In assembling its annual list of the 50+ men and women who matter most in comedy today, The Hollywood Reporter surveyed the top performers, writers, producers, showrunners and execs in the industry to get their read on how the business of making people laugh is evolving. Below, long-established superstars (e.g. Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Kevin Hart), as well as some of this year’s breakouts (e.g. Kate Berlant and John Early, and the makers of smash hit half-hour The Bear) share their thoughts on the most played-out punchlines, offer their best ideas for getting comedies back in theaters, and assess what can safely be joked about these days. (For many, the answer on that last count remains: everything!) We also asked them to reveal more personal information, such as their secret sources of inspiration, and funniest mean thing ever said about them. (“People on Twitter said I look like a raccoon on Adderall.”)

JUDD APATOW “Jim Henson said I lacked warmth.”

BILL BURR “You look like Jim Carrey in The Mask.”

NICOLE BYER “Someone commented on my Instagram that I had Cheetos-crusted roach fingers, and that made me laugh because it was so creative.”

JOANNA CALO “ ‘You’re not good at singing. I don’t like you and you’re not my family.’ It was my 4-year-old daughter, this morning.”

BILLY EICHNER “Most recently, it was various tweets telling me I was somehow both too attractive and not good-looking enough to play a role in Bros inspired by my own life.”

WILL FERRELL “When A Night at the Roxbury first came out, I went to the theater to watch it with an audience. I heard the kid in the front of me say, ‘Look at the tall one! He’s got a lazy eye!’ Which I don’t. I wanted to correct him, but instead I sat there in silence.”

KEVIN HART “I wouldn’t make it because I was too short.”

STERLIN HARJO “A guy at a Greyhound station once told me (unprovoked) that I looked like Mongo from Blazing Saddles. I told him, ‘Thank you,’ because I thought it was a compliment (I hadn’t seen Blazing Saddles at the time). It wasn’t a compliment.”

GABRIEL “FLUFFY” IGLESIAS “Just like Enrique Iglesias if he got stung by a bee.”

JOEL KIM BOOSTER “That I sound like a young Donald Trump.”

JIMMY KIMMEL “The first time I met Sarah Silverman was at the Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner in 2001. She said, ‘Jimmy Kimmel, everyone. He’s fat and has no charisma. Watch your back, Danny Aiello!’ I exacted my revenge by dating her for eight years.”

BERT KREISCHER “At my fattest, someone said I looked like the Octomom had transitioned.”

NICK KROLL “My late grandmother saw me in a new sweater at Thanksgiving, lightly touched my stomach, and said, ‘Well, Nick, you’re looking very prosperous.’ ”

JO KOY “I don’t really know, I stay in a positive lane and don’t pay attention to mean or negative things being said about me or anyone.”

PHIL LORD “Phil is like an Italian sports car. He runs hot but he’s always in the shop.”  

SETH MEYERS “You look like Old Tintin.”

HASAN MINHAJ “People on Twitter say I look like a ‘raccoon on Adderall.’ Someone called me a ‘cute mosquito,’ and I’m not going to lie, I’ve never heard a more hilarious description of what I look like.”

TREVOR NOAH “I don’t read the comments section so I don’t know.”

JOHN OLIVER “Every week our writers produce scripts full of brutal jokes about me that would hurt deeply, if I had any feelings left.”

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY “Dave Sirus and Mike Lawrence called us ‘The Lonelier Island’ and ‘Toddlers in the Hall.’ ”

JEN STATSKY “A hairdresser who I shared with many mutual friends once told me, ‘Everyone says you’re so funny, but I just don’t see that side of you.’ ”

RAMY YOUSSEF “Somebody said I was great ‘representation’ for people who make horrible decisions.”

KATE BERLANT “Christopher Guest and Sarah Silverman.”

JOANA CALO “Saturday Night Live in the early 90s.”

PAUL W. DOWNS “My once-in-a-lifetime generational talent.”

JOHN EARLY “Cheri Oteri.”

BILLY EICHNER “Downtown NYC performers like Sandra Bernhard, Kiki & Herb and Jackie Hoffman, who inspired me to start writing my own material.”

KEVIN HART “​The support of my mother, Nancy Hart.”

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY’S MARTIN HERLIHY“I watched a lot of SpongeBob and Looney Tunes. Also SpongeBob was hugely supportive when I was first starting out in the open mic scene.”

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY’S JOHN HIGGINS “School of Rock.”

GABRIEL “FLUFFY” IGLESIAS “Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams.”

