‘It’s democratising and exciting’: has lockdown changed comedy for ever?
Whether it is Munya Chawawa as the “posh MC” Unknown P on Instagram, Lou Sanders attempting rollerskating tricks on TikTok, or Alistair Green’s send-ups of arrogant politicians, conspiracy theorists and rude mums on Twitter, comedy videos are a constant cheering distraction in the infinite scroll of lockdown. While the rise of the viral comic started pre-pandemic – Mo Gilligan, now a Bafta-winner, first broke through on social media, while US comics such as Alyssa Limperis and Meg Stalter have been doing front-facing phone-camera videos for years – during lockdown, comedians who would usually be on stage were forced to find new ways to tell jokes. With more comics than ever gaining big online followings, the industry is reckoning with a big question: has Covid changed comedy for good – or is it a short-term boom?
Social media certainly has the potential to democratise the business. In the UK, most comedy stars build their profile through unpaid gigs and taking loss-making shows to the Edinburgh fringe, where a huge PR budget buys a better chance of getting scouted for the coveted career leap to TV. It is an anxiety-inducing cycle that favours those with money and the ability to spend every August splurging it. As comedians realise they can pick up bigger audiences (including comedy’s gatekeepers) online, returning to nonstop live shows might feel pointless.
Comedians Alasdair Beckett-King and Stevie Martin were thinking about this before the pandemic, both making videos for social media after the last Edinburgh fringe in 2019. “Edinburgh is essentially showing people that you’re still doing comedy,” Martin says. Yet she estimated 2,000 people might see her Edinburgh run, while a video could beat that in minutes. She began creating sketches with the actor Lola-Rose Maxwell about stuff that annoyed them: being asked to work for exposure rather than money, or tracking a missing parcel. During lockdown, now filming on Zoom, their views ballooned.
Beckett-King had similar thoughts: “I could have a video seen by thousands, although I know the intensity with which people are watching is less.” He already had the technical expertise from a film degree, so he started remoulding old jokes from his live shows into online sketches. His videos feature flawless green-screen forests and spacecraft, animated dogs and goblins, and well-observed music, accents and costumes, helping make his film and TV parodies particularly popular. A recent parody of Scandinavian crime dramas reached 2.5m YouTube views. Its success boosted his YouTube subscribers from 600 to more than 76,500.
Of course, among those viewers are comedy’s gatekeepers: the agents, commissioners and producers who can open a comic’s career up to an audience beyond the iPhone. “Social comedy is an incredible calling card for new comic talent,” says Fiona McDermott, head of comedy at Channel 4. “Chances are, when someone is pitched or suggested to us, you can look them up and some of their work will be out there. It’s democratising and exciting, and it’s a marked change from how we would have received pitches even three years ago.”
Gregor Sharp, a BBC comedy commissioning editor, agrees. “People send a link and say: ‘Have you seen this person?’ in those informal, groundlevel conversations. The other avenue is casting. Traditionally that would be a very formal process, but social media is starting to revolutionise that. It is a really valuable avenue now to access new talent, without them having to get on an agent’s books, network, go to events.”
The upcoming BBC Three comedy series PRU, about teenagers in a pupil referral unit, was partially cast this way, with callouts on Instagram and auditions over Instagram Live helping to find new talent.
“As an agent, it’s incredibly helpful to be able to put clients’ videos in front of producers and casting directors, as they serve to quickly and efficiently highlight how skilled a client is,” says United Agents’ Isaac Storm.
Storm represents Harry Trevaldwyn, who grabbed Twitter’s attention back in March 2020 in character as Boris Johnson’s daughter getting grounded. He only had 200 followers then, but that has grown to nearly 17,000. Trevaldwyn is now working on writing and acting projects off the back of his social success.
Similarly, the comedian Toussaint Douglass started experimenting with a green screen in his bedroom when the pandemic began, creating Star Trek and Bridgerton parodies, and workouts with his character Jaheim Wicks (“Put your hands up … like you’re being stopped by an over-zealous police officer”). Before, his comedy career was confined to the stage. Now, he has performed standup on BBC Three and joined Russell Howard’s writers’ room. “From all the opportunities I’ve got, the videos have been mentioned,” he says.
Douglass made his scripted TV comedy debut on Dane Baptiste’s oneoff BBC Three show Bamous: “The fact they’d seen my videos meant they felt confident I could construct a sketch using green screen technology. Back in March 2020, I just wanted to still do comedy in some form, but that made the transition from my bedroom to Bamous a lot easier.”
