From The Comic's Comic

Deep Comedy Philosophy Talk With Philly Philly Wang Wang

I didn’t really know Phil Wang much before I got the chance to speak to him over Zoom last week. I’d watched his 15-minute showcase a few years ago on Netflix’s The Comedy Lineup, and I’d also just finished watching his new hour stand-up special on Netflix, Philly Philly Wang Wang. So I was pleasantly surprised by how well we carried on together.

We got in on how comedy thrives or survives amid times of turmoil and chaos versus times of tranquility, how and why the Cambridge Footlights never formed a professional comedy mafia like the Harvard Lampoon did, and discussed some potential rules for comedy, including accents!

You can read my review of Wang’s special on Decider.

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Here’s a slightly condensed and edited transcript from our podcast chat!

Sean L. McCarthy: Congrats on the Netflix special. Quite a step up from The Comedy Lineup. You get your own hour now. Last things first, I know you meant to record this hour in May 2020. So what material did you end up having to drop to replace it with all of the pandemic material?

Phil Wang: It was stuff specifically to do with morality, and the differences in moral significance between words and action. You can tell why I dropped it.

Me: Yeah, it’s not timely or topical. (insert sarcasm voice!)

Wang: It could get a bit serious, and sometimes it was one of those bits that was quite challenging and quite abrasive and, you know, had this big callback punch line, that could really strike but sometimes it would kind of miss and just be a bit iffy and so it was a bit that I think every comics. Every show every comedian makes has a few minutes in it that I think I like this I think it has value, but it’s never quite got there. It’s never quite got to that 100% dependable, so that was the stuff I took out to replace with the pandemic material. And I think it has made for a better special. So in a sense I think the special has actually benefited from being postponed due to the pandemic. I want to go on record as saying that, on balance, I wish the pandemic hadn’t happened. But in the specific context of my special, it improved it I think.

Me: But you do also take blame for the pandemic so…

Phil: Yeah, sort of existential weird blame. So are you saying it was actually a conspiracy by me to get some new material?

Me: Isn’t that isn’t that the hidden agenda of every stand-up comedian is, just make things happen to be able to get material out of it.

Phil: Yeah, I don’t think any of us get up early enough, or have the organizational skills to conduct a global pandemic

Me: Right, but it’s not that comedians are disturbed people. It’s that comedians have to be disturbing to prompt the situations that then generate the material.

Phil: I think you’ve got a point there and I sometimes feel like I am too sensible and not disturbing in real life as a person, and if I were a little more insane, I’d have a lot more material.

Me: Well, that’s the engineer in you.

Phil: Right. Yeah, I’m too sensible. I’m too careful. I don’t really get into scrapes, because I’m good at. I understand risk, and I avoid risky situations. So, it’s really hard. I mean it’s made for a relatively stable life but I don’t get into as many amusing mishaps, unfortunately.

Me: Well how much of that is, is also due to having been brought up in Malaysia, where there’s perhaps more of an air of discipline?

Phil: I wonder if Malaysia is an area of more discipline? It is in some ways and like, growing up with growing up a Chinese family you’re a little more disciplined, maybe. Maybe discipline plays more of a central role. I also, you know, my mother is a doctor and my father is an engineer, so I’ve always had a very analytical risk-averse, grounding in life, and I had two parents who were always very good at understanding risk, avoiding risk and sort of playing it safe and always highlighted the importance of checking your actions, your intentions and so yeah, so I’ve been brought up to be a very careful person, which has been good in some ways, but I think also robbed me of some experiences.

Me: Well, you know, one of the things that’s also attributed to Chinese parents or Asian parents in general, is the idea that you should pursue a risk-averse career such as doctor, lawyer, engineer, so I guess I have to ask just out of obligation was there much pushback or questioning by your parents when, even though you went to Cambridge to study engineering, then you ended up falling in with the Footlights and in into this career?

Phil: I think my having gotten into Cambridge and completing a Master’s in Engineering at Cambridge satisfied a lot of their goals for me, as far as achieving something professional, sensible, and sort of real, you know. I got an engineering master’s from Cambridge, which, you know, and so they could go: ‘We did what we could. We did everything we could. He has, you know, he’s, he’s done, about as well in his academic life up to this point as one could reasonably hope for.’ And that doesn’t mean that like for years, my mum would say on the phone, she would just end the conversation with ‘Maybe you ought to get on a business degree. Do you want to get a business degree?’ and I’m telling her about these gigs I’ve done stuff and she’s like, ‘Yeah, that sounds nice. Maybe get a business degree.’ But that was the worst that it got. Really. They’ve both been really supportive and, and they’ve always said to do what makes you happy and what you value. I mean, my mother was herself sort of bucked the trend growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, and then moving to Malaysia to pursue archaeology in a place that was completely unknown to her so I think, you know, she, she is something, someone who is very familiar with the idea of taking the road less traveled by, as it were. There’s also an element of graduating in 2012. A lot of people my age, graduating into the world that the 2008 financial crash had left behind, and it was a world in which no job really felt all that secure. The idea of secure employment had started to go out the window. And in a way it was like, it was a time at which a career in comedy felt about as secure as a career as anything else.

