Jerrod Carmichael out as gay a new edy special | CNN

Contents:

• 7 HILAR GAY COMEDIANS WHO SLAY EVERY PERFORMANCE
• THE GREATT GAY COMEDIANS OF ALL TIME
• JERROD CARMICHAEL OUT AS GAY HIS NEW EDY SPECIAL
• GAY COMEDIANS FOR YOUR NEXT EVENT
• LGH YOUR FEARS AWAY WH 7 OF THE FUNNIT GAY COMEDIANS EVER
• THE TOP 5 GAY COMEDIANS YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTN TO
• JAGUARS’ KEV MAXEN IS FIRST MALE ACH TO E OUT AS GAY US MEN’S PRO SPORTS

7 HILAR GAY COMEDIANS WHO SLAY EVERY PERFORMANCE

Risg to fame followg her special "Nate, " Gadsby has phed edy to new levels by weavg together personal stori, art history lsons, and sthg monologu — routely takg hs at men and the chronicl her childhood growg up as a lbian Tasmania, where homosexualy was illegal until 1997.

Yang beme the first Che-Amerin and third openly gay st member on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" edian, who hosts a pop culture podst lled "Las Culturistas, " has proven his range on the "SNL, " masterfully portrayg characters om a Che tra reprentative ed as "Tra Daddy" to former Democratic printial ndidate Andrew Yang. Amstell, who beme known for appearanc on "Pop World" and "Never Md The Buzzcks, " stand-up edy as a nfsnal, workg through issu like his parents' divorce, eatg meat, and timacy the Brish ic speaks openly about his sexualy durg sets, Amstell said he was "terrified" of beg gay before g out durg his Netflix special "Set Free. Cho, who grew up San Francis and had parents that owned a gay bookstore, has squashed the stereotypil tras placed on Asian-Amerin gaed populary by wrg and starrg a s lled "All Amerin Girl" and has bee a celebrated stand-up ic.

THE GREATT GAY COMEDIANS OF ALL TIME

He often jok that he knew he was gay before he knew he was 's sce lnched a succsful stand-up reer — appearg on "The Late Late Show Wh Jam Corn, " "Late Night Wh Seth Meyers, " "CONAN, " and more. Whether the bt LGBTQ edians are observatnal, suatnal, absurdist, blue llar, abstract, alternative, dark, or a long form storyteller, all of the funnit gay edians are unique, hardworkg, and hilar. MoreKathryn McKnon Berthold (born January 6, 1984) is an Amerin actrs, edian, and mician wily known as a regular st member on The Big Gay Sketch Show (2007–2010) and Saturday Night Live (2012–prent).

However, he is perhaps bt known for beg a rrponnt on The Daily Show wh Trevor Noah, He quietly left the show November 2021 and is workg as a wrer and executive producer on the upg HBO seri adaptatn of the book The Gang’s All Queer: The Liv of Gay Gang Members. After breakg to the edy scene, this South Korean-born edian released their but stand-up album, Mol Mory, which vered racism the gay muny and his experienc fyg stereotyp about Asian Amerins. He filmed the documentary How Gay Is Pakistan?, worked as a wrer on the queer Netflix dreamed seri Sex Edutn and opened for Queer Eye‘s nonbary fashn maven Jonathan Van Ns on tour.

While he has been regnized as an important ntributor to the creasgly acceptg edy world, he has also acknowledged that gay edians existed long before he and his peers me around. “I remember Googlg gay ics and nothg g up, pecially gay Black ics, ” says Perks, whose blazgly funny stand-up work rang om sweet to goofy to rnchy.

JERROD CARMICHAEL OUT AS GAY HIS NEW EDY SPECIAL

Havg a moment, the late ’90s and early ghts, meant that, sudnly, a gay performer or character would appear a space that had been prevly domated by straight people — say, at the center of a TV s like “Will & Grace” or a stand-up special, or as the voice of reason to the leadg lady a romantic edy like “My Bt Friend’s Weddg” — and everyone uld appld and say, “We solved ! ” It was a pop-cultural phenomenon that started to surface when Perks, who’s 31, and other gay edians of his generatn were middle school. Gay edy isn’t niche ’s all changed so fast that at one pot, while he’s discsg a sketch about rporate sponsorship of gay pri paras that he did wh Lil Nas X last May, Yang, 31, tch himself and says, lghg, “Why am I talkg about this the past tense, like ’s another era?

GAY COMEDIANS FOR YOUR NEXT EVENT

(The podst format, which gay obssns n be discsed and nstcted at length, or which the hetero world n be filtered through gay sensibili, as is on Sam Taggart and Gee Civeris’s “StraightLab, ” has bee fertile turf for emergg edy stars. ” says Rogers, who, like all of his lleagu, has many ncurrent projects; he spent an early month of the panmic hostg (hilarly) a pet-groomg realy show lled “Hte Dog” for HBO Max; he -created a short-form seri lled “Gayme Show” (“for Quibi, rt peace”), whose wrg room was “entirely stocked wh queer people”; and he will have a regular role on a new Showtime edy lled “I Love That for You, ” tentatively schled for this sprg, wh the “S. ” Lyn’s style of humor — bchy, suatg, spiked wh alhol, rancid wh self-mockery — was rarely overtly queer; was what would now be scribed as “queer-d” — other words, legibly gay to anybody, gay or straight, who knew what signifiers to look for but to the obliv, merely droll.

