Generally speaking, talk to any stand-up comedian, the people in this world who are the brightest and have the biggest smile often are struggling with a lot of things under the surface.
One of the biggest misconceptions about me is that I'm a comedian, which I'm not. A comedian is someone who can stand up in front of an audience and make you laugh. I've never done stand-up and I never will. I'm a comic actor. My comedy comes through my characters.
There are a lot of people who consider themselves 'spiritual,' but that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. I don't really talk about it that often, because there's too much talk in the world. Especially with Christians, there's more proselytizing than there is actual living proof of it. That's kind of sad.
Every round I have three little targets. Maybe it is just 'talk to myself properly' or 'stand up straight on the greens.' One day I might say, 'Don't talk to anyone.' On another I'll be a lot chattier. Or I might say, 'smile all the way round.' Little things. But little things turn into bigger things.
I don't consider myself a stand-up comedian. I consider myself a performer; a comic as opposed to stand-up comedian. Stand-up comedians stand there and do their bits; I break every rule in creation. If there's a rule that can be broken in stand-up, I'll do it.
I'm very much a stand-up comedian in my heart. That's really what I do. Now I'm trying to incorporate all of the different elements of my work as a performer, and use it as a stand-up comedian.
For every stand-up comedian, Just for Laughs is our Super Bowl. Every comic in the world goes to Just for Laughs in Montreal. And they presented me with the Stand-Up Comedian of the Year award for 2018. This is my Oscar; this is my Emmy. That's my baby now.
A lot of stand-up is talking about your perspective in the world and your experiences in life. And I think it takes any comedian a while to find out what their thing is, or what they feel good doing on stage.
Conclusions are based in time. We live in time. So any definition of success is bound up with time. With other things you can say, "Can I yo-yo? Can I juggle?" Usually you have a pretty small window in which to get your answer. Stand-up is different. You can't do stand-up for one night and say, "Am I a funny stand-up comedian?" In two months or two years you'll start to realize it.
I think often when we talk about things like cancer, the kind of final act at the end of the story comes with a cure. But we don't talk a lot about what happens after. And it took me a while to even acknowledge to myself how much I was struggling.
I love doing stand up. I think it's a really worthwhile art form. It's so unique in all the things it combines, in terms of it being philosophizing, preaching, speaking truth to power and basic communicating. It's a good way to talk back to the world.
Canadian comedians are generally more well-rounded... They have to do a lot more. In order to have a career in this country, you have to do everything. And in the States you can narrow-cast, you can be just a sitcom performer or a stand-up comedian or a sketch performer.
When you ask people who their favorite comedian is or favorite African-American comedian, people generally say Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, or Richard Pryor. Redd Foxx gets left out a lot.
I knew that drinking and doing stand-up was going to make me less of an effective comedian. And I just had a lot invested in wanting to be a really good comedian and so I stopped for that reason.
People talk often of Brexit as the biggest challenge since the Second World War. It is certainly proving to be a lot more difficult and complicated than was promised by those who won the referendum campaign in 2016.
I think I have got a lot better as an interviewer. I let people talk now which is something you need to do. At the beginning I thought jokes, jokes, jokes, I am a stand up comedian but I think I have mellowed out now.
Often the people with the biggest smiles can be struggling the most.