Will social media success lead to post-pandemic rewards? For Martin and Beckett-King it looks likely – as their followers on socials increased, so did downloads of their respective podcasts. “It’s less time and more gain for me than doing a live show, but thankfully I think these online sketches will have boosted my live audience; then both sides are earning money,” says Martin.
Like comedians, agents were starting to spend more time on social media pre-pandemic, and this has accelerated in the past year. Hollie Ebdon, of Ebdon Management, previously signed Alison Thea-Skott after seeing a Facebook video: “I was already aware of what a great act she was, but it put her in such a different light.”
Chris Quaile, of Individual Artist Management who looks after acts like Micky Overman, says the company had “a traditional approach”, looking for talent mostly on the live circuit, but before lockdown he had begun conversations with purely online comics. “One YouTuber kept referring to what I do as ‘legacy media’,” he says. “That really aged me!”
Neither has signed a comic based solely on socials – they want acts who are more than viral sensations. “The quality of what people put out and the consistency is what we look for,” says Quaile. “I don’t want to sign people purely off the back of numbers.” Although, he says, it’s now more common for networks and streaming services to want to “acquire an audience that’s been generated by that artist. They’re not going to build it with you. They want your numbers.”
While Douglass has moved to TV, he credits standup as a crucial part of his journey; leaping straight from social might not be as easy. “Quick, smart sketches are perfect for the internet, but they have to have bigger ideas and bigger worlds for TV and radio,” Ebdon says. “Dapper Laughs was a great example of someone who had a big internet audience [but] maybe didn’t have enough to pad out something for telly. I hope commissioners look at what established comedians have been creating online to understand how they could transfer to TV, rather than just going after viral sensations.”
The BBC’s Sharp says viral comics might slot seamlessly into simpler comedy formats, such as panel shows, but for those with script-writing ambitions it is a bit more complicated. “There’s a challenge for how new talent breaks in,” he says. “It’s that jump from something you can film yourself to something that is complex and involves more characters and storytelling.”
Yet there is potential to prove those skills on social. “In shows like The Royle Family, where they don’t use a big canvas to tell the story, it’s all about pure character writing,” says Sharp. Filming at home, he adds, “forces you to dig deep into the characters for the story and that is always going to be a valuable quality in any script”.
Social media has brought a lockdown boost for many comedians. As performers use more platforms to bypass comedy’s usual obstacles – location, wealth and contacts – we will see more people splitting their time between the internet and stage in future; some may stay online for good. But getting a viral hit “still involves a lot of good luck” says Beckett-King, and for those with “legacy media” dreams, while commissioners are chasing social media audiences, followers alone do not guarantee TV stardom.
“The creation of a character or world that’s got real potential for something longer-form must go beyond the world of just ‘selfie framing’,” says Channel 4’s McDermott. “But there’s no doubt that this is a fertile time. I think we’ll see the rewards from the intensity and proliferation of output in the next couple of years.” The age of selfie expression is just getting started.
Patti LuPone and Jonathan Bailey starred in a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company in London in 2018. The pair, who had lockdown Netflix hits with the series Hollywood and Bridgerton respectively, caught up to talk about rehearsal-room nerves, the best night of the week to watch a musical and the Covid crisis for the arts.
Patti LuPone: Johnny, you’re the biggest star in the world!
Jonathan Bailey: Not bigger than Patti LuPone!
PLP: Much bigger – and sexier. The next season of Bridgerton is all about you, right?
JB: Apparently so. More about me and my bum.
Chris Wiegand: When did you two first meet?
PLP: On the first day of rehearsals for Company. I was very shy. Everyone else knew each other. We were told to choose partners to dance and nobody chose me!
JB: We were doing ice-breaking games and trust exercises on that first day, which demand you to be as exposed as you can be. You don’t want to be the person who drops Patti in a trust exercise! You wouldn’t for a second think Patti LuPone would get nervous on the first day, but you were coming back to the stage having said you wouldn’t do any more musical theatre. It took the director, Marianne Elliott, to get you back into the rehearsal room. You came all the way over to London.
PLP: The standard set by British actors is very high, so walking into rehearsals with them is an intimidating thing. It was the same when I did Les Mis in 1985. In London, acting is a timehonoured job as opposed to what it is in the US, where it’s like, “I wanna be a star and make a thousand million dollars”.
JB: My perspective was: yes, I’ve worked before in London, but, my God, I’ve never done a musical in the West End and I see myself as someone who’s predominantly known for TV, so can I prove my worth? Anxiety is a leveller – the anxiety never changes. The structure of theatre is always: turn up, do the job, be present and be kind, and work hard. It’s about being as honest, as technically on point and as healthy as possible in order to do the show.
