Déjà vu

The Story Behind TV’s Most Inescapable Comedy Trend

Why are more and more comedians making thinly veiled shows about their own lives, warts and all? It all goes back to Larry Sanders.
This image may contain Tig Notaro Pete Holmes Pamela Adlon Clothing Sleeve Apparel Human Person and Electrical Device
Pete Holmes in Crashing, Tig Notaro in One Mississippi and Pamela Adlon in Better Things.From left, courtesy of HBO, Amazon Prime Video, FX.

“Comedians are the most complex losers on the planet,” says Artie Lange, a stand-up and a series regular on Crashing, which premieres Sunday on HBO. “Comics have low self-esteem. Comics are egomaniacs. It’s a weird contradiction.” Perhaps this is why comedians often find fame specifically by trading on their flaws.

In Crashing, created and written by stand-up Pete Holmes and Judd Apatow, Holmes plays a character named Pete Holmes, who, like his namesake, goes through divorce and pursues stand-up comedy. It’s the latest in a line of television shows in which creator-comedians play versions of themselves, including, in the last few years alone, Louie (FX), Better Things (FX), One Mississippi (Amazon), Difficult People (Hulu), Master of None (Netflix), Maron (IFC), Lady Dynamite (Netflix), After Lately (E!), and, of course, Curb Your Enthusiasm (which will finally return to HBO for a ninth season in the near future). Still, these shows are technically fiction. “Stand-ups get onstage and play themselves every night, so comedians have some awareness of how they are slightly different onstage than they are off,” Holmes explains. “Even if you are true to who you are, it is still a slightly different version of yourself.”

In addition to a sea of programs that blur the line between creators and protagonists, there are also those that rely on real-life guest stars for authenticity. Extras (HBO), The Comeback (HBO), Episodes (Showtime), Entourage (HBO), Silicon Valley (HBO), and Nashville (ABC) all feature actors, athletes, tech giants, and musicians as guest stars, “giving the audience a glimpse into a very specific world,” explains Amy Gravitt, HBO E.V.P. of programming. “Portraying that as realistically as possible is essential to the success of the show.”

In all cases, the on-screen device of personalities playing themselves is designed to enhance realism—and it usually traces its origin to The Larry Sanders Show. “Judd and I are both rightly obsessed with Larry Sanders. I would say that is definitely an inspiration for [Crashing],” says Holmes. (Early in his career, Apatow was one of that landmark series’s writers.) Lange adds, “If there is such a thing as a genius in comedy, Garry Shandling was for doing [Larry Sanders].” The show-within-a-show, which ran on HBO from 1992–1998, centers on the behind-the-scenes workings of a fictional late-night talk show, and on the neediness and insecurities of its host.

Maya Forbes, a screenwriter who wrote on The Larry Sanders Show, says that their goal was “to be uncomfortable with how closely you are examining your flaws and self. For Garry, it was like, if you look very hard at yourself and you try to be honest, warts and all, you will get closer to expressing basic elemental humanity.” Having actual celebrities appear as guests on the fictional talk show—and, therefore as versions of themselves in between takes—was part of Shandling’s plan. “If we had been writing fake celebrities, that would’ve undermined the whole operation,” Forbes says. “[Shandling] had a real vision for how the show worked visually, too. He used video on the talk-show portion and film on the backstage parts. I think he was playing with those two worlds: our public persona and our private persona. That was why it was important to have real people who had public personas.”

Shandling didn’t invent the idea of playing a version of himself on-screen; Forbes notes that he took inspiration from Jack Benny, and from George Burns and Gracie Allen, all of whom played slightly fictional variations of themselves in radio and television in the middle of the 20th century. Also, there was an explosion of stand-up-helmed sitcoms in the 90s, as a result of the 80s stand-up boom—think Roseanne, Martin, Everybody Loves Raymond. But usually only the performers’ perspectives and personalities were translated to screen, not their actual lives. (Even Seinfeld, which was about a stand-up, famously wasn’t really about anything.) Further, the multi-camera format and laugh tracks mediated realism rather than explored it.

Shandling certainly canonized this particular way of doing it. And while his show is often cited as seminal, it’s been off the air for almost 20 years. So why are we seeing an explosion in alter-ego shows now?

“I’m sure there is some kind of social-media element to it,” Forbes offers. “There’s been a peeling away of the division between public and private personas. People are revealing themselves in this public space more frequently.”

Holmes agrees, saying that he sees his own show “as an extension of podcast culture. [Audiences] want the whole person, their past and present and emotions and experiences. That’s something the public has gotten a taste for.” Holmes has hosted the successful podcast You Made It Weird since 2011, and credits the experience with maturing him as an artist. “I used to be more private because it was very important to me that people like me. Then I started doing the podcast and realized that if you express some vulnerability, people actually like you more. Then it started bleeding into my stand-up. And then the audience starts to expect that from you, which is a wonderful thing.”

Audiences may also be more comfortable consuming this kind of discomfort—watching people show their underbellies—as thanks to the influence of reality TV. The Comeback (HBO; 2005, 2014) used a fictional reality show as a device to portray its protagonist (played by Lisa Kudrow) and her increasingly acrobatic attempts to cover up whatever embarrassing truth she had just accidentally revealed. At the time, it was a perfect example of the emerging cringe-comedy genre; Curb Your Enthusiasm and Ricky Gervais’s Extras (HBO, 2005-2007), in which A-list actors guest-starred as evil-twin versions of themselves, are often included in the same category. Today, when people play themselves in sometimes uncomfortable TV narratives, it’s simply called comedy.

Gravitt wonders if the uptick in these kinds of projects is also a natural result of peak TV: “So many more shows are being made, so you don’t have to make one show that appeals to everyone.” When artists create characters, they don’t need to ensure that every viewer will think she is either a Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, or Charlotte. Standups have also always played versions of themselves in their live acts. And as the TV industry catches up , the shows created by comedians skew closer and closer to their real lives. Speaking of the guest stars who will appear on Crashing, Holmes says, “When I asked Sarah Silverman or T.J. Miller or Artie Lange to come on the show and play themselves, it was almost the equivalent of saying, ‘Will you come and do standup on my show?’ ”

Holmes also compares the experience of making the show to therapy. “It’s almost like role-playing. I’m not re-writing the scene so that I have the perfect thing to say. They don’t go in my favor. But just to be able to do the scene, and yell cut—it gives you a zoomed-out perspective.” Actor and comedian Lauren Lapkus plays Holmes’s wife in Crashing; Holmes recalls that, in order to return emotionally to his past, there were times when “I would be feeding her lines that I knew would make me sad. She told me that was tricky. Because we are friends. And she’s saying things to make me upset. But I guess that is acting.”