Crashing: The funny business of a broken marriage.

Stand-up comedian Pete Holmes tells how a marriage break-up provided rich pickings for his new comedy series. Julie Eley reports from Pasadena.

For most people, a marriage break-up is no laughing matter, but Pete Holmes has turned his into a TV comedy.

The Massachusetts native and would-be youth pastor was just 22 when he wed his college sweetheart. Six years later he was single and couch-surfing on the New York comedy circuit after finding her in bed with another man.

Those events form the basis for his new eight-part SoHo series

Crashing, which has comedians such as Sarah Silverman, TJ Miller and Artie Lange appearing as versions of themselves.

I caught up with Holmes in a Pasadena Hotel where no subject was off limits for the bright-eyed, floppy-haired funnyman with the engaging demeanour of a Labrador puppy.

“I’ve done a lot of therapy,” he says. “Nothing’s too personal. We have re-enacted every emotional beat of that (break-up).

“I’m from Boston and men from Boston are supposed to take their feelings and keep them in a basement. And that’s where they fester and grow mould and become terrible and the next thing you know you are yelling at your nephew because you are still mad at your wife.

“I did the opposite. All the doors and windows are open.”

In fact it’s hard to imagine Holmes raising his voice to anyone. The son of a Lithuanian refugee who once did warm-ups for The Daily Show, he first

pitched the idea for Crashing when writer, director and fellow comedian Judd Apatow was a guest on his now cancelled Pete Holmes Show.

At the time, Apatow jested, “That doesn’t seem like a comedy at all. That seems tragic and sad.” But for Holmes it was a lightbulb moment.

“That’s when I first started thinking about the idea as an idea,” he says.

Apatow was soon convinced and signed on as Crashing’s executive producer and director.

But one person 37-year-old Holmes did not consult was his former spouse.

“My ex-wife and I haven’t talked since we split. I’ve never been a keep-in-touchwith-your-ex person,” he says.

“I do think, were she to see the show, it would be my hope that she would see that in the story (she’s) not some Disney villain who hurt a good person but that good people break up with good people all the time.”

But while Holmes hasn’t been able to hang on to his marriage, the one thing he hasn’t lost is his religion.

The lanky actor with a passion for Lululemon track pants (he’s not wearing them when we catch up but says, “God love you for noticing” when I comment on their absence) is still very much a religious person at heart.

When questioned about how he reconciles being a man of faith with the comedy world, he says, “I’m even worse than a Christian. I’m in to everything. I’m a vegan. I mean I’m as LA as you get. I fit in just fine.

“All my friends are atheists for

sure. At a certain point that stops becoming so important between friends. When I talk to an atheist and they say they don’t believe in god, after we talk for 10 minutes we realise that neither of us believe in that guy.

“I’ve had wonderful spiritual conversations with a lot of atheists.”

It was his mother who wanted him to be a youth pastor and when he abandoned that career in favour of comedy she told him, “Close enough”.

In Crashing, it is Holmes’ ex who breaks the news of their separation to her. That meeting, he says, never took place.

“Let’s be very clear, for legal reason this is not a re-enactment,” he laughs.

“What really happened when I got divorced is I lived in the house where she lived for like two weeks.

“It was terrible. Maybe if we wanted to do a hostile-like thriller I could have done what really happened.”

He concedes that personal failure has become a fertile ground for his comedy but says, “There’s no drama when things are going well. Every story is about something going wrong, someone trying to climb out in some ways,

“Isn’t it funny that the thing you wanted the least (a divorce) in this case literally took you into your passion?

“This is a blown-up version of how something you never would have asked for changed your life in a way that you couldn’t figure out how to do without suffering.”

And even funnier is, he’s still laughing about it.

“I’ve had wonderful spiritual conversations with a lot of atheists.” – Pete Holmes