The rare sort of entertainer that can succeed as an actor, stand-up comic, TV producer, author and radio host, Jay Mohr has been working steadily for well over 20 years. Although he was cast on Saturday Night Live in his early 20s, Jay is further a rarity in having experienced plenty more success since leaving SNL. Following his breakout role in 1996’s Jerry Maguire, he was seen in plenty of well-received films including Go, S1mone and Pay It Forward. He has also appeared in over 200 episodes of network television, starring in the criminally-underrated series Action, working on Ghost Whisperer and Gary Unmarried, and hosting and producing Last Comic Standing. All the while, Jay was a theater-level headliner on the stand-up scene with two best-selling memoirs.
Over the past few years, Jay has taken his career in an interesting direction. A life-long sports fan, he started hosting Jay Mohr Sports on FOX Sports Radio in 2013. Two years prior to the launch of that syndicated show, Jay began the Mohr Stories podcast, which has hundreds of thousands of listeners. While Jay has undoubtedly found his footing as a broadcaster and interviewer, he continues to pop up regularly in movies and headline big stages. His work in this year’s Road Hard — alongside fellow DIY-minded comic and podcaster Adam Carolla — had many take notice, displaying the dramatic acting chops that few comics are known to have.
In support of his new stand-up album, Happy. And A Lot, I had the opportunity to talk with everyone’s favorite Christopher Walken impersonator by phone. While many comics keep the funny to when they’re on-stage, an interview with Jay Mohr is everything a writer could hope for. He’s energetic, he’s honest and he’s full of interesting anecdotes. He’s also humble and spoke at length about the experience of having his wife — actress Nikki Cox, star of Las Vegas, Nikki and Unhappily Ever After — write material for him. Further onto the “humble” end, 100 percent of the proceeds from Happy. And A Lot go to WriteGirl Los Angeles.
For more information on the new album — in addition to tour dates and Mohr Stories bonus content — click on over to www.jaymohr.com.
Your episode with Barry Katz last week was very interesting in you two frankly discussing the business and the state of your podcast. Was that something you had planned in advance of sitting down?
Jay Mohr: Yeah, because he had sent that Bob Lefsetz article that I had read a little bit of on the air, and that’s what really kind of shook me. “Never leave your audience, they’re all you have. If you have a platform, embrace it.” But Barry and I knew going on that that’s what we were gonna talk about. So unlike anybody else, that guy just peels me like an onion. It’s great.
Cool. So a lot of people think that their wife is funny, but when did you release that your wife was truly funny?
J: First day I was a guest star on Las Vegas. I was doing my usual “make small talk with actor across from you,” and it’s usually just dumb jokes. Right before they said “Action,” I looked at her and said, “Do I look right into the camera or do I look right at you?” She goes, “No, into the camera,” and without missing a beat, she quoted Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and said, “Paging Mr. Herman.” Because that’s what Pee-Wee said when he’s looking into the camera in his own movie. I was like, “Damn, this woman cannot leave my sight.” I asked her out that day, and I asked her out the next day, and I just kept asking her out, because I did not want to leave a 24-hour window for anyone else to pull her away from me.
How does it go from realizing she’s funny to having her write stand-up for and with you?
J: Not with, she hands me a notebook because she’s an insomniac, she’s up all night. It started on an airplane, I was sleeping, I was doing Gary Unmarried, I was writing my book, No Wonder My Parents Drank. I was doing a stand-up tour, I was doing all these stand-up dates, it was kind of a ridiculous schedule. I woke up on the airplane, I forget where we were going, and she handed me a chapter, which was the first chapter of No Wonder My Parents Drank. It was perfect and it was beautiful. It was just so tender about how being a parent is like being in the circus. There’s a lot of weird smells, loud noises, it’s colorful, it’s weird, it’s aggravating, it’s scary sometimes, and then the circus leaves town. After a couple of days, you miss the circus. It was just this beautiful chapter, published exactly as is. I didn’t change anything. She should have a job writing for a men’s magazine.
