Comedian Brad Williams talks jokes ahead of his upcoming Pittsburgh shows
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Brad Williams, who has been working in comedy for two decades and has appeared in numerous films and television shows, was born with achondroplasia, a genetic disorder and cause of dwarfism. He’s done sets on late-night shows like “The Tonight Show” and released numerous stand-up comedy specials, including 2015’s “Brad Williams: Fun Size” at Showtime. He also co-created and co-hosted the popular podcast “About Last Night,” which ran for five years.
“One of the reasons why I was so attracted to stand-up comedy is that as a little person, I hear a lot of non-little people telling my story … putting it out there in the public how we should view little people and how we should view life as a dwarf. As you can imagine, it’s not a favorable view. I wanted to do comedy to just to say, ‘This will be the view,’ ” Williams said in an interview, discussing the power of comedy to affect the attitudes of an audience.
He will be performing two shows Saturday night at the Byham Theater in Downtown Pittsburgh.
Williams started his comedy career almost exactly 20 years ago when he took his father to a Father’s Day stand-up show where a comedian was making jokes about little people. When the comedian realized that the audience members sitting around Williams weren’t laughing, he stopped the show.
“The comedian called me up onstage and he started asking me questions. He wasn’t making fun of me. He was legit. He called me up onstage and said, ‘I want to talk to you,’ ” Williams said.
In their onstage conversation, Williams made a joke and got his first-ever glimpse of the powerful feeling of earning a laugh. “I was like, ‘Oh, that felt good. I created something from my brain and everyone liked it. Cool!’ ” he said.
So he started searching for open mics and writing material, and the hardworking funny man hasn’t slowed down since.
“A lot of people ask about your comedy career and it’s kind of like when someone loses a lot of weight. Someone says, ‘Hey, how’d you lose the weight?’ They know the answer, but they’re hoping this is the time when you say, ‘Oh, I just took this magical pill, woke up every day, kept eating junk food, kept not exercising and all the weight just fell off and now I have a six-pack.’
“It’s kind of like that with comedy. When people are like, ‘How’d you make it in comedy?’ They’re waiting for you to tell them, ‘Oh, I decided to be a comedian one day so I went down and I met with the vice president of show business and I said that I would like to be a comedian and they said great, here are your jokes, here are your tour dates, go be funny.’ … That’s not how it happens, it’s a long grind,” he said.
While his dwarfism is part of his comedy, Williams doesn’t want anyone to assume it’s the only thing he jokes about.
“When people come to my show, I don’t want them to think I’m going to be onstage for an hour being like, ‘I could take a bath in a thimble.’ That’s not my act. There will always be the perspective of a little person because that’s the only life I’ve ever lived and I don’t know what it’s like to be a 6-foot-1-inch strappingly handsome man — I know what it’s like to be a 4-foot-4-inch strappingly handsome man.”
He’s also a husband and a father, which are topics that provide plenty of comedy fodder.
“There’s a lot going on in the world that I want to see and comment on and a lot of things I think are absurdly funny, so I will do stuff like that,” he said.
Williams celebrates the massive amount of content that comedians can put out in the digital age. In a time where promotion happens through touring, television, social media and podcasts, more up-and-comers have a chance to forge their own path, he said.
“It’s just building their own. It used to be, well, you had to be on the ‘Tonight Show’ and then you had to be on a sitcom. You had all these executives and people who are, let’s face it, terribly unfunny because if they were, they’d be doing what we do, and they’re the gatekeepers. Now those gatekeepers are gone,” he said.
It also means that audiences can find something to fit their exact taste, he said.
“I love the fact that when I’m playing the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh, I’m doing that based on, I don’t have a movie out, I don’t have a TV show that’s regular, I don’t have a hit podcast, I don’t have a special that’s on Netflix or HBO Max, none of the industry supported me. It was fans. Fans built me up. Fans saw my clips, saw my specials and spread it around,” he said.
“This is the people saying, ‘yeah, we like this guy, and we like what he’s bringing and we like his vibe and we like his message.’ And for that I will always be indebted to the fans. I’ll be out before the first show for about an hour and a half doing a meet and greet, free and then after the second show I’ll be out doing a meet and greet for as long as it takes. People are like ‘why do you do this?’ And I’m like, ‘You guys pay my mortgage, thank you.’ ”
Brad Williams will perform at the Byham Theater in Downtown Pittsburgh Saturday night. Learn more at trustarts.org. More information about the comedian can be found at bradwilliamscomedy.com.