The self-deprecating stand-up comic discusses having a magician for a father, the challenge of mainstream comedy and his aspirations to build the next Disneyland. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: Who is Nate Bargatze and what makes his comedy unique?
From the New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. Pretty much whenever I watch a buzzy new stand-up comedy special, at some point I end up having to scramble for the remote control to hit the mute button because one of my kids has wandered into the room. The material's just too blue for their precious little ears.
When I was watching Nate Bargetzi's latest special, though, my 10-year-old walked in, I grabbed the remote, and then I realized I didn't have to do anything. Because the next joke he told with my daughter in the room was about drinking chocolate milk.
If stand-ups today often catch fire by being seen as transgressive and dangerous, saying the things others won't say about subjects others won't talk about in language others won't use, then Bargetzi has captured the zeitgeist in a friendlier way.
He's low-key and clean, and his comedy traffics in highly relatable stories about the foibles of family life, his confusion with modern living, and his own lack of smarts. It's an approach that apparently works. His was the highest grossing comedy tour of 2024. He's also found a new audience through a couple of recent and widely praised turns hosting Saturday Night Live.
And now he's branching out to a new area with his upcoming book, the self-deprecatingly titled Big Dumb Eyes, Stories from a Simpler Mind. That kind of aw shucks attitude is a trademark of his, but as I learned, it's actually masking some surprisingly bold ambition. Here's my interview with Nate Bargetzi.
It's interesting reading articles about you over the last couple of years since your career has really taken off and you hit a new level. And the writers of those articles always try and explain why you've gotten so big. But what's your hunch about why you have gotten to the place you've gotten to over the last couple of years?
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Chapter 2: Why has Nate Bargatze's clean comedy style been successful?
Like, why you? Oh, I always wonder why you. You know, I mean, I think you're just talking about relatable things. You're talking about, I think, authenticity. Not that I'm going out for authenticity, but you're in a world now where entertainment is, I think, there is no authenticity. You know, it's like you have the...
Wicked's and you have these Avenger movies and you have all this stuff that's great, but there's not like a regular person like on a screen anymore. And where their movies used to kind of be like that, where you would see planes, trains and automobiles and home alone. And you would have someone be like, all right, that's a guy. That's a regular guy in this movie that you enjoy watching.
You know, it's like easier to watch and it's just easier to take in. And you just want to be entertained and you don't always want to be thought provoked. And that's something that I've always tried to stay clear of because I realized like, you know, I need to, I'm trying to sell you something. I'm selling you entertainment.
So I need you to be able to come and trust that you're going to get the entertainment that I am showing you that I'm selling you.
You said, I'm selling something, which is an interesting thing to hear because obviously that's true. And obviously that's true for just about everyone in the entertainment business. But usually, in my experience, people aren't so explicit in saying that. Why do you think there is hesitation on the part of some entertainers to say like, hey, I'm selling something?
I don't know, because I think there's got this weird, I mean, it's just I think kind of in life in general has got this self-importance. You know, I have a platform, so I need to say something on this platform. And I'm kind of anti-platform. I don't need to use this platform to tell you what to do.
You know, if I go want to give you my opinion and like tell you what I think and all this, I also think that's a lot about me is what I think. And when I go on stage, I try to remind myself this night's not about me. It has nothing to do with me. If it becomes about me, it's too much. I can't handle it. But if I can make it for other people, now I'm just kind of an employee and I'm working.
And so I'm just making stuff for people. And so it's not about my self-importance or any of that stuff. It just doesn't matter. You don't need me to do that.
Help me understand the distinction you're making when you say, you know, I don't want it to be all about me because your material, it is largely about you.
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Chapter 3: How does Nate balance personal material with audience connection?
Your family is the source of a lot of your material. Yes. You know, and your wife in particular. And I did wonder, does she have to vet the jokes that you tell about her? Like, if you're coming up with a joke based on something she's done that annoys you, say, or that you found strange, do you then go to her and say, like, hey, I'm working on this joke. Are you okay with that?
