Being canceled has its privileges.
Not many, mind you, but a few that matter for comedians who care about their craft above all else.
Take stand-up comic Josh Denny. The Food Network alum found himself professionally canceled in 2018 for a racially-charged quip that landed with a thud with some social media users.
His own network disowned him and removed his contributions. He became a comic without a community, forced to forge a career on Hollywood’s margins. No late-night couches or Netflix stand-up deals.
He’d have to do it all by himself moving forward.
Denny has done just that, including his latest comedy special, “Goliath.”
Warning: This isn’t your typical stand-up set. It’s corrosive, exploring difficult topics without fear. Even those weaned on today’s rebel comics may flinch.
It’s everything deemed off-limits about modern comedy. Think ’90s-era Howard Stern for a rough comparison.
No compromises. No rules. And he’s paid a considerable price for his outlaw brand of humor. The reward? He can still tell the jokes he wants to tell without a filter thanks to our digital age.
“My comedy style is observational. It’s just that my observations are much darker than somebody like Jerry Seinfeld or Jim Gaffigan,” Denny told The Hollywood in Toto Podcast.
Denny said painting outside the lines has cost him professionally. He doesn’t sugarcoat his career, nor is he willing to go on an apology tour and beg for forgiveness.
“As an artist, you have to decide what’s in your heart, what you care about and who you want to be,” Denny said. His days hosting Food Network’s “Ginormous Food” gave him his biggest audience to date, but that fan base proved superficial at best.
“They didn’t really appreciate who I was as a person because they had no idea who that was,” he said. “My currency in life, the thing I think is the most valuable, is interacting with people, having conversations with people, entertaining people, sharing perspectives. It’s the greatest kind of wealth you can have in this world.”
The comedian offers a word of caution to right-leaning comedians, schools late-night hosts for their dereliction of comic duty and more in the latest Hollywood in Toto podcast.
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