I think you can tell I’m having a good time. And I think it’s also reflected in the special. It’s probably been the best year of my life. I’ve gotten to spend this last year just doing stand-up for the first time in my career. Does this new special feel like a comeback of sorts? So it’s been about two years since your last special, you had a very big 2018, and then we haven’t seen you for a while. 10, we talked to Wolf about everything that has gone down over the past two years and why she decided to stop telling Trump jokes after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “It’s probably been the best year of my life,” Wolf says.Īhead of the new special’s release on Dec. But when Netflix prematurely canceled it after just 10 episodes, Wolf decided to rededicate her energy toward stand-up.Īfter years spent writing for Late Night with Seth Meyers, helping Chris Rock with his “sorority racist” Oscars monologue, and then serving as a contributor on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 2019 was the first year during which she only did stand-up comedy. The controversial performance dramatically raised Wolf’s profile and drew outsized attention to her “late night”-style series The Break, which premiered exactly one month later. They haven’t invited a comedian back since. It’s been almost two years since Wolf broke into the stand-up mainstream with Nice Lady on HBO (deemed the best special of 2017 by this website) and just about a year and a half since she broke Washington, D.C., with her scathing White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech.Īfter Wolf joked that she loved Sarah Huckabee Sanders “as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale” and complimented her “resourceful” approach to makeup by saying, “She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye,” prominent media figures on both sides of the partisan divide denounced her and even the White House Correspondents’ Association tried to distance themselves from her. The punchline comes near the end of her masterful hour-long set-and she doesn’t say his name. Michelle Wolf: Joke Show is now streaming on Netflix.Michelle Wolf mentions the current president of the United States just once in her new Netflix special Joke Show. I don’t know why we can’t just get on board with it. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to do a panel show over here for a long time. That, and she would love for it to somehow translate into the American television market. Even, as is often the case on these programs, when Wolf was setting her sights on them.īut it’s all in good fun, and as Wolf stresses to me repeatedly, she absolutely loves the format and is always trying to do more whenever she’s overseas in the U.K. “When I saw you, I thought maybe Benedict Cumberbatch had gotten in a terrible accident.” Needless to say, despite Carr’s all-too-obvious Annie joke, the audience - and the other comics - were immediately on her side. “Michelle, do you know who any of us are?” the host asked her in a 2017 episode. This is especially true of her numerous 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown appearances, during which she not only holds her own with Carr’s infamous penchant for insulting his colleagues, but even dishes it back for good measure. Hunter often perform in this manner for their mostly British audiences, and Wolf’s addition to the mix is largely the same, though she manages to add her own unique flourishes to the mix. For, as the panel’s resident American comic, she’s thrown into the mix to see if she can and will understand what the other panelists are referring to - let alone what they’re saying. Her appearances on these programs often operate in more or less the same way. In the years that followed, Wolf began appearing on 8 Out of 10 Cats, its Countdown game show spin-off 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year - all of which are hosted by Carr and populated by many of the same European and Australian comedians. That same year, she appeared on the BBC’s Live at the Apollo comedy showcase and participated in Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle’s American Autopsy program. Though aside from Carr’s influence, Wolf’s rise in the televised British comedy circuit began with her 2016 debut at the famed Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where her show So Brave was nominated for the Best Newcomer Award.

Michelle wolf comedy