Me: Yeah, I suppose it is. One of the things I guess that’s ironic about comedy is that it thrives amid chaos.

Phil: Do you reckon? Would you say that comedy thrived during the Trump era? I would say it didn’t. I would say that comedy suffered from the Trump era.

Me: I guess what I believe is that people look to comedy more in times of chaos. Whether or not the comedy industry or specific comedians rise to the occasion is a different matter.

Phil: Okay, that’s a good point, that’s a good counterpoint. Yeah, yeah, yeah! I think you might be right. Yeah. I think that’s a good point.

Me: But you made me think, so thank you for that.

Phil: Yeah, it’s hard to know really. I think comedy requires a kind of stability as well to play off of. I think the world needs to be sufficiently boring for comedy to be good. I think when, when the world’s in chaos comedy feels this need to be, like, politically, socially and ethically responsible. And I think it puts on shoes that are too big for itself and suffers from it. Whereas if the world is in a relatively comfortable place. I think comedy has a more accurate idea of what it’s there for. I mean, we’re starting to bleed into my own beliefs, about what comedy should be and what’ it’s about. The problem with the Trump era was like, there was no joke to add. Comedy needs a joke that add. And with Trump, there was no joke to add. It was finished the second the cameras were turned off.

Me: He was the joke.

Phil: Yeah, it’s hard.

Me: Yeah, I suppose you’re also, you’re also right to suggesting that in, especially as I’m thinking about it now. In times of chaos, it’s also when we have these broader discussions or debates about the merits of comedy. I’m old enough, when I was in college, in the early 90s, we were talking about political correctness then. And then after the September 11 attacks, we were talking about political correctness then. and now we’re talking about it once more, in terms of like what you can joke about and when.

Phil: Yeah, he’s just called wokeness now. They just changed the name but it’s the same conversation.

Me: But in times of relative stability, we’re not having those conversations. We’re just, we’re just having a laugh. Is that because the stakes are.

Phil: Yes, yes yes you’re right, yes. The stakes. I think it’s an interesting question. I really don’t know. There’s a theory in the UK that comedy thrives from a conservative government, that comedy is always done well when Tories have been in charge, but it’s probably more to do with the fact that the Tories are usually in charge. So I think that’s a false correlation people have made.

Me: Right. I mean, you know you do talk in your specials (spoiler alert) about how you have rules about accents. And, you know it’s perhaps shocking and yet not shocking at all, that even though you recorded this a little while ago, just in the past week, there was the football team from Italy, Juventus, their women’s soccer team, put out this Tweet were one of their one of their players was making slanted eyes with a cone on top of her head.

Phil: At this point these people, I’m not even angry, I’m just like, that was dumb, you should be, how are you so unaware and dumb to do something like that now? How little attention do you pay to things? But I mean, my rule about accents, sort of stands. That is like, pulling your eyes apart, stuff like that is next level. But it doesn’t bother me personally. I just get embarrassed for them. I’m like, I feel embarrassed for them. I don’t feel like, I don’t feel less in myself, I just feel embarrassed for them, because they look stupid.

Me: Right, it’s such a juvenile thing.

Phil: But also, that bit is about a play on sort of power dynamics. and it’s, it’s kind of a reply to this idea in comedy that people like, that comedy should always punch up and I’m like, who is up is a very difficult thing to judge. China, you can say, is up. So is doing an impression of Chinese people punching up or punching down? If you make an impression of white people, you’re not going to get in trouble. But there are more Chinese people. They’re the real majority. And so I’m just playing around with that. I just, I kind of like to turn people’s ideas like this on top or upside down, on themselves or in on themselves. And the real crux of the bit, is that if you are a powerful society, and a historically powerful race of people, I don’t think a rude impression should really touch the sides of what you find offensive.

Me: Well, I would hope, especially too, since you were a past president of Footlights that you’re you’re at the you’re at the top of the comedy food chain.

Phil: Right. No I wish, I wish!

Me: Eric Idle Peter Cook Hugh Laurie Doug Adams. Phil Wang, you’re part of the comedy elite.

