Jim Gaffigan Reflects on His Unusual Path to Stand-Up

A few minutes into his new Amazon Original comedy special “Dark Pale,” hitting the streamer July 25, Jim Gaffigan delves into some topical issues — then speculates on how people might respond. Most people associate the veteran comic with his self-deprecating bits about his laziness, living with five children and his many ruminations on Hot Pockets. So, following jokes about COVID and plane crashes, Gaffigan stops for a second and notes, “This is usually the point when people ask, ‘When’s he gonna do the food jokes?’” As he goes further, discussing funeral decorum, he stops and asks the crowd, “Was that too dark? It’s gonna get worse.”

On the contrary, Gaffigan is only getting better. Since his television debut in the mid-’90s on “Caroline’s Comedy Hour,” the comedian has constantly adapted to a changing world while maintaining his incisive wit and affability. “Dark Pale” marks the comedian’s 10th comedy special, and while he finds big laughs in some somber topics, he can also mine humor from something as wholesome as a hot air balloon ride with his daughters. His agent, Nick Nuciforo, partner and head of comedy touring at UTA, has repped Gaffigan since 2005, and praises his wide appeal. “His brand of humor is both clean and hip, and I have seen him excel in both alternative rooms and rural settings,” says Nuciforo. “The ability to succeed with any audience is a superpower that opens up unlimited opportunities.”

A true Comic’s Comic, Gaffigan is also held in high esteem by his peers. Before he was an established stand-up and filmmaker and selling out theaters with his one-man shows, Mike Birbiglia cold-called Gaffigan after searching for any other comedians who attended Georgetown. Gaffigan not only answered his landline but met Birbiglia for lunch and gave the aspiring comic advice. Birbiglia says it was not only some of the best advice he ever received, but that he still seeks Gaffigan’s counsel to this day. 

“I think he’s a real master and student of artistic and entertainment autonomy —which is to say he creates his own specials, he creates his own material, he creates his own tours, the artwork for the tours, all this stuff,” says Birbiglia. “A lot of times if someone’s not great at that they can end up with a really watered-down marketing of themselves or cover art or material, but he’s extraordinarily focused and has great taste and is a very wise and generous guy.”

It’s no surprise Gaffigan is being honored with Variety’s Creative Impact Award in Comedy Award. He has had sold-out tours, three Emmy Awards, seven Grammy nominations for comedy album of the year, two bestselling books and was the first comic to hit reach one billion views on Pandora. Starting next month, he’ll embark on his “Barely Alive” tour, and this fall he’ll share four arena dates with fellow icon Jerry Seinfeld. 

He’s also a busy actor. And while the comic could easily slide into scene-stealing supporting roles in studio comedies, he has purposely sought out parts that cast him against type in unique independent projects like this year’s melancholy sci-fi drama “Linoleum” or playing George Westinghouse opposite Ethan Hawke in “Tesla.” 

Later this year, Gaffigan will be seen in Seinfeld’s feature directorial debut “Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story” and in “Providence” with Joseph Gordon- Levitt. He can currently be seen on Disney+ in “Peter Pan & Wendy,” playing Mr. Smee opposite Jude Law’s Captain Hook, and as part of the impressive ensemble of Steven Soderbergh’s miniseries “Full Circle,” now streaming its first two episodes on Max. 

The Setup

Not too shabby for someone raised in a small town in Indiana with a graduating class of 25 students. “In high school, the closest thing to the entertainment industry was the marching band,” Gaffigan reveals, adding that his school didn’t even have its own. He consumed “Saturday Night Live” and adored David Letterman — not just for his sarcastic, self-deprecating humor, but because that comic had also come from Indiana. And though he secretly wanted to be a performer, he says, “Everyone you saw on television, even local newscasters, were from a magical land. It just wasn’t a realistic pursuit.”

Gaffigan only ever did one play — the Moss and Hart classic “You Can’t Take It with You,” where he played the eccentric grandfather. “I loved everything about it,” Gaffigan recalls. “But what I really remember is I had a teacher, a very devout Catholic woman who didn’t like me at all. And even she came up to me and said, ‘You’re good at this.’”