PLP: For actors, so many people pass through our lives in such an intense way. You have an intense emotional experience with them, and then they’re gone.
JB: It’s like a love affair. You can’t explain it – only another actor will get it. You kept me going in Company. I had the patter song, Getting Married Today, and you had performed it before. When we were rehearsing, you whispered to me that it was all about the beat and to let the beat do all the work, so you can sail through. That completely unlocked it.
PLP: That’s paying it forward. People have rescued me in moments of desperation on stage. You need that kind of support. This isn’t a competition, this is a community. We are all here for the same reason, which is to do the best we can on stage, individually and collectively, for an audience.
JB: Theatres are like sacred places – you hear the stories of previous performances and people who have strived to find that sweet spot on stage and succeeded, and failed, in the same space before you.
PLP: There’s a story about Laurence Olivier after the curtain call: he’s cursing, yelling, slams his dressing room door. Everybody’s shocked. They send the dresser in, and he says: “Sir, what’s the matter? You were brilliant tonight.” Olivier replies: “I know – and I don’t know why.” It’s elusive.
JB: It’s an alchemy that you can’t put your finger on. I was in a production with a very famous actor a few years ago, and he said to me, sadly, one night: “Oh, I’m in ribbons.” I asked: “What’s going on?” He said: “Well, I gave my best performance last night.” I said: “Yeah, you were great!” He said: “No, no, no. It was at one in the morning, and I was having a spliff!” The answer to that for the modern actor would be, maybe I’ll just have a little spliff in the interval …
PLP: I did that once when I was at school, which was, like, a million years ago. It was an opera, and I was in the chorus. I smoked pot, and all I did was look at the audience, and I thought: “They all know I’m stoned!”
JB: Narcotics aside, if you have a wobble during the day when you’re performing, you feel as if, the moment you step onto the stage, at least half of the audience can smell it on you.
PLP: If I’ve done the work in the rehearsal room, I don’t have to worry about going on stage. One time, I was doing the play The Cradle Will Rock, and I was having a really hard time with this guy [a boyfriend]. I went through the rehearsal period for the show and all of a sudden it was previews, and I thought: Holy fuck! I haven’t done anything! I hadn’t really rehearsed because I was thinking about him. So I thought of three adjectives and that was my performance. Then when I was doing Les Mis in London, I was still having a hard time with this guy, and he broke up with me, and I let out a wail that woke up Michael Ball, who was living in the same house. And I took the square bottle to Hampstead Heath in my pyjamas. I don’t know how I did the show that night, but that particular experience informed I Dreamed a Dream for the rest of the run.
JB: You can get straitjacketed into one way of saying a line. You’ll try anything, do a cartwheel before you go on stage, and it comes out the same way. Your best performances are in the shower the morning after the show!
PLP: Is it because the pressure has been taken off? Any role reveals itself in some bizarre way after the fact. I was taught very early by David Mamet: wipe your feet at the door. Leave all your personal stuff outside, leave the role on the stage. So I’m not obsessed with it, but you don’t leave your characters behind – they’re part of you.
JB: A couple of months into Company it started to take over my sleep. I felt like I was in the middle of that song at 2am. Sometimes, your character doesn’t allow you to wipe your feet at the door.
PLP: You have to have a bit of a cold heart. You have to be completely emotionally open, but not let it take over your life. The roles I’d love to go back to are Nellie in Sweeney Todd and Rose in Gypsy. It was incredibly difficult, physically, to do Gypsy. Boyd Gaines would come off stage panting. It doesn’t let up. In musicals, you’re stronger at the end of a run than you are at the beginning. The strongest voice is on Saturday night; the weakest is Monday night because you had a day off. What I love about a long run is the muscle you develop, the physical technique, the mental strength. We’ve all been off stage now for almost a year. I am questioning whether I have the ability to rev up that energy again.
JB: In Company, we were all behind you in your scene. We’d listen every night and there’d be a new and fresh crackle every night.
PLP: Before the show, I like to look at the audience. I want to know who I’m playing to. I want to find the guy who is least interested in being there, and that’s the guy I’ve got to get to that night. It is necessary for our culture to continue to be expressive – it’s the soul of a nation. In America, the entertainment industry was left out of the two original stimulus bills and my community is decimated. I’m not just talking about actors. I’m talking about drapers, stitchers, costume houses, scenic shops, the ushers, porters, box office people, the delis, restaurants, all of the people who support and make a living from our theatres. All of them decimated. Why are we considered in my country to be third-class citizens? My entire career it’s been like that. Especially for a stage actor.
