Gabriel Iglesias appeared before his first audience at age 10, but he didn’t have his own jokes yet, so someone suggested, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” He broke the crowd up with his answer (“To pick up chicks.”) and was immediately hooked. Since then, the 45-year-old comedian affectionately known as “Fluffy” has built a fan base than can fill Dodger Stadium, literally. Some 45,000 fans came to see him at the hallowed spectator grounds during the recent Netflix Is a Joke Fest.
Other career highlights as of late include providing voices for animated characters Speedy Gonzalez in last year’s Space Jam: The New Legacy and mountain barbarian Picchu in Netflix animated fantasy series Maya and the Three. It’s fitting that a comedian who is as animated as Iglesias is onstage would find himself in such productions, but scoring the role of Tobias in the Magic Mike film franchise is one of two fateful decisions that led to him being one of the most recognizable comedy talents working today.
The other was deciding in early adulthood to pursue stand-up with the entirety of his being, which at one time weighed 445 pounds. Iglesias has shed at least one-quarter of his body mass since, but the stand-up sobriquet that inspired titles of early stand-up specials such as I’m Not Fat ... I’m Fluffy remains. Still, it’s not his weight that sold out Dodger Stadium. It’s the stories he tells, drawn from a life of a kid who soaked up comedy while growing up in Long Beach.
By the time he hit his 20s, he could no longer resist the stand-up life, and, by 2000, he was performing sketch comedy alongside Nick Cannon and Kenan Thompson on Nickelodeon’s All That. The three comic actors all went on to bigger and better things. Iglesias crossed the road to get to the other side and found stand-up success.
The Mirage, 10 p.m. May 27-29, starting at $59.99. ticketmaster.com
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