The thing about family, Josh Johnson wants me to know, as he scoots closer and angles his phone in my direction, is that they suck at boundaries.
It’s morning in New York City, a pinch shy of noon, and we are on the subject of family because Johnson’s phone won’t stop buzzing. At first I assume it’s work, and I want to ask if this is a common occurrence now, if his recent rise to semi-stardom has prompted a wave of attention. I want to know how he’s handling it, or not. I want to hear what has changed for him, and if his dad’s passing, in 2016, afforded him any perspective.
But Johnson, being the acute observer and anticipator that he is, explains the situation before I can get words out: Drama is brewing in the group chat. The saga involves, as these things often do, a crazy cousin. “It’s really bad,” says Johnson, caked in the soft lighting of a chic disco (transformed into a video- and photo-set today) in midtown Manhattan. Because said cousin keeps flooding the chat with bizarre QAnon propaganda no one wants or asked for, the family started another group chat without him. Except he found that one. And the one after that. He somehow keeps getting added to them, Johnson says, because “crazy finds a way.”
The story ends there, and I realize I’ve been Johnson’d: A relatable, mundane premise has ballooned into a cosmic, or at least fairly comic, wisdom. As a stand-up comedian, that’s Johnson’s specialty. Maybe you’ve been to one of his sold-out shows. Perhaps you are among his 1.3 million TikTok followers. There’s also a more-than-decent chance you’ve seen him on The Daily Show, where, as of this year, he was bumped from the writer’s room to full-time correspondent. Or maybe—it’s all good, I forgive you—this is your first encounter.
Whatever your entry point, what you notice almost immediately is how Johnson unravels a story like a detective, with a kind of forensic scrutiny for the familiar. He is purposefully digressive, detouring by way of (apparent) improvisation. Revelation is always the result of his meticulous curiosities. Curiosities about everything from family group chats to smart TVs, dinner parties, relationship disputes, trad wives, washing machines, and American history. What Johnson’s comedy of the everyday achieves is a kind of comic cartography. He turns the unremarkable into a map of shared astonishments.
Now 34, Johnson was raised in Alexandria, Louisiana. He kick-started his stand-up career in Chicago, then got his first break in late night as a writer on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he also performed the occasional routine. In 2017 he jumped over to The Daily Show, which, in the wake of longtime host Jon Stewart’s departure, was undergoing growing pains. Johnson embraced the challenge, and what followed was a glow-up not even he could’ve predicted. He opened for Trevor Noah at Madison Square Garden. He headlined a national tour. He appeared in multiple specials, including his own on Peacock, titled Up Here Killing Myself. At the same time, he was building up a fan base on TikTok, with meandering, many-minute videos that trusted audiences to follow along. The more I talk to him, the more I think that that—Johnson’s patience, and his expectation of ours—is the cornerstone of his appeal. Though his comedy is very much on the internet, it doesn’t feel of the internet: In an age of instant gratification, Johnson takes his time.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity, combining on-camera and off-camera portions. Check out WIRED’s YouTube channel for the video.
Jason Parham: You headlined a national tour this year. I imagine that comes with a lot of pressure.
Josh Johnson: Sure, sure. But also, that pressure is very much a privilege. There was a long time where there was no pressure on me because no one cared what I would do.
Have you learned anything about yourself throughout the process?
I don’t need much sleep. I need, like, four bad hours. I don’t know if that’ll last. I think it’s very much a now thing. I think, five years from now, I’ll need sleep very badly.
Let’s talk about your comedy heroes.
There are those almost template answers of Carlin and Pryor, but fundamentally they changed what people understood stand-up to be. Rather than just doing the joke—my wife, oh my wife—rather than doing that nonstop, a lot of it was either biographical or it was world takes.
Is there a joke that stands out?
What am I allowed to say?
Anything.
I’m paraphrasing it badly, but basically Pryor had this joke where he was like, “Duh, duh, duh, duh. That would be like me sucking a dick.” And then everybody busts out laughing. Then he is like, “I’m just kidding.” And then he takes another pause, and he’s like, “No, I’m not.”
He keeps flipping the joke, to the point where the audience doesn’t know what to expect.
He did have jokes that didn’t make it into specials that were about him being bisexual. This was a time where it was truly unthinkable and unheard of. Who else was really doing that? Who else was really like, No, I’m famous enough, I’m rich enough, and I’m influential enough to not just allude, but actually tell an audience stories about an experience that would be unimaginable for their favorite guy to have? There’s a sincere bravery to that, whether you get it right or not, or whether history looks back at the context in a fair way.
Is legacy something you think about?
I hope to be looked back on fondly, but who knows? It’s not really up to me. So I had to let that go a long time ago.
Walk me through your process. Does a Josh Johnson joke have a specific structure or arc?
Do you know that game at the fair that has holes in it and there’s a little ball that you’re trying to get through a maze to the other side?
Sure.
