Rory Scovel Jim McCambridge Logo text In June of 2020, comedian Rory Scovel lost his father. It happened quickly, much like the rush of grief that followed. It was still early in the pandemic, and channeling any of it into comedy before the kind of packed audience he was accustomed to wasn’t an option. Not that he was necessarily ready to do so at that time.
Six years later, Scovel is back on stage, delivering what is arguably his strongest hour yet. Rory Scovel: Show Must Go On, his new Netflix special, dropping on Tuesday, is a considerably more vulnerable effort than anything the South Carolina native has ever put forward. Without spoiling the hour, it ends with material about his late father and the relationship that he wished they’d had, all wrapped up in a joke about his dad’s final wish being for his son to sell more tour merch. Seriously, just watch it.
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The married dad insists that he’s never come up with new material as swiftly and easily as he did here. “It just kind of came together,” he says, acknowledging that there was only one brief period in the process where he watched the special and “of course I hated it,” he says, but that was before the edit. In the end, Scovel says he’s proud of what he was able to pull off, and only in part because it’s tighter and, in his estimation, “punchier” than his prior work. “It’s insane that it took me 20 years to learn how to edit,” he adds with a laugh, “but better late than never.”
Scovel, who’s also known for his acting work in series like Physical and Rooster, hopped on a Zoom in early August to discuss the deeply personal new hour along with his Jan. 6th heckler, his desire to perform in red states and why he thanks “MDMA” at the end of his special.
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You just told me this special felt different. Going in, what did you want to say or do that you hadn’t said or done before?
I just made it much more personal and vulnerable. Obviously, the ending [about losing his dad] is its own massive vulnerable thing, but even just talking about politics and religion, I’d hit a boiling point of being like, “I have so much frustration and I want to just rant about it.” But at the same time, I don’t like it when someone just rants and preaches to me, so how can I do it in a way that is pleasant for people who might already agree. I needed a joke to be the seed of it.
I want to talk about the end of the show first. The final bit starts with you joking about how your dad’s final wish was for you to move more merch. Before long, you’re wiping away tears. I’m curious about the evolution of that bit, and, really, how you went about workshopping it.
When the tour started, I was ending on a political thing. Then, at some point, I started ending the shows by saying I had merch, and [the dying wish of a loved one bit] is a joke that I’ve done for a long time, and I used to say it was my grandmother. It was a throwaway. Then one night, I said my dad and I thought of a tag but there was nothing serious about it. Maybe a month and a half into the tour, I just had this thing where I was like, “I want to say something real about my dad.”
So, there really was an evolution…
And it became, like, how could I say something really vulnerable and honest and it be a tribute to my dad and therapeutic for me, but then pull everyone back out afterward? But the way that I did it in the special is the only time that I ever did it that way because I never wrote anything down. I didn’t want to know what I would say. I didn’t want to know what it would feel like. I really didn’t want somebody to watch the special after having come to a show and think that this dramatic emotional moment was performative. To me, that would diminish the integrity of it. So, I went into the special knowing that this was the right choice because it terrified me and it felt different and interesting but I also think I love it because I really meant it and I tapped into a place where I no longer cared if, in the end, it was funny.
How did it ultimately feel on the night or nights that you taped it?
I was like, how can I have the audience witness my love for my dad, a thing that I didn’t profess while he was alive? Really, I didn’t talk like this. I didn’t say these things. Then you just go do it for those two shows; you say different stuff each night, kind of just vomit it out and if it doesn’t work, there’s always editing. But you’ve seen it and you know that I got emotional immediately. The only thing I did [previously] to try to see if I could take an audience to a deep place was at a show in Milwaukee, where I decided to talk about mom passing away when I was very young and also about my dad.
I think I might have talked for 10 minutes with some people laughing the whole time, and I am not saying anything funny. I’m saying very dramatic stuff, but I’m not emotional. I’m not crying and I’m not trying to cry. I went in, like, I’m just going to say bullet points of my youth and the drama and the trauma that my dad lived through, that my family lived through, and I got to the end of that, made the joke, and it worked. That was the only research I needed to do.
I was aware that your mother passed away when you were one only from a few interviews that you’ve given but it’s not come up in any of your specials. After watching this one, I wondered if you were more open to working out your own grief or trauma through comedy?
I’ve been doing these improvised shows for a while and I’m really addicted to them. What I’ve discovered in those shows is when you don’t know what you’re going to talk about or how long you’re going to talk about something, you start looking for fuel for the fire. If you just go grab tiny little observations, you’re kind of making these big efforts to find a little bit of fuel. What I’m now learning is that the bigger fuel comes from some kind of secret you’re embarrassed of or ashamed of or an emotion or vulnerability or something you think is so weird about you but then the moment you say it, you realize no one thinks it’s weird and, really, we all have similar secrets.
