Leo Reich: ‘The Youngest Comedian Ever!’
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2023
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Before Leo Reich takes the stage at the top of his new HBO special ‘Literally, Who Cares?!’ we hear him introduce himself as the “youngest comedian ever.” As he explains in this episode, “I try to really lean into a kind of self-appointed voice-of-a-generation or young genius vibe,” before making sure to add, “in an ironic way.” That upending of expectations around the attitudes of a queer Gen Z comedian—or “rug-pulling,” as he puts it—are at the heart of Reich’s excellent new show, which first ran at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022 and premieres on HBO and Max this Saturday, December 16th. Reich talks about writing the show while he was still living at home with his parents during the pandemic, why he prefers the connection of a live audience to being a slave to the TikTok algorithm and the ultimate laziness of railing against “cancel culture.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is The Last Laugh. |
| 0:06.4 | I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast. |
| 0:09.2 | There's a very good chance you've never heard of my guest on this week's show. |
| 0:13.7 | To be totally honest, I'd never heard of him either until I decided to check out his new one-person show called Literally Who Cares, |
| 0:22.7 | which premieres on HBO this Saturday, December 16th. It's also possible you've never heard of him because, at just 25 years |
| 0:28.5 | old, Leo Reich is the self-described youngest comedian ever. That's the first joke in his new |
| 0:35.1 | special. But as we discuss in this great conversation, it really helps set up the persona of a disaffected, |
| 0:41.8 | contradictory, queer narcissist that he inhabits on stage for an hour and might have more |
| 0:47.5 | overlap with his own personality than he's willing to admit to himself sometimes. |
| 0:51.7 | The show, which Leo was inspired to write during the pandemic just after he had graduated |
| 0:56.2 | university and premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022 before going on to longer runs |
| 1:01.5 | in London and New York, is so much more than a typical stand-up hour, using music, lights, |
| 1:07.3 | and, yes, a few gimmicks to put us inside the mind of a Gen Zier with real anxieties |
| 1:13.3 | about the future. It's also one of the funniest hours I've seen all year. In this clip from |
| 1:20.3 | early in the special, Leo shares some earnest thoughts about why he wanted to express himself |
| 1:25.2 | through comedy, before pulling the rug out from under the audience |
| 1:28.7 | with his first song of the night. |
| 1:32.0 | Why be funny? Why be funny right now? |
| 1:35.5 | Well, for me, ever since I burst onto the scene in the late 90s |
| 1:38.8 | when I was in layman's terms, born, I feel... |
| 1:41.8 | I feel like the world's got so much darker, right? |
| 1:45.9 | I read the news these days. I'm left with these big |
... |
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