How Comedian Nate Bargatze Pulled Off the Funniest Stand-Up Special of the COVID Era
Nate Bargatze has been a professional stand-up comic for nearly two decades, but every time he has to start putting together a new hour he thinks to himself, “I’m the worst comedian ever.”
“You can’t think of anything new and you’re like, ‘I am awful. I’m an awful comedian,’” he tells me on his return to The Last Laugh podcast this week. “So those thoughts don’t go away. You definitely have moments of like, ‘I’m pretty good.’ And then you have moments of like, ‘You’re out of your mind, dude, you’re terrible!’ So it’s a hard balance to figure all that stuff out.”
To be very clear, Bargatze is more than “pretty good.” With his understated Southern drawl and self-deprecating attitude on everything from his own comedy skills to his ability to help his young daughter with her homework—as he jokes about in the exclusive clip from his new Netflix special The Greatest Average American below—the 41-year-old has sneakily become one of the best stand-ups of his generation.