I think the revelation [of doing this special] was that I really just enjoyed the honesty. Also, the era of where standup is right now, it felt like, I don’t know, I’d love to not be vulnerable — I’d love to keep this shield up and I’d love for people to think I was cool and attractive and all these things, but I turn 46 tomorrow and I think it’s just not the truth.
You just referenced the era of standup that we’re in now, explain what you meant by that.
I think political identity is such a thing now in what we do. And I don’t know, it’s kind of like everyone’s got to pick a side to play to. I don’t necessarily love that people would go, “Oh, this is a liberal comic,” or, “This guy votes liberally, so these will be his opinions or his takes.” I’d rather it be me going, “Well, no, these are my takes, and whatever category they fall into is what they fall into.”
But I don’t want anyone to think that I’m intentionally playing to the left. It’s almost impossible for me to intentionally play to the right, it’s just not in my soul to do it. But it isn’t like I sit here going, “I think the left is great and there’s nothing wrong with it.” I’d rather be like, “Red and blue, we’re all under a spell!” So, with this hour, it feels like I tiptoed into that a little bit to figure out how to do it in a bigger way in the future.
Roughly two minutes in, you joke that Christian Republicans are “fake as fuck.” Talk to me about that choice.
That first show, the ending [about my dad] was in my mind the whole time — knowing, oh, I’m about to face a mountain at the end, and I’m kind of terrified, especially because I’ve chosen to do it when the cameras are rolling. This is the moment that I need to deliver the thing, and because I had never been that level of vulnerable on stage before — I don’t know that I’ve been that vulnerable off stage — I was in the green room after and my wife was like, “Are you okay?” I felt like I’d just done four shots of whiskey. She was like, “You’re having a vulnerability hangover.” And I was.
So I went into that second show, like, deep breaths, and I got through about five minutes of jokes, and then I literally could not remember the next joke. It’s happened to me before. But I’m out there, fucking around, hoping maybe the audience won’t know, and at some point I’m asking my opener, who’s in the back of the theater, like, “How does this joke start?” That’s where the special stars.
I started there because, to me, it bookended nicely with the ending, and it also supports the title of the special: Show Must Go On. In the edit, I chopped it down, and then I was like, “I know this seems crazy, and I know [adding the ‘fake as fuck’ bit] is going to get people to turn it off, but there’s something kind of fun about leaving a cliffhanger of saying something that’s so biting, politically, and then going to the [opening] credits.” Because if I saw that, I would go, “Wait, what?” And I’d keep watching.
Some will have the opposite reaction…
I know there’s going to be a lot of people who turn it off, and there will be a lot of people that give me shit about it. But it’s like, well, if you can’t handle that and you have no curiosity about what led me to that, I’m probably not your flavor anyway.
Talk to me about the decision to film the hour in Seattle, and what goes into it?
My preference was to shoot it in a red state. I didn’t necessarily want it to be in a liberal city where someone could go, “Well, of course you can be that critical when you’re preaching to the choir.” I didn’t want to preach to the choir, and I really wanted to do it somewhere that would feel maybe more contentious. But it just timed out that Seattle was the right city. It wasn’t booked yet, so it could be at the end. And I’d also spent so much time in Seattle as a comedy home [early in my career]. I will say that that was the hour I did at every show, red or blue. And to my surprise, the red states really loved that hour, maybe even more so than a lot of the blue states.
You say in the special, “It’s good to be in a blue state, even if red states are more fun,” which I’m guessing is a joke that’s rooted in some truth?
I should maybe rephrase what I just said. It’s not like I want to go in and be contentious. What I meant is that I didn’t want people to think, “Oh, you do it in a blue state because that feels safe.” I do the same show wherever I am, and my expectation is that they should laugh at it because I think it’s really funny. But there are people who do get offended or hate the show because of the politics – because they can’t look past certain topics and opinions. And that’s why I addressed that in the show. I say, “Are you going to act like liberals and I can’t tell jokes? Because that’s who we all say can’t take a joke.”
What does it look like when it’s clear people can’t take your jokes?
I can tell you what it feels like when parts of the room don’t like it, and I tend to look in that direction a little more, just to see. Maybe my energy needs to play to them? But what does it look like? Well, some people would get up and leave, which I get. I did the show in Wilmington, North Carolina, at a comedy club before I really started the tour and I got heckled. I said something about Trump and this guy goes, “You really think Biden was better for us?” And the whole audience goes, “Yes!” And you just got to watch this one guy be like, “Wait, everyone really does think that?” And then that table got up and left on their own accord.
Afterwards, someone was like, “Yeah, there was a convicted Jan-Sixer at that table.” For real. I was like, “That’s just proof that anyone will come to a show. They don’t need to research. They’re not going to be like, ‘Oh, what’s the comedy flavor?’” It’s so baffling to me.
At one point in the show, you joke, “Us comics, we have to go red to make little green,” which is clearly a reference to the manosphere. What is your relationship to that branch of comedy and its ascension?
