Comedian Todd Barry talks animation, adventures, and crowd-work ahead of Friday’s Free State Festival

Todd Barry. // image courtesy the artist

Comedian Todd Barry’s dry wit has garnered him quite a following over the past three decades, along with his appearances on seemingly every comedy series of note in that time. Be it the superlative special Medium Energy, his crowd work tour , or popping up in everything from Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and Flight of the Conchords to Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, Barry has made a name for himself thanks to his acerbic delivery and spot-on observations.

Todd Barry performs at the Lawrence Arts Center on Friday, June 27, as part of the Free State Festival, and we hopped on the phone with the comic to talk about his many appearances and the changing face of comedy today.

The Pitch: Your latest special, Domestic Shorthair, just hit YouTube. How do you feel about the current way of releasing specials directly to fans through companies like 800 Lb. Gorilla?

Todd Barry: Well, I mean, it’s good to get it out there, if you think of it as a calling card or just an advertisement for you. It’s a little different, ’cause I used to be able to just get paid to do a special. I mean, I guess I’m getting paid in a way, but not like I used to get paid, but I don’t know. I mean, I think a lot of people have really hit pretty hard from just releasing it on YouTube.

Does it help that people can discover it via the algorithm or was it better when it would air on Comedy Central and it would be in a primetime spot?

Back in the day when people watched TV a little differently, you could say, “It’s gonna be on this time,” whereas with Netflix, you can just go watch it at your leisure. Same with YouTube, so it is nice to be able to say if you ever, “If you wanna watch this, this is where it’s gonna be.”

Early on in the special, you’re talking about being at a stand where they’re selling Girl Scout cookies and you’re talking about the things you’ve been in. Is there a particular thing that you find people recognize you from most?

That’s hard to know because if they come up to me, usually it’s pretty neutral or generic what they say. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but they don’t necessarily go, “I like you for this.” I mean, Flight of the Conchords got a lot of attention, relatively speaking, but oftentimes if they come, they just go, “You’re really funny,” or something along those lines, if they’re nice, you know. It’s hard to know. When I did Flight of the Conchords, I definitely got recognized from that specifically.

But I was also in The Wrestler and occasionally someone mentioned that. Not as much as I mentioned it, but, I mean, now if someone’s nice and they say anything, really, I’m fine. That’s a nice thing to happen. Hopefully, I haven’t done too much stuff that I’m embarrassed about. If they like anything I’ve done, that’s good for me.

Your crowd work special is over 10 years old now and I’m just constantly amazed by the fact that not only were you able to do that, but so many people responded so well to it. Do you find that folks come to your shows expecting a good amount of that?

I mean, I’ve been doing a decent amount of it lately when I’m touring, just mainly ’cause I don’t have enough new stuff, so it kind of fills things out. But it’s also, I do have fun doing it and I also get a little ADHD and it’s like I need to just break things up and it’s more of a surprise what might happen when I talk to someone in the crowd. I think there’s people who want crowd work. I haven’t met a lot of anti-crowd work people.

As you’ve traveled over the years, do you see differences in audiences post-COVID?

Well, I mean, the only thing that COVID did–well, not the only thing that COVID did, but relating to this–was, there’s still, like even after COVID there was something called drop rate. There was still high drop rate and so you’d be like, “Yeah, 20% of the people aren’t even gonna show up,” and I still don’t even know why that happened, but they don’t even ask for a refund, which is always a nice thing.

I imagine that’s gotta be both a positive and a negative.

I mean, if they’re gonna not show up, I’ll take their money if that’s what they wanted, if that’s the way they wanna do it, but I don’t monitor that stuff too much ’cause I don’t know what I can do with that information. But, I always find out how many people showed up and all that and I do ask how many things people didn’t show up because I’ve heard stories about people who are bigger than me, where hundreds and hundreds and maybe thousands of people don’t show up.

You’ve been in so many things, it blows my mind whenever I see your face or hear your voice pop up in something. Do you have a preference between voice acting versus live action?

I like them both equally, but there’s, you know, there’s definitely advantages, too. I’ve done voiceovers where my recording session is 10 minutes and I always like that and it’s just you don’t have to look good, you don’t have to dress up, you don’t have to take a shower, but I also like acting ’cause it’s just something really–I dunno, it’s fun, but it’s kind of a challenge when you’re a standup comic used to doing whatever you want.

No complaints about it. I do like it and I haven’t done in a long time and I’d love to do it again soon.

I imagine that, in terms of voice acting, especially, you probably got a little spoiled with as many episodes as of Dr. Katz as you did, where it’s essentially letting you be yourself?

Yeah, that was. I was actually thinking about that today. They used to film that in Boston, and they would fly me up from New York to Boston and put me in a nice hotel, pay me well, and the way we did that, we would stick to a script at the beginning, and then we would kind of run wild with it.

As you’ve gone forward in your career, what are some of the changes you’ve seen in the comedy scene as a whole, and also in terms of how you have to approach things? I mean, obviously like content creation is a little different than it used to be.

I mean, I’ve been doing this like 37 and a half years or whatever. When I started, there was no YouTube. If you did a show that was a one person show, you’d make postcards for it and have to order 5000 of them and then you’d have 4200 left, but it was not email lists.

I think the promotion is a big thing that’s changed and people getting famous, ’cause there are comics I run into who I think are not even professional, and then you see they have 450,000 Instagram followers. Just staying on top of it, I find it really difficult. And also, I mean, when you move to New York or LA or something like, I started in Florida and we weren’t really talking about TV deals or anything. We were kind of just talking about gigs and jokes.

I always feel for comics, especially these days, give the fact that you have to constantly be posting clips to either Instagram, Facebook,/or TikTok. Just putting yourself out there so much, even more so than you do as being a comic on stage, I gotta imagine that wears after a bit?

Yeah, I mean, at some point, ideally, you stop reading any comments. I know I have, for the most part. So there is like this putting something out there and then, oh, then now we’re supposed to interact with these people and yeah, and that’s still hard to get used to even though it’s been going on a while now. We wake up and it’s like, “I got this clip now I’m gonna post on Instagram. Do I post it on Bluesky, also? Do I post it on Threads?” I mean, I guess it’s not the worst thing can happen in your life.

Todd Barry performs at the Lawrence Arts Center this Friday, June 27, as part of the Free State Festival, with opener Tom Peters. Details on that show here.