When comedian Lewis Black performs at upcoming shows, audiences will see a version of the next comedy special he plans to film. “It’s all about the pandemic and how I’ve responded to it,” he said. “This is the fastest I’ve ever come up with a special. It usually takes a couple years, sometimes three. And I started this really when I hit the road and started touring last December.”
Black is known for his rants (you can watch several of his “rantcasts” collected on his YouTube channel) but at the end of each show, Black also reads from the rants sent in by fans. “I’ve been doing that after the show for quite some time.” Because he’s toured so extensively, has he found that rants are regional or pretty universal? “Certain cities seem to be more irritated than others, where you kind of go wow.”
Before he started in stand-up comedy, Black was a playwright. Later, he became a household name thanks to his appearances on “The Daily Show.” He’s an actor as well, landing his first role in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters,” followed by guest roles on “Law & Order: SVU,” “The Big Bang Theory” and as the voice of Anger in the animated film “Inside Out.”
It was his pursuit of an early acting job that came to mind when asked about a worst moment in his career. “It’s the greatest lesson I learned,” he said.
My worst moment …
“I auditioned to be myself. This was way back, probably in the mid-’90s maybe? Joy Behar, of ‘The View,’ had a sitcom pilot about a school written for her. At this point I was transitioning out of the theater and moving into stand-up; that was my new career and people were responding to it, and then I was getting auditions for stuff as an actor.
“So (the show’s writers) saw me perform — I think because Joy had recommended some of us to potentially be on the show — and they wrote a part for me, and it was based on my act. They basically took my personality and made it into a history teacher character. And I thought, wow, this is great!
“They flew me out to Los Angeles, I went to the hotel and this is when I should have turned around because I think God was sending me a message. I get out of the car and the valet says, ‘Oh, are you the new valet?’ And at that point, I should have either turned around or taken the job (laughs).
“So the next day, I go to the audition. And there were something like 12 people in the room. I don’t really want to work in an office, now I’m in an office in front of a group of people like it’s a board of directors meeting, only I’m standing up and I have to perform. But I felt very comfortable. A little nervous. But I knew this character because I had given them half the lines! It was really written for me. And I’m easy to write for — it’s like writing for a big, barking dog (laughs).
“So I did this audition and I thought it went pretty well. I got some laughs. But they only had me do it once. I said, ‘You know, I can do this again and if there are some notes you want to give me, I can do that.’ They said no, it was great, they didn’t need to see anything else. And there’s an acting phrase, ‘There’s some other colors I can bring to this scene’ — I spent thousands of dollars on acting school and this is what they give you, ‘colors’ — but they said, ‘No, no, you nailed it.’
“So I walked out of the room, closed the door, then opened it and said: ‘Are you sure you don’t want to see me tap dance?’ And they all laughed and said no. And I said, ‘Then why did I take the lessons?’ You want to leave them with something to remember you by. Just a little cherry on top of the fact that they wrote it for me!
“And then a day later I got the call that I didn’t get the part (laughs). They found a better me! It was amazing — how can you audition to be yourself and not get the role?
“They gave it to Paul Sand, who I believe was a Chicago actor (he was an early performer at Second City). He was certainly more of an actor than I was. The show never got picked up, by the way.”
Hollywood can really test your sense of self, let alone your ego.
“I was in a state of shock. Joy and I laughed about it; she thought it was nuts and we commiserated.
“The only upside was that I had not planned on acting as my career; I still had stand-up to fall back on. But I was broke. I mean, really broke. I had nothing. And if I had gotten this job, I would have made more in a week than I had made in a year. So there was that profound disappointment.
“But there was also something else. I had friends in this business, really fine actors — I went to drama school at Yale and I knew people who were truly extraordinary actors — and they were getting (screwed) too, so all of a sudden it became clear to me what show business is about, and it has nothing to do with what you do. Even though they wrote the part for me — and I thought I was a pretty good me — it wasn’t enough!
“But how is there a better me? Nobody is better at being me than I am!”
The takeaway …
“At the time, my takeaway was: This is going to be great when I go back to New York and talk about this on stage as a comic (laughs). I may have lost a job, but at least I got 10 new minutes of material! So I could go back to the scene of the crime — the club where those TV writers saw me — and perform and tell the story.
“So it was a horrible moment, but it was also a great moment. I had seen my friends go through stuff, and it validated my feelings about Hollywood. Don’t let it define who you are.”
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