Judd Apatow, Pete Holmes offer a raw look at comedy in HBO’s ‘Crashing’

As a comedian and the onetime host of a late-night variety show on TBS, Pete Holmes has rarely seemed at a loss for words. But as star and creator of HBO’s half-hour comedy “Crashing,” which airs at 10:30 p.m. Sundays, Holmes is drawing from another time in his life as a struggling New York City comic named Pete Holmes, who is forced to commit to his comedy dreams after his suburban life falls apart.

Focusing on what Holmes describes as a version of himself from roughly 2007, the series offers a raw depiction both of the end of a marriage (Holmes’ ex-wife is portrayed by “Orange Is the New Black’s” Lauren Lapkus) and the beginning of a life in comedy. Far from depicting a romanticized ideal of the pursuit of show business dreams, the “Crashing” show hinges on a warts-and-all-portrait of the indifferent open mics along with the hustle, humiliation and uncertainty required to become a comic.

“One of my hopes for people with this show is, even if you’re not interested, literally, in becoming a comedian, it’s a good plight (to depict),” Holmes said. “Because a comedian just wants his thoughts to be accepted. And even if you’re an architect or a dentist or whatever you are, I think people can relate to that desire to be appreciated in an authentic way.”

Driven to pursue comedy since taking improv classes in high school and writing a humor column while at Gordon College in Massachusetts, Holmes first tried stand-up his junior year and from there was committed to making it a career. Now 37, Holmes has released two comedy albums and three stand-up specials since 2010.

Onstage, Holmes displays an earnest, goofy charm that aims to boost the audience’s “joy quotient” while not shying away from tougher topics like sex, death and homophobia.

“What Pete’s really good at is erasing the line between performer and audience,” said fellow comic Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley”), whose career began alongside Holmes’ at open-mic shows around Chicago. “When you’re watching a show when Pete’s performing, it sort of feels like you’re all in it together, it really feels like a group. It can’t really feel like a person up there talking while everybody else just listens, it has to feel like a dialogue.”

That facility for personal connection led Holmes to start his conversational interview podcast “You Made It Weird” on the Nerdist network in 2011, which eventually led to “The Pete Holmes Show.” The series aired for 80 episodes before being canceled in 2014, but it was that disappointment that led Holmes to reach for something more personal in “Crashing.”

“I was like, ‘I love doing silly stuff, but what is the one story that makes me unique? What am I really here to do? What can I tell better than anyone else?’” Holmes said. “Well, this is the story of a religious guy who married the first person he slept with, very young, and she left him. And then, in that kind of despair, got thrown into the unlikely canopy of fellow comedians. People that you might think are degenerates or misfits ended up being a very loving, unlikely group that saved me.”