Jim Gaffigan's career is practically prototypical for a stand-up comic who broke in during the '90s. After years on the nightclub circuit, peddling charming, unchallenging jokes about the stresses modern city life put on a dumpy small-town Indianan, Gaffigan landed his own sitcom, Welcome To New York, which got good reviews but died in the ratings. But while other comics of his generation returned to obscurity or started scrounging for cruise-ship gigs, Gaffigan continued to pursue bit parts in movies and on TV, and along the way, he reinvented his comic style. His observational humor lost a lot of its initial peevishness, and it now relies on his hyper-awareness of his own mundanity, expressed in an "inner voice" that comments on his act throughout the show. Subsequently, his popularity has surged, aided by a frequently re-run Comedy Central special, countless TV appearances, and self-released CDs packed with his extended riffs on Cinnabon and Hot Pockets. While preparing for the release of his new CD and DVD Beyond The Pale, as well as an upcoming theater tour, Gaffigan spoke with The A.V. Club about failure, success, and the slow grind of being a comedian and character actor.
The A.V. Club: Why do you still live in New York instead of Los Angeles?
Jim Gaffigan: I could use a lot of the clichés, but I'll stick with, "I'm too pale." I'm essentially a transplanted Midwesterner. I love New York. I moved here in 1990, when I was 24, and started stand-up in '91.
AVC: Did you go to New York to do stand-up, or to get a job?
JG: I came to New York for a job. I'd always kind of wanted to live in New York. I grew up in this small town in Indiana where I was just like, "I gotta get outta here." I remember being a little kid and looking around and going, "Well, there's been some kind of mistake. I don't think I'm supposed to be here." When I grew up, I didn't know anyone in the entertainment world. I wanted to be an actor and a comedian, but I moved to New York really just out of this romantic notion of always wanting to live in New York.
AVC: Did you have a job lined up when you got there?
JG: I did. I'd studied finance in school and went to Florida for a financial-litigation consulting job. I was about to kill myself, so I moved to New York. Somebody helped me get a job in advertising. I was an account guy for a while, and then a copywriter for a while.
I come from a family of bankers, all conservative. Not what we consider conservative today, with all the negatives, but a conservative family where you're driven by security, and wearing a tie to work is considered success. My uncle was the first one to go to college, and at that point we'd been in this country for 150 years. It took us five generations to get to the middle class, and I was like, "Hey, I think I'm gonna go into the entertainment world!" Everybody was like, "Are you nuts?"
AVC: You probably have an interesting perspective on the whole red-state/blue-state divide, having moved from Indiana to New York.
JG: Manhattan's probably one of the bluest parts in the country, and Indiana's definitely one of the redder states. I have sympathy for both sides. That's not to say that I'm anything but a Democrat, but I think there's this condescension to middle America that's in some ways based on myth. Every now and then you hear, "Will it play in middle America?" It's really derogatory. "Will those dumb idiots think it's interesting?"
My wife's from Milwaukee and she's also an actor. We were in L.A. and I had a test for this sitcom that was all about people from Green Bay. I auditioned for the role of the father, and there was a scene constructed around Monday Night Football that opened with my character saying, "Are you ready for some football?" And the guy who went in after me did a very effeminate take on it. That's not to say that's not an interesting choice, but to have a football-fanatic father in Green Bay being effeminate about the Packers, it's just kind of disrespectful. I hope I'm not sounding homophobic. In that situation it was funny, and the actor was a funny guy, but within the context of portraying football fanatics in a derogatory way, I felt it was narrow-minded and dismissive. I remember sitting there and going, "Wow. There's literally gonna be riots in Wisconsin if you're portraying Packers fans as a bunch of sissies." I remember thinking, "I can't do this."
That's not to say I don't whore myself out in soda commercials.
AVC: So you had to audition for this sitcom? People don't just say, "Get me Jim Gaffigan?"
JG: No, not at all. I wish that was the case. I think the business is all about getting too much respect or none. Once you feel that you're entitled to something, I think that's when you go crazy. You gotta really remain humble. If you assume that you should get anything, you're gonna really go crazy.
AVC: Welcome To New York was tailored for you, though.
JG: Yeah. I came up with the idea. The show was pretty good, but it was supposed to be about Midwesterners being smarter than New Yorkers. It was supposed to be the antithesis of Woody on Cheers. People would think that the Midwesterner would be naïve, but in reality, the Midwesterner was practical. But I would get scripts where they're like, "In this episode, you talk about when you used to talk to your horse." 'Cause there is this crazy perception.
Part of me loves telling people I'm from Indiana, cause they do think it's still Little House On The Prairie. Which I believe was North Dakota, actually. [Actually, Minnesota and South Dakota. —ed.]
AVC: Why didn't Welcome To New York work?
JG: I think that some people would say that it had a bad lead-in, which was the Bette Midler show [Bette]. At that time, CBS had Monday-night comedies, but they didn't have any Wednesday-night comedies. It's the climate of that business, too. They're trying to look for the quick fix. You've seen it with Friends. They're like, "Okay, Friends was successful, let's find five people that look like those five people on Friends," rather than finding five unique characters.
I don't want to sound like some pompous ass that tries to understand the television business. It's hard to do a really good show. It's hard to give people reasons to watch. Welcome To New York debuted during a presidential election year, and it was also the year that the Yankees and the Mets were in the World Series, which didn't help, because all through September and October, no one in New York was watching anything except for those games. That's eight million people there. Who knows? There are people who really remember that show and are like, "That was pretty good." It was an amazing cast. I was on this other sitcom, Ellen's second sitcom [The Ellen Show], and I thought that was a pretty good show too. The show-runner was Mitchell Hurwitz, who went on to do Arrested Development. And Ellen, she's really mega-talented, and so is Cloris Leachman, and it's not like Martin Mull's a slouch.
I dunno, I've never seen Celebrity Dance. It's huge, right?
AVC: Time for you to slap on some skates.
JG: Exactly.
AVC: Which one were you really angling for when you came to New York: being a comedian or being an actor? Or was it always both?
JG: I didn't really come to New York for either. I did improv at first, and that's what got me into all of it. They're both wildly addictive and rewarding and abusive relationships that I have. Stand-up, there's an immediacy to it, and acting, there's just some jobs that are just so amazing, where you miss them like a great relationship. I did a bunch of episodes of Ed, and it was so fun to play this character that was obsessed with the female lead. Acting can be so fun.
I do feel like there's part of me that's like, if I just did one, I'd be smoking crack. Stand-up is kind of a crazy endeavor where you're peaking at 10:30 at night and then you're done, and you've got all these endorphins going, and you might have a drink at 2 a.m. And if you have nothing to keep you balanced, it can be really destructive. And then the acting thing, there's the rejection. A lot of my friends who are comedians say, "That acting thing is an insane pursuit."
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