Second City is too PC, Jeff Garlin says
Jeff Garlin and Stephen Colbert gleefully reminisced about their time at Second City last week on The Late Show.
“We were the backbone of that organization because we worked in the box office,” Colbert said. “We sold the tickets. We answered the phones.”
Garlin trained and performed at Second City for years, but said he had no interest in visiting the theatre when he was in Chicago last month promoting his new Netflix mystery movie Handsome.
He expressed disappointment in management’s recent handling of a noted rise in slurs shouted by the audience.
Signage was posted late last year warning audience members that “Second City has a zero-tolerance policy and does not allow hate speech of any kind.”
“I feel like Second City’s changed for the worse. Political correctness. I got no time for any of that. There has to be a level of irreverence. The way the relationship between, to me, a comedic artist, whether an improviser or a stand-up is, you play to the top of your intelligence, and you do the best you can and you weather whatever storm the audience gives you, whether it’s heckling, whatever it is.
“And you don’t ask backstage how you want to be referred to, Mr. or Mrs. or Z, or you know what I mean. Like, all this stuff is nonsense. It’s about you show the audience respect, they should show you respect. That’s it,” Garlin said last month in Chicago.
“Yeah, so I’m kind of disappointed. I only wish Second City well, but they’ve got to get some backbone.”
Garlin also criticized Second City’s “insane” audition process and said “it’s been a long time since anybody of greatness has shown up on Saturday Night Live.”
Second City CEO Andrew Alexander said he was a “little disappointed” in Garlin’s comments.
“To my knowledge, I don’t think he’s seen shows recently. To me, it’s all about the work, quality of the work. The hate speech issues that he’s referring to were in response to a specific time and place, what was going on in the country at that time and we were having some challenges, but it’s all calmed down now,” Alexander said.