Lyn (who was self-protectively disparagg about gay men terviews) and ntemporari like Charl Nelson Reilly on “Match Game” (another game show) the 1970s were gay entertaers before that was a tegory; they are the first DNA strand ntemporary gay male edy’s triple send strand was the first generatn of out male edians — guys like the performance artist Frank Maya, who beme the first out gay man to get a spot on the early ’90s MTV seri “Half Hour Comedy Hour, ” and Bob Smh, the first to crack “The Tonight Show” durg the Jay Leno era, and Stt Thompson, the gay member of the Canadian edy qutet the Kids the Hall. They were pneers who had to walk a plited le, at once makg stand-up safe for gay performers and makg gay edy palatable for straight dienc that, 30 years ago, were still far more fortable lghg at queer people than wh them.

And the third strand was drag — there all along, olr than pop culture self, the subject of angry ntentn the gay muny between those who embraced as an act of transgrsive fiance and genr subversn and those who nounced as mstrelsy or, worse, bad for the e; pop culture, was a s-long journey om “La Cage x Foll” on Broadway the 1980s to “RuPl’s Drag Race” the 2000s, at which pot the naysayers fally had to adm feat. Source photos: Alex SchaeferOne thg that distguish the new wave of gay edy is that n draw om all the tradns and rebe them to somethg new — at once polil and mpy; cheerful and subversive; stumed and nfsnal; explic and mastream.

LGH YOUR FEARS AWAY WH 7 OF THE FUNNIT GAY COMEDIANS EVER

It’s an approach that nnects gay edy to a long Amerin tradn of outsir humor — the humor of the opprsed — and an equally long tradn which those outsirs bee sirs. In the scene, Styl plays a distracted, gay, sexually (hyper)active social media brand manager who’s ught advertently postg his own horny Instagram msag unr the pany acunt — cludg one to Shawn Mens, to whom he sends what he sheepishly adms to his boss ( a le that drew screams of lighted shock om the stud dience) was “a picture of my open throat.

”The sketch was an stant h, which was surprisg not jt bee Styl gamely threw himself to the role but bee the language ed — “still on a poppers high, ” “feelg really prsed after threome, ” “wreck me, daddy” — was for-, by- gay talk of a kd that was unprecented on “S. L., ” which had only the last , wh the rise of Kate McKnon and the stallatn of the gay -head wrer Chris Kelly, started to journey out of a long, vexed history of homophobia.

Sce Ellen DeGener me out 1997, lbians and gay men have had, and ntue to have, separate and plited trajectori through edy, and one major and persistent difference is that the ia of sex between men still triggers a more vol, openly disgted type of homophobia om some dienc than do the ia of sex between women. “Sara Lee” didn’t seem the least alarmed by that; wasn’t a sketch aimed at heterosexual drive-by gawkers but one unmistakably wrten straight-outta-Grdr language by gay men who weren’t pecially terted translatg their work for a wir dience. VioThe edian shar an anecdote about g out to his LeeIn one way, that sensibily was nsistent wh Yang and Rogers’s unforced gay-bti vibe on “Las Culturistas, ” which is not gay as “We’re here, we’re queer, ” but gay as “We’re two adult men havg an extremely long and impassned discsn about Glenn Close — don’t expect to make fortable for you.

THE TOP 5 GAY COMEDIANS YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTN TO

The character, makg a tense and hghty appearance on “Weekend Update, ” exemplifi the ways which gay edy is now, so to speak, genre-fluid: It’s performed and -wrten by an out gay man; ’s not overtly gay but is, Yang’s words, “very much queer-d”; and ’s also drag. A kd of drag that seems steeped ls the world of RuPl than the mp zans of “Pee-wee’s Playhoe” (a subversive, tangibly queerish show that’s still makg s fluence felt s after buted 1986), but drag nohels — apparently, we all know a gay iceberg when we see one. Bt of all, nothg is done for the purpose of ncealment: All the dg displays a fluency the var ways that celebry gayns n tersect wh pri, vany, narcissism, tensn, jury, entlement, persistence, weeps and termatn.

JAGUARS’ KEV MAXEN IS FIRST MALE ACH TO E OUT AS GAY US MEN’S PRO SPORTS

He giv them feelgs, gdg, sensivi, issu and, naturally, drama — and the show’s implic gayns serv as an embodiment of Torr’s belief that translatn is unnecsary. I jt thk that is distct om packaged queerns” — other words, om the explicly inty-based edy that might lead a performer to be labeled “the gay ic.

”Torr’s edy upends several tradns, cludg the gree to which gay men have so often been asked to ntextualize themselv wh the straight world — as ic relief, as sikicks, as the bt iend. (That class distctn — placg femmey or mpy gay men a tier below gay men who n, if not pass as heterosexual, at least -swch — is entangled wh real-world hierarchi and prejudic wh and outsi of gay muni that pop culture over the s has both reflected and rerced. ) One of the strikg thgs about this moment is that effemacy — or, more accurately, tonatns or gtur that we read as gay — is no longer a joke for the benef of straight dienc; ’s jt part of who the performers are (or, some s, aren’t).