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Caloroga Shark Media. Say there, I’m Shohnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News Keegan Michael Key. He’s in the macpack. I’ll tell you why. At the end of this story, he says that although Key and Peel were once an iconic duo, they don’t see each other that often anymore.
Keigan said, we lived together for a few months. We would write and talk about comedy, who we liked and why we liked them, and how that worked in the architecture of what we were trying to build comedically. When we were on camera, it was alchemy. It was just like, why is this working. It’s been almost a decade now since that show ended, and we don’t see each other that often anymore, which is to me a tragedy.
Peel lives in la Key lives in New York. Our evolution, I think is tied to both of what our desires are. His desire was to start exploring the horror genre. My desire was to do more dramatic work like had been trained in school. After Kean Peel, both of us jumped to another platform, but we needed that first platform.
He talks about in the early seasons, I was playing the clown more and doing more physical comedy in the beginning of our time together, and then I find myself into playing more of the straight roles and teeing up Jordan to play the clown. I got to work with those guys. A few times. I’ve mentioned I helped put together a Comedy Central radio for series XM, so I was in the room with them several times. Here’s the reason why I love Keegan.
Michael Key and Jordan Peele totally cool, but I love Keegan for this. So it’s my last day at Sirius. We’re at the super Bowl radio row and I’ve called in every favor. I have to get Comedy Central to give me really good guests for the super Bowl because it’s serious. The super Bowl is a big deal.
So we’ve got the cast of the work Alkoholics here, and we’ve got Key and Peel there, probably five minutes too early. Again, it was my last day. I had been let go, but I’m a professional, so I was like, I’ll stay on and finish the super Bowl broadcast. I called in the favors. I’m a pro, I will produce the show, and I did so.
Now, about two months later, they were on the cover of Newsweek is like comedy’s hottest thing. So on this Super Bowl day, one of the bosses just didn’t get it and got all excited that Jamie was there and the Cardinal of New York was there, and decided we were going to put the Cardinal and Jamie fox On together, which took away the set that I was going to use for Key and Peel. So the engineers put together I called it the kiddie table with like a snack table and the leftover equipment and stuck Key and Peel in the corner. And I’m just apologizing to those guys, and Jordan’s cool with it, and Keegan looks me out and he goes, dude, I see what’s going on. I get it.
It’s all good. And I will always appreciate that guy for reading the room and seeing that I’m trying and it ain’t me. So Keegan, Michael Keay, I love you. Mark Maren talked about watching Robert de Niro film the First Joker movie. Maren on his podcast said, I did that one scene with de Niro and Joker, and I was literally watching him because I was on the set all week and he’s playing that talk show host.
He doesn’t know his lines and they’re doing it over and over again. It was totally demystifying de Niro to me because I’ve watched him my whole life. Obviously he’s a great actor, but they understand something. People live their lives on cameraon be doing it that long. Because I’m watching it, I’m like, this is a disaster.
How they got cut this together? He knew was gonna be cut up alright, He’s been on set so many times. I was just gonna do it and do it, do it, and they’ll find one. Sam Morrell talked about his time on The Joker. He told Howard Stern, I think they expected me to suck, so I was kind of pumped.
I’m in my trailer and director Todd Phillips is going over with me and I was like, it says I’m an open micro this. Do you want me to be crappy like an open micer? And he was like, yeah, well you’re doing any jokes. Sam said, well, I’m not gonna bomb my stuff. I’m gonna kill Joker too.
Out on October fourth, do you like Saturday Night Live? Well, good, because we are going to talk about Saturday Night Live every single day for the next nine months. Did you hear SNL’s turning fifty? Michael Chase says, as the writing staff grows and as the cast grows, SNL’s like an apartment building, not a house. We all live together, but we don’t really live together.