Even having won over the toughest of critics, Gaffigan had no idea how to continue such a path; he had also been raised to seek security. “My father was the first one in his family to go to college. My grandfather made dentures, my great-grandfather worked in a coal mine,” says Gaffigan. “It took my family 150 years to get to the middle class.”

He did the responsible thing and studied finance, but still harbored this unspoken ambition. In 1990 he moved to New York City and took a job in advertising. Believe it or not, he had anxiety with public speaking. “It sounds absurd, given that I go on stage and make a living, but I would get so flustered talking in front of a group of people in a conference room,” he says. “Somebody I worked for said, ‘You should go and do improv classes.’” Improv not only led him to also take acting classes but also to attempt stand-up comedy after someone in the improv class dared him to do so.  

That goading gave Gaffigan the excuse to finally attempt his dream, but there was another factor that contributed — the death of his mother, Marcia. “I think the injustice of it, because she was only 53, had me rethinking this whole idea of following the rules,” he says. “I had grown up believing the thing to do was wear a tie and get a job and retire at 60 and play golf for five years until you die. After I lost her, I started re-evaluating my entire life.”

Gaffigan attempted stand-up for the first time six months after losing his mother. Asked if it went well, he codifies that he was surrounded by friends. “It was a safe environment,” he admits. “I don’t think I realized just how safe of an environment it was, because then I went on to eat it on stage for a long, long time.” 

Still, Gaffigan was living a double life at his day job in advertising, hiding his blossoming career from co-workers. “I think today we’ve been educated by YouTube and streaming services and decades of Comedy Central so there is a respect for stand-up comedy,” he notes. “But back then, if you weren’t on ‘The Tonight Show’ and were talking about being a comic, you were just considered mentally ill. I remember being so excited when I booked my first TV slot, on ‘Caroline’s Comedy Hour,’ but I couldn’t tell anyone.”

He became that oddball guy at work who “was more of a mascot than anything,” showing up exhausted and sleeping on his couch during lunch because he was up late taking classes or doing shows. “When they came in to fire me, I was actually asleep. They had to wake me up to lay me off,” he notes. “The worst part was, I couldn’t even use it in my act because Dave Attell already had a great joke about being woken up to get fired.”

Gaffigan says there were no hard feelings — in many ways, the company did him a favor by freeing him up to pursue his career full-time. He was booking commercials and honing his stand-up skills until his big break came via his fellow Hoosier and idol Letterman. “I must have auditioned for ‘Letterman’ for about six years, and I was the last of my peer group to get on a late-night show,” Gaffigan notes. “And one of the reasons I got it was because he was doing a week of new comics — they couldn’t use anyone that had been on ‘Conan’ or ‘The Tonight Show.’” 

It’s no exaggeration to say that 1999 appearance changed his life and career. Letterman wanted to develop a show with Gaffigan via his production company, which had found success with “Everybody Loves Raymond” and Ray Romano. “It felt like the perception of me really changed because of him saying, ‘Oh, this guy is funny,’” says Gaffigan. “Suddenly, I was getting weekend spots at the best clubs and all the people I tried to meet with wanted to meet with me,” Gaffigan says. It led Comedy Central to give me a half hour, which led to me being able to sell out comedy clubs, which led to my first special ‘Beyond the Pale,’ which just propelled me to everything I’m doing today.”

Finding His Voice

Like every comic, Gaffigan went through a period of testing out different personas in those early years. He tried being “The Angry Guy” or “The Political Guy” before realizing it lacked authenticity. “Sometimes I’ll read someone and think, ‘I wish I could write like that.’ But the truth is, that’s not my personality, that’s not my point of view,” he says. “And your point of view is important.” He eventually began leaning into his strengths as, well, himself — a likable Midwestern fellow who makes jokes at his own expense about being lazy and mediocre. “It might be a little exaggerated version of myself — I probably pretend to be more misanthropic and grumpy than I am in real life.”