Phil: In a way, yeah, it’s an interesting thing because they’re, they’re this legendary comedy society with this elite prestigious alumni, but at the same time they’re a student theatre group in the University of Cambridge. They live this double life as simultaneously, like prestigious, and a bunch of kids.

Me: So does it not have the same cachet in the UK, then that the Harvard Lampoon still seems to have?

Phil: Well, the Harvard Lampoon is like professionalized, it’s like everything in America, it’s professional. It’s not even just a club, it’s like a proper company. I mean that the public to have regular publications they have a publishing arm, don’t they?

Me: All I know is they have a pipeline to Hollywood.

Phil: Is that still the case?

Me: Yeah, you can graduate from Harvard, be the president or a member of the Lampoon and then immediately get on the writing staff of Saturday Night Live or The Simpsons.

Phil: Interesting. Again, there’s a confirmation bias, you know, in that the people who end up at the Lampoon or the Footlights are bright, funny people who were going to end up many of whom I would say would have ended up in those jobs anyway, or at least would have pursued those jobs. So it makes sense that they’d be in those jobs. But similarly, you know, in the UK, the stranglehold that Footlights supposedly has on the comedy circuit, or on the comedy industry is overstated at the moment. It’s not really the case. I mean, it might have been a few decades ago, but right now, and this is a good thing, you know, I think the intake of comic perspectives and backgrounds in the British comedy industry is broad and is quite wide. I think it is pretty egalitarian really, compared to many other domains.

Me: If you had you had any moral or actual authority in comedy, what would you do to make it a better industry?

Phil: I don’t know. I think that kind of goes against exactly what I think is wrong with the comedy industry is that I don’t think edicts should come down from anyone. Comedy should just exist by its own merits and be judged on its own merits and be funny. I mean that sounds trite to say. I mean in somewhere like UK, a little more, I think a good grant would be good for, like an arts grant. I think there used to be something like that in the UK, for people who were pursuing a career in the arts, and, like, performance got a sort of government grant to help them get going. I think something like that would really help, and it would help address the class imbalance that exists in the UK. and comedy is very middle and upper middle class dominated. So yeah, a little financial support from the government, like, more robust arts grants, But that’s a boring answer to that question. But I think it’s the one that will help the most.

Me: It’s boring but it would represent a fundamental shift, because it would allow more people to do it. I mean I know in the United States, it has been debated among comedians and people in the industry about how, at least in terms of sketch comedy and improv, the barriers to entry are so huge for people who don’t have the financial means to take the classes or to study at the theaters.

Phil: It’s crazy in the States, I mean, like the States look like an amazing place to make it. But to get started it’s impossible. I mean, you don’t get paid for ages and even when you do is like $50 or something it’s, it’s crazy! And like bringer gigs, and the amount of just unpaid and performing open mics in front of other comedians and performing in laundromats, it’s brutal man from what it sounds like starting comedy in America, I feel very lucky I got started in the UK because it sounds brutal starting comedy in America. It sounds incredibly hard.

Me: Probably, probably still easier than starting in Malaysia, though.

Phil: Well, probably not anymore. I mean the Malaysian comedy scene is really coming up and there are some great comics I know their and they’re really building up their own identity and a real confidence, and there’s a guy called, you’ve got to check out Jason Leong on Netflix. He’s a Malaysian comic, His show is a bit more, it’s quite Malaysian but I think even if you’re not Malaysian you can get a lot out of it. It’s really good. If you want to get a flavor of Malaysia comedy.

Me: Is it in English or Mandarin?

Phil: It’s in English. He’ll throw, because he’s Malaysian English. Sometimes they throw in a Chinese word or a Malay word but it’s not, I mean, it’s basically 99.9% English.

Me: Okay, yeah, I’ve watched quite a bit of the Indian specials on Netflix because they’re mostly in English. But it is interesting as an American to see Netflix go really, really global with their stand-up and not know if it’s playing well, because one, it’s subtitled so you’re, you have that difficulty, although sometimes you can you can tell just by the cadence whether someone is funny.

Phil: Yeah, I mean it’s, you know, who knows, I mean there’s things that would get lost in translation with anything, even American special to come over here you know American comics make references to a shop brand or something and we have no idea what he’s talking about we can but we can from the context, fill in the gaps and sell you know enjoy it. Right.

Me: Well, Phil, I know I’ve taken up time when you have a lot of other interviews to give, but thank you for indulging me in a very serious, what turned out to be a very serious conversation.

Phil: I mean this is the kind of conversation, you should have on The Comic’s Comic. It’s like more in depth than anyone really wants to know.

Me: Right. Well, I would love to hear all of your challenging material. So, I congratulate you on this special and look forward to the next one.