This week, we’re highlighting 24 talented writers and performers for Vulture’s annual list “The Comedians You Should and Will Know.†Our goal is to introduce a wider audience to the talent that has the comedy community and industry buzzing. (You can read more about our methodology at the link above.) We asked the comedians on the list to answer a series of questions about their work, performing, goals for the future, and more. Next up is Chloe Radcliffe.
Tell us a story from your childhood that you think might explain why you ended up becoming a comedian.
I’ve always loved performing, and I’ve always thought of myself as pretty funny, so I don’t have a clear “the first time I got a laugh from an audience†memory.
But I did go to speech-and-debate camp (a damning indictment of my teenage social standing). The second year I went to speech camp, I had to leave for a few days in the middle of it to do a summer theater intensive (yet more damaging evidence of my virginity). I cried on the drive to the theater thing because it felt so wrong to deprioritize speech (and because I knew that with this spread of extracurriculars, I would have to take my gay friend from a different high school for the second year in a row if I wanted a date to the Snowball Dance). But that love of solo performance and writing for myself meant that years later, when I got laid off from a corporate job at Target HQ and decided to try performing again, I was drawn toward stand-up more than live theater.
If you were immortalized as a cartoon character, what would your outfit be?
I would have a ratty backpack stuffed to the seams, meatball style, and I would always be on my bike. A little spray of sweat would follow me everywhere. The clothes specifically? Probably just jeans and a tank top, but the second anyone brings up the concept of “outfit,†I would point to the tank top and pipe up with my catchphrase, “I found this on the sidewalk!â€
What’s your proudest moment/achievement of your comedy career so far?
At the end of our first day of shooting on Steven Soderbergh’s miniseries Command Z, I went to craft services and filled a paper cereal bowl with a weird mish-mosh of Trader Joe’s snacks. I was trying to sneak out through a tiny back staircase and had to squeeze by Steven, Michael Cera, and a PA. As I passed, with my back to them, Steven said, “What’dya got there?†and as I turned, I said, “She slowly turns to reveal her dog-food bowl.†Michael didn’t react (a cancelable offense), and the PA was too terrified to even smile. But Steven liked it, which was a tiny relief considering I thought it was a great line that frankly didn’t get what it deserved.
And then over the next couple weeks, every time I went to crafty, Steven would ask if I needed a to-go box. And I would just grab whatever the biggest vessel in sight was — an apple box, a black trash bag — and say, “Nah, I got my own.†Good bit, good bit.
Which comedian’s career trajectory would you most like to follow?
I guess if we’re talking direct map, probably Patton Oswalt: successful at very high levels in stand-up and acting and actively still doing both. He didn’t completely abandon stand-up as his Hollywood career grew. But on a more poetic level: Donald Glover. Now, he had the One Big Role launchpad, which is incredible (Do I want that? Yes I do) but so out of my control that saying “I would like to follow that trajectory†isn’t more than a hope. But his drive to expand into multiple art forms speaks to me.
I want to act, I want to do stand-up, I want to perform my solo show — which is rooted in stand-up but is something different — I want to write a movie for myself, I want to make videos of me biking around NYC, I want a bunch of things. And for the last couple years, I’ve been fighting to make peace with my conflicting priorities of stand-up and the rest of the entertainment industry. So seeing someone succeed with a spider web of projects is so inspiring.
Tell us everything about your worst show ever. (This can involve venue, audience, other acts on the lineup, anything!)
I was booked on a charity boxing-tournament comedy show (just you wait) by a notoriously weird New York guy in the very deep, very Russian part of South Brooklyn. It took an hour and a half on the subway to get there, and I was running late, so there was a danger that I wouldn’t make my spot time. I asked to be swapped with the guy after me (the guy after me was an open-mic-er I knew — it’s not like I was suggesting I take the place of a big-dog headliner). The booker refused and said that if I didn’t arrive by my spot time, I would not be paid, for what was now promising to be an almost-four-hour round trip. I ran the ten minutes from the subway stop and then at the event hall where the tournament was, an old woman using a walker was bottlenecking the front entrance, and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to committing elder abuse.
I got inside, and the host brought me straight on … into the center of the boxing ring. Mind you, this is after a full charity-boxing tournament. They have already watched someone get crowned for beating the most shit out of everyone else. The room is absolutely jammed with people milling around, speaking Russian, and, most crucially, bleeding from their faces. And I’m just standing four feet higher than everyone else, in the middle of a springy, empty boxing ring, saying dick jokes into the boxing announcer’s mic while people every once in a while look over at me, confused and mostly annoyed.
I got paid.
What have you learned about your own joke-writing process that you didn’t know when you started?
How to recognize (and sometimes access on command, though not always) the right brain-flow state that results in writing that resonates with people. Sorry about that sentence, it’s one of the more obnoxious ones I’ve ever written. But the jokes that land the hardest are the ones that both feel the most true and recognizable to people and feel the most unexpected. And I can now identify the Brain Vibeâ„¢ï¸ that leads to that kind of writing. The more experienced I get, the more ability I have to re-create that in situations that aren’t right before or after sleep or on psychedelics.
