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Los Angeles Times
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Nate Jackson made his name on viral crowd work, but his comedy is built on much more than that
There's a reason Nate Jackson's debut Netflix special arrives during barbecue season. Perched on a stool under the spotlight at his shows, the comedian spends most of the evening delivering hospital-worthy third-degree burns to crowd members who want the smoke. If you lock eyes with him in the first five rows, chances are you even paid extra to be his next victim by sitting in 'the roast zone.' During a recent pair of packed, back-to-back gigs at the Wiltern last month, the Tacoma-bred comic made full use of his flame-throwing abilities to torch his highest-paying L.A. fans over their questionable fashion choices, weird haircuts and bad teeth. As the evening progresses he dives deeper, extracting more information and grilling them about their personal lives and romantic relationships with a camera zoomed in on them, broadcasting their faces on a jumbo screen if they were at a Dodger game. When everything works right, Jackson finds a way to weave the stories of his random burn victims together in a way that makes the whole show feel pre-planned. Meanwhile, even as Jackson is busy making fans the butt of his comedic freestyle, the person laughing the hardest is usually the roastee. It's the mark of good crowd work that's not simply well done but more importantly done well. This ride of the unpredictable twists and turns is given the same spotlight and attention in his special as his pre-written jokes in a way that keeps the pace engaging while making his audience the stars of the show. It makes his debut 'Nate Jackson: Super Funny' a testament to the style and the brand of comedy he's grown from a weekly comedy night to a brick-and-mortar comedy club and now a Netflix special that bears the same name. Speaking of names … no, he didn't interview himself for this story. But a journalist and the comedian swapping professions for a day or two could be funny. Whaddaya think, Nate? Recently Nate Jackson spoke to Nate Jackson about his career coming up in the Tacoma comedy scene, refining his ability to improv on shows like MTV's 'Wild 'N Out' and using his crowd work skills to go viral on TikTok. Well, well ... Nate Jackson. Nate Jackson. I heard about you, man. When I Google me … we come up. What is the likelihood of that? It's been my whole career — searching 'our name.' Then there's a random guy [another Nate Jackson] playing a guitar and then all of the sudden, a third-string Denver Bronco [also named Nate Jackson] wants to write a book about playing football while high, and then he takes over the front three pages of our name. No worries, us doing this interview together will definitely help us both surge in Google rankings. So you're Nate Jackson. I'm Nate Jackson Jr., and my dad is [also named] Nate Jackson. So this is a lot of Nate Jackson. Some Nate-ception going on! [Laughs] Bars! Congrats on your latest special, 'Nate Jackson: Super Funny.' What'd you think? I thought that it was a great balance of what everyone's seeing on you on their phones [via TikTok] recently, and it also shows people what you spent your entire career doing in comedy before social media. You're able to convey the level of crowd work you do in a live setting really well. I know a lot of people say, 'Oh, crowd work is so easy to do,' but is it actually really hard? Oh no, it's easy to do. It's hard to do right. How did it start for you with the crowd work becoming a central part of your act? It never was a thing I wanted to go to as a central part of my act. I fought against that concept. If you work on a joke for three months, you want that to work more than the thing you just walked out [on stage] and said, 'Look at that light flickering.' But you can't control what is going to hit harder. Organic [humor] wins almost every single time when you're writing material. One of the main challenges is making it so that it's consumable by the masses. You want to write about things that people can relate to. You want to be relatable, right? Well, what's more relatable than, 'It's hot in here, and we can all feel it.' How did you get started in the Tacoma comedy scene? I started because I had a room in Tacoma, Washington. I had a lot of rooms in Washington, and I consolidated them into a Thursday night, and it was the 'Super Funny Comedy Show,' which is now the 'Super Funny Comedy Club.' But it was every Thursday, and I was young enough in my career that I was like, I need to produce a show that would pack this place out, and I don't have the skill set to be the [driving force] yet. But I can host; I can add a live band. I need my headliners coming from somewhere else. So that's why we had [big names like] Lil Rel, Tiffany