Episode #399
Originally from New Jersey, Anthony DeVito is a NYC-based comedian who has performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, released a half-hour special on Comedy Central, and a full special, “Brain Noise,” in May 2022 on YouTube. DeVito was a writer and sidekick of Sam Morril on MSG’s People Talking Sports and Other Stuff. He followed that up by writing for Netflix’s The Break with Michelle Wolf, which also led him to writing jokes for Wolf when she delivered the keynote at the 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner. You may have heard him talking about his relationship with his grandmother on This American Life, but you may not yet have seen or heard his one-man show, “My Dad Isn’t Danny DeVito.” He’s taking that show to the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe festival. But first, he sat with me to discuss his life and career.
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Last things first, have you ever crossed paths with Danny DeVito?
No. I used to do this hostel show, early on in comedy, I think on the Upper West Side or Upper East Side. And there were rumors that he would like, come by — it was in an area wherever he was close to living. And there were rumors that he would come by and watch the show every now and again. So I was excited because I thought, well, if he hears the name and if I’m kind of funny that night, maybe… we strike up a friendship. Not like, you know, not in a psychopath way where I thought: This guy’s gonna make my life! More in a way that he might think my name’s DeVito, your name’s DeVito, you’re funny, I’m funny. Why not, we’ll be friendly? You know? And who knows what blossoms from there?
I mean, he does seem like that kind of guy.
Right? Doesn’t he? Seems like a very everyman kind of guy.
Very personable
Very personable, very. I saw a picture on Twitter a couple days ago. where he took a picture of his gross foot. And I was like, this guy’s great. So the hope is that he would put his name on the show, that would be the coolest thing in the world.
My Dad Is Not Danny DeVito…presented by Danny DeVito.
That would be amazing. That’s the dream. I have no idea how to make that happen.
Someday. I’m sitting in this room and I’m staring at — is that a framed T-shirt of Hawaii?
A framed sweatshirt. So Greg Stone and his wife Tina, who I lived with for years. Greg obviously another comic. I’ve known Greg since I was in high school. We’ve been best friends since high school. I wore that shirt every day. And they snuck into my room. It was filthy, filthy shirt. So they snuck into my room, took it, framed it so I can never wear it again. Most of the clothes I own are over 20 years old.
That’s not a bad thing??
No, I don’t know. Maybe?
Is it? The interviewer says, thinking about his wardrobe.
Right. Hahaha. Right. That’s cool, right? Like I think that’s cool. No, I don’t care. I’ve never put any emphasis on clothing or appearance. Julia gets involved when she feels like she has to, I’ll see things disappear where I’m like, where’d that thing go? She’ll say, oh, that thing is trashed now, because there are too many holes in it. And she was right. She’s always right.
But as I was looking at it, it got me thinking. So you’re from New Jersey, but then you went all the way to Miami for school, and then Miami you went all the way to Hawaii. Were you running from something?
Hahaha, yes. Well, Miami, I’ll say, I was not running from a crime. If that’s what you’re insinuating. Sean, I am not my father.
You could be running away from your identity.
Sure. It’s just an esoteric sense.
Or existentially running away from yourself.
I would say that from Jersey to Florida, for sure. Because And I love Jersey but I had had my fill. I think at some point I was like, oh, I think to grow or kind of to be full-blown who I am in terms of comedic sensibilities, and honestly like comedic sensibilities, just meaning personality. I need to go somewhere else. Honestly, I picked Miami just because I loved Police Academy Miami. Assignment: Miami Beach was my favorite one. I had never been there. And they had given me a good amount of financial aid. Well, this seems like a no-brainer. So I went to Miami and then from Miami, met this girl who I was like, Oh, this will be my wife. This is the love of my life. And when she broke up with me going into my fifth year of college because I had five years for architecture…
From there, she breaks up with me. When you’re that hurt, you go, oh, I want to reinvent myself, so like that version of a person has not been hurt. So I moved to Hawaii. I wanted to leave the country. I wanted to get as far away as possible. But I’m also lazy and I didn’t want to learn a new language or renew my passport. So I just moved to Hawaii and then that’s sort of when the adventure of Hawaii began.
That was to stick with a tropical theme, because getting as far away from Miami, you could have gone to Alaska.
Even if I was going to be depressed, and if I was gonna be selling, if I was going to be in whatever this disposition was, I did still want to be near a beach.
And had you done any proper standup at that point?
No. I started in New York, I believe, like 13 years ago, so from Hawaii. Then I moved. I was in Hawaii for about six months. Then I moved back to Jersey. I was going to pursue architecture. Did that in an office for like a year and a half. Hated it. Was terrible at it also hated it. And I had friends who, at the time, were working in an architect’s office in Paris. So from there I lived in Paris for about a year.
