John Early and Leo Reich on Their New HBO Comedy Specials 

Leave it to two stand-up comedians to arrive totally loose yet studiously prepared.

Assigned to interview each other for emmy, John Early and Leo Reich appear on their respective Zoom screens and show off the handwritten questions in their notebooks. “Look at my Moleskine!” Early boasts from his home in Los Angeles. Over in his native London, Reich adds, “Me too!” For the next hour, they share a chemistry that would make Tina Fey and Amy Poehler proud. It’s somewhat surprising, considering they’d not previously met, live on separate continents and are more than a decade apart in age. Yet they’re each other’s biggest fans.

Sure, there’s the obvious connection: Both are charismatic comics who recently premiered buzzy specials — John Early: Now More Than Ever and Leo Reich: Literally Who Cares?! — on HBO. They also stunned audiences and critics with biting cultural observations and merciless self-reflection enhanced by pitch-perfect music. The New York Times raved that the 36-year-old Early, a former scene-stealer on the TBS hit Search Party, “mixes cringe comedy and cabaret to dizzying effect.” And no less than The New Yorker declared Reich, 25, “an authentic Gen Z voice.” That’s the jumping-off point for a freewheeling exchange of thoughts and curiosities. Here’s an edited excerpt. 

Leo Reich: It’s a pleasure and an honor. How are you?

John Early: Well, about three nights ago, I was eating at a Pakistani restaurant and a cardamom pod was in the rice. I swallowed it, and it sliced my throat internally. So now my voice has a husky Emma Stone quality.

LR: So apart from your internal organs, you’re doing well.

JE: Leo, when you were young — and let’s be clear, you are young — did you secretly love getting hoarse?

LR: Oh yeah. It’s the most basic reference, but I watched Friends religiously with my family. I loved the episode where Phoebe gets the croaky voice.

JE: Lisa Kudrow is my god.

LR: I love that your show is so specific — it’s like a mix of camp and nostalgia. How did you land on that world?

JE: I was going for that “Bette Midler in the early ’80s” sweatiness. When you film something, you’re hemorrhaging some quality of live-ness. So I had to compensate for it in some way with my band. I also watched a lot of rock docs from the ’70s. The one that appealed to me the most was The Last Waltz [about The Band], because it’s so beautifully made, but has a jazzy structure. My show has a secret spine, but it’s still a grab-bag.

LR: There is a lot of Christopher Guest-y mockumentary stuff in there, too.

JE: And how did you choose the visual language of your show? It’s so gorgeous. The New Yorker described it as “hyperpop.”

LR: There’s a slickness to my show that should, in theory, build and build towards the end. It’s like an overproduced, metallic, plasticky, futuristic aesthetic that hyperpop stars do — but it works. I wanted to feel like it was a sexualized show without ever being sexy. Like, “I look so fucking hot right now,” but I want people to feel repulsed by my desperate attempts to package myself in a clean and easily consumable way.

JE: Both of our specials do share a kind of despair. We go about expressing it maybe in different ways, but there are common preoccupations and frustrations.

LR: Yeah, I was going to ask how you think our pieces are generational. There’s a moment where you say, “I’m talking about myself here, too, y’all.” How much of that is self-criticism, and how much is “Everyone else, get your fucking shit together”?

JE: In retrospect, I do wish I had made it clearer that I’m not really attacking Millennials themselves or suggesting that these Millennial qualities are inherent in each individual. But I am talking about a group of people influenced by certain historical forces. I know blaming “our society” sounds so pretentious, but I am talking about the emptiness of a certain language that we’ve been handed and have passively absorbed and accepted. When I sing the Neil Young song “After the Gold Rush,” that’s me saying, “There has to be a better way.”

LR: You do end the show by saying, “I feel love.” It’s hopeful as hell!

JE: Thank you! You’re actually listening!

LR: I’m going to ask you my least favorite question, which is about being gay. Do you feel like—

JE: No.

LR: Great, good to meet you! But, I mean, in my experience of doing this show over the past two years, I feel like a portion of the reviewers use certain language and talk about me being an effeminate, camp, gay performer. Like, “He’s being a bitch.” Maybe it’s not a question as much as me saying it’s annoying.

JE: I do want to talk about it. Touring my show was the most vulnerable thing I’ve ever done. I was finally letting myself be more direct. I was weirded out by the way many reviewers didn’t engage with that and described the show as a little romp. It felt dismissive. And your special is so deep and soulful. I’m mad on your behalf as your big sister. I haven’t read the reviews, but I’m mad!

LR: I do think it’s interesting that so many comics are afforded the ability to say something about the world and make people go, “Oh, wow, I should really think about this.” Maybe people see me as a gay guy in little club shorts and eyeliner and go, “It’s happy time!” But there is some pent-up anger and sadness.

JE: When your show ended, I clapped. Alone. I was like, “Whoa!” I do think your show is uniquely cathartic, because we’re all living with this ambient sense of doom. You really dove headfirst into it. But I should also acknowledge that it’s also laugh-out-loud funny! It’s, like, a joke a second. That’s most important.

LR: Right back at you. Want to hear my favorite joke? It’s part of a setup, but I was crying laughing on my sofa when you said, “None of us know anything of war.”

JE: One more question: As someone who’s much younger than me but also British, did you love the Spice Girls growing up?

LR: This is a violent thing to say, but they’re slightly before my time.

JE: But you’re British! There’s no cultural pride?

LR: It’s still in the air, for sure. But they’re not my thing. I’m more of a Sugababes fan.

JE: I literally don’t know who that is.

LR: I’m going to send you a link to a song that will make you go crazy. You won’t believe it!

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #8, 2024, under the title "A Stand-Up Sitdown."