It’s undeniable that Jess Salomon’s smile and energy is infectious (would it surprise you to know that she’s Canadian?). On top of that, she has a wildly fascinating life story (we don’t want to ruin it, but where she came from to comedy and the woman she married could make for a pretty enticing memoir), which makes her debut on The Tonight Show, pretty memorable.
Please enjoy her set here.
Viceland’s late night experiment, VICE Live, where they do 2 hours live nightly, is still going and part of filling that time is occasionally featuring stand-up comedians per late night tradition. They highlight those in NYC’s comedy scene that deserve to be highlighted including Rachel Kaly and Gastor Almonte.
Their latest “Tight 5″ features Jon Laster who works the crowd beautifully and has a pretty great act out about public protesting. Give it a watch here.
Honestly, it would be great for the mental health of our country (and maybe the world) if Aparna Nancherla was on TV way more. Her comforting voice, very clever writing, and calm persona is what we need more of.
So, enjoy a bit of that with her set from last night’s Colbert.
A Little Late with Lilly Singh to Replace Last Call with Carson Daly at NBC
We were curious with what NBC was going to do after announcing the end of Last Call with Carson Daly. Given that it airs at 1:30AM after the block of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers, we kind of thought they would just end that slot together.
Yet, a pleasant surprise came today when they announced that international YouTube star Lilly Singh would take over that slot with her own late night show. This marks a few pretty significant firsts as Singh is the first female-POC to host in late night on a broadcast network. Singh also enters as one of the first YouTube stars to have her own talk show on traditional linear TV (the other being Grace Helbig with the very short-lived The Grace Helbig Show on E!).
We’re curious what Singh will do in the parameters of traditional late night talk show and, more importantly, what NBC will let her do with a slim half-hour slot, especially since 1:30AM is so late (though, we have a feeling that pushing the content online the following day will be a major component to this show).
We’ll just have to wait and see when A Little Late with Lilly Singh debuts in September.
Corporate is unquestionably one of our favorite shows right now for how dark, weird, and existentially funny it all is.
That energy and vibe definitely carries through in this panel interview on Friday’s Colbert with Matt and Jake (especially including Matt’s hair). Watch and enjoy it here.
Here Is Brody Stevens’ Set on Conan
Brody Stevens should have gotten to do a lot more things for how purely funny he is. In the last several days, you might have scoured the Internet to watch Brody do his thing, which is what we all should have been doing more of when he was around, and saw something like his set on The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail.
For us, we immediately wanted to rewatch and share his set from 2012 on Conan.
It’s special for a few reasons:
1) It is one of his first big time stand-up performances on TV
2) It is one of his first late night spots
3) Most importantly, it’s one of the first times that a national audience got to see Brody be Brody, i.e. the in-the-moment-performance-art-jock that people knew and loved (and thankfully JP, Conan, and Team Coco let that happen in this set).
We weren’t able to find the set outside of the context of Enjoy It!, but we asked the good folks at Team Coco about it and they now have the set for you to watch and enjoy right here.
Oh, you might notice that he indeed jokes about being cut out of Judd Apatow’s Funny People in this set. Judd Apatow found the footage of Brody in Funny People and actually brought everything full circle by showing it on Conan this week.
Yes, Thomas Lennon has just come out with a children’s book entitled Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles.
This bit was what he decided to do to promote the book with his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and it might just be enough for you get to the book even if you don’t have kids. Props to Lennon and Brian Stack for this madness.
At 9PM EST/6PM PST tonight, Fat Tony, Sandy Honig, Zack Fox, and Marie Faustin will embark on launching VICE Live, the nightly, two-hour, late night variety talk show that will be done completely live (instead of live-to-tape). We’re as curious you if they pull it off and, more importantly, what they’re going to do fill two hours. every night (every other late night show is an hour with a few half-hour stragglers here and there).
Oh, you know that, as it is a 100% millennial driven show, you’ll be able to stream it too right here.