JIMMY KIMMEL “David Letterman and Howard Stern.” 

BERT KREISCHER “The 6.5-page Rolling Stone article in 1997 that called me the number one party animal in the country. That article catapulted my life in the most unimaginably beautiful way. Because of that article I was presented with not only the opportunity, but also the courage to try stand-up for the first time.”

NICK KROLL “Being a very short child and a very bored 21-year-old college student.”

PHIL LORD “Being too young-looking to get a date in high school.”  

NATASHA LYONNE “My low self-esteem and dreary outlook!”

BILL MAHER “My funny parents!”

SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO “Going to comedy clubs when I was 16 years old.”

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY’S BEN MARSHALL “The Hollywood Video near my dad’s apartment. Also YouTube.”

SETH MEYERS “My parents considering it a noble endeavor.”

CHRIS MILLER “Steve Martin, Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, the Muppets, the Simpsons, Gary Larson.”

HASAN MINHAJ “My high school teacher Ms. Takeuchi. She was the computer programming teacher and encouraged me to get into public speaking. I’m still trying to get a hold of Ms. T. Hopefully she reads THR. I doubt it, though, she was more of a laminated Nat Geo magazine type.”

TREVOR NOAH “My friends.”

PHOEBE ROBINSON “My college friend Lindsay, who wanted to take a stand-up class together in 2008. I thought I was going to write very serious dramas. Shows how little I know.”

TOM SEGURA “Moving a lot as a kid. I had to make those kids laugh as the new kid and without that need I don’t think I would’ve been drawn to it. Also, if I were a D1 athlete I definitely wouldn’t have done comedy.”

CHRISTOPHER STORER “James L. Brooks.” 

TAIKA WAITITI “My childhood trauma.” 

BOWEN YANG “Debra Wilson [of Mad TV fame]. People must put respect on the name!”

RAMY YOUSSEF “My uncles. They are the funniest people on earth.”

LUCIA ANIELLO “Corporate consolidation.”

JUDD APATOW “People being scared to make comedy.”

BILL BURR “There is no threat to comedy right now.” 

NICOLE BYER “Nothing — if the jokes are funny, people will laugh.”

UTA’S GREG CAVIC “The cancellation of shows too quickly. We’re missing a chance to let word-of-mouth take hold, and everyone benefits from a larger library of shows in the streaming era.”

WILL FERRELL AND JESSICA ELBAUM “I don’t know. What is it?”

FX’S NICK GRAD “Vladimir Putin.”

STERLIN HARJO “Feelings.”

KEVIN HART “Unfortunately, the ‘cancel culture’ climate of today.”

GABRIEL “FLUFFY” IGLESIAS “Cancel culture.”

JOEL KIM BOOSTER “Clapter. Comedians who are more concerned about being ‘right’ than they are with being funny. I feel like this is a phenomenon widely associated with progressive comics, but the majority of popular right-wing comedy is just as bad.”

BERT KREISCHER “People pretending there’s an actual threat to comedy. From my perspective, comedy is thriving right now. Comics are taking huge chances not only with material, but also with autonomy. The biggest success stories are guys doing things their own way, whether it’s through podcasting or releasing specials on YouTube. I think comedy is in its Gold Rush era, and maybe that’s because people are asking questions like ‘What’s the biggest threat to comedy?’ ”

NICK KROLL “Interview questions about threats to comedy.”

PHIL LORD “Quarterbacks. (Real answer: Not enough comedies star comedians.)”

BILL MAHER “Political correctness, which I’ve been saying since 1993 when Politically Incorrect went on the air!”

SETH MEYERS “Climate change causing the clubs to flood.”

CHRIS MILLER “The high cost of advertising a feature film is causing studios to be more and more risk-averse. It’s now such a huge financial investment to release a film in theaters with any public awareness, so the people spending money are afraid to gamble on weird, different or unusual films and see if they hit.”

TREVOR NOAH “Unfunny people.”

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY “Spilling water on your computer.”

PHOEBE ROBINSON “Audiences thinking that stand-up comedy is comedians posting videos of them interacting with hecklers. Truly depressing that that will get more attention than really great jokes.”

MAYA RUDOLPH “Social media.”

TOM SEGURA “People not complaining. All the complaining that people think is hurting is actually helping. The idea that people shouldn’t complain is ridiculous, too. That’s all that comics do — complain. We complain and so does everyone else. Nothing better for comedy than people outraged or pretending to be outraged by it.”