So has she herself ever thought of doing stand-up?
J: No, she likes to hide as other people. She wants to be the center of attention, but as Mary Connell or Tiffany Malloy. She doesn’t want to be the center of attention as Nikki Cox.
A lot of people think of you as an East Coast guy, because you grew up in Verona, New Jersey, lived in Manhattan, and were on Saturday Night Live. Is there anything you miss about living in New York City?
J: The immediacy of everything, everything’s right there. I miss my parents, they are about an hour ride from the city. Now if I want to see my parents, I have to get on an airplane, get a hotel, book an East Coast trip. That’s really what I miss most, seeing my parents regularly, but as far as what I miss, there’s a great energy in Manhattan. It comes up off the streets, you’re part of the machine, you’re part of the center of the universe. But in L.A., there’s also a great energy. I really love it out here, too, and it’s funny, my wife — being a Santa Monica girl her whole life — she said, “You ever notice that all the insults about Californians are compliments?” “What are you going to move out to L.A., get all relaxed, do yoga on the beach?” I’m like, “Yeah, probably.”
That sounds like great material that shouldn’t be forgotten…
J: Mmhmm, not bad. What happens is she’s an insomniac and I sleep like a log…The things that people really latch onto with the album [Happy. And A Lot] is that couples really need to have similar hates. That’s just something that she just handed me in a notebook with examples. The track on irony, the bit about that, she had been talking about for a while, and I woke up one morning and there was a spiral notebook about Journey and the Liberace Museum and Neil Diamond. I didn’t have to change anything. It’s very nice when you’re sleeping with the writer.
Jay Mohr and his wife Nikki Cox
You mentioned about your parents, I assume they’re still in Verona?
J: They actually moved to Easton, Pennsylvania, only because they wanted to be closer to Larry Holmes.
The episode of your podcast where you had John C. McGinley on, you two talked about being from Verona. Are you the only two celebrities from the town?
J: Here’s the strange thing, brother, there’s two guys in the NFL, Anthony Fasano, there’s another guy whose name I’m forgetting. Scott Chesney who’s a very famous motivational speaker, he rolls with Deepak Chopra. This tiny town of like 1,400 people is just pumping people into the NFL and stand-up, there’s something in the water. Guido juice.
You were excellent in the movie Road Hard, and in the Q&A after a screening in New York, Adam had answered that he chose you for your role because he wanted someone who could act but also could come across easily as a douche. I’m sure that last part was a joke, but was this the first crowdfunded production that you had been part of?
J: Oh yeah, absolutely, and it’s the beginning of a revolution. Everything is crowdfunded now. Anybody that can come across this interview, and read it, hear it, however, a GoFundMe or a campaign like that, what you’re essentially doing is being part of a revolution. You’re saying no to the studios that turn out Tyler Perry movies and remakes of remakes. What you’re doing is supporting something that other people don’t want to give money towards. And an Adam Carolla movie, the studios aren’t going to give that money, raise enough money to shoot a quality movie. Nothing was lost in production, he got great actors, and it’s a really great movie. That was my first time and I always encourage somebody to take part in something like that.
Road Hard was largely about how comics no longer have it easy with the big money development deals being gone and having to do multiple things to make a living. You’re a stand-up comic, but also an actor, you’ve written two best-selling books, you’ve hosted on television, you’re a podcaster, you work in radio…Was it always your plan to have a multi-faceted career like that?