To go back to what they’re going to do, well, we’ll let the hosts speak for themselves in this promo.
In prepping for the new streamlined Conan, Jenny Zigrino was the comedian that Team Coco went for to do a test show in the new format. The word is she crushed it.
Thankfully, she got to actually do a set that made it to air and we definitely see what that test audience got to see.
Please enjoy it here.
As we said yesterday when sharing his #GulmanTip writing advice, Gary Gulman is a master craftsman when it comes to stand-up comedy.
Last night, he got to back up our claim with his set on Conan, which is, in so many ways, elegant and funny. In regards to Gary’s idea that he’d make a good millennial, we would note that his vocabulary is much more expansive than your average millennial, but we think that’s absolutely fine.
Enjoy the set here.
The Late Late Show with James Corden is really picking up the slack for stand-up comedy being featured on late night in 2019. They’ve already had four sets this month alone including this late night debut of the wonderful Paige Weldon.
Paige is definitely one of those comics whose rise we’ve been following for years in LA (go get Girlfriend at the Time by the way) and we’re so glad to see her it kill it, especially in her own low key way, on Corden.
So, please enjoy her set here.
Jo Firestone, always one to eschew from convention, prefaced her set on the last Tonight Show this past week with some “praise” for Mamma Mia 2. Then, she went into her set with her signature charming offbeat style for a great set that makes you want to hear Jo kind of talk about anything and everything.
Please enjoy it here.
Adam Newman’s snappy delivery and pep, despite being very self-deprecating, are almost tailor made for doing stand-up on late night. Whatever late night talk show he’s on, the punchlines hit fast and hard and, unsurprisingly, he kills it with the crowd at Corden (we think we can even hear Reggie laugh in the background).
So, please enjoy his Adam’s from last night’s Late Late Show here.
We don’t say this a lot here, but whoa.
Viceland is upping the ante a ton from pretty much every other late night show by having it be truly a unique variety show with the Vice touch, having four hosts (three of which are multi-hyphenate comedians and one that’s a hip hop artist), and going completely live (as opposed to live-to-tape, which all talk shows do these days).
This is so incredibly ambitious. In fact, SNL, a live variety comedy show known for how incredibly hard it is to produce, only goes weekly and doesn’t put up two hours of show. What this will end up being or looking like is anybody’s guess (save for the talent’s and Vice execs’), but this might be the kind of shake-up to the incredibly rigid late night talk show format (that was perfected by Johnny Carson decades ago) that we’ve been desperately looking for.
We will say that Vice’s last attempt at this, Desus & Mero, was a great shake-up as well and we can’t wait to see what they’ll end up doing at Showtime.
In any case, we’ve enjoyed much of the comedy of Marie Faustin, Sandy Honig, and Zack Fox when we’ve got to see them and we’re very, very intrigued to see what that trio along with hip-hop artist Fat Tony will be like on a nightly show.
While Guy Fieri is undeniably loved by many, it would seem Nicole Byer is more dedicated than most to eat at a dining establishment of his.
Byer described just how far she went in order to do so on last night’s Late Night with Seth Meyers. Enjoy it here.
It will always be amazing to us when someone whose native tongue isn’t English figures out how to handily do stand-up in English. It’s another whole level of fluency in a language that, like so many things in comedy, just can’t be taught.
Daniel Simonsen who is originally, as mentioned above, from Norway made his very first American TV appearance last night on Late Night with Seth Meyers and, to our point, has managed to toy with nuances of English as well as his play it up with his hilariously bone dry stage persona.
So, please enjoy Daniel Simonsen’s very first U.S. TV/late night appearance here.
It would seem that both Joe Zimmerman’s phone and comedy are kind of blessed.
Witness it for yourself from his set on last night’s Late Late Show with James Corden.
Yes, you read that right. It’s a late night talk show done in a river.
Absurd satirist Conner O’Malley has a knack for sending up pop culture to the nth degree and then some.
The Emmys for this year are tomorrow, but perhaps Conner will have a shot for one for next year?