JEN STATSKY “Fear of taking risks on smaller original ideas.”

LIVE NATION’S GEOF WILLS “The ‘woke’ police and yelpers and those over-embracing cancel culture. It seems, more often than not, that young comedians are looking over their collective shoulders, afraid that they might say something offensive and get [passed] over for a TV show or movie part or whatever. Comics should be able to write and perform and make mistakes without being punished. If [comics trying new material] are no good, they will get weeded out. One bright spot is that it seems that the pendulum might be starting to swing the other way. The rising success of events like Skankfest and acts like Rick Ingraham make me think there is hope. I want to see comedy succeed across the spectrum, all styles and all formats.”

RAMY YOUSSEF “People wanting to get their truth and facts from it.”

LUCIA ANIELLO “The bath.”

JUDD APATOW “The second I open my eyes. It’s all downhill from there.”

BILL BURR “The shower.”

BILLY EICHNER “By figuring out what’s making me angry or what’s hypocritical or most absurd about our world.” 

STERLIN HARJO “The kitchen drinking coffee with family members.”

KEVIN HART “From normal everyday activities. Hanging with the kids, at the supermarket, etc.”

JOEL KIM BOOSTER “The middle of having sex.”

JO KOY “Real-life situations from my family or from my past. My son gives me material every day.”

BERT KREISCHER “The morning, when I’m hungover as fuck and on the tour bus with a bunch of comics halfway through an iced coffee.”

NICK KROLL “The shelf in our kitchen where I hide all my naughty little snacks.

PHIL LORD “My office. At my desk.” 

NATASHA LYONNE “The surrealist frustration and slow pace of navigating mundane logistics out in the world with an internal monologue running at hyperspeed. Once I write it down, it becomes universal human experience about juggling a rich and ridiculous inner life.”

BILL MAHER “Conversations with my friends when I’m high.”

SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO “The world. Living life for me is the best source of material.”

HASAN MINHAJ “In the shower. If I’m stuck on a joke or can’t crack it, I’ll take a hot shower and for some reason it helps me unlock what I’m trying to do. This is great for jokes, but horrible for our water bills.”

TREVOR NOAH “In any situation where I’m living my life to the fullest.”

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY “My dreams, so I think. But then I wake up and find a note in my phone that says, ‘Car that looks like a plane’ or ‘What if instead of mice in your apartment you got birds.’ ”

MAYA RUDOLPH “From real people.”

JEN STATSKY “With Lucia [Aniello] in the bath.”

ROBIN THEDE “Failed relationships.” 

TAIKA WAITITI “Bed. At around 3 a.m. Then I go to sleep and forget it all. Every night.”

JUDD APATOW “The Sopranos. It was always funny when it wanted to be.” 

BILL BURR “Goodfellas.”

STERLIN HARJO “Being There.”

JOEL KIM BOOSTER “Hereditary.“

BERT KREISCHER “I have to say, my favorite show is The Great. It’s about Catherine the Great, and the way that they can blend the absolute atrocities that were committed by her husband and her into comedy is absolutely fucking brilliant. I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for, but fuck, that is the greatest goddamn show!!!”

FX’S KATE LAMBERT “The Wire.”

PHIL LORD “The Watcher is the most pitch-perfect, dry-as-a-bone comedic tone I’ve ever seen.”

NATASHA LYONNE “The King of Comedy.”

BILL MAHER “Succession!”

SETH MEYERS “Euphoria. Eric Dane is heartbreakingly funny.”

CHRIS MILLER “Succession is an hourlong comedy that’s shot like a drama. It’s loaded with comedic setups and situations and funny lines, all delivered straight.”

HASAN MINHAJ “Season 3 of Barry. It’s full-on drama and I love it. Same with Ramy.“

TREVOR NOAH “The survival show Alone.“

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY “Ah, the terribly comedic drama called life, of course! *THR has removed Please Don’t Destroy from this list*”

PHOEBE ROBINSON “Succession.”

MAYA RUDOLPH “Mommy Dearest.”

CHRISTOPHER STORER “Terms of Endearment.”

ROBIN THEDE “Succession! I laugh constantly watching that show; the writing and acting are STELLAR.”

BOWEN YANG “My friends told me to go into Tár and watch it as a comedy and I think that’s exactly how it’s meant to be considered.”

RAMY YOUSSEF “Better Call Saul.”

BILL BURR “Goodfellas.”

PAUL W. DOWNS “Bad Sisters.”