I don’t know if I have a relationship to it. I think I was like, “Oh, there’s a lot of comics I didn’t know were so politically on the right about stuff until the atmosphere shifted.” And I think that’s why it seems like a lot of them shifted towards that because there was money to be had in it — whether that’s true or not, I couldn’t tell you. But if it is true, there’s just no integrity in that. I think I’d rather not gain some sort of massive audience and not make millions of dollars and retain my integrity mainly because I’d rather my kid see that version of me. And not to bring my dad back into it, but my dad would not have been that way. Whether he was right or wrong, he stuck to what he thought was right.
Shifting gears, your last special was on HBO, this one is at Netflix. I’m curious how you’d describe the market for comedy specials today. It’s seemingly cooled some…
For someone like me, it’s, “Where do you get the eyes?” And it’s probably Netflix or YouTube. My last one was on HBO and that felt so cool because, as a kid, it was just like, “Oh, here’s HBO,” and also they don’t do a hundred a year. They’re very selective. But in terms of, globally, who has access to stuff, YouTube is probably the best. It’s just such a gamble because now you’re hoping you make ad money. And if you do and it hits, as we’ve seen, you can really explode. It can change your life.
Netflix is probably up there as well in terms of, hey, we press a button and now everyone has access to it. And if that works, then good. But I think word of mouth is still the strongest [force]. I mean, when I hear someone tell me that I should see something or read something or check something out, that has so much more weight to me than anything that I get [served]. Honestly, if I get thrown something too much on my phone, and this goes against my own publicity [efforts], I’m like, “Why are you trying to talk me into this?”
I think of you as someone who is very immersed in the L.A. comedy scene, but you left L.A. not too long ago, no?
Yeah, we got out. We were there for 14 years and I do love this job but I just was like, “I got to be around less people.” Not that it’s affordable anywhere, but I need more affordable. It’s also fun to live in a place [Colorado] where there’s not so much industry of one kind and it feels good. I feel very inspired to want to create more as though it will be seen.
One thing you hear from folks still climbing in L.A. is that driving around and seeing all of the billboards of everyone else’s successes everywhere can be inspiring and also very challenging.
It’s a mind fuck. I will say, I miss my friends and our family friends horribly. We had such an awesome community. But I could just tell I wasn’t really happy. And I think my wife and my kid were fine, but then we moved and I think they’re like, “Wait, we were really going a hundred miles per hour in LA.” And I was like, “We were. We were going very fast.” So, we’ve slowed down a little bit.
When it comes to where the business is today, what excites you and what frustrates you most?
I guess I’m most excited that it seems to be a landscape that keeps changing. And that used to really frustrate me because I thought, “No, we’re all supposed to do this and then X happens.” And I think a great lesson and revelation for me, and probably for a lot of comics that started when I started, was, “Hey, everything that you thought was what you needed to do, maybe that still works for you, but it isn’t necessarily going to get you attention.
And someone who just started, who figured out this other format of showcasing their humor is already crushing it and selling more tickets.” And it’s frustrating – it makes you feel like someone is cutting in line, even though that’s absurd. But I’ve come to the realization of, well, it’s actually easier to get an audience now. The frustrating thing is that it gets oversaturated but if you do come out the other side and you’ve gained an audience, you really proved that what you have is a valuable product. I just hate having to work that hard. (Laughs)
I respect your honesty.
Having to work really hard is frustrating. However, people do keep showing up and I’m fortunate that Netflix is like, “We want to show your special,” and that only leads to more eyeballs and bigger and better things, I hope. And I can’t really be upset about any of it. I’m in a spot where if you told me when I started that I’d be here in 22 years, I’d be like, “Well, that’s the goal.” I’m sitting at the target and I just have to remember that.
Back to your hour, in the end credits, you thank MDMA, which I wanted to ask about because it made me laugh.
I had to. I went to Burning Man last year for the first time and I tried MDMA for the first time and I really believe that that is what sparked the fire of tapping into this vulnerability and not being afraid to speak my feelings. Because as you know, on MDMA, it is so easy to do. I loved how effortlessly I was telling my friends how much I loved them and talking about how much I love the experience and getting to words and emotions that my brain usually blocks me from because we’re all hiding everything. And so I was like, I got to thank MDMA. I mean, it might be the reason the ending of this special even happened.
Before I let you go, I need to know, on behalf of your late father: how are the merch sales going?
When the credits roll, we put my website up there and there are two shirts that we made. If people buy them, 100 percent will go to charity. So, I’m hoping that people just lose their shit and really want the T-shirts. One of them has this dope picture of my dad, it looks like a damaged Polaroid, and it just says [Show Must Go On]. My buddy who opened for me designed it. I did ask my siblings, like, “Are you guys okay with me putting dad on a t-shirt?” I was like, “Because I think it could be really funny if this thing caught fire and a lot of random people have our dad on a t-shirt.”
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Rory Scovel: Show Must Go On is now streaming on Netflix.
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