you.

Yeah.

Do y'all look alike? So I look like the perfect mix between my mom and my dad.

My sister looks like my mom.

My brother looks like my granddad.

And my sister, Chris, she looks like her mom.

Wow.

and that was that

Is that a concern that you face?

Yeah, I mean, it's a concern.

I'm lucky that I have a pretty good setup with my team, and they know when I really don't want to do something.

Full transparency, there's cities that I get really excited about, but then I also have to wait a while.

I didn't go to Chicago all of 2021. five and then I came back this year and we sold out all those shows but I love Chicago and Chicago everyone who is a fan of my work in Chicago is so supportive but I'm not worried about burning out in a place like Chicago if I visit once a year or even a place like Seattle a place like SF a place like Philadelphia, a place like Chicago.

Markets like Tampa, I can only go once a year.

And I don't know if I should go.

So do you burn out at all? Do you manage burnout? What's the what's the way that you keep all this going and stay relatively sane? I assume you are relatively sane.

I promise you won't regret it.

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I feel like it's a beautiful tradition at every, every institution.

Mm-hmm.

They love it.

So I, I think that they are correct.

I believe that, but I think there's this weird ...

To say that sports isn't political is to deny, um, a, a visual and sort of, like, objective truth.

To deny that sports can get political and that people can leverage and that certain groups of bad actors can sort of coalesce around someone, so then that person, that particular athlete's- Mission is a bit tainted because they wanna crush, but they have to be asked about this all the time, and then they do have to give an answer about it because they...

And you know, I'm not dancing around saying Caitlin Clark and Sophie, but what I am trying to do is say, like, if you're an athlete and a group of people who say horrible stuff about your coworkers coalesce around, coalesce around you and sort of, like, prop you up on the internet in a way that is yucky to your coworkers, your peers-

You just hope.

[laughs]

Okay, okay.

Maybe y'all aren't gay, but y'all are gayer than when you walked in.

You're gayer than your great-great-grandparents.

That's how time works.

The present is bi, the past is straight, the future is gay.

[laughs]

Sometimes people ask me, they go, "Oh, Jay, you've been dating this white guy for so long.

That was pretty good.

I worked with three Serbian...

I was a personal trainer, sex worker.

I was a personal trainer when I first moved to New York City, and I worked at a gym with three Serbians.

One named Toza, one...

I think, named Ivan, and then another one whose name is escaping me, but his ass was pristine.

But his ass is not escaping you.

Okay, y'all cut for story reasons.

Right.

Well, Disney left that part out of Finding Nemo.

So the clownfish, they exist in groupings where there's one large breeding female, and she gets to breed and lay eggs, and the second-largest clownfish is the breeding male.

And so after those two, there are non-breeding males primarily.

And what happens is that when the female clownfish dies, the largest male, who was her breeding partner, goes through sex reassignment naturally and becomes the largest female breeding clownfish.

And then the second-in-command largest male steps up and becomes her breeding partner.

And-

[laughs]

I mean, that's just like, you know,

it's like you've been together for decades and decades and decades and decades.

Yeah, but I think that one of the things that really has been helpful, and I always kind of describe it as a pressure release valve, is that as a queer person, particularly as a queer person from a very traditional place like Mississippi, I never felt any pressure to do anything the normal way.

Because once you come out, you've basically, you've said my path will be very individualistic and it will not be wife, kids, job that you stay at for 30 years, retire, then you die.

But as a queer person, The minute you sort of make that declaration, that discovery of your queerness, you've already broken the primary rule, the most traditional of the rules.

And so then your life can take whatever shape and whatever form you want it to.

You can move to New York with your boyfriend.

Have you always been confident? I mean, in yourself, in your sexuality, and also, you know, when it comes to the big ogre of sex, it's like, have you been confident in that department as well? Have you always been a confident man? Well, I was lucky

Yeah

... with comedy.

And in my head, comedy, it was close to theater, but it was, like, so separate.

I was like, "Oh, I don't know." And then you would just keep seeing comics in stuff.

You'd be like, "Oh, that comic is also an actor." And so then I was like, "Oh." So then in, like, high school I started writing, like, funny sketches.

I was obsessed with SNL, so I would watch SNL and I would, like, talk...

I would, like, I remember I'd do Brian Fellows.

And it is on fire

Together, Jay and fellow stand-up Gianmarco Serresi perform at the Ice Palace in Speedos.

When I go to Fire Island, I'm just excited to go to the Pines as I am to go to Cherry Grove.

When I go to Cherry Grove for events, you know who I see? I see Wanda Sykes.

I see Anna Gosteyer.

I see Rachel Drash.

I see all these wonderful women there as well.

And so many of these gay boys want the girls to be in their houses.

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As a younger queer person, you kind of go, oh, why do gay people love disco so much? And then you get some taste and you go, well, disco's amazing.

And then you go, oh my God, this was the last party for so many of us too.