NICK KROLL “The Don’t Worry Darling press tour.”

NATASHA LYONNE “The King of Comedy.”

JUDD APATOW “Irish Spring. It just works!”

BILL BURR “Cuban Seed cigars.”

NICOLE BYER “Gucci.”

PAUL W. DOWNS “Pellegrino.”

WILL FERRELL AND JESSICA ELBAUM “Lucas Papaw ointment.”

STERLIN HARJO “Absolutely nothing.”

JOEL KIM BOOSTER “Silicone-based lube.”

JIMMY KIMMEL “Costco.”

JO KOY “MSPCA – love what they do for animals. Took home a few dogs from them.”

BERT KREISCHER “Rolex and menopausal sex.”

NICK KROLL “Obviously grandmas making passive-aggressive comments about their snack-loving adult grandchildren.”

PHIL LORD “Fingers. In our thumb-dominant communication ecosystem, someone has to stick up for the other eight digits.”

NATASHA LYONNE “Cigarettes. If it’s going to kill me anyway, I may as well get paid first.”

BILL MAHER “The dispensary I own with Woody Harrelson in West Hollywood called The Woods. Oh wait, I am.”

SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO “The Belmond Hotel Group”

TREVOR NOAH “Pickleball! We need to discuss the scoring system. It’s ridiculous. It should be number-number-letter, not number-number-number.”

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY “Seltzer (no company, just the concept).”

PHOEOBE ROBINSON “La Mer. I actually don’t wear makeup when I’m not working because my skin is very temperamental, so I rely heavily on my skincare routine to do the work of keeping me cute. And I’ve been using La Mer products for years and I feel like I have the skin of a 17-year-old Korean. Thanks, La Mer.”

MAYA RUDOLPH “Some sort of luxury brandy. Just so I can say, ‘Mmm, now that’s what I call smooth,’ by a roaring fireplace.”

TOM SEGURA “Gelato. All flavors. Or Ferrari. Any color. Basically, just get me to Italy.”

ROBIN THEDE “Some luxury travel brand that flies me all over the globe to eat and go to spas. Dream job.”

JUDD APATOW “When I first started, I asked the crowd to heckle me so I could practice dealing with hecklers and they refused to stop.”

BILL BURR “The first time I got heckled at Dick Dougherty’s Comedy Vault. It wasn’t a bad heckle. It’s just it had never happened to me before and  totally lost my place after the interaction. My mind was completely blank and 30 people were staring at me like, ‘Annnd?….’”

NICOLE BYER “I was talking about dicks and a man yelled he had a big one so I asked him to get on stage and show it. He didn’t. He arrived without a dick and was six pumpkins tall (he was a short man), so I roasted him. Then he got aggressive. For a minute I was scared, but then I remembered a flick of the wrist would send him flying.”

STERLIN HARJO “Once onstage with my comedy group The 1491s, a Christian man charged the stage to fight us because we said “abortion” on a Sunday.”

GABRIEL “FLUFFY” IGLESIAS “My mom yelling ‘That’s not true!’ after I did a bit about my mom.”

JIMMY KIMMEL “I got hit in the face by a rainbow loom doing a show at JoAnn fabric.”

NICK KROLL “Myself in the mirror every morning.”

JO KOY “He wasn’t heckling, per se, but he did wear a bright neon yellow (or was it green?) hoodie to my Hawaii arena show that was too distracting. I had to call him onstage and swap hoodies with him.”

PHIL LORD “I got heckled by my ex-girlfriend while giving the best man toast at my roommate’s wedding. Then her brother threatened to beat me up. But they were both wrong. It was a very funny toast.”

BILL MAHER “The time I went into the audience myself to throw a guy out during a taping of Real Time.”

SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO “Guy in the second row took his shirt off and wanted to fight me.”

SETH MEYERS “Edinburgh Festival Fringe. My comedy partner Jill and I eat it doing improv at a stand-up night. At the end of the evening, they ask for applause for all the acts and when the emcee says our names it’s dead silent save for a lone Scotsman who yells out, ‘Shite!’ ”

TREVOR NOAH “At a Halloween show a drunk audience member dressed as Jack Sparrow got up and started crying after I made a joke about pirates. I still want to know what he was drinking that day.”

JOHN OLIVER “It’s not even a heckle that sticks out. The most memorable is a 100 percent walkout at the Edinburgh Festival. Four audience members started out in the room. Then two left. Then one left. Then the final one … left. The silence of that empty room said more than a thousand hecklers ever could.”