Yeah, I'll tell her. Yes. I mean, there's a couple of times I'll go try it first to make sure I even want to. Because if it's not going to work, then maybe there is no reason for me to bring it up to her. But then if it works, you're even in more of a bind. But if it works, then I go and I can figure out how to say it. And I always try to make fun of myself, too, in it.
When I first started, I would do jokes about my wife and I could tell that the audience didn't. If they don't know you and if you don't show love, then they're not going to go with you. So if you show that aspect of it, then you can get away with quite a bit.
With my daughter, I'm very sensitive to try to... I haven't talked about her a ton outside when she was a baby because I didn't want her to... I want her to be her own person. I want her to be able to trust that she can come to me as her father, which is the most important thing, and say stuff to me and not think anything she says I'm going to go tell the whole world.
So it's splitting that balance to be like, I want to be very protective of that for my wife, for my family, for any of them to know that, you know, I'm not just using all of them to gather material.
Your dad was a comedian and a clown. Yeah. When you were growing up. Do you and he have any competitive feelings about comedy?
He did. So he was a clown at the beginning and then he did magic. He's a magician. And, I mean, he'll tell me, like, jokes and stuff and say, well, you didn't say this and say that. So I can talk to him about comedy and all this. But... Yeah, competitive. I mean, he comes out on the road with me, and he's done a hundred and something shows with me in arenas, and it's, I would say competitive.
I mean, it's like different. I mean, when he came up, you know, they had three kids, and He had a day job and he did all this stuff. He could have moved to Vegas when we were younger and he chose not to. And so we grew up in Nashville and I think grew up with a very normal, I mean, as normal as you can with your dad being a magician. But he's very proud and he cries when he brings me on stage.
You know, I ask just because, you know, it's not, I don't think it's uncommon for when fathers and sons go into the same or related lines of work for that to sometimes be emotionally complicated.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Nate face starting out in comedy with clean material?
A lot of Buffalo Bills gear.
Yeah. According to my family, the Bills won four in a row.
You have been doing this a long time, but it's probably in the last six or seven years where you sort of changed actually how you look. Yes. You got a different haircut. You grew the beard and mustache, started dressing a little cooler. I think maybe you lost some weight. Yeah.
Did the impetus to do that come from you or did a manager or agent say like, hey, if you want to get to the next level, we might want to think about making some changes? Yes.
Yeah. Kids show business showed up and goes, hey, fat. So if you want to make it, you better get you better get your life together. No, I mean, it was it's both. It's a mix. No one told me to do anything. I mean, as a comic, weirdly enough, you're you and you're talking about yourself. So you are going to be you. But I wanted to do it, too. And I'm going through it right now.
I mean, I you know, I do not have great eating habits. And when I grew up, we just ate because you had to eat. Food was never celebrated. Food was just something you had to do. And so I eat a lot of fast food and a lot of chain food, and I get in on the road. And I do realize it can get in the way, though. I realized that.
I stopped drinking in, like, 2018 because I knew if I wanted to get where I wanted to get as a comic, this was going to be in the way. And so I've realized that with food, too. If I want to do this thing, I want to do stand up at this high level, possibly make some movies, all this kind of stuff.
Even for myself, I realize, all right, well, I have to go put in the effort for me to be able to handle all this kind of touring and in the mentality it takes to stay focused.
Which is interesting to hear you say that because you don't think of the image that pops into the mind when one thinks of a comedian as not like a super fit guy.
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Chapter 5: How does Nate incorporate his family into his comedy?
So it's like, let's start with something super fun and then just get into a habit.
Do you have a sense of what that book would be?
uh there was i looked up like the most popular books it was like christina agathy is that her name it's like an author uh agatha christie agatha christie so i was all backwards uh i think i'm dyslexic so that should count as i said it correctly in my head wait that wasn't just a bit christina agathy No, I thought that's what it was. I'm sorry. I ride the line.