Haddish, Leslie Jones, Deon Cole. So Tacoma was spoiled by the lineups that came and did [my] Thursday night. In doing that, every week I could write, but I could not keep up with the pacing of having a monologue every Thursday. [I was] a new comic without my voice. So I abandoned that. Sometimes I would make a joke and then say, 'Now I'm just gonna mess with who's in front of me.' And that [crowd work] muscle started to pulsate. Then I added a little improv to it. Then it I said, 'All right, this next [set] I'm gonna go up with [no material]. I'm gonna go up naked and I'm coming off with a 'W.'' It got to where people are like, 'Yo, I kind of like it when you just freestyle.' So doing improv on stage led to you freestyle roasting people? It didn't necessarily need to be a roast. I could be [a joke on] something I saw on the news that day. They just want to see me create — to just pick up the newspaper and then go off that. I'm like, 'Guys, that's a slap in the face to when I'm putting three, four hours in at Starbucks, working on the writing and making sure the punch lines are all there.' But it's the same thing I'm doing with the crowd work content. I don't just mess with people for the sake of messing with them. I am getting information to then plug into a setup. Now we're in a comedy structure where it's act out and mix up a set up, a punch line, etc. I want to make it worth slowing down the pacing that I would have if I was the only one talking and dictating the energy. When I go to somebody, it is now at their pacing. They can take four minutes on the answer, and people are now fidgeting in the crowd. I'm like, 'Come on now, hey, come on.' You got to keep it moving; that's the rule to what's happening onstage. It can go slow, but we need to feel like we're going from point A in a story or an interaction to point B. Sometimes maybe I'm going from point A to point C, and I hit you with some misdirection in there, then, wham to point C and all connects. People are like, 'Wait, so the last 10 minutes was a setup?!' That's what I pride myself on. So you, how do just say, 'Oh, that's crowd work' — is it? It's definitely more than what people ascribe to it as a part of a show. It turns the fans into the show in a way that they can walk away feeling good about — even if they've been roasted. And that's on me, because I could just be malicious and leave it bad. But I always, I try to uplift. I'm a 'Que,' a member of Omega Psi Phi [fraternity]. It's one of our principles, 'to uplift.' I don't want you to leave the show being like, 'Man, I'll never watch a show again.' No, it should be like, 'Okay, [he roasted me], but we had fun.' I'm not trying to beat up on people. I wanted to talk about the role TikTok played in your recent glow-up in comedy over the last few years. How did it help you develop as a comedian? I just started showing [my skills]. Once you start showing it, you're not a secret anymore. Comics would come to Tacoma — which is off the beaten path — and then be like, 'There's a guy up there that even as a host you need to have, you need to be ready to follow, because he's just — he's literally just up there winging it, and he's on fire.' Everyone in comedy knows the guy or the girl, and that was kind of what the stigma became. I was one of comedy's best-kept secrets. People would come up [to my comedy shows], they would see my razzle-dazzle, they would take little bits of my recipe and add it to their stuff. And so I would watch people years later and be like, 'Really … really?!' Don't come up here and take my sauce and then, because you got more shine than me, use it. It takes a lot to just be the person that can handle that and not develop a chip on the shoulder. But if I'm the creator, if I'm their origin and I'm the source of [my style of comedy], then I have no issue continuing to create. People were just like, 'You need to get online!' I was like, 'I am! I have every app and I'm tired now. How many things I gotta manage?' And it just got to the point where I was like, 'Alright, let me get on. Let me do TikTok. That's the app where people are following.' I saw friends that were having wild success on there, and I was like, alright, I'll try it. And sure enough, within six or seven clips — the seventh [clip] hit. It wasn't mega viral or anything, but it did more than my average video was doing over on on Instagram. I said, there's something to this. And I stayed on it. And then things kept it [growing]. And so I was watching, and the needle was moving. And so here we are. How often would you post clips on TikTok when you started using it? I was posting at least once a day. That is not easy, because you got to get your sound right, your video needs to be quality, and then you got to pull it, edit it, and caption the words that are on the screen. There's AI now, but all of us who were