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY “We were performing a live sketch at Union Hall [in Brooklyn] and in between lines, someone yelled out that we look like all the members of Vampire Weekend. We stopped the sketch to address that.”

TOM SEGURA “I got heckled in Baltimore on my current tour and I slammed the guy and then he popped off again. So, I said something back. Then a moment later there was chaos I couldn’t quite make out in the balcony. After, I learned that another audience member had urinated on the heckler. It was oddly endearing. That guy really had my back. He peed on someone who was disrupting the show.”

FX’S NICK GRAD & KATE LAMBERT “Bruno.”

NETFILIX’s ROBBIE PRAW “Tim Robinson. Yes, he just won a very well-deserved Emmy [for best actor in a shortform series for I Think You Should Leave]. That said, there isn’t a show that is more meme-worthy and delivers more belly laughs per minute. It makes my day when anyone tells me they just discovered it.”

LIVE NATION’S GEOF WILLS “More people should be talking about the Netflix Is a Joke festival that we helped to produce and promote in Los Angeles and how the Netflix crew killed it. It was a smash success and the festival sold over 200,000 tickets in venues from tiny clubs to Gabe’s [Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias] historic Dodger Stadium appearance. [Dave] Chappelle broke the record for his run at the Hollywood Bowl. [John] Mulaney played The Forum and the Bowl. The Wiltern, Palladium, Orpheum, ACE and Fonda hosted multiple events. I wish it was my idea, but it wasn’t.”

LUCIA ANIELLO “Julia Louis-Dreyfus.”

NICOLE BYER “Janicza Bravo, Radha Blank, Viola Davis and Keke Palmer.”

JOANNA CALO “Nora Ephron and Carrie Fisher.”

UTA’S GREG CAVIC “Bernie Brillstein. I miss him.” 

PAUL W. DOWNS “Mel Brooks.”

BILL EICHNER “Valerie Cherish.”

WILL FERRELL AND JESSICA ELBAUM “Harper Steele.”

FX’S NICK GRAD “Paul Thomas Anderson.”

STERLIN HARJO “Jeff Bridges”

KEVIN HART “My late, great friend Patrice O’Neal.”

JOEL KIM BOOSTER “Michaela Coel.” 

JIMMY KIMMEL “Redd Foxx.” 

BERT KREISCHER “Tom Cruise.”

NICK KROLL “The person who invented the chocolate-covered pretzel.”

PHIL LORD “Chris Miller.”

BILL MAHER “A co-host someday. Politically Incorrect and Real Time, I’ve loved every minute, but I’ve never had a wingman, or better, a wingwoman, and I think it would be fun.”

HASAN MINHAJ “Khalid Mohtaseb. He’s one of my favorite cinematographers in the world.”

TREVOR NOAH “Jonah Hill, Regina Hall, Kevin Hart and Taika Waititi.”

NETFLIX’S ROBBIE PRAW “Mel Brooks.”

JEN STATSKY “Any member of the Los Angeles Clippers roster.”

CHRISTOPHER STORER “Paul Rudd.”

ROBIN THEDE “Keke Palmer, Beyoncé and Denzel Washington. Not in the same project, lol. Or … maybe in the same project?”

RAMY YOUSSEF “Yorgos Lanthimos. But for him to act on my show.”

JUDD APATOW “How I always work hard on these responses and no one ever tells me they read them.”

WME’S MIKE BERKOWITZ “Politics that are meant to garner applause over laughs.”

BILL BURR “Do jokes about whatever you want to do jokes about.”

NICOLE BYER “COVID and Trump.”

UTA’S GREG CAVIC “Jazzercise.”

WILL FERRELL AND JESSICA ELBAUM “Leonardo DiCapriani and his young model girlfriends. I’m excited for him and Gigi, and can’t wait to see what the future holds!”

STERLIN HARJO “Nothing!”

KEVIN HART “My height. I’ve heard them all.”

GABRIEL “FLUFFY” IGLESIAS “Russia [and] Putin. They are made enough.”

JOEL KIM BOOSTER “Pronouns.”

JIMMY KIMMEL “Eric and Don Jr. Stop it already. They’re good dudes.”

JO KOY “Talk about whatever you want. Just be aware of others’ feelings.”

BERT KREISCHER “The city you are performing in.”

NICK KROLL “Chocolate-covered pretzels, it’s so played out.”

BILL MAHER “The hysterical coincidence that George Bush’s last name is also a slang term for vagina.”

SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO “Politics.”

CHRIS MILLER “Pronouns. Please. It wasn’t funny the first time.”

TREVOR NOAH “Is something I’d never say. No topic is done to death. Only the precision or angle of a joke matters.” 

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY “Please, no more jokes about … anything. No jokes at all. They’re exhausting to listen to.”

NETFLIX’S ROBBIE PRAW “Former presidents.”

PHOEBE ROBINSON “COVID or dating apps. Every time I hear a joke about these two topics now, I feel an egg inside me dying.”

TOM SEGURA “Prescription drugs that have side effects. We know.”

TAIKA WAITITI “Anything in the news.”

LIVE NATION’S GEOF WILLS “I think comics should be able to joke about everything.”

BILL BURR “Start making theatrical model comedies.”

NICOLE BYER “Letting creators create? Maybe movies aren’t as good as they can be because they are over-noted? I truly don’t know!”

BILLY EICHNER “Nope!”

WILL FERRELL AND JESSICA ELBAUM “Give every 10,000th ticket holder a new hot tub.”  

STERLIN HARJO “Edibles event screenings.”

JIMMY KIMMEL “Maybe stop making moviegoers pay eight dollars for a soda?”

BERT KREISCHER “Make more of them.”

NICK KROLL “Yeah, selling chocolate-covered pretzels at the concessions counter.”

PHIL LORD “Court danger. My favorite comedies all feel dangerous. Everyone — the characters, the filmmakers — should be headed for the rocks all the time.” 

NATASHA LYONNE “Bring back original ideas and trust that if you build it, they will come.”

BILL MAHER “I’m sure I would have some if I knew what ‘theatrical model for comedies’ meant.”

CHRIS MILLER “Make more comedies. More smart comedies, more funny comedies. Going to the movies is an experience, and there isn’t a better experience than being in a room full of people all laughing together. Once people remember that experience, they’ll seek it out again and again.”

TREVOR NOAH “Make really funny movies that people want to watch and then release them in movie theaters.”

JOHN OLIVER “No. Wait, here’s one; John Cena and I in a remake of Twins. Wait, I’ll go back to my original answer … no.”

PLEASE DON’T DESTROY “We have a theatrical comedy coming out next summer, so hopefully somebody figures this out by then!”

MAYA RUDOLPH “Put a rapping baby with sunglasses in it. Gets ’em every time.”  

ROBIN THEDE “Stop thinking formulas are the way projects will make money; audiences are smarter than that. Invest in big ideas, no matter the source, and fund them adequately.”

BOWEN YANG “Lydia Tár should do stand-up (for which she won her first Grammy in my imagination).”

WME’S MIKE BERKOWITZ “The direct-to-fan access that artists have. It’s shifting the balance and putting the power into the hands of artists, giving them autonomy in how and when they communicate and share content with their audience.”

FX’S KATE LAMBERT “People actually want to laugh.”

LIVE NATION’S GEOF WILLS “How big the live comedy business has been in 2022. When the pandemic showed up, I thought, ‘OK, we will never get the [business] bigger’ and I was sad but figured that’s life. Then 2022 rolls around and is by far the biggest year for live comedy I’ve ever seen. With a few exceptions, almost every comic that can tour has toured or is touring in 2022. And I’m personally excited about how comedy is selling overseas and how comics from other countries are selling in North America.”

WME’S MIKE BERKOWITZ “The increase in content being created by artists, [with] fewer buyers. A few streaming networks have become players in the stand-up comedy business while others have yet to join the party.”

NETFLIX’S ROBBIE PRAW “There are now more platforms than ever for comedians to reach their audience — between streaming, social media, podcasts. It’s an incredible opportunity. We hope that working with them on a Netflix project will help them find even more fans and grow that audience.”

LIVE NATION’S GEOF WILLS “Financially, live comedy is becoming the main income source for pretty much every touring comedian. [It’s amazing] how many people and businesses are doing well, whether they are performers, promoters, agencies, etc. For example, I heard the other night that one of the big agencies has 50 people working in their live comedy department! Of course, when [business] is good, there is a cadre of get-rich-quick and phony disrupter types that show up, and there is no shortage of them now.”

Written by Seth Abramovitch, Kirsten Chuba, Mia Galuppo, James Hibberd, Rebecca Keegan, Mikey O’Connell, Lacey Rose, Julian Sancton, Rebecca Sun and Jackie Strause

This story first appeared in the Nov. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.