Mo Welch’s ‘Dad Jokes’ + Is ‘The Bear’ a Comedy?!?
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2024
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mo Welch spent years trying to make jokes about the father who abused her mother and abandoned her family funny without totally bumming out her audience. Now, she has perfected the art of the extremely dark “dad joke” in her new stand-up special-slash-documentary ‘Dad Jokes.’ In this episode, Welch talks about how terrifying it was to come face-to-face with her father for the first time in 20 years after he went to prison for stealing TVs and how she managed to thread the needle of turning that trauma into comedy on stage. She also reveals what she has learned about comedy from collaborators (and previous Last Laugh guests) Anthony Jeselnik and Beth Stelling and tells the story of how she dropped her microphone in a toilet seconds before her late-night stand-up debut on ‘Conan.’
But first, Allegra Frank joins Matt for her final appearance on the podcast to wrap up their discussion about the big comedy categories at this year’s Emmy Awards, including what to expect from ‘The Bear,’ ‘Hacks,’ ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ and more.
Stream Mo Welch’s ‘Dad Jokes’ on YouTube
Follow Mo Welch on Instagram @momowelch
Follow Matt Wilstein on Threads @mattwilstein
Follow Allegra Frank on Twitter @LegsFrank
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and today on the show, |
| 0:09.7 | I'm going to be talking with a very funny comedian Mo Welch, who has a new stand-up special |
| 0:14.8 | slash documentary out called Dad Jokes, all about her quest to reconnect with the father who |
| 0:20.6 | abandoned her family as a child. |
| 0:22.9 | You know, just really heartwarming stuff to celebrate Father's Day. |
| 0:26.2 | But first, Allegra is here for what I am just devastated to announce is her last appearance, |
| 0:33.1 | at least for now, on this podcast. |
| 0:35.5 | Allegra, I feel like we were just getting started here. |
| 0:38.1 | And yeah, this is a bummer. |
| 0:41.1 | Yeah, nothing gold can stay. |
| 0:43.2 | It's all good. |
| 0:44.6 | I don't want to get into all the ins and outs of it here, but I would say if people |
| 0:49.1 | want to Google what's going on at the Daily Beast, I welcome them to do that. |
| 0:52.4 | But yeah, we're losing a lot of really |
| 0:54.9 | great people at this site, at this company, and Allegra is one of them. And first of all, I mean, |
| 1:01.7 | you're going to be so missed across the Daily Beast on all levels, but especially by me and |
| 1:06.3 | what we've been able to do on this podcast. You know, I'm so glad that you got to interview John early. |
| 1:10.9 | That was so fun. And I was, you know, hoping that you were going to get to do more of those |
| 1:13.6 | coming up. You never know. Things could, we could end up podcasting together in some other form at some |
| 1:18.7 | point. But for now, this is our, this is our last one. Yeah. For now, maybe we can go independent one day and do our own thing. The first laugh. |
| 1:28.3 | We'll take first laugh. |
| 1:29.2 | Oh, yeah. |
... |
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