That’s what I would describe as one of my jokes. And the ball doesn’t always make it to the other side.
For example?
I watched the Olympics, and I did a set on the Australian breakdancer. There were a lot of movements that I had never seen before, so I was like, that’s some real creativity. But also, is it just bad? Because it’s being universally panned. And so you try to think of what’s the subversive take. Was it horrible? Is there a way that I can prove it wasn’t horrible? I did fall in the camp that it was horrible.
I think a lot of us were there.
But then there are so many other angles to think about with it. She said that she made up all the moves that she did. And in the set I say that I believe her. There are moves that I’ve never seen before, but then how did we get here? What could we have done to help her along before she got there? Maybe if Australia had a better immigration policy, there would’ve been some more Black people in Australia to be like, Hey, don’t do that. Let’s show you what to do. And I’m not even saying you have to open your borders. Three Black people. Three extra Black people could have prevented a nationwide disaster.
[Laughs] So, you’re sort of free-associating.
I think a lot of times when people tell a story, they give you all of the hard-line moments. And obviously you don’t want any fat in your jokes or in your stories. But also I think that sometimes telling stories from A to B leaves out a lot of what’s in between, which is intention, the feelings that people must have had while they were going through the thing.
Has social media changed your relationship to comedy?
I don’t know if it has. My comedy is a relationship between me and the people that come to the show. Posting to social is my relation to people who I hope will come to a show one day and who I think will enjoy these jokes. When I’m done with a joke, why not share it?
It’s working. You’ve blown up on TikTok. What’s life like now?
I’m still getting used to everything, so I don’t really know what the difference is. From even where I came from to be doing what I’m doing now, it’s a real blessing.
How so?
Alexandria afforded me a lot of opportunities that I didn’t see at the time, because I grew up in a lot of different intersections. I was around white kids at school but then Black people at home. Whether it was going to birthday parties or whether it was doing sports, I was around these kids that were in more affluent neighborhoods, and I got to see what money was like and what it could bring. And then back at home, there would be lots of violence that I was closer to. I knew how easy it was for things to go sideways for a person. It’s not as if I was in the most danger or anything like that. It’s just, whether I was coming home at night or having to run to work—because I’m not a good driver, I can’t drive, so I would run to work in the morning. That was a nice long run through neighborhoods where people were running for different reasons. You know what I mean?
Oh man, I do.
I look at where I’m at now, and it’s something that you hope for, but it’s not something that you know how to imagine. You would hope that, “Oh, I’ll do comedy one day and maybe I’ll get paid to do comedy or maybe I’ll do a show and everyone will come to see what I have to say.” But what’s happening now is one of those things where—it’s hard to put, this might not make sense, but it both feels like an overwhelming reality that you can’t believe, and at the same time it feels familiar because you’ve dreamed of it for so long.
So this was the dream.
I got a degree in lighting design. So I was like, “I’ll go to Chicago and do design work.” Then a real decision had to be made, because if you’re going to do design, that can be freelance forever. Comedy can also be freelance forever, but I realized I was better at and more enthusiastic about comedy, and so I was like, “You could be poor doing anything, so why not be poor at doing something that you’re a little better at?”
And now you’re on The Daily Show. I’m curious if, as one of two Black correspondents, you feel a burden of representation?
Not really. To think that every take and understanding of a story comes down to representation is to do a disservice to the people that you’re speaking to and about. I don’t think of it as a battle, if that makes sense. I don’t know if that fully answers your question.
Well, I was curious about how you navigate the job, and what it asks of you. You are in a very rare position that comes with a unique set of challenges. There were times in my career where I felt pressured—and in hindsight maybe I put some of that pressure on myself—to write about a certain topic either because I knew no one at my job would or I was asked outright, even though I didn’t want to.
I don’t feel any burden. Like you said, I am one of two Black correspondents, but we also have a team behind the scenes that’s one of the most diverse teams in late night. We have a sense of who we’re speaking to and about when we talk about a story. I never feel like, “Oh, jeez, I’m going to have to talk about this” or something. I more feel like these are real opportunities.
News commentary and political satire define so much of the media climate now. Is The Daily Show still relevant?
A lot of the political commentary that exists is derivative of The Daily Show, because The Daily Show was this transformative piece of satire for how to engage with politics. The Daily Show ends up getting digested on every medium, which I think is indicative of something that’s still relevant. I also think that taking things like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok very seriously is an opportunity.
In what way?
For me, sometimes when I even pitch something, I’m informed by the general sentiments coming off of social as much as I am by what’s being written in the news. As long as there’s politics, there’ll be political satire, and as long as there’s political satire, I think the people doing it at the highest level will have a place with the people consuming it.
But I don’t know if political humor is moving the needle in the way it once did. There’s so much noise now.
Well, there’s a lot of noise, but also, I guess I’m interested in what your definition of moving the needle is.
