Nate Bargatze Relives Rejection from ‘Late Show' in Conversation With David Letterman
Nate Bargatze Relives Rejection from ‘Late Show’ in Conversation With David Letterman
David Letterman kicked off the first of three nights of his “Gods of Comedy” interview series at Netflix Is a Joke Fest on Monday, sitting down with Nate Bargatze at the Montalbán Theatre in Hollywood.
“I have not met this man, so to nudge up against a guy who is just as good as it gets is a thrill for me,” Letterman said, prepping the crowd for the surprise guest. “In the world of comedy, some perhaps are as good. No one is better.”
Over the next 90 minutes, Letterman probed Bargatze about his Tennessee upbringing and his journey as a comic, including the time bookers for The Late Show With David Letterman rejected his audition tape to appear on the talk show in 2012.
“I was told that it was ‘too mundane,’ and I did not know what that word meant so I looked at it and I put it in my head, and I was like, ‘I don’t think it’s good,'” quipped Bargatze, who performed alongside Jerry Seinfeld, Sebastian Maniscalco and Jim Gaffigan in front of a sold-out crowd at the Hollywood Bowl on May 1 and 2.
Letterman apologized to Bargatze before playing a clip of his appearance on Conan O’Brien’s show, where he performed the same joke he’d submitted to Letterman. Speaking of the experience, Bargatze recalled his early days as a comedian: “You’re just constantly getting told ‘no,’ so it’s frustrating because everything’s switching, and you don’t want to miss out on the things you grew up seeing. But finally, I submitted it to Conan, and they said, ‘Yeah, all we do is mundane.'”
Noting how he now sees that his delivery wasn’t quite a fit for The Late Show, Bargatze spoke on finetuning his approach to standup while working comedy circuits in Chicago, Boston and New York.
“You mentioned earlier that you couldn’t work dirty, you had to work clean. Who said that? Who told you that?” Letterman quizzed.
“I just never wanted to be dirty in front of my parents. I never wanted my parents to come to the show, and I would feel like I was embarrassed,” answered Bargatze, whose father, Stephen, is a professional magician who’s now done more than 100 shows with him.
Explaining that he grew up in a typical southern Christian household where he and his siblings were only allowed to watch certain things – Sinbad’s standup being on the approved list – he added, “I’ve always said I want my parents’ approval of my comedy and, fortunately, it works for everybody else, but I’m just trying to make sure I don’t embarrass them.”
Asked what the next phase of his career entails, Bargatze, 45, said he’s always seen the years between age 40 and 50 as the ideal time to be his hard-run for standup. Then, he plans to switch his brand of clean comedy to another medium: movies.
“I’m obviously family-friendly. I don’t write material for kids, but my favorite viewers I see in the crowd a lot are grandmothers because I don’t think they really have anything that they can go watch and no one wants to go watch anything with them,” said Bargatze, half-jokingly. “At my special, there was a 12-year-old girl sitting in the front row, and then it’s awesome to see a lot of grandparents. I like that they can all come together because that’s the only stuff that I was allowed to go to as well.”
“I think you can make movies like Home Alone and things that everybody can enjoy, and everybody can go to,” he added. “I don’t think that’s happening right now, so that’s where I want it to go.”
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