Comedian Bill Burr on imposter syndrome, ‘racist morons’ and more
Comedian and actor Bill Burr played his biggest show in Metro Detroit to date earlier this month at Little Caesars Arena, which is part of his 2024 tour of large venues and theaters.
While he’s spent decades honing his observational material that goes from a laid-back guy’s thoughts to exasperated outrage, he’s had a lot of success over the past two years.
In 2021 the Massachusetts native performed at Red Rocks for a Netflix special that was released in 2022. That same year, Burr became the first comedian to perform at Fenway Park. In 2023 a comedy film that he directed, co-wrote and starred in, “Old Dads,” was the most-watched movie worldwide on Netflix for two weeks.
That was not even the only No. 1 Netflix movie that he starred in last year. Burr also had a lead voice role in the Adam Sandler animated film “Leo,” which had 34.6 million views in its first six days.
Burr spoke to The Detroit News last month. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: This whole tour is bigger venues. How have they been going?
A: They’re pretty nerve-wracking because you got to sell a bunch of tickets, but the shows are always great. And I’m always amazed how much they figured out the sound at these bigger venues where I mean you can take (the audience) on the same sort of ride you can at a comedy club where you can bring them down, you can get them going up.
I’ve been doing these arenas now for a couple years, and I’m used to it but I’m not gonna lie to you, you definitely have imposter syndrome when you first get in there, like why are all these people coming to see me? So the fact that people are showing up is, you know, is amazing. And then