Gary Gulman on Growing Up a ‘Misfit’ and ‘The Great Depresh’

The Last Laugh

The Daily Beast

Comedy Interviews, Comedy, Interviews, Tv & Film, Society & Culture, Tv, Movies, Film

4.6 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s now been four years since Gary Gulman released his remarkable stand-up special ‘The Great Depresh.’ And despite a global pandemic that caused its own parallel mental health crisis, he says he’s really never felt better. The prolific comedian has a new memoir out called ‘Misfit: Growing Up Awkward in the ‘80s’ and when we spoke, he was about to perform at Carnegie Hall—less than five years after he walked out of a psychiatric ward. In this episode, Gulman opens up about how he turned things around and achieved a new level of comedy confidence that has allowed him to be vulnerable on stage in a whole new way. He also weighs in on Bo Burnham’s anxiety-themed special ‘Inside,’ discusses his role in Amy Schumer’s Hulu series ‘Life & Beth’, looks back at his “miserable” time on Dane Cook’s ‘Tourgasm’ and a lot more.

This episode was originally published on September 21st, 2021.

Buy Gary Gulman’s book ‘Misfit: Growing Up Awkward in the ‘80s’

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Last Lap.
0:06.6	I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and after our most recent throwback episode with Maria Bamford,
0:12.5	we are back in your feed with another comedian who has a new book out this week about his own struggles with mental illness, Gary Gullman.
0:25.6	As promised, we will be returning to our series of episodes with this year's Emmy nominees next month. But I am such a big fan of Gary's comedy that I really wanted to reshare the conversation we had just about two years ago,
0:33.6	now that his new memoir, Misfit, growing up awkward in the 80s, is officially on sale.
0:39.1	Gary and I spoke at a really big moment in his career.
0:42.6	Following the release of his truly excellent special, The Great Depression,
0:46.7	he was preparing to play Carnegie Hall for the first time,
0:50.0	less than five years after he walked out of the psych ward.
0:53.6	He gets into some of that part of his life in the new book, but it's really more of an origin
0:58.0	story, with each chapter focused on a different year of his childhood from kindergarten through
1:02.5	12th grade. As he explains near the top of this conversation, it was originally called
1:06.6	K through 12, and he was already deep into working on it when we talked in 2021. There is so much
1:12.9	great stuff in this episode, including some incredible stories about what it was like for him to be
1:18.1	part of the Torgasm reality show on HBO with Dane Cook, and a lot more. So please enjoy my
1:25.4	conversation with the great Gary Goldman.
1:29.1	Welcome to the show.
1:30.7	And I feel like I start a lot of these interviews asking comedians, you know, kind of casually, how's it going?
1:36.5	How are you doing?
1:37.1	But I feel like with you, I want to like seriously ask you, how are you doing?
1:42.5	I'm doing excellent. I mean, I'm really, really grateful. I have about four and a
1:48.5	half years of uninterrupted mental health. So that's amazing. Yeah, it really is. It's probably
	...

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