doing this [before AI] would laugh about it and be like,'When do you caption?' We'll watch a movie and literally just be captioning. For a five-minute video, a four-minute video, I'm talking about exhaustion ... Now, you plug that thing in [with AI] and the whole thing is done. Thank God, or thank computer. I don't know who [I] was supposed to thank in that scenario, but it streamlined the process so much more content can come out now. What took me all night long to get one clip out — now we do three a day. Or two a day now, at the very least. We talk about how AI can be a threat to original entertainment, including comedy. But are there ways AI and social media have changed the art form for the better? Yes, and we can do so much more. We can now edit a whole podcast in two minutes. You would think it's getting rid of jobs, and in theory it should be, but it should make one person be able to do so much more. Instead of someone losing the job, we have the capacity to put out way more content. So let's keep all of our employees, but let's now do 180% times more work. Also as far as AI goes, I'm okay if we stop right now for two years. Let's just stop right now ... before we legitimately are in a plot of 'Terminator.' With the type of show you're doing now, where do you see the future of comedy going? I think that what I'm doing it is the evolution of stand-up. You [can't] go on stage and just do your set the same way — the way you practice it in your mirror — in front of a blinding light, where you can't even see [the crowd]. What's the difference between being in front of seven people or 70,000 people? It feels exactly the same. I think there's a detachment between the person and the people. We've seen the guys that are such glitzy superstars — that just being there to watch it, that's the presence you want to be in. But with human interaction, every show is different. You have to be malleable and loose. You can't do your set, 1-2-3-4-5 — you gotta be able to go 5-3-2-1-4, with different segues on the fly. What's a better mechanic, the one that does the same 14 diagnostic steps no matter what car comes in, or the one that opens the hood and listens and goes, '[Your car needs a] timing belt, gimme a timing belt'? Let's say you have five jokes — your hot five. Three [jokes] are about your cat, one's about your mom and one is about a motorcycle. And you walk out on stage and there's a motorcycle club in the front four rows. Do you get off of your normal order and establish rapport with the audience by moving your motorcycle joke to the front, or do you set yourself up for failure by talking about your new cat for three jokes to a motorcycle gang? They'll listen to you if they like you. So get what will establish that first — be malleable. A lot of new fans of yours may not know, but you've had experience with improv years ago in the 'Wild 'N Out' days [on MTV during Season 8, circa 2016]. What's it like taking those skills you learned on TV and moving it to your own specials, podcasts and social media in this new era? It's all 'yes, and …' We take the current situation and go, 'What else can we add?' We're just building … the real talent, the expertise comes in when they build, and it's also a pivot, like the segue you just did right now to get into this topic. So kudos to 'Wild 'N Out' to being able to procure and find all of us and put us together. But all of us obviously had something, otherwise how do you catch the eye of a network showrunner? Shout out to Nile Evans and everybody that's a part of procuring the talent that ends up being the stars of tomorrow. We can be like, 'Oh, it's a little urban hip-hop show.' Or we can be real about the fact that Katt Williams and Kevin Hart and all these people have come down the halls of that show. I would argue 'Wild 'N Out's' alumni that have hit are as decorated or more than 'In Living Color.' This special feels like just a big culmination of your career right now. What's something you would want people to take away from it after watching? Live your life to the fullest. Love hard, play hard. We only got one shot at this. I left it all out on the stage. That's exactly how we should live every day. Bert Kreischer said [my new special] made him miss doing stand-up … that is so powerful. The best comics make you go, 'Why didn't I think of that?' or, 'God, I gotta write!' He didn't watch it and go, 'You know who you remind me of?' I think that's not flattering. He watched and said, 'I gotta get down on my stuff.' I don't know if it's like, 'Oh, this kid's coming,' or if it's just a, 'I respect what you do, I appreciate it, and it made me want to get back on my stuff.' I feel like it's more the latter, but there's going to be some of that 'OK, this kid's coming.' There's going to be nothing you can do because I'm coming, whether you like this special or not.
