Letterkenny’s Mark Forward brings his stand-up to KC; asks that you stop quoting the show to him

Mark Forward of Canada’s hit comedy Letterkenny is swinging through Kansas City to perform at The Folly. While he’s briefly performed as part of a past tour, the stand-up is doing a full hour this time—joined on stage by Jeff McEnery (“Alexander”) and Letterkenny/Shoresy writer Allie Pearse.

Ahead of the show March 12, we spoke to Forward about what it takes to be Coach, progressive perspectives on old material, and the complicated situations that arise when strangers shout his catchphrase back to him in public.

The Pitch: What the most exciting part about you and your friends hitting the road in America?

Mark Forward: Everything’s exciting about it. I had a blast on the Letterkenny tour, where I got a chance to do 10 minutes of stand-up. The difference between having a great time with that and now getting to go up and do an hour each night? That’s just great.

That Letterkenny tour is famous locally for being one of the most strained Covid-reschedules of an event. You were rescheduled multiple times, with some frustrating periods without information. I imagine that was equally frustrating on your end?

The experience was crazy for everyone. We were here in America, having just wrapped a show in Detroit, and we were driving to Buffalo and just sorta knew… the show wasn’t going to be happening. That was the end of the first tour and then every time they thought we had something else on the books, we’d wind up facing that we had two different countries with very different policies, and re-opening speeds. It was unfortunate across the board.

Ahead of the 2020 show it was it was a very beautiful moment for Letterkenny fans here in Kansas City because they had originally scheduled the tour to stop and basically what is a large ballet studio, and tickets sold so well that moved to one of the largest venues in town. Fans were like, “Ah, there’s more of us here than we knew. Good, good, good.”

To be honest, that tour was the exact same reaction on our end. Look. Canadians are lovely. Lovely. We don’t revere each other in any way. So I remember being in Houston at a convenience store and the girl behind the counter was just blown away that we were there. Same thing would happen at restaurants where people were excited to see us, and told us so, which is a very different monster. In Canada, they just pretend that don’t know you.

I’ve read about how the rest of the cast has a tricky time with people quoting the show back to them. Is that extra weird for you, considering that your character is always cranked to 11?

Right, my character screams and throws things. That’s his signature move. I can’t do that back to people in Houston or I’ll get tased.

I love that I have this level of success, and I really appreciate how everyone here just wears that on their sleeve when they see me. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in those situations. If I post online, say, about how I love my grandmother or wish someone a happy birthday, it gets buried under a bunch of gifs shouting “That’s Embarrassing!” It is what it is.

I’m just happy about this huge, wonderful experience. But I never know how to respond when someone walks up and just quotes the show to me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do back. Do I… perform the entire scene? I don’t want to upset anyone or hurt their feelings, but it’s a puzzling moment, especially when you aren’t expecting it.

How did you get started in stand-up? What was the moment that made you decide to hit an open mic that night?

I was cast in a play, and I’d been doing plays for about a year. A guy that owned the theater did not like that I was in the play. So he didn’t speak to me for six months. I realized that I liked doing this, but—and it sounds bad—I wanted to do this without anyone else. The other people? That part I could do without.

I did an interview before this one where someone played early stand-up from my career, and I did not like hearing that old joke. It doesn’t represent who I am now, and it came from that early place of trying to push some people away. I kind wish I could get rid of that part of the early years.

To expand on that, what do you think about the forward momentum of progressive comedy? All comedy has to be of a time and a place, but culturally we are learning and growing at such a rapid pace that jokes can age poorly in a matter of years after you record them. Certainly there are plenty of comics that dig in and fight back against that, but it sounds like you’re not that type of guy. 

Look, if you’re doing good, smart comedy, this probably doesn’t effect you. The guys railing against this just want to be able to say whatever they want without repercussions. There is a hard thing of having a joke that… Okay, so I had a joke that was kind of targeted towards a homeless guy. That was very early in my career. And it took a while to realize that if a joke had any chance of hurting someone else, it wasn’t a good joke. You can just write another joke. If you’re hurting someone or punching down, well, you’ve done jokes wrong. I’m not saying that I never get a joke wrong, but if you can learn and do better then that’s all anyone can ask from you, and that’s all you can expect from yourself. It’s my job to try.

When you got back on the road after lockdown, did you have a period of doing bits decompressing the year spent inside without human contact, or did you just slide back into the world and not focus on the Dark Period?

I touch on it, because to not mention it would be strange, but I don’t linger on it. No one really wants to linger on it. There’s a laugh to be had in us all saying, “Hey, remember that time? That happened.” We were doing 14 puzzles a week and not sure when we could go out again. It’s strange to talk about because people came out of that period one of two ways: they either got much, much crazier, or they saw all the craziness around them and changed for the better. Society functions oddly.

Well what are the subjects you’re punching up at these days?

I toy with some climate change stuff, but in a very ridiculous way. I also saw a headstone during pandemic of a guy named David Bowie. He died in 1933. I just fixated on how this guy died and had no idea what the future of that name would become. It consumed me. It was at a graveyard in my small town, and there’s 1933 David Bowie. I thought about him every day. This joke came out of it, but yeah, that’s where my head goes. Look, I’m not changing the world with my stand-up. You’re not going to learn anything, I promise.

Last question here is just for me, but what was it like to act in the comedy feature The Rocker?

I was doing stand up in Toronto, and the producers saw me perform and wanted to put me in the film. I was in scenes where I was sitting with actor Jeff Garlin and he would regale me with stories about acting, and would get frustrated with over-acting from some of the extras. He’s say, “Watch that cashier!” And we’d see the actress was holding up something in the background, really overselling it. He’d get so mad about the whole thing. Also I got to act alongside Christina Applegate, so that was a dream come true.

Forward hits The Folly on March 12 with tickets available here.