A cold open could go down. I’ll be like, I don’t like it one bit, but it’s not my voice and it’s not up to me. I can’t agree with everything political we’ve had on the show, and I’m sure this stuff I’ve written that’s made some castmates bristle or some writers go, what are we putting on? We can’t say that, but we have to live with each other. We’re rid digging the space and trying to get this real estate for our ideas.
So there’s no one mission statement. I don’t believe beyond Funny’s funny maybe Lauren idea of what he wants the identity to be. As I always say, as Corny s it sounds at SNL, we’re not the A students. We’re the kids in the back of the class learning spitballs with the teacher. But I think the audience might feel like comedy is going to tell them the truth because they don’t trust politicians anymore.
They don’t trust news even and so they’re very protective of it, and they feel like if you say something against the side, it’s almost traitorism. It’s almost trees. It as to make fun of Biden or the left when Trump is running, and I get that feeling. But as time goes by and we face more disasters and crisis, we’ll understand that this was all a ridiculous time. Sarah Simmerman spoke to Saint Louis NPR.
She said, I think the one consistent thing with me is I’ve always kind of tackled the darkest reaches of humanity. That kind of started with speaking at my dad’s funeral and eulogizing him and realizing there was a lot of funny stuff in it. I’ve always felt that all comics become funny and developed their sense of humor as a means of surviving childhood. I would say one hundred percent of comics become funny that way. So it’s been a survival skill for us since we were kids, and so it’s very natural to me that processing death, especially big ones like this, feels very natural to process it through stand up.
I think the two things that helped me grow as a person our therapy and stand up. I think a lot of comedians have really feared getting well because they feel like their comedy comes from not figuring out their stuff. For me, I disagree. I’d rather be happy because I think we lived just one time on this rock and outer space, and it’s crazy not to figure out your joy, but to be able to utilize it and use it in poignant, ridiculous and silly ways. That really works for me.
Chris Rocks Everybody Still Hates Chris premieres today ten pm East and West on Comedy Central. Not sure why they made this, but Everybody Still Hates Chris features Chris Rock as adult Chris narrating stories inspired by his experience growing up as a skinny nerd and bedsty I like this one from Josh Gadd speaking to people. He says he wishes he hadn’t used his regular voice to voice all Off in Frozen. Josh Gadd said, if I could do it all over again, I would have not lent that snowman my voice, so I would have created a different voice because it’s very weird being in a supermarket and having a little child stare at him. So that was my first big mistake.
But you know, if people tell me I have a very unique voice, people seem to like my voice. I try to give it to them when I can. I saw Josh he was in the Book of more And when it first premiered million years ago, he crushed in that. Oh what a good show if you’ve never seen the Book of Mormon. Apparently they’re making more Frozens, he told Kelly and Mark.
All of a sudden, my phone’s blowing up. People are like, I’m so excited about Frozen three and Frozen four, and I said, so am. I I had no idea. Nobody thought to call us up and be like, oh, by the way, we’re doing two sequels to your movie. Bubba shared this one on the Facebook group, which is Daily Comedy News podcast group.
At the Norman Rockwell Museum an exhibition called What Me Worry The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine. It’s the Norman Rockwell until October twenty seventh. The exhibition explores the unforgettable art and satire of Mad from its beginning ens in nineteen fifty two. I’m scrolling down here on NRM dot org. They’ve got some of the cover arts, some of the old Mad fold ins.
Remember those. There’s an online symposium on Friday October eighteenth from six to eight and again on Saturday, October nineteenth, called the Usual Gang of Idiots and other suspects. Mad Magazine and American Humor join us for this lively exploration of the art and history of man. That’s cool NRM dot org if you want to check that out. The museum is in Stockbridge, Massachusetts if you’re up that way.
Open Thursdays through Tuesdays ten to five. They have an app as well, closed Wednesdays. Guys wait to schedule the article. John Adam Connover spoke to Variety. I think there’s some spin here.
Conover till Variety. A lot of people know me as an informational comedian, right, I do comedy about important topics. They don’t know me as a stand up comedian. And stand up comedy is my first love. So I want to do a straight stand up show.