In any case, enjoy this PCP version of a late night talk show here.
Coming fresh off of being an unrepped New Face at JFL Montreal, Katie Hannigan shows Colbert’s crowd at The Late Show what a handful of industry folks got to see just a week or so before.
She has such a magnetic persona and delivery that contrasts perfectly with her material about her life, making it a real joy to watch this late night debut.
See the set for yourself here.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Mark Normand’s style, writing, cadence, persona, etc. are kind of perfect for the demanding nature of doing stand-up on a late night talk show.
His tight writing, structure, and transitions (and the fact that he dons a suit) calls back to a sort of a classic tight 5 on Carson (this set just happens to be a bit over 5 min. FYI).
In any case, you should enjoy Normand’s set here.
For someone who has a life threatening experience like Chris Cope, it’s reassuring to see the hope and confidence in a stand-up performance, especially your first televised one.
See Cope do just that here on last night’s Conan.
In his TV stand-up debut, Danny Jolles delivers an argument for the oft-maligned group commonly referred to as “bros”.
Jolles, who loves deconstructing opposing opinions in joke form, certainly weaves his points into a finely crafted set that you really ought to watch instead of, perhaps, already getting suspicious because it’s a “bro defense”.
Watch, enjoy, listen, and learn here.
For those uninitiated with Reductress, “the Onion for feminism”, please go on a deep dive ASAP and get into their great satirical articles, podcasts, etc. that probably, at this point, surpass the simple comparisons to The Onion.
Now that you’re hopefully caught up, you can get hyped that Reductress, co-created by Beth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo, is getting their own late night pilot over at Comedy Central that they’re calling The Reductress Hour. Abby Elliott will be hosting, but doing so in character.
Whether that’s more or less in-character than Jordan Klepper is on The Opposition isn’t clear at this point, but given Reductress’ tone, we’d guess that they’ll be going as absurd as they can go.
We can only hope that it gets picked up to series so we can see what that actually looks like.
Even more than joking about politics, joking about religion can be even more divisive. People’s faith often guides the rest of their other beliefs and is a personal foundation that doesn’t much appreciate being shaken of poked.
That being said, the idea of a sacred cow, especially the sacred cow, makes making jokes about it even more alluring to comedians. Many have tried, but usually end up with a joke that only one side agrees with on top of usually deriding the entire concept of religion. That’s not to say that they aren’t great jokes, but they do require an open mind that many often don’t have. One of the all time great jokes in the canon of comedy by Emo Philips fits this description.
Ahmed Bharoocha performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and opened up with a joke that not only acts a defense of faith and religion, but does so in such a simply beautiful way that’s mostly inclusive of all religions. For our money, it’s a joke that will stand the test of the time.
Do watch Ahmed’s whole set, by the way, as his performance was stellar through and through.
David Letterman Will Be a Guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers at End of This Month
“It’s Dave’s show and we are just borrowing it.
DAVID LETTERMAN will be our guest on Late Night with @sethmeyers on Wednesday May 23rd!”
-@shoemakermike (LNSM Producer)
Decades ago, David Letterman was host of Late Night on NBC, ostensibly being groomed to take over The Tonight Show. As some of you might now, the gig went to Jay Leno and Dave then switched teams to CBS to host The Late Show only to go head-to-head w/Leno on a nightly basis. Of the late night rivalries, it was probably the biggest one that ever was and will ever be.
That being the case, David Letterman will return to be a guest on Late Night and appearing on NBC, which is a thing that many of us would never happen. David Letterman has only been a guest sparingly on Late Night during his tenure at The Late Show. Specifically, he appeared when a very young and inexperienced Conan O’Brien had just taken over Late Night and once when Fallon when pal Steve Martin was on the show.
With the rivalry with Leno well over and Letterman enjoying his post CBS career doing whatever he wants to do, we can only wonder what the hell Dave will talk about with Seth. Our guess is that they’ll probably start off with the beard.