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Addison Rae Announces Dates For Debut 2025 Headlining World Tour
Addison Rae announced the dates for her first-ever headlining world tour on Tuesday morning (June 17). The Addison Tour is slated to kick off on Aug. 26 at the National Stadium in Dublin, Ireland and keep the 'Diet Pepsi' singer on the road through European gigs in England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany before she hops over to North America on Sept. 22 for a run of shows through an Oct. 19 gig at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. Rae's debut full length studio album, Addison, was released earlier this month, landing at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The former TikTok star hosted an exclusive, intimate album listening event at The Box in New York City on June 5, where she gave fans a first listen to the album just hours before it was released. She performed seven songs from Addison for the first time ever at the event, including 'Fame Is a Gun,' 'High Fashion,' 'Aquamarine,' 'New York,' 'Headphones On' 'Diet Pepsi' and 'Times Like These.' More from Billboard Addison Rae's 'Addison' Album: All 12 Tracks Ranked How Brandon Lake Is Leading A Whole New Flock To 'What's Real And What's True' In Christian Music Where Are the Blockbuster Soundtracks? The Screen Has Gone Dark for Hit Movie Albums Since 'Wicked' & 'Twisters' Pre-sales for the world tour will kick off on Wednesday (June 18) at 10 a.m. local time across all territories, followed by a general on-sale that starts on Friday (June 20) at 10 a.m. local time; click here for more information. Check out the full list of 2025 Addison Tour dates below. Aug. 26: Dublin, Ireland @ National Stadium Aug. 28: Manchester, England @ Manchester Academy Aug. 30: London, England @ O2 Forum Kentish Town Sept. 2: Paris, France @ L'Olympia Sept. 4: Brussels, Belgium @ Cirque Royal Sept. 5: Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Melkweg Sept. 7: Berlin, Germany @ Uber Eats Music Hall Sept. 8: Cologne, Germany @ Live Music Hall Sept. 22: Austin, TX @ ACL Live Sept. 25: Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom Sept. 27: Nashville, TN @ The Pinnacle Sept. 28: Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern Sept. 30: Washington, DC @ The Anthem Oct. 1: Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount Oct. 5: Boston, MA @ Roadrunner Oct. 7: Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore Philadelphia Oct. 8: Toronto, ON @ Rebel Oct. 10: Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre Oct. 13: Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom Oct. 16: Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater Oct. 19: Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern Nov. 11: Melbourne, Australia @ Forum Nov. 14: Brisbane, Australia @ The Fortitude Music Hall Nov. 17: Sydney, Australia @ Enmore Theatre Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ooh La La! Art Deco Exhibition Ends Today
Exactly one hundred years ago, the most fashionable designers from around the world gathered in Paris to debut an entirely new kind of modern design. The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes launched the style we now call art deco, and the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles has been celebrating all weekend at one of L.A.'s most magnificent secret spaces, the Oviatt penthouse. The private residence of clothing magnate James Oviatt sits 12 stories above his magnificent men's store on Olive Street downtown. The boutique closed in 1967 and sat empty for decades. His widow lived alone in the penthouse until she died eight years later. The space was restored in the 1980s and is occasionally open for special events. Today is World Art Deco Day, and until 9pm, guests and club members will be mingling amidst icons of decorative arts from the 1920s at 'Art Deco Tous Les Jours'—an original exhibit of stunning period artifacts including textiles, furniture, fashion, fine art, and a newly recovered painting long lost to the Oviatt. 'They can come see the exhibit and enjoy our centennial cocktail menu curated from period books by our vintage cocktail expert,' the society's executive director Margot Gerber tells Los Angeles. 'We'll have French music and curator talks in the gallery explaining the significance of the original expo and how it impacted Los Angeles.' Los Angeles City Hall, the Wiltern, and the Eastern Columbia building were all influenced by the style. The 1925 Expo sent shockwaves around the design world, inventing a whole new design vocabulary that found its way to fashion, architecture and everyday household objects. Suddenly, everything from vacuum cleaners to clocks went modern. A zeppelin-shaped cocktail shaker will be on view near original fabrics and souvenirs from the Expo, including some very expensive playing cards that were intended to be sold in Oviatt's clothing store. They're displayed near a carved bar that Oviatt had sent back from the original Parisian expo. The Art Deco Society is cooking up months of fun to celebrate. More outings to vintage venues like the Queen Mary, Tam o'Shanter and Yamashiro for their popular Cocktails in Historic Places series are on the roster. L.A.'s legendary Bullocks Wilshire department store, a temple to commerce and art deco, opens June 7 for a lecture on jewelry history of the 1920s and a perfumier will address the group at the Saban theater in Beverly Hills on June 29 to discuss Jazz Age fragrances used in everything from perfume to chocolate. What will become of L.A.'s mini expo tonight when the doors close at 9? 'When we wrap we'll just bulldoze it into the Seine river,' Gerber jokes. 'That's probably what they did in 1925.'
