The fact that Joel McHale fit an interview into breaks from filming scenes for season six of Community speaks to the health of what is arguably the best-written sitcom of the past five years, as well as his own work ethic. McHale’s decade-long run as host of E!’s The Soup provides job security, but the self-described workaholic scheduled some stand-up shows before Community makes its debut on Yahoo TV. He spoke to Las Vegas Magazine’s Matt Kelemen ahead of his latest shows at The Mirage, Dec. 29-30.
How do you segue back to stand-up when on break from The Soup and Community?
Improvs all around. If I do a show in Philadelphia I’ll do college shows around Philadelphia, like University of Maryland. I love going onstage, just screwing around up there in clubs because they have great audiences. I enjoy the process of getting back into it, but I do like to do a couple of warmups before the bigger shows. It’s like doing layups before a game.
You’ve had the rare experience of having a show canceled then brought back.
It was sad that the show I was working on was ending. I definitely wanted it to come back. I was bummed. We grieved it, creatively. The cast had a dinner, and then it was over and we kind of moved on. Then all of a sudden on the last day of our contract the show got picked up by Yahoo and it was really great, jarring news. We were all thrilled. A lot of us were making other plans and very happily got to come back.
Has anything changed going from network to Internet?
Well, we lost Yvette (Nicole Brown), and we added Paget Brewster and Keith David as cast members, so that’s obviously a big change. We also switched studios where we shoot it. We’re at Radford, which is in Studio City, and we have a lot more room now and we have a huge set. We were sad to see Yvette go, but all the other changes have been great.
Having a faithful audience is more important than ever.
That’s it. That’s the key. The audience drives the whole thing.
Did you have any career blueprints or particular inspirations?
I kind of saw that everyone had different ways of getting into the business, and getting work and getting paid for it. When I signed on to do The Soup, which wasn’t called that when I signed on, I thought, “Greg Kinnear did this (Talk Soup) and moved into a movie career. If I could do a quarter of his career then I would be very happy.” Inspirations, they’re all over the map. I was a huge fan of movies and television growing up. I watched a lot of Mel Brooks films, tons of Monty Python, all of Woody Allen’s movies. I loved Richard Pryor. It was all over the map. Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter. You can’t get much better than that.
I can definitely see how you took everything in.
My attention span is insanely short. I like a lot of stuff, and I’ve always dreamt that if I was so fortunate I could get paid to be an actor... (I thought) it was just something that would never happen and I’d have to get a real job at some point, and so far I still haven’t had to. And I get down on my knees and thank God for that.
Joel McHale performs at The Mirage, 10 p.m. Dec. 29-30, $49.99-$69.99 plus tax and fee, 16+. 702.792.7777
