TCB Debriefing 9/18/23: CCSUF, NYCF, Talk Shows Pause Return, Russell Brand, Barbie, Jonah Kills

September 18, 2023 News barbie, bill maher, comedy central, drew barrymore, jax media, jonah kills, new york comedy fest, russell brand, stand up comedy, wga strike

1. The latest round of Comedy Central’s digital stand-up showcase, “Featuring” or more explicitly “Comedy Central Stand Up Featuring” just announced its New York line-ups for its latest taping. The likes of Ayanna Dookie, Sam Morrison, Chinedu Unaka, Homles, Randall Otis, Lucas Zelnick, Kate Sisk, Tommy Brennan, Grace Kuhlenschmidt, Usama Sidiquee, Mark Smalls, Mav Viola, Asha Ward, Ethan Simmons-Patterson, and Eagle Witt will be taking the Cutting Room stage on Thurs. Oct. 5th. Admission is free so long as you RSVP to the early or late show here. Thank goodness this came along and the arrival of Comics Unleashed on CBS won’t be on the only short form stand-up you’ll see from a TV network.

2. The New York Comedy Festival, running from Nov. 3rd-12th, just made a big announcement for their line-up and schedule which includes:

Get the full schedule/line-up/tickets all at nycomedyfestival.com/schedule

3. Both Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher have paused their return of their respective talk shows, The Drew Barrymore Show and Real Time with Bill Maher (NY Times), following controversy stemming from the ongoing WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes. Considering negotiations are to resume on Wednesday; let’s hope this is a good omen for talks to pick up in earnest and bring the strikes to an end with fair deals all around.

4. Russell Brand is facing allegations of emotional abuse, sexual assault, and rape during the “height of his fame” and nearly every project and endeavor has been put on pause (BBC). We would wonder how has it taken this long for this to come out, but the story of survivors is so frequent that it’s common knowledge that it could take years and years and years for them to step forward when processing trauma.

5. Barbie has just surpassed The Avengers as the 11th highest grossing domestic release in film history with $626 million in U.S. theaters (Variety). If it makes $30 million more at home, it’ll beat the far less raved about Jurassic World to be in the top 10.

6. Showtime is lining up its ducks for when the strike ends, starting with a UK comedy from UK theater impresario Clem Garrity called Jonah Kills (Deadline). Fingers crossed that this is another sign that we’re nearing the end of the strikes, which has lasted 139 days.

7. We’ll leave you with this: Elon Musk is thinking of starting to charge for use of Twitter/X concluding that it might be the best way to combat bots on the platform. It’s also the best way to finally sink Twitter into oblivion besides trying (and kind of failing) to change its name to X.