Los Angeles Times
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Morgan Jay is giving his audience the musical sex comedy they want (and an auto-tuned microphone)
Before we sit down for the interview, Morgan Jay is in the middle of a photoshoot — posing against a piano. Once he doesn't have to sit still for photos, he immediately begins to play an original song called 'Would You Be My Dad?' where he sings about learning how to tie a tie. The impulse to burst into song is natural for the musical comedian. Jay rose to popularity over the past few years for his use of an auto-tuned microphone in his performances and audience participation segments that went viral on TikTok. Now his popularity has transcended social media feeds; he's in the middle of a U.S. and international tour, including two sold-out shows at the Wiltern on April 11. 'For a lot of these people I'm their first comedy show,' Jay explains, something that many of his largely Gen Z fans tell him after his performances. 'So I give the people what they want from the internet, and then when they come to the show I exceed expectations.' Jay has been performing since hitting open mics in 2007 while in college. He had early formative experiences where he learned how to work with crowds, including as an intern on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and as a certified New York City bike tour guide. 'It teaches you how to be in front of people and be comfortable,' Jay adds. 'In addition to having to entertain them, I had to make sure nobody got hit by a car.' At first, Jay's comedy was centered around his skills as a musical comedian; he has a background in acting and choir before he began to pursue comedy. But it was his take on crowd work — where stand-up comedians base their material off of improvised interactions with the audience — that got people's attention. What once began as a way to engage audiences during corporate comedy bookings over Zoom, Jay's trademark is to go into the crowd with an auto-tuned mic and get people to sing alongside him. The effect of the microphone gives all his audience members the same electro-tinted singing ability. In the same suave way he can break into R&B stylings at any given moment, Jay has a way of relaxing his audience to make them feel comfortable enough to sing along. But the crowd work is only one section of Jay's show. 'I would say 99% of my audience knows me from the auto-tune, so when I do my full show and I sing a couple songs on guitar and do stand-up, I think they're a little bit surprised.' Jay says his show mimics how his audience often first encounters him: the chaos of a social media feed. 'It helps the show go from one thing to another thing,' he says. 'It speaks to that brain rot. One minute you're looking at this thing and the next you're looking at this thing. You want it to be dynamic.' And Jay has certainly embraced the brain rot-affected viewing habits of his younger audience. He allows audience members to film him throughout his performance, a rarity in comedy when locking your phone away in a pouch has become the norm for high-profile comedians. Jay's live shows also feature a camera man that follows him throughout the venue, broadcasting the footage on a large screen. 'I'll pay whatever the cost is [for the camera setup] because it changes the show and allows me to go anywhere in the room.' Jay continues, 'People love staring at a screen already. So they're at home now.' Jay's high-energy act goes beyond the stage and even the orchestra section of his venues. He often runs the entire length of the aisles and travels up to the last row of the balcony, cordless camera and operator in tow. 'Every seat should be a good seat,' Jay says. 'I didn't wanna lose that intimacy that these smaller venues had of everybody being able to see me.' While crowd work is inherently intimate, Jay embraces the form by centering his material on sex and relationships. His most common question to couples in the audience is if 'they're going to make love tonight?' And he often says his shows are perfect for a first date (messages in his Instagram DMs — which Jay reads — tell him his shows often lead to a second). When I ask Jay if he thinks he's the go-to sex comedian right now, he laughs. 'I've created this movement of the goofy gang,' he explains. 