Wow. Did you speak any French?
No, not at all.
Was that a problem?
Ah, well, I got lucky. I worked in the bar of this exchange college in Paris, which had an exchange program with NYU and American University. So I didn’t really have to learn French. I took classes. And the thing with the French is, if you just try, that’s all they want. You know what I mean? Like everyone’s like, oh, the French are assholes. But, if you just give a give an attempt at French. Throw them a bone and they’ll go, OK, that’s awful. All right. I can tell you’re not French. Let me help you.
That’s what I tell comedians whenever we talk about Just For Laughs in Montreal. If you just try.
They just want that. They just want a little bit of effort. They want to hear a horrible bonjour. And then, What do you need to do? Then they’re very nice.
They’ll switch to English.
I absolutely loved it there. I lived in Paris for about a year. We had a one-bedroom. I slept on basically a gym mat next to a radiator next to my buddy Connor, who slept on the couch, and our friend slept in the bedroom. It was like an extension of college but just in Paris and a little bit older.
Sleeping next to the radiator must still have felt a step up from sleeping in the jungle.
Totally! Yeah, man! Look, the projection of, from the woods to radiator, I was like we have a roof. I don’t care. My back is burned. But this is incredible.
I was looking at your IMDb page just to see if there’s anything I didn’t know about that I should bring up. Lost is not on there.
I gotta get it on there, man. That was because that was before I started doing comedy. I was just a man out in the world who happened to be in the show, Lost.
Had you heard of the show? Seen the show? When you got that gig?
No. I’d heard of the show. I had no idea what it was about. I knew that they filmed in Hawaii on Diamond Head Beach. That woman just came up to me and she just asked if I want to be a TV show. And I was doing my environmental canvassing thing and I was like, you got it.
Do you have a minute for the environment? Do you have a minute for show business?
Yeah, it was like I certainly do, ma’am. It was funny because on set is interesting, because on set you have, because it’s Hawaii, there’s a lot of military there. So we were filming a flashback scene between these Iraqi soldiers and U.S. military. So you had real U.S. military there. And then you had me and a bunch of other tan Hawaiian guys who looked vaguely Middle Eastern, like all eating lunch together. And you could see there would be like real separation, where it would be like, oh, this is interesting. Where the guys who are U.S. military sort of snapped back into place. Not so much so that they were aiming guns at our our head. But to the point where it was like, Oh, this kind of put you back in the action for a second.
Did you share any scenes with Naveen Andrews?
He played Sayid? No. I almost did. One of the LA actors missed their flight, and on set, there’s only so much union time, and all these things, so they basically were scrambling. So they had nobody. I was the only guy who looked remotely close to Middle Eastern. So, I swear to God, the director came up to me and he goes, ‘Do you have any experience acting on film?’ I didn’t, but I said I’d read Michael Caine’s book on film acting. And he went ‘we’ll just grab a Hawaiian guy,’ and walked away. There was a chance I could’ve had a line in the show, playing a young Sayid or like one of his friends in a flashback. Yeah. A real piece of regret.
I thought you’re gonna say a real Lost opportunity.
Well, yeah.
So then how did it feel to have your first proper TV credit with Comedy Central send you back to Hawaii?
Yeah, it was surreal. It was really surreal. Because when I lived there, I was homeless. So it was going from being homeless in my 20s in Hawaii to coming back, I think like early 30s, and doing the thing that I had always wanted to do and taping my first set for Comedy Central. It was super surreal. I would look off into the distance at the woods and like, I think people were thinking, ah, he’s being wistful, and I was like, I’m trying to find my home!
Was that the moment where you’re like, I can quit the job at the Apple Store?
That actually happened before. Before that had happened. I think one of the first things I auditioned for was, there was a time when YouTube was gonna start doing all of these produced channels.
Yeah, I was working with My Damn Channel at the time, which had a deal with YouTube, too.
So there was one that was gonna be a sports comedy network. I auditioned. I got the role as their host, whatever. It paid very well. So I quit the Apple Store that day. They’re literally like you got the job, and I told my boss, I was like, you know, whatever. It’s been great working here this or that, and I just walked out. Because normally they do like this big clap out for you and it’s a whole like. So when a worker leaves the Apple Store it’s customary that all the employees go to the showroom, and clap the person out. It’s so goofy, and I would always go up to customers. They would be like, what’s going on? I’d say, they’re shipping out to Iraq. But I was so excited to avoid all that, I ran out of there as fast as I could. But I mean, that job that I had at YouTube didn’t last very long. The show got canceled pretty quickly. But it was enough for me to sustain myself. I think at the time I was just featuring but it gave me a little bit of financial security to then roll into eventual headlining work and be a working comic.
