Nimesh Patel
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
I spoke with comedian Nimesh Patel when he thought he had licensed his new hour, Instant Karma to Netflix. Shortly after our chat, Netflix decided to film a brand-new hour with Patel instead later in 2025. So our chat found him at a crossroads — Patel had just filmed an episode of CNN’s Have I Got News For You, and subsequently performed a second time on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Our conversation spanned from his earliest video sketches and emails with me back in 2010, and tracing his time with Michael Che as part of the Monday night Broken Comedy showcase in Greenpoint,...
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James Tom
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
The comedian James Tom now jokes about having told they/them pronoun jokes as far back as 2013 quote-unquote “before most non-binary people were born.” Back then, Tom felt alone in the world and in the comedy community. But now, living and performing as a gay trans man, Tom told me over Zoom that he feels more like “the estranged father of the non-binary transmasc comedy community.” We also spoke about Tom’s unique experience getting Just For Laughs New Faces in 2021 when the pandemic forced the festival out of Montreal to Los Angeles, writing for the queer pirate comedy, Our Flag...
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Rory Rosegarten
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Rory Rosegarten started his career as a comedy manager by the time he was 20 with a whopper of a first client: the already legendary Robert Klein. More than four decades later, as founder and still president of The Conversation Company, Rosegarten manages a small but highly successful comedy clientele — his longtime roster includes both Brian Regan and Ray Romano, his newer client Tom Green recently premiered a documentary, a stand-up special and a docu-series all this year on Amazon Prime Video, and he’s currently working with comedian Gary Valentine on a TV series based on golfer John...
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Mike Drucker
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Mike Drucker is an Emmy-nominated and WGA-winning writer and comedian living in New York. Drucker’s comedy career really began with an internship at Saturday Night Live, where he later contributed to SNL’s Weekend Update as well as The Onion before leaving the city and the East Coast for a gig writing for video games with Nintendo of America. So it makes sense that his memoir, Good Game, No Rematch, would share his love letters to video games and their place in his life and comedy. Drucker sat down with me to talk about how he kept his comedy career humming in the background...
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Abby Govindan
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Fooling media outlets into thinking she created the Netflix series may have won the comedian and Fordham grad plenty of new followers on Twitter in 2021, but it didn’t go a long way in making her the pride of her Indian American family back home in Houston. It’s just one of the stories Govindan shares in her debut Off Broadway one-hander, “How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents,”produced by the comedians Hasan Minhaj and Daniel Sloss. In the show, she reveals how she struggled with her mental health before finding therapy and stand-up comedy, and...
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Brad Alexander
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Brad Alexander composes music for television and musical theater, whose notable works include the music for See Rock City & Other Destinations, which won the 2011 Drama Desk Award, Richard Rodgers Award and BMI Foundation’s Jerry Bock Award, and more recently served as lead composer for the PBS/Amazon animated series, Clifford The Big Red Dog. I remember seeing and hearing Brad as a piano whiz as early as the second grade, as we were elementary-school classmates and friends growing up in small-town Connecticut. We had a great time catching up on how his career went from the...
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800 Pound Gorilla Media
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
What’s in a name? Since its launch in 2016 by comedy managers Ryan Bitzer and Damion Greiman, along with founding members Ian Adkins and Anthony Leo, 800 Pound Gorilla Media has grown from a small record label into a king kong of comedy distribution, working with everyone from Kevin Hart’s LOL Network to Bill Burr and Al Madrigal’s All Things Comedy, and releasing a cool 100 comedy specials on their YouTube channel in the year 2024. 800 Pound Gorilla Media also celebrated a new licensing deal with Hulu in 2024 that sees at least one of their specials premiering exclusive there once a...
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Comedy MVPs of 2024 with Jason Zinoman
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
We did it, comedy fans. We withstood another year of craziness, hundreds upon hundreds of comedy specials, and have gotten my friend and colleague in comedy criticism, Jason Zinoman from The New York Times, to join me for another December to Remember and try to make sense of it all. 2024, a year that started with a fake AI George Carlin and a captivating Katt Williams performance on Club Shay Shay, that saw the relaunch of @Midnight as After Midnight on CBS, that saw Just For Laughs go bankrupt and cancel their Montreal bash only to promise a revival in 2025, that saw the major presidential...
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Kelly McCaughan
The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First
Kelly McCaughan is an actor, writer, comedian and clown whose show, Catholic Guilt, was nominated for Best Newcomer by the 2023 ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards, and then brought back the following Fringe, where her show received a Best Show nomination from the 2024 ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Originally from outside of Pittsburgh, McCaughan went to college with fellow renowned clown Natalie Palamides where she studied theater, learned improv through the Upright Citizens Brigade, and Bouffon from Red Bastard. Her TV credits include roles on HBO’s Crashing and Apple TV+’s Servant, and she has...
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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...
info_outlineI spoke with comedian Nimesh Patel when he thought he had licensed his new hour, Instant Karma to Netflix. Shortly after our chat, Netflix decided to film a brand-new hour with Patel instead later in 2025. So our chat found him at a crossroads — Patel had just filmed an episode of CNN’s Have I Got News For You, and subsequently performed a second time on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Our conversation spanned from his earliest video sketches and emails with me back in 2010, and tracing his time with Michael Che as part of the Monday night Broken Comedy showcase in Greenpoint, where Chris Rock saw him and hired him to write for Rock’s stint hosting the Academy Awards in 2016. Patel told me how he felt inspired watching his peers find fast success, how he handled free-speech backlash at Columbia University well before Columbia made nationwide news for it in recent years, and how Patel’s approach to crowd work has changed since it has become the trendiest thing to see on TikTok. Patel released his previous specials on YouTube, and filmed a short set for Netflix’s Verified Stand Up showcase in 2023. As he preps his new Netflix hour, he is embarking on a live theater tour that extends through the end of 2025. There’s a lot to get to, so let’s get to it!
Go see Nimesh live on his theatre tour which is happening now through the end of the year. For show and ticket info go to www.FindingNimesh.com