I started watching The Daily Show religiously around 2004, when I started college. Later, when Trevor Noah took over the desk, the show no longer felt like appointment viewing. Part of it was Trevor’s style. He didn’t feel as nimble as Jon. Another part, the larger part I think, had to do with the technologies that were changing how we consumed media and connected with one another.
That makes sense. Sometimes I think it’s easy to conflate relevance with impact, but if something isn’t impacting you in the way that it used to, it may also mean that the individuals themselves are making a change in how they consume media.
And comedy itself has changed—with social media, streaming. Are there new rules for comedy?
There’s a great book by Kliph Nesteroff called Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, and it talks about cancel culture before it had a name. People point to Carlin getting arrested for the seven dirty words and stuff like that, but the further you go back in history, the more restraints comedians had. We’re talking decades before Carlin. There were people that were arrested for alluding to sex—which was something that people were having.
Yes. Even back then, people had sex.
If anything, Carlin, Lenny Bruce, some of those were the last people to actually feel the consequences of doing comedy for an audience who wanted it.
Nobody is being arrested today, you mean.
This is the most free time we’ve ever had.
Even with cancel culture? Or maybe we’re past that?
There is living proof right now that if you are funny enough, you are not cancelable. People will still come to the shows, they’re buying the tickets, they’re watching your specials.
I suppose it seems worse now, because social media puts the reactions and responses to everything constantly in our faces.
We have more access to outrage than we’ve ever had. You used to stay mad about something. You used to be mad as hell about one thing that happened, and then there was turmoil in the streets and it was something that we talked about for months. Now, people are mad as hell about 12 things a day that they never revisit. Who’s the dude that shot the lion, that dentist that shot the lion?
I must’ve missed that.
Never mind. We either miss it or we can’t remember it.
But we have powerful feelings in the moment.
I don’t even think half those feelings are lasting. A week later, if you went to that same person, they wouldn’t care. So if you don’t care a week later, why are you telling me to kill myself today?
Chappelle, Seinfeld—they’ve both caught a lot of shit for things they’ve said in recent years.
Chappelle catching hell is indicative of being relevant. I don’t see a world where you do Chappelle’s numbers and you make Chappelle’s money and you have Chappelle’s background, body of work, and you’re not relevant. There are some things that are so big. It’s like how people will try to say Facebook isn’t relevant. Facebook is still serving over a billion users. So it may not be something that you consume as much, and it may not be a platform that you like at all. Maybe you feel like Facebook is helping to subvert trust in the political process, but it’s still relevant, and the outrage is part of the relevance, and the outrage keeps the relevance.
Sure, outrage keeps the relevance. Doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
I’m saying that if Chappelle releases a special and there are 12 think pieces on it, how is Chappelle then not relevant?
Do public controversies ever affect your approach?
There are some big ideas, and I think the way in is to make them digestible, to make the entry a little bit smoother. If I walk out on stage and I’m like, “Racism, right, y’all?” I think that’s a different show.
It’s not necessarily a bad show.
It’s not a bad show, but I think it starts off on a different tone than like, “This thing happened to me today,” and the thing is funny, and now we’re talking about racism all of a sudden. You look at old Carlin clips and the reason that they’re still relevant is he wasn’t saying something specific to the time. He wasn’t calling out Reagan or naming one specific company in a joke. He was talking about everything in the broader scope of why it happens. And if you keep things to the broader scope of why something happens, using jokes as the entryway, how can you not continue to have something that yields benefits for people long after you’re gone?
TikTok is why you’re famous, but you once joked that the internet was a bad idea.
Just because I’m benefiting doesn’t mean that it wasn’t wrong. I’ll say it this way. There are definitely people who are like, “Man, asbestos made us rich, it’s still not great for the public’s health.” You could still look back and be like, “Maybe we should have thought of a different solution than asbestos.” I feel the same about the internet. But I am watching younger people have an understanding of their consumption of the internet that I don’t think we had. You see some younger people being like, “Ah, this doesn’t make me feel good.” I think I had been on the internet for a decade before I ever asked how it made me feel.
At the beginning, it was new, exciting, maybe a little scary. The unknown of it all. What scares you now?
I’m scared of becoming an out-of-touch callus to my craft and community that I’ve built. I never want to lose sight of how I got here. I think you always have to leave space for the idea that it’s possible for you to unintentionally become a person that you don’t like.
How would that happen?
I’m constantly trying to remember how to not lose sight of myself, because I think that one of the best things that can happen is you’re alone in a room looking in a mirror and you like the person that you see. I’m sure I’m going to fail sometimes, but the person that I feel like I started to become after I lost my dad, if I stay that person, I think that everyone in my life will know that I love them and that I’m doing my best. I think that as long as there’s an understanding of that, then how can you not love life if the people that love you know that you love them, and you know you’re doing everything that you can to be understanding and supportive and show love? The rest is just chilling. The rest is good tacos and Thai food.
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