Kumail Nanjiani (64:14)
And I was like, oh, this is a great feeling. I remember specifically just, like, riffing and her laughing like that. And I'd also really, really, really fall in love with standup. Like, from Fresh. You know, in college, I'd never really watched stand up. I didn't grow up with standup. But over breaks, I would go to my uncle's house in Georgia and I would, like, be up all night just watching HBO comedy. They had this series called One Night Stand where comedians would do half hours. You know, know, Gotten obsessed with Conan o' Brien and Letterman. And I was just watching this stuff and I was just devouring standup, and I just truly fell in love with it. And my junior year. But I'd never done anything, but I just loved it so much. And then my junior year, we had a little coffee shop on campus called Bob's Underground, like, tiny coffee shop. And this one kid who was older than me set up like, a standup show. And it was just like college kids going up and doing standup for the first time. So I went and walked. And I remember being so jealous of them, and I was like, okay, I have to try this. Like, I was so scared to get up on stage. But the only thing scarier was not doing it. Like, I truly feel like I had no choice but to do it. So I was like, okay, I'll give myself six months if I could come up with something. I like, I'm gonna sign up for this next year, and I'm gonna go do it. So I wrote. I wrote for six months. I wrote a bunch of jokes. And I have a friend of mine, Fred, who's still friends with. With me. He lives in Minneapolis. He was like, hey, do you want to, like, bounce our jokes off of each other? And I remember me being in his room reading my jokes to him, and he's being. He was like, hey, this is actually really funny. Like, he was kind of like, what the fuck is going on? Like, why? Why? Why? Why are you good at this? And I went up on stage, and to this day, again, you know, it's all my friends in the audience. It's just college kids to this day. One of the best sets I've ever had in my life. I did, like, a half hour, which is crazy. You don't general. You don't do a half hour until you're, like, five years into it. You don't get the opportunity. You're doing open mics, four minutes. I remember getting off stage and being like, I could do Letterman next week. And then I didn't do letterman for another 10 years, you know, But I did that, and it was great. And I remember just, like, walking around, people being like, hey, you're that guy that did stand up. You were so good, and you've never done it before. It was just this thing. And then six months later, my senior year, last semester, senior year, I wrote another half hour. I did it again, and it was so fun. And I was like, oh, this feels like the first thing that I could be good at that I also enjoy. And I was like, I'm gonna. I knew a lot of comedians came from Chicago, so I was like, I'm gonna move to Chicago. I'm gonna have a day job. Cause I needed A day job for a visa. I was like, and I'm gonna really see if I can, like, do standup in front of a real crowd. So I moved to Chicago with some college friends. I lived with them. And I remember looking through. We had this. It's gone now. I think this was called the Chicago Reader. And you just go through the thing, and it tells you where the open mics are, and just me going up, signing up, and getting on stage. And I was really lucky. I didn't really bomb until I didn't have my first, like, bad set until I was four or five months into it, which is pretty rare now I'm old enough that I can admit. And I wouldn't have been able to admit. This is gonna sound arrogant. It was just right from the beginning, standup just made sense to me. Like, from the beginning, I just understood how to write a joke, how to perform a joke, how to be funny in front of a crowd. I mean, I was terrible, but, you know, I was around other people who were terrible, and I just knew immediately. I was like, oh, this is something I can do. There are people I know who've been doing standup for 20 years, who've never done well, and I'm like, you are. It is so impressive that you're still doing this. Like, if I. If I had a bad set in the first month, I would have never done it again. So I'm lucky in that I didn't have that.
