Lots of Laughs

One of the funniest comedy shows I’ve ever seen was the taping of Brad Williams’s Fun Size at the Lobero Theatre in 2014. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one laughing. Fun Size was his first comedy special, went on to become the highest rated special on Showtime, and was a key factor in making Williams — who was born with achondroplasia, a type of dwarfism, which plays a large part in his stand-up — into one of the most in-demand comedians working today.

After a busy decade that included many more comedy specials — his latest, Brad Williams: Starfish, premiered in December on the streaming channel VEEPS — TV shows, feature films, and a gig as the first stand-up comedian to headline a Cirque du Soleil show (their newest, Mad Apple, in Las Vegas), he’s back at the Lobero on Saturday, January 6, where he’ll perform two shows.

I interviewed Williams last week, as he was preparing his latest tour, titled TOUR ‘24. (I promise the show will be much more creative than that title.)

Have you always wanted to be a performer?  When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I wanted to perform. I wanted to be in front of people. … Kids get addicted to sugar. I got addicted to attention.

… I was at a stand-up comedy show and the comedian on stage started doing midget jokes. The audience around me was not laughing. They were very uncomfortable, and the comedian noticed that and said, “Why aren’t you guys laughing? Is one of them here?” And I just raised my creepy little hand in the air and was like, “Yeah, I’m here.”

And the comedian called me up on stage and he started asking me questions, and I answered the questions. Honestly, I wasn’t trying to be funny. But my answers got laughs. That was it — once I got those laughs onstage from, from a roomful of strangers from an original thought that I had, I was like, this is what I want, this is the thing I want to do. So yeah, 20 years later, here we are.

That’s wild. How old were you at that point?  I was 19. I was working at — and this is one of the things that got laughs, the guy asked, “so what do you do for a living,” and I go, “I work at Disneyland.”

I grew up in Orange County. It’s like a requirement that every kid works at Disneyland. When I said, “I work at Disneyland,” the audience laughed, and then I looked at the audience, and I said, “Shut up. I’m not one of the seven.” And that got a good laugh. And I was like, oh, man, that felt great. 

I was working in Disneyland, and I was going to school at USC, then started doing comedy for about a year, doing open mic nights. Then I got a great opportunity where I could go on the road. So, I went to my parents and told them I know, I have a year left at USC, that you guys are paying for and sacrificing so much for, but I’m gonna drop out to be a clown.

How did that go over?  Not well, as you might suspect. … My parents were incredibly supportive. But if any kid says, “Hey, I got a year of college to go but I’m gonna drop out because I already found what I want to do,” any good parent will be like, “No, don’t do that, finish college.” And that’s what they said. But I was pretty adamant.

The last time you performed in Santa Barbara you were filming a show. Other than logistics, is it different when you’re filming?  Oh, yeah, way different. I prefer not shooting because shooting a special, you’re just hyper aware of everything you’re doing on stage in terms of “Am I fidgeting with my hands too much? Is my hair out of control?” 

I remember shooting that special Fun Size and my eye got some makeup in it during the show. My eyes started watering and I’m like, “ah fuck, I’m recording this”. Whereas now that I’m coming back, I’m not shooting a special. I’m not worried at all. If my eye starts watering, okay, I’ll rub it. I don’t worry about continuity. I put a water bottle down and take a drink. I can move it … Obviously, I still want it to look good, but just those other factors that go into making a special now I don’t have to worry about so I can just give it my damn all. Make sure people in the audience are having a great time. And that’s my number one priority.

You’re doing two back-to-back shows (7 p.m. and 10:15 p.m.). Will they be the same?   I have signposts that I’ll definitely hit for both shows, but the beautiful part about stand-up comedy and the beautiful part when you’re not filming a special is that it can go any sort of way. 

What about with something like the Mad Apple Cirque show in Vegas?  When I’m doing the live show, and Mad Apple, it’s not just my show. I’m going on after two guys that juggle each other with their feet. That’s a whole other thing. Because I have to understand that this audience at a Cirque show probably isn’t as familiar with my work as my audience. So, I have to kind of introduce myself. Whereas my audience, I can just kind of come out and go, and they know what I’m doing, and they know what I’m going to do. But in terms of the unexpected always happening, this has actually happened a couple of times, during Mad Apple in Vegas we had technical difficulties: a lightboard malfunctioned and just stopped working. And in order to get it started up again, it takes about seven minutes to recharge and restart and redo the whole thing. 

There was just nothing going on on stage. And I ran out and I told the audio guy, “give me a microphone.” … I did about 10 minutes. And the audience had already seen me. So now I’m coming back. And it was so great, because it was so unexpected. The audience knew they were getting kind of a bonus show. It was such a cool, fun moment. I remember I got backstage after I did that, and there was a Russian Hand Balancer who looks like he’s chiseled out of granite. He’s just an Adonis of a man. And he sees me walk backstage, and he just has this look on his face, like he just saw a ghost. And I’m like, “What’s going on?” And he goes, “I have no idea how you do what you do.” I’m like “You go on top of the Empire State Building and balance on one hand … [and] you don’t know how I do what I do? I just talk. Like, if I mess up, a joke doesn’t go right. Oh, darn, I have another one. If you mess up, you’re dead.”

It just kind of shows you how people view stand-up comedy. … Jerry Seinfeld has a great joke about it, where he says more people fear public speaking more than death. So, at a funeral, they’d rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. 

It’s so strange, because for me, that’s where I’m the most comfortable, I am the most comfortable on stage with a microphone in my hand. And in front of hundreds, sometimes thousands of strangers, just talking. That’s where I’m the absolute most comfortable. 

Brad Williams performs at the Lobero on Saturday, January 6 at 7 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. For more information see lobero.org/events/brad-williams.