Although Jimmy Pardo has been performing stand-up comedy since the late ’80s, this year has been a whirlwind of exposure for the Chicago native. Pardo was tapped as the warm-up act for The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien, and when that show was canned, TBS shot a stand-up special hosted by Andy Richter, featuring Pardo and the show’s writing staff. It highlighted Pardo’s work on his popular podcast Never Not Funny, which just wrapped its seventh season. Pardo and producer Matt Belknap started NNF before comedy podcasters were as prolific as they are today, and in that time, Pardo’s biting, off-the-cuff banter has become a staple among comedy fans. On Friday, November 26, Pardo will host the second-annual Pardcast-A-Thon—an all-night charity event to raise money for The Smile Train, a charity that provides surgery to children with cleft palates. In preparation for this marathon of Never Not Funny-ness, The A.V. Club chatted with Pardo about the podcast boon, his signature improvisational style, and his loyalty to Conan O’Brien.
The A.V. Club: You mentioned on Marc Maron’s podcast that your own podcast was the thing finally getting you some heat. Was that the intention behind it to begin with?
Jimmy Pardo: Truth be told, I just thought of it as something to do between television jobs. I wasn’t setting out to be this groundbreaker, or any of that stuff. I had been doing my own shows at the UCB theater [in Los Angeles], and the gentleman who’s now my producer, Matt Belknap, had asked if I wanted to do a podcast. I was familiar with podcasting because of Ricky Gervais, so I figured I’d give it a try. I’m lucky that people took a liking to it immediately and it became successful.
AVC: How did the format come about?
JP: Initially, he wanted to take the talk show I was doing at UCB and turn it into a podcast, so it would be me interviewing comedians. It was a talk show. Our first episode was kind of me doing an audio blog to begin with, like “Let me tell you what’s been going on this week, then I’ll bring a guest in.” And boy, that’s a snooze. Then it was me, my co-host Matt, and Mike Schmidt, and the three of us did the first 59 episodes together, with a guest every now and then. After those 59, Mike left the show, so I had a guest on every week. It became the best vehicle for what I do. I love being in the moment, I love to improvise, I actually like listening to people, talking about comedy and life, and talking off the top of my head. The idea of podcasting really linked itself to my skills, and here we are four years later.
AVC: What appealed to you about the talk-show format at your live show?
JP: Basically, I do enjoy being able to bounce things off other people; they say something and I’m able to say something back. I apologize, it sounds like I’m explaining a conversation to you. I grew up idolizing Johnny Carson; that’s the easy answer. I loved Carson, I love Letterman, I just thought my skills were that I’m good at listening, I’m good at interacting, let’s try a talk show.
AVC: Having worked comedy clubs in the ’90s, in the midst of the club boom, did you feel pressure to sit down and write jokes, or did you try and remain true to how you best work off-the-cuff as a comic?
JP: I almost feel like a broken record saying this, because I say this to every young comic who wants to hear me run my mouth in a green room: When I was an open mic-er, I was very free-form and improvisational. I took chances, and people always talked about it. “Oh hey, Pardo’s on, let’s go watch him.” And then I started getting paid, and to address what you just said, once that started happening—let’s go March of ’89 through maybe 1992—I was writing very average comedy, and I was performing very average comedy. But I felt like that’s what I had to do, because I was getting paid. For those three years, I was not true to myself. Then when it all clicked was when people said “You’re funnier offstage. You’re funnier to hang out with than to watch onstage.” I was always insulted by that. Then something clicked, and suddenly as an open mic-er, I would talk off the top of my head and improvise. It was so freeing. And I grew from there.