Surpassing:Seth Meyers, Mike Birbiglia talk 'Good One' terror, surviving joke bombs, courting villainy

Absolute terror.

That's how comedian Mike Birbiglia describes the feeling of starting from scratch on Surpassingan entirely new act following his successful 2023 Broadway one-man show "The Old Man and the Pool," which last year became a Netflix special.

"I've been a touring comedian for 20 years. And I'm just a blank slate," says Birbiglia. "It's never not terrifying. So it's a smart idea to document this time on film, because I'm vulnerable. When the camera turns on, I'm dreading it."

Fellow comedian Seth Meyers turned the camera on his longtime friend, producing the documentary special "Good One: A Show About Jokes" (now streaming on Peacock). "The Late Night With Seth Meyers" host agrees that getting personal onstage is far more intimidating than a nightly TV monologue written with a staff of writers.

"There's some dread there, too," says Meyers. "But it's not nearly the same as walking on stage where 99.5% of the jokes are things we've written, and about ourselves."

Birbiglia, 45, and Meyers, 50, spoke to USA TODAY about finding humor without politics or, more importantly, offending their wives.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

A big part of "Good One" is trying out jokes in front of an audience, knowing that many will fail. How do you get through jokes that bomb?

Mike Birbiglia: If you don't acknowledge that a joke has failed, then it's just another piece of information you're relaying to the audience. They don't really know when a joke is failing, unless you're leaning on the joke so hard.

Seth Meyers: Interesting, so you're saying to just play it off like it was a setup?

Birbiglia: Absolutely. Sometimes a series of setups. When the audience comes to a comedy show, they're expecting 50 to 100 jokes are funny. If you hit that, you're in good shape. If you have only 13 or 15 good jokes, they're going to have pitchforks.

How do you keep from offending your wives with your personal comedy?

Meyers: If someone who knows my wife (Alexi Ashe) is in the audience, I don't do the joke. I try it in front of people who won't get back to her. If I can get into a place where I'm comfortable with her seeing it, she'll appreciate it. Because more often than not, I make myself the dumber of the two of us. That brings her great satisfaction.

Birbiglia: My wife Jenny (Stein) is a poet and my brother is a collaborator, so I vet everything past them. The only other people I talk about onstage are my parents. Fortunately, they don't watch my act. Seth's parents watch my act more than my own parents.

Meyers: This is true. They're massive Birbiglia fans.

If you need comedy material in 2024, there's plenty in the political world. Why don't you work that more?

Birbiglia: It's a weird moment where people are so dug in politically in this country. I don't think you're changing minds with political humor. I tell personal stories in a way that I become closer to audience members. Anything I bring up with politics will make me farther apart from audience members, inevitably, just by the statistics alone.

Meyers: Unlike my show, when I go out on stage and do stand-up, there's very little politics as well. It's so nice to be up there doing stuff about people you love, as opposed to the things that are making you crazy.

Mike, you've been on a villainous streak, playing an elder-evicting real-estate flunkie in "A Man Called Otto" and Taylor Swift's bizarre son in last year's "Anti-Hero" music video. What gives?

Birbiglia: In the (Swift) video, I'm like this dystopian, greedy son. It started with "Orange Is The New Black," where I was the corporate evil prison guy. People think it's funny when the smiley comedian is dastardly. I'm all about it, if it's a great script.

Meyers: Also, Mike has been kicking old people out of homes for, like, 25 years. He can't support himself doing stand-up. That's a side gig. But really, the best villains are comics. That's why we like them. Alan Rickman in "Die Hard" is one of the funniest bad guys of all time.

Mike, what's the state of the once-blank show now?

Birbiglia: It's been about a year and a half. I'm literally on a 50-city tour right now. Every city has a new iteration of the show, incrementally. I'll try five jokes this week and so on. It'll probably end up being a solo show, on or off-Broadway, in about a year or two. But I never fully know until I know.