'I think that goes hand in hand with being sexy because you have to be a little bit physically and sexually vulnerable to have fun, right?' But despite his popularity, Jay doesn't consider himself part of the traditional comedy scene. He never hit the comedy career marker of performing on a late-night show (although he says he would love to go back to Fallon) and, despite living in L.A. for 13 years, doesn't see himself as part of the L.A. comedy scene. He says that some L.A. venues have turned him down in the past. 'For them, I'm just this TikTok crowd work guy,' Jay says, before quipping, 'I'm not bitter, it is what it is.' Jay skipped being a local draw to becoming an international sensation. His tour includes multiple stops in Brazil, which he claims he's the first American comedian to do. Jay also has imitators of his auto-tune crowd work around the globe, from India to Portugal. 'It's cool to have invented a style of delivery, but it is just answering the demand of what an audience needs right now.' Jay still embraces some traditional comedy career moves, including recent appearances in TV sitcoms like 'St. Denis Medical' and acting in the film 'Cotton Candy Bubble Gum,' which premiered at SXSW in March. And while he's gathering clips to put together into a special, he's willing to embrace whatever medium his audience favors. 'I've asked fans under 25, 'What's the last special you watched?' And they'll be like, 'I don't really watch specials,'' he says. But when I ask Jay if he feels like he has his comedy figured out, he paraphrases David Bowie's quote that artists should always feel like they're in the deep end, barely able to touch the bottom. 'I keep thinking, how much further can I take this?' Jay's evolution seems focused on his live show, which he is transforming into even more of a musical experience with the inclusion of a full band that he tested at the Kookaburra Lounge in Hollywood. 'I remember the smile my manager had from ear to ear [after the show]. He was like, 'Okay, you're going to do Red Rocks in a year.'' Jay clearly feels indebted to his viewers. He knows that certain fan-favorite songs and the use of auto-tune will always be a part of his performances. He puts himself in the position of his audience — and not just physically when he jumps from the stage — to craft a show for the modern era that appeals to everyone, including those who don't know his TikToks. 'I have to be my first fan,' he says. 'You have to sit yourself and be like, 'Is this worth $70 and ticket fees?' I think it is.' Jay then adds, 'Period! That's how the article ends.' In the spirit of group participation that's become the cornerstone of his comedy identity, Jay concludes the piece for me. And while it does not have the electronic vibrato of an auto-tuned microphone, it does sing.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
It's about damn time: Lizzo is back with new music and will play First Avenue in March
Lizzo is back. The Grammy winner, who took off while in Minnesota, released a new single on Friday alongside an announcement that she'll head to First Avenue for an intimate gig on March 18. The "It's About Damn Time" singer will have two other underplays leading up to the "homecoming" show in Minneapolis, including the Wiltern in Los Angeles and Irving Plaza in New York City. The flute-playing hitmaker has kept a low profile in recent years. Outside of contributing to Barbie, her last album was released in 2022. In 2023, Lizzo was sued by three former dancers who accused her of sexual harassment and a hostile work environment. The singer said the allegations were "as unbelievable as they sound and too outrageous to not be addressed" in a social media post. She later denied the charges in court. She was also sued that year by an employee from her wardrobe department. In December, a federal judge in California ruled that the former employee did not have standing to bring the case. Lizzo's sole live performance in 2024 was at a Joe Biden fundraiser, where she appeared with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at Radio City Music Hall. Despite speculation that a 2024 "I quit" tweet signaled she was done with the music industry — she later clarified that she wasn't quitting music — she's not just doing a couple of shows. A new album, Love in Real Life, will be released this summer. A music video for the title track (see above) was released alongside the announcement of the three underplays. Tickets for the First Avenue concert, which will surely go fast, go on sale Thursday, March 6 at 10 a.m. A presale will take place the day before. Fans can access the presale by signing up at