The year after Adam Devine’s House Party where things started to fall into place for you. You got a set on Colbert, The Late Show. You got a half-hour on Comedy Central. And then you were the sidekick to Sam Morill on an MSG talk show.
Yeah, man.
I remember watching that show. Tell me about that show. Sure. It seemed so seat of the pants loosey goosey. Almost like it was improvised.
We would have loved for it to be even more improvised. That was another surreal thing. Because like Sam and I were interviewing athletes that we idolized as kids. I’m obsessed with basketball, was obsessed with sports growing up. So to sit next to Darryl Strawberry and like, kind of get to shit on him a little bit and have him laugh. I was like, life isn’t real, you know? But yeah, that was a wild like year in terms of like, I think (getting passed at) the (Comedy) Cellar and Colbert were within the same week. So yeah, and then maybe like, knowing about the Comedy Central half hour the week before. So it all like happened very, very quickly, which was exciting. And then yeah, after that worked on MSG with Sam on the show for eight months or something.
Now, so for both the Cellar and for Colbert, how long did it take you auditioning for both of those things? Was it a grind or did one come into place a lot quicker than the other?
The Cellar definitely came into place a lot quicker. I was always someone who, I found it so nerve wracking to be there if you weren’t passed there. Just because it meant so much. So I never really went and Michelle Wolf had been trying to get me in there for years. We’ve been friends for a long time. And then when I did the set on Colbert, Estee (the booker) saw the set and asked, why doesn’t this guy work here? And Michelle was sitting right next to her and she goes, I’ve been trying to get him to work here for years.
Estee was like well, have him audition tomorrow night. So Michelle texted me and she was like you have a Cellar audition tomorrow night. So that happened so fast. And then it was like, two days before that I had done Colbert or like four days, whatever it was. So like I didn’t really have a chance to be nervous and I was coming off the heels of the most nerve-wracking thing in my opinion that you can do in comedy, which is a late-night set. So the stars kind of aligned. With Colbert, I had been working on a set for Conan. I’d been back and forth with JP Buck from Conan, and he’d been given me notes. I was running that set at Stand Up NY. And then the Colbert booker was at Stand Up NY.
Jessica Pilot?
Yeah, Jessica saw the set. was really taken by the set and was like hey, I love this. I can get you on Colbert, like, next month. So I was like, I don’t know what to do? Because I didn’t want to offend? You know what I mean? I’d been working with JP and I didn’t want to seem like I was undermining anybody. So I emailed him I was like, I was like, here’s all the things, just tell me what the right move is to do. And he very graciously was like, if she can get you on next month, do that. So, yeah, from there, it was a little bit more than a month process probably like a two-three month process. But then yeah, from there did Colbert. It’s a nerve-wracking thing because there’s no stand-up before you. There’s no reason for stand-up to happen. You know what I mean?
It’s unlike the other late-night shows because it’s in the Ed Sullivan Theater. So it’s not like you have any interaction with the audience.
And then when you’re standing there and you’re like, The Beatles were here. Somebody told me this. And I think they were trying to tell me this years ago to comfort me. But at the same time, I was like, well, that’s too much pressure. I think it was years ago, Adam Newman was about to do Letterman. Marc Maron told him or he’d heard Marc Maron say this where he was like, for those five minutes, enjoy it because you’re CBS. You’re the network. There’s nobody else. And I think he meant that as a way of like, isn’t that kind of cool? But I’m like, that is too much pressure. I can’t be a television network!
Right. If people tune in during those five minutes, you are in total control of the CBS airwaves.
That’s insane. Who would do that!
I thought the more nerve-wracking thing about performing on that stage. For either Letterman or Colbert, because there’s so much separation, you either have to wait for the laughs or you’re more likely to get claps. I’ve talked to comedians, I think even back to Letterman where their sets were full of applause breaks. It was so jarring because when you’re doing the Cellar or you’re doing a bar show in Astoria, that’s not happening every 30 seconds.
Yeah. You build your jokes for the rhythm of that, like sort of instant laughter. It builds and builds and builds on the punch lines until a grand finale. So with there, you’re right, the laughs come as like a big wave. And the rhythm is very different. So as you’re doing the set, you get used to the rhythm, and it’s just something that throws you off at first, but I think if you’ve been doing comedy long enough, you’re able to kind of adjust on the fly to what that’s going to be.
You mentioned Michelle Wolf, and you’ve worked with her a couple times. You wrote on her sketch show on Netflix and then worked with her on her legendary White House Correspondents Dinner speech. What was it like writing for Michelle?