J: Yeah, from a young age. It’s weird, I wanted to be an actor as a kid. I tried stand-up at 16 and I went, “Okay, this is my tribe.” I never really fit in anywhere, I was getting along with everybody but not really fitting in with anybody. Then when you do stand-up for the first time, somebody comes up to you and says, “There’s this other place on another night in another town, I’ll meet you over there.” And then you meet other people, and they go to another town and you follow them along. It’s like being a traveling preacher, it’s pretty neat. But I knew I wanted to get a lot of attention in whatever form you could, I didn’t get a lot of attention as a child (laughs), which is why I got thrown out of a lot of classes, trying to get attention. Now, ironically, going back to irony, my only source of income is getting attention. So I wanted it early on. I’m at that great level where it’s like, I’m not interesting to tabloids, nobody’s bothering me. As Martin Short once said to me, “You’ve always just sort of hovered around the show business middle class.” At first I’m kind of like, “Wow, that’s not a nice thing to say.” But then when I realized it was true, a lot of pressure left me and now I realized he’s right, and the game is how high I can push this ceiling in the middle class.
Do you primarily identify as a stand-up?
J: Yes, that’s the on-going argument in my house. My wife thinks I’m an actor that figured out how to do stand-up comedy, and I think I’m a comic that figured out how to act. Street Kings was on the other night, and there’s a scene where I give Keanu Reeves a piece of evidence. We watched that scene and my wife goes, “I rest my case.” But then I go out and do a show in a theater, and you do two hours and it goes great, and then I’m like, “well, I rest my case, too.” I asked Buddy Hackett once and he said, “You never made up your mind what you want to be yet, do you want to be an an actor or a comic?” So that still sticks with me, I don’t know. But what’s great about Happy. And A Lot is that it’s all my wife’s material, so I have to act it all out, because I didn’t write it.
Wow, that’s pretty profound. Did she point that out to you, or you figured it out?
J: I realized it, and the thing is it’s written so well, and there’s so many call-backs, that if I miss a line seven minutes of material down the road goes out the window because the call-back won’t make sense. You know what I mean?
Looking back, seeing how the show has changed over the years, are you still proud of Last Comic Standing?
J: Oh yeah, comics get to go on television as themselves. I don’t know what’s better than that. The Tonight Show, you get seven minutes, six and a half minutes? On Last Comic Standing, when I was in charge of it, I really loved the comics [being filmed] at the house. I was very proud of that. Comics got to be on TV as themselves, their real personalities, I think it’s a tremendous show. Now that it’s Norm MacDonald is a judge, Roseanne Barr, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Anthony Jeselnik hosting, it’s sort of a best case scenario in my eyes. If you want a show to evolve, you want it to evolve like that.
So with everything you have going on, what is ahead for you? Is there a third book in the works?
J: I want to write a book about my conversion to Catholicism. Everybody thinks I converted because of my wife, that’s always the next question. “Why? Because your wife’s Catholic?” And I would really like to write a book called A Priest And A Comic Walk Into A Bar. What I like about it, it just seems like Christianity is this silent majority, especially in Hollywood. It’s not something you’re really supposed to talk about. But when you do start talking about it, people sort of come out of the woodwork, and it’s interesting. My church, Saint Monica’s, is the first place I went where it wasn’t “yes” or “no,” it was “I don’t know, let’s talk about this.” It was a discussion, and that’s what I think is exciting right now, it’s a time for discussion. People are really questioning things, and if you heard Monsignor Jim Lisante or Father Willy [Raymond] on my podcast, these are not the stern Catholic men that you think growing up they’re supposed to be. These are very deep, compassionate, welcoming thinkers. I think that’s something that needs to be explored and written about.
Finally, Jay, any last words for the kids?
J: Mohr Stories‘ free app, come on now! (laughs) How about this, if you buy my album, all proceeds go to WriteGirl Los Angeles, benefitting creative writing programs for women. I’m a big advocate of that, and when animals like Greg Hardy are playing in the NFL after beating the snot out of their girlfriend, all I can do is talk about it, tell people about it, but I can also put my money where my mouth is. It doesn’t go to me, it goes to these great programs, you can go to Bandcamp and buy it, iTunes, just go to JayMohr.com for anything you need related to me, it’s all there.
So you put your name on that, right?
J: Yeah, send a little man through college, you got it. [does a Herm Edwards impression, referencing the Mohr Stories intro] Put your name on it, be a man, or a woman, put your name on it.
-by Darren Paltrowitz