You don't know what's a bit, what's not a bit. You know, I'm very protected. No one can really tell what's going on. And then I can, you know, depending on who I'm talking to, I can decide if it was dumb or not.
And, you know, even... Just the title, Big Dumb Eyes, or you already made some self-deprecating allusions to your own level of intelligence. I know that's sort of the persona, but stand-up, almost by definition, at least from my perspective, really requires... You know, comedians can act stupid or tell stupid jokes, but comedy involves crafting the material.
It involves observational insights and editing the material. You need to have some facility with words. Are there aspects of comedic intelligence that do transfer over to day-to-day life?
Yeah. It's awareness, being aware of just your surroundings and what's going on. Because you're looking for material. You're looking for things that happens to make a joke about or tell a story about. So you're always very alert. I mean, it's exhausting because it just doesn't feel like it turns off. You analyze every interaction you have.
I like seeing when I see two people talk and I realize that neither one of them really know what they're saying to each other and they're kind of on a different page. That's very fun to watch.
Is there an example recently that comes to mind of just something out in the world that you observed and thought, oh, maybe there's material in here for me?
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Chapter 6: What is Nate's relationship with his magician father like?
Like and it's like I want to make stuff that people have somewhere to go to with their whole family. And, you know, it's easy to watch and it's fun.
Maybe this is related, but in the acknowledgements of the book, right at the end of the acknowledgements, you're writing to your fans. You write that it might not always seem like it, but I do have a plan and I hope you keep rolling with me.
Yeah.
What's the plan?
The plan is, I mean, I'm kind of doing it. It's like the plan is to be, if you found me... And you like what I'm doing in this is I don't want to betray that trust. So the plan is just to trust me. You know, I don't plan on touring forever and doing stand-up forever. I mean, I want to make movies.
I think you get a lot of times that people can think, like, if you get too big, are you going to change? I mean, look in the South, I can tell you right now, you can be like, oh, you're Hollywood now, or you're this, or you're that, or you're going to... The audience is very much in my mind with everything that I will make, and I will make stuff... hopefully for them and with them in mind.
I'm not doing it, again, I try not to do it for me. It's not to get my point across. My point does not matter. It's for you. And so I want them to be able to keep coming and see that I'm... trying to do something I think that's a little against the grain right now.
And weirdly enough, something being broad is, you know, like when I started comedy, some comics were like, well, I'm not for everybody. And I was like, well, why would you not want to be for everybody? I want to be for everybody.
After the break, Nate and I talk again, and he tells me about his desire to serve a sorely neglected comedy audience.
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Chapter 7: How does Nate view his lifestyle changes and physical appearance?
I kind of disagree with that because it's hard to, you know, mainstream is not something that's easy to attain, even with movies. You know what? I mean, Sandler did. That's not easy. That's why there's not 40 Sandlers.
I remember you on The Tonight Show, 2016, and you did a couple jokes about how you like Donald Trump, but then the joke was basically like, because you're so stupid that you believe all the insane promises that he made. Yeah. But then in the same routine, you had these jokes about, well, you wouldn't vote for him.
In that instance, then the joke wound up being because you were essentially too stupid to figure out how to go vote.
Yeah.
But would you do material even on that level now?
I would now if I felt it. So that was the reason I wrote that joke was because everybody was saying they didn't like Trump, every comedian. So all the jokes were saying I didn't like Trump. So then I thought, how can I make a joke that say I do like him and be able to do it on tonight's show where I ride a line? Yeah. where no one's going to get mad.
I don't want the people voting for Trump to get mad. I don't want the people that are not voting for Trump to get mad. I wanted to say the opposite of what everybody else was saying. So if I have an idea and I can do that, I will do that. I do like that challenge.
Are there other topics like that that come to mind where you feel an instinct to go against the herd in that way?