I didn’t want to do information. I didn’t want to do Here’s how you can change the world. I just want to do jokes about myself, about my life. It’s personal story. What’s the spin?
John Well? He brought the quote to very personal special to drop out, to be able to care about every single detail and have it come out on this incredible platform where people are going to watch it and give a hoot about it. That’s very rare to be able to do as a comedian now. So not a it’s very special up on YouTube for free and hope that people watch or do it on a big streamer and hope their algorithm is going to show it to people. Yes, I mean the algorithm on Netflix.
If you don’t want Netflix money, that’s fine, But you know Netflix, every Tuesday they put a big, giant special in front of everybody’s face. It’s not really the algorithm, but okay. Adam says the specials called unmedicated not because I’m against prescription treatments for add but simply because they never worked for me and they caused me problems. I felt addicted to them for a while and they caused me to have other addictions as well. And I turned out fine, but other people maybe not.
Bo When Yang said he was obsessed with Gray’s anatomy growing up and he was going to pursue medicine, he realized later that his interests had to do more with Sandra Oh than with healing the sick, but it was a convenient way to satisfy his parents. He tilled The New Yorker. I think I did the drag of saying, well, maybe I’ll be a doctor. He then got into improv. Improv was my only wait point for a billion.
We were all fifteen year olds performing with beer drinking thirty year olds. Maya Rudolph says, when you’ve seen his funny, tend to be pigeonholed as the wacky best friend because there’s a lot of meat in that role. You think that’s where the fun is. He wants to be the straight guy, but you’re never the straight guy, and that’s all you ever want to be. I remember at SNL sitting in Lauren’s office saying I want to play the wife sometimes.
Why can’t be the girlfriend? He was like, you don’t want to be the girlfriend, you want to be the crazy German art dealer neighbor Kevin neil In told the Union his biggest influence was Chevy Chase. It’s been thirty years since I’ve been on SNL. It’s hard to believe so things are different. Back then, I was portraying more of a newscaster like a dry delivery.
And for the last fifteen years or so, people are more being themselves. They’re like comedians commentating on things and smiling and laughing about it, unlike newscasters. But things are changing. Newscasters on CNN or Fox News of personalities that are more entertaining. I’d probably fall more into that category with the snide comments more myself.
As for SNL’s fiftieth they told me to save the date. It’s almost overwhelming. At the fortieth after where I looked at it was like Madame Tussau’s wax Museum of Hollywood. Eddie Murphy was there and Prince Taylor Swift. It was crazy.
I’m so grateful for the career I’ve had and continue to have, to be honest with you, The highlight of my career was really early when I did the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. That was the only game in town for talk shows that validated he as a stand up. After the Tonight Show, I’ve never felt such a natural high. Tim Meadows also from SNL Third Straight SNL are here. Yeah, I line these up on purpose.
He’ll still we are in the CBS Comedy Pilot DMV, a single camera comedy pilot set at the place everyone dreads going most, the DMV. I’d put it second. I’d rather go to the DMV than the dentist our quirky and lovable characters and making minimum wage doing a thankless job where customers are annoyed before they even walk in the door. Good thing they have each other. Tim Meadows plays Greg, a former high school English teacher.
Greg is the examiner who likes to get through the driving tests and the day as quickly as possible. Greg is sardonic, defeated, and would love nothing more than to retire. Zarna Garg is getting a CBS comedy Zarna. Garg will play Zarna. The ship was also called Zarna.
In Zarna, Zarna plays Zarna, a proun immigrant woman who’s been raising her American born kids on Indian values, but now that they’re getting older, it’s time for Zarna to focus on her own American dream. And that is your comedy news for today. If you enjoy the program, tell a friend about it. They might like a two. If you would like the program without commercial interruption, there’s a link in the show notes so to tell you how you do that.
If you’re hip to podcasting two point zero and you want to send some SATs my way, that’s the thing you could do. And I’ll see tomorrow