Robert Smigel on Triumph, SNL, Conan and More

The Last Laugh

The Daily Beast

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

4.6 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1997, Robert Smigel put a dog puppet on his hand, started making poop jokes in a thick Russian accent and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog was born. 25 years later, he’s still going strong. In this rare long form conversation, Smigel talks about how he pulls off his epic confrontations of politicians like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham. He also opens up about his time writing for Conan O’Brien, ‘The Dana Carvey Show’ and SNL, where he created ‘TV Funhouse’ and ‘The Ambiguously Gay Duo’—an animated sketch he readily admits would not work today. Robert explains why his eventual exit from SNL was “not pretty” and weighs in on Alec Baldwin’s “easy” satirical take on Donald Trump.

This episode was originally published on June 30th, 2020.

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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 this July 4th week,
0:11.0	we are revisiting my conversation with the man behind America's most patriotic dog puppet, Robert Smygel.
0:19.0	You may have seen Robert's name in the news lately after he was
0:23.3	detained, along with a handful of staffers for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, while they were
0:28.4	filming a segment that we still haven't seen, by the way, starring Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
0:33.7	on Capitol Hill. The incident, which Colbert jokingly referred to as, quote, first-degree
0:39.2	puppetry, led Tucker Carlson to immediately label them the real insurrectionists. Of course,
0:46.1	this was just one of many sticky situations Smygel has found himself in over the years,
0:51.7	going all the way back to his first appearance as triumph on Conan O'Brien show in the late 90s going all the way back to his first appearance as Triumph on Conan O'Brien's show in the late 90s,
0:57.4	all the way through a hilarious confrontation with Ted Cruz that he breaks down in detail during this episode.
1:04.8	Robert and I talked pretty early in the pandemic when he was still figuring out how his comedy would work in this new world.
1:12.5	I am so glad to see that he is back and more daring than ever. Here's my conversation with the
1:19.2	great Robert Smygel. I want to talk about the Quarantine Squares game show that you just put out,
1:25.0	because it was really great, so fun. Oh, did you like it? Yeah, it was really great so fun oh did you like it yeah it was
1:28.7	really really funny and so surreal to see all of those people in little squares uh it was a pretty
1:35.2	perfect use of uh of the technology that we're all using now absolutely it was i've been wanting to do
1:40.3	a triumph hosted quiz show for many years it's one of many triumph ideas I just haven't been
1:45.3	able to sell. And I had this idea of doing these jeopardy type questions where the punchline is in the
1:52.0	form of a question. And it just felt like a really fresh way to do triumphs sort of smart-ass humor.
1:58.2	I just could not get it done. But I had this idea in the back of my head,
2:01.7	and I thought it would make a great podcast. But I wanted to do it with an audience. I wanted to,
2:06.7	you know, go to the Bell House in Brooklyn or a place like that. You know, I tried to sell it
	...

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