others at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, and has become both her debut stand-up comedy album and special.
The album came out in 2023, the special in March 2024 via Comedy Dynamics.
Connors sat down with me over Zoom, where we talked about the process for getting onto the cast of The Groundlings, how an American comedian starts her career in Canada, finding her true voice onstage and off, her perspective on comedians like Meg Stalter while working the Edinburgh Fringe alongside her, starting over in L.A., how she almost performed on NBC’s Bring The Funny primetime comedy competition series, and the importance of hosting and producing her own live show.
There’s a lot to get to, so let’s get to it!