Michelle is the hardest working person I’ve ever met. I don’t know how many jokes I threw at Michelle, where Michelle were like these are great and they like never made it to air because Michelle, if you send Michelle a great joke, she recognizes it as a great joke, but like takes it as a challenge to beat that joke. That’s partly why she’s as successful as she is, because she’s so driven. She’s such a perfectionist and she’s an athlete. She has that mindset into how she approaches comedy a little bit, but I just knew her as like a goofball. She used to open the open mic at The PIT. And she was just like this, you know, I don’t know red-haired girl that make me laugh with her silly voice so like, we were always just friends. So when she became famous, I think the friend part never really dropped off, which was cool. So I’ll have to be reminded of her celebrity but like, me, usually I’m like, that’s just my dumb friend Michelle.
So when you see your dumb friend, Michelle, 1) standing up there skewering Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and everybody else in the room. But then 2) seeing the massive reaction that it got, what was it like seeing your dumb friend in the spotlight like that?
I mean, so at the time we were working on The Break, the Netflix show. And we were in pre production. So we were kind of doing sample shows every day to get used to what a workday would be like. In the room, we didn’t realize that it was that. Because it just feels like a bad corporate gig, and I think you do enough of them.
You’re in the banquet hall of a hotel.
Yeah. Chris Christie is there, people are eating. You’re just like, Oh, I’ve done this show. I’ve done this show before, it’s a VFW in Parsippany, but I know the show. You know what I mean? So I’m like, this is just that set. She delivered the jokes great. They were awesome. Who cares how it went over in the room. People are gonna love it out there because this was a really original take and especially because everyone was like, she’s gonna skewer Trump and it was like, no, she turned it on the opposite. And she put it on the media. And they were sort of baffled by that, and it was great to watch but we really thought it was just like it was just gonna be that, so we partied that night. Had a great time. We’re all in disbelief like we were on the front cover of The New York Times dancing. One of my best friends from childhood who lives in DC snuck into the party. He’s a teacher, on the front page of The New York Times, so we were just laughing on the train back to New York. And then as we’re getting on Twitter, we’re like, this is kind of like blowing up and then more and more we’re sending each other tweets and like, there’s a real buzz on the train and then the next day, we had to write monologue jokes for the show in preparation for a real show. Michelle was (the butt of) all the monologue jokes. So in the writers room, Michelle normally would read all the monologue jokes that were submitted. So Michelle would have to read like ‘shit for brains red headed comedian Michelle Wolf says.’ That part was so fun. That was one of the most fun days, was the day after. And Michelle became the top story and we all got to write jokes about her. And then she’d have to read whatever we wrote in the writers room.
What did you learn, though, from watch her deal with the intense blowback?
Michelle is just like, so media savvy tip in terms of like, even when we were writing jokes leading up to it, like, yeah, we wanted to make fun of like, the way Mitch McConnell looked or this or that Michelle was very smart to be like, you can’t attack that because then they’ll attack me on that and then I’ll just be known as that so she was very good about not doing that. So the blowback that she got felt unjustified. So she came out looking like the winner, as opposed to them having like, any real like, righteousness in what they could say about her. So no, she handled that super well. Almost like she had been ready for that moment, like her whole life.
Michelle’s savvy and then previously worked with Sam Morill, who’s proven himself very savvy with social media and YouTube. Was that part of the calculus for you in terms of making your special for YouTube?
A little bit? I mean, Sam was the one where like, he did it and showed, I think he, you know, because I think maybe a couple other people had done it before. But like, Sam had so much success with his YouTube special that it kind of showed where the money would come from in something like that, because I think at first that was a trepidation with a lot of us because it’s like, usually, you know, you get paid to make a special and that’s where that’s where the hard work comes from the money you get from this thing you’re putting on a network, but with Sam, it was like, he’s going to do it for free. So we were all like, a little skittish about it, but then seeing that it’s like, oh, the accessibility on YouTube is just so much greater than any platform. And then these people feel like they’re discovering you, rather than you’ve been shoved in their face. So they feel like a certain ownership within you. So they’re more apt to become your fans and go see you on the road. So the money that you get comes from that headlining work on the road. So I’ve now understood that and yeah, with this, I was like, I wanted just to see. When Sam did his it was attached to Comedy Central. And they have a very big following. So they were able, and that’s not to discredit it, because it’s a great special and there’s a reason why it has so many views. But that helps the first movement of the special. So I kind of wanted to just see doing it on my own and having you know, friends share it and do a bunch of podcasts to promote it and just kind of see what happens. And I don’t really have any YouTube following. It was more out of a curiosity and more out of like, I didn’t put a ton of money into the special partly because I was doing Fringe and that’s decimated my bank account. I just kind of wanted to see out of curiosity, what’s the cheapest way I can do a special and what gets out of that for me? And so far it’s been cool.