Key to his longevity is Gaffigan’s ability to adapt with time. His manager Alex Murray, a manager and partner at Brillstein Entertainment Partners, says, “He and his act are evolving. He’s not the same guy I met 22 years ago. He’s constantly changing and maturing. I think that is why the audience keeps coming back. They know it won’t be the same show, but they know it will be good.”

When Gaffigan and his wife Jeannie began to have children, he vowed he wasn’t going to talk about them in his act. “I wanted to talk about things that are universal,” he says. “I remember watching other comedians talk about their wives and kids and thinking, ‘I can’t even get a date, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’” But Gaffigan, who often says “comedy is self-assignment,” realized “your assignments shift.” So within a few years, the man who once didn’t think he wouldn’t discuss his children onstage titled his 2013 New York Times bestselling memoir “Dad Is Fat.” 

Some things remain consistent through the years — it’s impressive that Gaffigan can keep coming up with new and genuinely hilarious takes on diarrhea. And people often comment on how they appreciate the comic keeping his act clean. “It wasn’t some grand scheme,” he says. “I’m not reinforcing values. I come from a small town in the Midwest where you only curse if you’re in a car accident or you just stubbed your toe. You’re not cursing when you’re talking about doughnuts.” He reflects on working in advertising and watching people with better vocabularies than him cursing nonstop. “I wasn’t offended, but I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t organic to me.” And when he began doing late-night shows on the regular, he had to remove cursing for network standards. “So as I wrote, it became easier to think up an option rather than worry about changing it later.”

Also unwavering: his commitment to perfecting his material. Observes Birbiglia, “I think that for him, originality is paramount, and I think that he prides himself on creating a lot of original material and whittling it down to the very best stuff for his audiences. And in that way, he respects his audience. And for that reason, his audiences continued to show up year after year after year after year.”

Despite the lazy persona on stage, Nuciforo says, “Jim is a master of his craft and obsesses over his material.” The agent recalls an incident where, just an hour before he was to tape a special, Gaffigan realized he was using similar descriptor words at two different points in his show. “He changed the word, and it killed,” Nuciforo reveals. “That level of detail is truly unique and demonstrates his mastery of the art. I know that we can put Jim in any situation, and he will shine.”

Concurs Birbiglia, “I think that sometimes an entertainer is willing to release a special that’s maybe fifty percent as good as it could be for a paycheck or to keep their profile high or to keep their name in headlines. But he’s never done that. He never mails it in. He always brings a thousand percent to whatever he’s doing.”

Stage to Screen

Murray says that from the start, his client made it clear he wanted to pursue dramatic roles as well — and he takes it just as seriously. “We once rerouted a cruise ship Jim was performing on so he could do a scene in a movie,” Murray says. “Jim is 100% committed to every project he is on.”

Gaffigan understands how the business tries to pigeonhole talent. As someone who did many commercials and guest spots on TV, he recalls when “Beyond the Pale” premiered and a nationwide newspaper covered it. “The description was, ‘Actor Jim Gaffigan tries stand-up’ or something like that. And there was nothing malicious about it, that was just the perception at the time.” 

At one point, Gaffigan was up for a small role in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2006 fantasy “Lady in the Water.” He recalls, “It came down to me and another guy and the other guy got it. But a week later I got a call that he wants to reshoot the scene and do it with you. It was just one day but I was like, ‘Great, I’m going to be in an M. Night Shyamalan movie!’”

“So the story goes, he took his kids to a movie and he saw a commercial I was in before the previews,” Gaffigan says. “I think it was for Sierra Mist. And he said, ‘Well, I can’t have that same guy be in a commercial before my movie.’ So they went back and swapped the other guy back in.” 

Though Gaffigan notes things have changed a lot since then, he originally struggled to straddle the worlds of acting and comedy. “If I was at an audition, I wouldn’t bring up that I was a comedian because some people believed stand-ups weren’t serious about acting.” 

But Gaffigan has always taken it seriously. And while he obviously doesn’t shy away from comedic roles — particularly in voice-over animation, where he’s in high demand — he found himself increasingly drawn to dramatic parts. In many ways, he says the genres complement each other. “In comedy you relieve tension but in drama, you sit in tension,” he notes. “So maybe because I have stand-up comedy as an outlet, I find it so rewarding to be a piece in a larger puzzle.”

