Chapter 1: What insights does Billy Gardell share about his journey from stand-up to sitcom fame?
on this episode of the Commercial Break. As Chrissy and I gear up to do more episodes per week after we said we were going to do less episodes per week, I'm going to ease you into the whiplash with one of our more recent and final interviews for season number seven. The prestigious title of primetime television star has long since gone out the door.
With the emergence of Netflix and Amazon, Prime and Pluto, Disney Plus and HBO Minus, Primetime TV just doesn't hit like it used to, but go back just about a decade, and Primetime television stars were some of the most famous people on Earth.
From Friends to Seinfeld, Cheers and all the way back to MASH, having millions of people set an appointment to watch you do your thing in front of a live studio audience puts you in the upper echelon of fame and talent. Billy Gardell didn't do that once, he did that twice.
He was the star of I Heart Abishola, but you will probably best know him from his lead character Mike from the show Mike and Molly, where coincidentally, he shared the screen with a little-known actress named Melissa McCarthy. I'm telling you, there was a time when Mike and Molly was everywhere.
Fast forward a decade after Mike and Molly left the air, you can still find it in reruns, and we found Billy Gardell slimmer, wiser and funnier than he has ever been. Sometimes a guest is exactly what you expect. Sometimes a guest is nothing like you expect. And sometimes a guest is just everything you'd hope to expect.
Don't let anyone tell you Billy Gardell is past his prime or less funny because there's less of him. Neither of those things is true.
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Chapter 2: How has Billy Gardell's health transformation influenced his career?
And listen to this interview. You'll find out for yourself. I'll be back at the end. Enjoy our talk. The next episode of The Commercial Break starts now. Billy's here with us now. Chrissy, hi, Billy. How are you? Where are you?
Well, hello. Where are you? I am in my house in Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles.
Have you long lived there? Are you a long-time Los Angeles resident?
Chapter 3: What challenges does Billy Gardell face in Hollywood today?
I have been here. I'm originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so I still consider myself a yinzer, but I've lived in Chicago, New York, Orlando, Atlanta, worked all over the country, but I settled out here about 1996. Okay.
And why did you travel so much? Like, why so many places? Just as you were following the dream, you moved from place to place?
Yeah, just that's kind of where my stand-up career led me. Like, I started in Orlando and then worked all the gigs in kind of Florida back in the late 80s. I started in 87, and then I moved up to Atlanta and kind of branched into Atlanta. Working all the southeastern states, you know, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia.
And then made my way up to New York for a little bit and did the Northeast Corridor. And then Chicago, worked the Midwest states, and then finally made my way out here and About 25 years doing overnight success. That's what I usually tell people.
Well, we've talked to so many people, and I say this a lot on the show.
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Chapter 4: How does Billy Gardell balance his past fame with current endeavors?
An overnight success never happens overnight. 95% of the time. I mean, unless you're just some social media fluke.
Well, I was going to say until this internet slot machine came along. Yeah, you actually had to work at what you did before you got good and got picked.
Yeah, you just told the story. I mean, you told the story of how people traditionally had to do it, which is go out there and work the crowds until you have an audience large enough to be paid attention to.
And you cut your teeth. You had to break into television in some way, too. Nowadays, TV is the smaller component. Internet is the bigger component. And I'm in awe of what some of these guys have done through the internet. It's amazing. So are we. Really?
Chapter 5: What role does gratitude play in Billy Gardell's life and career?
We have them on. I know. So we're like, holy shit. No, no. I mean, I genuinely mean like the landscape and entertainment and what we –
god bless you what we find in uh you know what we're how our viewerships shift every year and then now what it is it's it's it's so different you just don't know what's gonna catch or why it's gonna catch and so um i think the odds are kind of good for young artists you know with with the internet but uh the other side of it is there's everybody's doing it you know whatever that uh
15 Minutes of Fame saying was, that's very true.
It says, in the future, everybody will have 15 Minutes of Fame. That was Andy Warhol. And he was right. We're here. Yeah, we're here. We're in the moment, right? And, you know, like you said, when you got on, when you... We're on Mike and Molly.
Chapter 6: How does Billy Gardell view the evolution of television and comedy?
That's like a huge, phenomenal success where millions and millions of people are tuning in every week, in syndication, rolling and rolling and rolling. That is now so less likely to happen to somebody, to have that captive audience every week after week after week.
No, that'll never happen again. That kind of television viewership will never happen again, just because One, the internet has taken over all of mass media, and that's okay. That's just what the game changes. You evolve with the game or you just get out of the game. But the idea of us all watching something at the same time again and talking about it on Monday, those days are long gone.
You know, now you see something and you go, did you see? And someone goes, no, I didn't see that. And they have to look it up. And there's just a lot of stuff, man. There's a lot of moving parts.
Yeah, I think we discussed this a little bit before we started the interview, but there is this kind of double-edged sword where one is now you don't have to wait. You can find your audience, right?
Chapter 7: What advice does Billy Gardell have for young comedians today?
There is an audience out there for almost everybody. If you have a lick of talent or a good idea or one joke that hits, then people can find you or you can find them. But there is no mass media attention anymore, and the audience is so fragmented. Divided, yeah. And you have to rely on the algorithm to get you there. And that may not happen for everyone who's talented.
There's kind of like no – there's no farm team anymore, right? No. How long were you here in Atlanta? We're in Atlanta, by the way. How long were you here?
I lived in Atlanta for about – I want to say four years before I headed up to Chicago. I lived in Marietta, right outside of the city, which I just loved. I lived off of Delk Road.
Chapter 8: What can listeners learn from Billy Gardell's experiences with personal growth?
Oh, yeah. I've lived off of Delk Road. Of course, I've lived everywhere in Atlanta. There was a great little barbecue joint in my neighborhood, and you could get a two-bedroom apartment for $700. It was a different time, you know?
Did you live in Atlanta during the Olympics? Is that kind of during that time period?
Yeah.
i don't when were the olympics were they 96 no i left i left right before that that's when i headed for la well i had actually left for chicago in like 94 and then headed to la in 96 i think how did you come upon mike and molly excuse me for not knowing the story but how did you come up no it's okay how did you come upon mike and molly i'm interested to hear this
Well, my thing is I've always, that was my goal when I set up. You know, I was always a sitcom fan. I'd watch them with my dad. And so when I was young, when I was very young, I wanted to be a stand-up. I knew that right away. I knew that at like nine years old. And then I wanted that to lead me to a sitcom because, you know, that was what I was interested in.
And I was lucky enough to get to do two of them. You know, I did Mike and Molly and then Chuck. Lori came up with another idea and said, I think you're right for this one, too, which is unheard of. You know, that's two Super Bowls. But Mike and Molly, it was at a weird time, man.
I was at a place where I was actually thinking about leaving Los Angeles and moving back to my hometown of Pittsburgh and maybe jumping on the radio there and having a good life just doing that. And I was kind of at my rope's end out here. And I told my friend who was going to put me on the radio show, Randy Baumann from WDVE, that... I said, I'm going to ride out one more pilot season.
And that used to be a time out here where there'd be like a three-month stretch where they'd order 50 pilots. And to give you perspective, nowadays they order five. I mean, it's really shrunk down. But you would try to get on a pilot and hope it got picked up. So I said, I'm going to ride out one more pilot season. And I only got, I want to say... I remember it as six.
It might have been four auditions the whole three months, and the last one was Mike and Molly. It was literally a Hail Mary into the end zone. Hail Mary into the end zone, literally.
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