Is that also why you filmed at Acme in Minneapolis instead of at the Cellar or the Village Underground? Because most of the other New York comics filmed theirs there.
I love Acme. The idea with doing Acme was that I’ve done Acme like five or six times. I’m lucky enough. It’s one of the best clubs in the country. Every time it’s been an absolute lay-up as a crowd, so I was just really looking to record another album. I really wasn’t thinking too much about the special, as much as I just want to record another album, get some royalties off the album, make a little bit of money. But then a friend of mine, local comic there was like, they have three cameras that shoot in 4k at the club. You might as well try to shoot a special there so I was like, Yeah, great. But the weekend was Halloween weekend. So it was half a house. Nobody knew what they were there for? Hahahahah.
You do mention it in the beginning.
By the way, the host. And, you know, funny comic young comic, but the host barely acknowledged that it was happening. So I had to come out there and say and when I did, they were so confused as to what that even meant. And then tepid response, at best, throughout the whole weekend. All the young cool people in Minneapolis were out partying on Halloween. An older crowd could be great. It was just that they weren’t so comedy savvy as a crowd. So it was like I taped a road weekend with the club cameras. But it was you know, it’s kind of what I could do. And I was like, let me just put it up. I hired you know, Jason Katz, great editor to work on it and yeah, so far it’s been alright, man. It’s done more than I thought it would.
But there’s also something to be said to for having it be more natural because sometimes stand-up specials when they’re when they’re too slickly produced, it doesn’t duplicate the actual experience of being in a room. But at least with your one-man show. Whether it was I remember, I think you first started doing it at The Creek and The Cave back when it was in Long Island City — A Week At the Creek — and even whether you were doing it way back then or now in the summer of 2022, when you’re doing it for a monthlong run at the Edinburgh Fringe, at least for that show. People are going to come in expecting something. Based on the title alone, this is gonna be something.
Yeah, I’m excited for that because I don’t think I’ve had that too too much with the show. I do it around town. I do it on the road a little bit and I think people half expected but I think because of the nature of the fringe and the shows that are there. I think that hopefully, and I’ve been told that, people are going to be there to see it. So that is exciting to me that there’s not going to be a moment where I sort of like have to explain or make a concession based on like, the audience’s not knowledge of it.
I have not been to Scotland yet, but I would presume that even people in Scotland know who Danny DeVito is.
Danny DeVito is ubiquitous.
How has deciding to do this show, and then the few years that you’ve been developing it, and working on it, how has this process changed your ideas about what you want to do with your life and with your comedy? Because there’s a lot of revelations that happen. I know it’s changed you as a person, because it has to, but how has that also impacted how you think about comedy and everything else?
I think yet to be seen, but I would say even the seeds of like putting together a next hour, I think will probably done differently, because like, everything else was done like, so piecemeal. You do you do a stand-up hour, at least like in the US, like, joke by joke by joke and then all of a sudden you look out and you go, OK, cool. I have 40 minutes. Let me put this other thing. Let me figure out chunks and segues and like how to make this kind of seem cohesive. But with this, it’s done as a whole. So I think in some ways, it’s easier to write this way. Because you have a focus. OK, this piece needs to be here because this piece is intrinsic to the story. So now it’s about making this piece funny enough to be here. So I think going forward, I’ll try to write the next hour like that, where it’s like, I’m kind of coming up with like, what I want to do with the hour before I start to write it, rather than just being like, OK, here’s a joke. Here’s a joke. Here’s a joke. Here’s a joke. It just is a little bit more fulfilling, and then also just like it’s a little easier to write honestly, than just picking out ideas out of the ether at random.
You do this 13 years, you exhaust your brain. Like, you know everything.
You know, there’s a lot of brain noise. Is that why you titled it that?
The title comes because of a joke within the special. My therapist had me name the voice inside my head because I’m very hard on myself, to take the gravity away. And it was just the idea that like, that’s where my life is at. My friends are starting families pick up names for their kids. I’m doing that for the voice in my head. They’re like, we’re gonna call our kid Charlie. I was like, I’m going with Kevin for my brain noise and it just felt like a good title.
Well, Kevin, if you’re out there.
Oh, he’s in there.
Danny DeVito, if you’re out there, if you can’t make it to Scotland, please check out your boy Anthony DeVito.
We need a union.
Thank you so much for doing it.
Of course, man. It was a pleasure.
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