JB: Our government had its “Fatima” campaign – suggesting a dancer retrain to go into cyber! That was our government’s suggestion – that anyone who considers themselves to be a performing artist should retrain. That was very plain and clear about our value. But this is the time when we are all talking about communication, identity, having a moment of quiet to work out who we are. Well, go to the theatre to find out who you are. See how you respond to that weird mercurial thing that happens in the theatre – it reminds you how it feels to be alive.
CW: What are the shows you saw that made you both feel alive?
PLP: The productions I remember to this day are Peter Brook’s Marat/ Sade, with Glenda Jackson, and his Midsummer Night’s Dream. Those productions transported me. When I went back on to the street, things felt different. As a kid it was less theatre that did that, but Bette Davis and Busby Berkeley movies.
JB: My grandma had a dressingup box – that was my idea of transforming and having a safe space. I remember seeing Oliver! when I was six and having vertigo in the theatre – I experience that even when I go to theatres now. There was no sense of professional artistry in our family, but I said to my parents: I’m going to do that! Within a year, just by chance, I got scouted. I ended up playing Tiny Tim with the Royal Shakespeare Company in A Christmas Carol at the Barbican in 1995. I remember a smell like dry ice, makeup, sweat, the detergent they used to clean the costumes. All these actors would be around the pool table and you’d hear actors being called to the Pit and to the main stage, and I just thought: these are the most extraordinary people I’m ever going to meet. I still watch actors perform and don’t understand where their performance has come from. That awe has never left me.
PLP: Me neither. You know why? We’re still fans.
CW: Patti, you were in previews with Company on Broadway when theatres were shut by the pandemic in March 2020.
PLP: We were days away from opening when there were rumours that Broadway was going to shut down. We thought we’d be back in two and a half weeks. We were allowed to go back in the theatre, and I went to clean out my personal stuff and put my costumes in garment bags. There was just the ghost light on stage. I realised on my way home to Connecticut I was saying goodbye to my life in the theatre and I burst into tears. It’s been close to 50 years in theatre. It was scary and heartbreaking. There was a silver lining because in my career I had not spent that much time with my family. I just went home and saw spring and summer, and it was beautiful to be at home and live in life.
JB: For an actor working in theatre, there’s 10% of you that never switches off because that phone is going to ring at some point, and you don’t know what it will mean. You’re an actor because you’re defined by the idea that you could wake up tomorrow and the phone could ring. It’s a battle cry for us in the theatre now – we’ve got our war paint on.
PLP: Art is not celebrated in my country. It’s a tragedy. But I was really happy to see the performances at Biden’s inauguration, where you saw the diversity of the people that live in this country.
JB: How hungry were we all for Amanda Gorman’s poem? The sense of physicality she had. That was theatre, wasn’t it? The words travelled through her body. It was a moment of beautiful performance. That was exactly a moment of showing everything we’ve been talking about. The world stopped and looked.
Although the title invokes John Carpenter’s 1976 classic Assault on Precinct 13, one of the all-time great pulpy siege movies, this tale of a hostage-taking at a Veterans Administration hospital in Buffalo, NY, is all pulp, no greatness. In fact, the premise is not so much about an assault as an infiltration that one fortuitously skilful character, who just happens to be around at the time, accidentally foils when the bad guys threaten his wife and child’s safety. In other words: Die Hard, but with a teensy budget that appears to have mostly been used on a visual effect that makes the many shots of bullets entering bodies look like puffs of red dust exploding like scarlet glitter bombs. It’s quite distracting in its shabbiness.
Sean Patrick Flanery stars as Jason Hill, a version of Bruce Willis but with more hair and less comic timing. He’s a former soldier whose wife Jennifer (Gina Holden) works as a therapist treating PTSD patients. While waiting in the hospital building for her to finish treating a high-ranking general (Gerald Webb) while their daughter (Sarah Elizabeth Jensen) waits in the parking lot, Hill notices that some of the workers supposedly there to fix a broken elevator, as well as some unfamiliar security guards, are acting kind of hinky. That’s because they’re all bad guys working for Rabikov (Weston Cage Coppola, son of Nicolas Cage): a Russian terrorist who wants to exchange the general and the lives of the hostages he and his minions capture for his brother, who is being held by the US authorities.
Coppola’s year-old-Époisses-ripe performance, sporting a surprisingly convincing Russian accent, is one of the more amusing features of this film which is otherwise a fairly bog-standard opportunity to dish out regular doses of gunfire and fisticuffs.
• Assault on Station 33 is released on 15 March on digital platforms.