There's an element of honoring all of the people who aren't here anymore who loved Diana Ross as the boss, who loved Donna Summer, who loved Anita Ward, who loved Sylvester.

There is this celebration of resilience and the power of being a queer person alive in your 20s, alive in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, your 60s.

You know, I'm in my mid to late 30s now.

And there's this idea where I go, holy shit, there's a version of the world a few decades ago where maybe I'm not here.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was in DC, uh, but I was in DC f- I was in DC just for shows.

And they were wonderful.

I had, like, this moment where a guy who, like, I, like, remembered from something, he came up to me afterwards, and y- as a queer person on the internet, sometimes...

Gay men, please remind us of where.

It, it doesn't have to be the full story, but if you just, "Hey," we talked a little bit, or just, "Hey," we flirted a little bit.

You know my friend, so and so.

Porn.

I think it's because you are such a studious comedian that you come so correct to the conversation that you seem to feel strong enough to call it out and have more and more.

I feel lucky that that is a perception of me.

I mean, I went to grad school.

I was a graduate teaching assistant for three years.

I got a BFA and an MFA in acting.

So I do love craft and I love performance, but I also love intention and textual analysis.

And also I love being able to say, okay, what was the reason behind that? Or like, what could I guess might be the reason behind that? So whenever I'm kind of calling out people who are weird about gender performance and gender identity and expression in standup, I just feel like if no one else is going to do it, I should do it.

there needs to be retribution for their actions and they also need to be treated so they don't keep hurting people

Sports content

... he's not going to, like, the, the NBA Players Association and be like, "We gotta do this kind of stuff." He's not, like, actually ...

I don't think he was being that crazy.

I just think that, like, sometimes, especially with the way media and sports intersect right now, is that if you say anything, everything that happens to you after that, we do get to say, "That's why they did it."

And getting in.

That entire saga, there were...

So once again, online, because I know so many gay people who also like football, some of them were like, "Hey, man.

L- hey, hey, just let people cook a little bit." And then some people were, like, disgusted to a degree, where I was like, "Well, okay, you can be mad, and you can voice your opinion, but now I'm starting to think you've been wronged-

It was just fucking, you know, mean.

So the weirdest part of the popularization of what was originally the Friars Club roast is that the roast used to be kind of such an inside, very secretive thing.

I think around...

the 80s with the popularization of like the dean martin roast and i think also the roast of richard pryor if i'm not mistaken those like some of the first televised at least filmed and then sort of like uh kind of spread roast and then comedy central and so roast roasting As one comedic medium used to be truly reserved for people who are extremely close.

So it would be someone who was a coworker or peer or someone who knew very well, and they would both have like some pretty.

personal jokes and public jokes and then it sort of got very popular in the mid 2010s thanks in part to comedy central and so then roasting sort of was for celebrities but also then they were bringing people who didn't know those celebrities and then you would kind of just have to do some surface level stuff because you didn't know them that well and then it became sort of like oh, now there's roast battles.

And so like, you know, less established comedians would kind of just roast each other.

But, you know, definitely one of the uglier sides of of social media and the advent of the viral media.

Is he MAGA?

I, this, okay, so th- and this is the only thing I can say because I only know Nate through, like, acquaintances.

I think that there is a level of both curiosity and loyalness to a fan base that might be more MAGA friendly than any of us know.

W- the internet is so siloed and in such distinct bubbles, that you'll be like, "Oh, I, I know this person," but I don't know who their fan base is necessarily.

So you can see a person and go, "Oh yeah, me and them get along.

I like some of their stuff.

I like a lot of their stuff." But you don't know who else is liking that stuff, 'cause it's that specific brand of people.

This person said you're never going to appeal to everyone so you may as well appeal to the people you're gonna appeal to and have some dignity.

Loosen you up.

Yeah.

I'm telling it's fun.

And it's it's like one of those things where like cats is hard.

Cats is so hard because it is such a reimagining of a world.

They make Bustopher Jones good.

Bustopher Jones.

What you got?

[laughs]

Uh, I mean, my argument would be that the grenade should be full of laughs first and foremost.

I think the ability to harm a large group of people because you have an elevated and an amplified voice is something that right now we're still really s- trying to, like, articulate for certain comedians.

I know, I know that Dave Chappelle knows what words can do because words made him a multimillionaire.

Like, I know that he knows that not only words have power, but that analogies have power, and that, you know, being able to point, he knows that mob mentality has power.

So I know that anyone who's like, "Oh, well, like, isn't it the comedian's job to, like, shake up the room?" The, if the room is already shook up in regards to gender identity and expression, a cisgender multimillionaire man shaking it up ain't gonna make it better.

Yeah.

It would've been handled, and it hasn't been handled, and it keeps being muddied, and, like, they keep tying the kn- and now even, like, I think that, like, his interview when he was talking about, like, he didn't want, uh, I think it was Congresswoman Lauren Boebert to, like, post that picture of him, you have to know who you're permitting into your fan base, especially if they have nefarious intentions.