So he’s been happy to take on supporting roles in dramas such as “Experimenter” and “Chappaquiddick” or films that balance comedy and drama including “Troop Zero” and “Away We Go.” Indie films have also granted him the opportunity to take the lead in roles that challenged his inherent likeability. That ranges from playing a bigamist in “Being Frank” to “American Dreamer,” a dark drama in which he plays a desperate man who resorts to kidnapping a baby.  

Gaffigan knows that his original fanbase might be surprised by his acting choices. “People who have seen ‘American Dreamer’ have come up to me and they’ll be like, ‘You really fucked up my night,’” he admits. “They’ll say they convinced their wife or boyfriend to watch a Jim Gaffigan movie and didn’t realize what they were in for. But in some ways, that’s what movies and good art are supposed to do.”

Gaffigan also has the lead role in Colin West’s feature debut “Linoleum,” playing Cameron, the host of a children’s science show in a small Ohio town who decides to build his own rocket to the moon. His wife Erin is played by Rhea Seehorn, no stranger to comics excelling in dramatic roles after working with Bob Odenkirk on “Better Call Saul.” 

Seehorn had never met Gaffigan prior to the film but considered herself a big fan. “I wasn’t surprised that Jim was an amazing dramatic actor — his comedy has always had that intelligent, observational, storytelling aspect to it. And, I’d be the last person to assume a comedic actor isn’t going to make a great dramatic actor anyway — given my experience with the fantastic Mr. Odenkirk,” she says. “I didn’t know though, until Jim told me, that he was trained as a dramatic actor and started his career that way … and then got into stand-up!”

Seehorn says the two took many “long walks on the muddy trail outside of our Best Western hotel” discussing the characters and the story. “He really is just so, so, very talented, intelligent, and generous as a scene partner,” she raves. 

Soderbergh, who directed all six episodes of “Full Circle,” concurs that “there is added value in the sense that he’s just a really fun presence on set.” In the series, Gaffigan plays the boss of Zazie Beetz’s U.S. Postal Inspection Service agent, a woman involved in a complicated kidnapping case. And while the combination of the Oscar-winning auteur and the Hot Pockets guy might seem offbeat for those not already familiar with Gaffigan’s work, he fits effortlessly into the tense universe Soderbergh has created. 

While Soderbergh has high praise for his dramatic chops, it’s amusing to note there was one scene that he worried Gaffigan wasn’t up for — considering his persona. The take involved known foodie Gaffigan having to eat an entire burrito. “I’m not somebody who grinds on a lot of takes but the guy had to eat — I don’t know — eight of these things?” Soderbergh recalls. “It was the only time I was concerned. I said, ‘Is this a problem? Jim, I don’t want to have this go on for too long. Can we do more? He’s like, ‘No, these are actually really good.’”
Coming Attractions

It’s a testament to Gaffigan that even someone like Soderbergh is impressed by his output. “He’s incredibly busy,” says the auteur. “His stand-up schedule is ridiculous; that guy’s constantly all over the country.” Murray says he “used to think it was ambition, but it is a joy of the work for him. Jim is the hardest worker I know.”

Point out to Gaffigan that this conflicts with the image he’s curated of laziness, and he concedes he might be taking a little creative license. “Well, I’m married to a woman who gets a Napoleon-like level of sleep, maybe five hours a night,” he notes. “So by comparison, I do feel lazy to her.”

With the new special and two new films already completed, Gaffigan’s next few months will be dedicated to his “Barely Alive” tour, kicking off Aug. 25 in Las Vegas, and the arena shows with Seinfeld. 

Yet Gaffigan still finds time to help. “He’s one of these people who I’ve done so many charity shows with over the years. We’ve raised money for the Georgetown Scholarship Program. We’ve raised money for voting organizations,” says Birbiglia. “When he is available, he’s always willing to perform for a good cause and raise money. He’s got a big heart. He’s got a bigger family. I’m always fascinated to see what he does next.”