What’s the biggest financial hurdle you’ve encountered since becoming a comedian?
The Edinburgh Fringe. The Fringe is a truffle pig that relentlessly snurfs out any last secret stores of cash you may have. Its hunting senses lock like lasers onto your savings that you thought could last years longer. Costs include literal thousands of dollars on a place to stay (that is usually bad), flights, any show-development costs, food, festival fees, printing flyers and posters … much less the optional add-ons of a producer, a PR rep, flyer-ers to hawk your comedic wares, a director, or (dare to dream) a semi-functional venue.
When I was planning for the Fringe, I was prepared to lose a couple thousand dollars, and over a period of a few months, my tolerance for loss kept creeping higher and higher. Or maybe jumping higher and higher — when it moves by a couple thousand dollars in one go, that’s not really a creep, is it?
And! My solo show has a life that it absolutely would not have without the crucible of Fringe! I am one of the lucky ones, where Fringe was overall a massive benefit (though it didn’t feel like it at the time).
At the end of the movie 8 Mile, Eminem’s character, B-Rabbit, starts his final battle rap by dissing himself so the person he’s battling has nothing left to attack. How would you roast yourself so the other person would have nothing to say?
“Some people say Chloe is just a pretty face. Then she turns her head.â€
“You can criticize Chloe for her history of infidelity, for reckless biking, for dumpster diving for groceries. And most do.â€
“Chloe’s love life is like a tenth-grade chemistry class. One nerd and lots of cheating.â€
“Chloe dumpster dives for groceries and has a solo show all about how she has a history of infidelity. It’s shocking that anyone has ever wanted to fuck her, much less that she’s had options.â€
When it comes to your comedy opinions — about material, performing, audience, trends you want to kill/revive, the industry, etc. — what hill will you die on?
The collapse of gatekeepers through social media, though helpful in many ways, came with an inverse downside: the loss of curators. The peak of material that connects with people still breaks through, but I think huge swaths of comedy have been flattened to the most familiar (read repetitive, hacky) output. And there’s fewer avenues for a curator with good taste (this could be a single person, or say, a TV channel) to spotlight an unusual voice who wouldn’t otherwise get attention.
What is the best comedy advice, and then the worst comedy advice, you’ve ever received?
Okay, unfortunately I can’t pick between these three best advices, so you get them all. Best:
• Write a punch line that’s true: When I was starting in Minneapolis, there was a weekly joke workshop where you got seven minutes to do whatever you want, ask for feedback, whatever. And having more experienced comedians there felt so precious. One of them, Turner Barrowman, who went on to become a producer and development exec in L.A., encouraged people to not fall into the trap of trying to paint the nuttiest picture when building out a joke. He was constantly returning to the most precise, accurate details of what makes an idea funny. In so many ways, that’s where I learned how to write comedy, and it’s probably no coincidence that I sometimes run into the problem of remaining too grounded now.
• Write everything down: Five or six years ago, Vulture ran an article asking comedians to give advice to their younger selves. The Lucas Brothers answered in a little list of short suggestions, which I could look up, but I’m not going to bother, because the one that really mattered was “Document everything.†That stuck out to me because I was not good enough at the habit of writing down any funny ideas and, more crucially, I felt a dearth of funny ideas, so every possible concept felt precious and valuable. I’ve never felt like the idea fountain that I think a lot of creatives are. So, five years ago, on a train to Boston for a day-job work trip, I made a shitty iPhone text edit that says “document everything,†and it has been my phone background ever since. And now it’s a great tool, because when I interrupt a conversation to write something down — not just a funny idea anymore; now, I write down literally anything I would like to remember and keep with me — I can show my phone background to the person who I’m interrupting and not seem so rude or annoying. Also, my shitty edit has the exact same vibe as the Brat album cover, but I did it first, I didn’t copy anyone.Â
• If you’re going to quit, quit now: About a year and a half into comedy, I was in Seattle for a family thing and decided to make it a week of doing stand-up. It was my first time performing in a different scene. My very first night, I did the booked closing spot on an open mic, and a guy named — and this is a faithful reporting — Jet Black, talked to me after. He asked when I was going to move to NYC or L.A., and I said, “Well I guess if I don’t quit, I’ll move at some point.†And he got curt and said, “Don’t say ‘if I don’t quit.’ You’re good enough to make a career in this, so either commit to it, or if you’re going to quit, quit now and don’t take the space that other people want really badly.†And I needed that kind of no-nonsense directness (I had an old speech coach who would say, “Radcliffe, don’t fuck this upâ€). That night, I decided to actually pursue this as a career. Now, did Jet Black become a little weird later in the week? Sure — who didn’t see that coming. But I will forever credit him with saying exactly what I needed at that point in my career.
Worst: The podcast industry is oversaturated. We’ve been saying that for eight years, and clearly it keeps growing. Wish I had started one back then!!
More From This Series
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- Emil Wakim’s Parents Finally Understand His Job Now
- Gianmarco Soresi Demands Inclusive Bullying in Comedy
- Veronika Slowikowska’s Got Magic to Do