Um, yeah, it was, yeah, yeah

yeahAre you interested in getting on Doxie? [laughs]

By Iris Van Herpen, and it had real bubbles that

thatBen Stiller

Yeah

... readjust what I, what I said yes to.

'Cause, like, even right now, there's some things that I...

There's some comedians that maybe a long time ago I would...

Perfect example, there was a world up, up until, like, I wanna say, like, middle of, like, middle of 2020-something where I was like, "Ooh, if I, if I go, if I go on Joe Rogan, I could really, like-"

Any dates in, like, late May, early June?

Yeah, so I, Chicago is coming up in Labor Day, where I'm gonna do my annual Fire Island show with Gianmarco Soresi, the Speedo show.

We might have a special fun guest on that show we're working on.

So, so-

And for the first time, I wanna say in over 15 years, the public opinion is that Democrats would be better on the economy because he has tanked the economy to such a degree so fast.

And to your point, Don, Barry Weiss has all these mandates secretly, covertly, and not so covertly coming from the White House about what to put on CBS and what to do with the CBS Evening News, and the ratings have tanked.

And you wanna know why that is? Because people's opinions and people's voices still matter, and people can vote with their remote controls, just like people can vote with their YouTube clips and thumbs, and they can subscribe and like here.

There's a level of, of kind of, like, obliviousness to, that this administration and the kind of the acolytes and the sycophants associated with this administration have to actual public opinion because they only think, "Oh, just listen to the voices who approve of what Donald Trump is doing." But there is a large, not small by any measures, large group of Americans, a majority, a plurality of Americans who are like, "This is bad.

This is messed up." And for the sake of today, I don't care, I don't care where you were a couple months ago.

I...

Correct

It's like, what is

going on there? I...

I'm going to ruin a bit of the fun.

Part of the reason why Drake is feminized and part of the reason why Kendrick is masculinized is like racism and colorism specifically, because the argument is that because Drake is biracial and people do associate softness and femininity with white womanhood, kendrick was sort of cast basically as this figure that was more masculine than drake because kendrick is darker kendrick is a monoracial african-american and so that was part of the argument which is like a tough thing to suss out because if you're just calling drake feminine because he's a light-skinned biracial black man then like vis-a-vis that every dark-skinned Black woman is masking a lot, is masculized by this, like, kind of rhetoric.

So that's, like, hard when you see it happening.

You go, oh, hey, you can say you think Drake is dishonest and not genuine about, like, his rough upbringing or whatever without being like, oh, he's just a sissy because he's light-skinned because that plays into like a horrible thing.

But then to see everyone turn on Drake who was a Drake fan, that's like a cultural shift.

was lemon.

Shut the fuck up, Nancy Mace, you fucking hypocrite.

And she said, "Who's stealing from the American taxpayers?" Kristi Noem, with expensive furniture for her private plane to fuck Corey Lewandowski.

That's who's stealing from the American taxpayers.

Who's stealing from the American taxpayers? People who are passing bills against Americans being able to use bathrooms in public places where they pay taxes to get those buildings fucking built.

You're stealing from trans Americans if you tell them they can't use the fucking bathroom at the airport.

You're stealing from them, in their cities, in their towns.

326 times, that is 300 more times than there are trans athletes in NCAA history.

What did you wanna ask?

Okay.

Uh, no, but I...

When, when you say you have people who you wanna reach out to through storytelling, my question, 'cause I know your answer, my question for you, Don, is how many people message you and message your team going, "Hey, I was kind of on the fence, but like, I'm so happy I'm watching Don's p- show because I'm learning information"? 'Cause there is a certain amount of Americans that you have to like basically be like, "Hey, I know you might not think you're gonna like this, but you ha-- like, I wanna give you some information I think is helpful for everybody." When you talk about Americans getting scammed, you're not saying, "Oh, it's just Black people," "Oh, it's just women," "Oh, it's just queer people." You're saying, "Hey, Americans, everybody, this administration is taking advantage of you.

Hey, older white gentleman, he just cut your Social Security.

He's gonna make you work for another year." It's not-It's not the audience that people always think about.

So do you have people who message you and go, "Hey, Don, I'm a s-- I'm a sixty-five-year-old retiree, and I, you know, I-I-"

That's not gonna do it, Chad.

Yeah, I know.

Doing leg presses.

Yeah.

RFK Jr. choosing to do, I mean, we're gonna call them partial reps in jeans, is, I mean, I think it's indicative of this culture.

It's a man who has a legacy and who has, like, ton...

He's a nepo-baby, telling us what we should do, all while showing us that he doesn't know how to do it, and he's doing it so poorly that he's a danger to himself and others.

It is a perfect encapsulization of what's going on with the American experiment right now.

That's, like, what I saw in that clip.

Exactly