Yeah, I did it with the peanut allergies. I had a joke about airplanes when they say you can have peanuts. Like, who are these adults addicted to these peanuts this bad? These kids are going to die. And so that was one that there's a lot of people that would make fun of the peanut allergy aspect. And so it's just going the opposite way and just defending the kids that have the peanut allergies.
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Chapter 8: What inspired Nate to write his book 'Big Dumb Eyes' and how does he view reading?
And I'm fine with being told no, but I just want to know it went through the whole system. I want to be told exactly like the building's not big enough or whatever. And for this next tour, we do have bigger screens. Because I get a lot of people when I say I want to do a theme park and I've had it with friends where I say I want to do this and they're like, why? Why would you?
You basically get told you can't do anything because it doesn't make sense for, I guess, how I've lived to think that I want to go do all this other stuff. What would be in the Nate Land theme park? Just rides. Rides.
Ideally, I would want it to be like a Universal Studios kind of thing where we can be shooting movies on one part and then you have the theme park on the other and kind of just build that. I just want to build a world where people can be discovered. I think that's a big driving point for me. When I came up, I think a lot of people would not get out of the way for the next younger people.
Like in comedy clubs, when you're coming up and you can't get spots at that club because the guys that have been there for 15 years are not moving or going somewhere else. And so I want to have places for new artists to be able to, I don't know, come do something.
I don't want to be another one of those naysayers, but Universal Studios slash theme park. I think you need like a billion dollars to do that.
Yeah, well, look, we got some stuff we got to get through, you know. I was going to ask you how much money you have, if you could give it to me. We're asking for everyone doing a Venmo. You need a lot of stuff. I do agree. The one thing I've learned, though, is in a business, money's not the problem. People have a lot of money.
There's a lot of money, and money gets used in a lot of different ways and stuff like that. So hopefully we can get there. This is not something that is going to be tomorrow, but... But I feel, like, driven to do it. So, you know, we're going to give it a go.
I want to go back to the book. In it, you mentioned that you were raised Baptist. Your parents are Baptist. And you write very movingly about how your dad at one point found a deeper level of faith. You call it his moment of testimony. Have you had a moment of testimony? No.
Uh, yeah, I mean, I feel sometimes I'm having it now, you know, I mean, I think that's where the drive and all this stuff is coming from to make sure that you can bring your child to my standup show that I want you to come as a family and you go do stuff. And I think about those moments of.
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Chapter 9: What insights does Nate share about comedic intelligence and observation?
in the grand scheme of things you're not doing no one's in school no one's taking a test no one's it's not this crazy important days but those those are the ones that you tend to go back to and remember and so yeah creating those moments i always see older uh i'll have a lot of grandmothers come to my shows and they love me i do really good with grandmothers
And I always loved that because I don't think there's much being made that they could go to.
Certainly not stand-up comedy.
No, no, no. That's the goal. I'm trying to be only grandmothers. Shows are at 8.30 a.m. That's the late show.
Earlier you had mentioned that you don't plan on touring forever or doing stand-up forever.
Do you actually know currently when you'll stop? I do. I could see the next specials will be on Netflix. I could see maybe one more special after that. I don't want to overstay my welcome. I also want to get out of the way. If I preach it and I was frustrated by it, I need to live by that. And so I do think there's a point I need to get out of the way.
I need to step aside and let the next wave of comedians come up. And I don't want to be just hovering in the spotlight. And, you know, I got this tour and then maybe one more tour. And then just from there, just I got movies I want to do and then do that and then start running Nate Land.
I have to say, I feel like that's big news that Nate Bargetze knows he's going to stop in a couple of years. Yeah.
We're doing this interview in 10 years and I'm like, you know what? I got back into it. All right. I'm only doing stand-up. I don't have a theme park. I have a carnival. I have a carnival that travels. That's all I can make it. It couldn't do a theme park. Still something. There's still some rods.
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