Jack Whitehall Quotes

When you go out there to do comedy, you feel like you're doing battle with the audience a lot of the time. You're either going to get 'em, or you're not.

I think doing The Improv is a little more ominous than doing a college campus because it was so different than anything I'd done.

I'm a comedian, and I like to work on my live show, and if I'm doing television, I don't have time to work on my live show, and I can become a lame comic, and that sucks.

It's depressing sitting at a comedy club all night, waiting to get on to do your five or ten minutes of material.

With a live audience, it's very clear when you've pushed it too far to the edge - because you fall off that edge and hit bottom with a thud. Nothing abstract about that. You know you went too far when you hear that groan or worse - that silence instead of the big laugh you were expecting following your hilariously edgy joke.

You say a line and you wait for them to laugh, then you say another line and you wait... It felt weird to me. But it's interesting and the energy is almost like theatre, I suppose, with all the people there.

TV is easier: it's all planned out for you and the audience is there to see a show and they are all pumped up but when you are in a comedy club, you have to be really funny to win them over.

The Comedy Store in LA, it's a really loose room and it's really dark and creepy and a great place to explore your own thoughts onstage.

TV is easier: it's all planned out for you, and the audience is there to see a show and they are all pumped up, but when you are in a comedy club, you have to be really funny to win them over. To me, that's more pure.

When I come out to do my stand-up set, I pretty much get bombarded with lines from movies. You try to play off it a little bit, but that's what people want to see. Some clubs, the drunker the audience gets, the more they heckle.

I don't really do stand-up.

If I'm not in the theatre, I'm in an open mic night or doing a guest set at the Comedy Club, or whatever, just trying to develop stuff.

In our show we know, if we're not getting a response, you see it in our face... we either do something to get a laugh, or the audience is in on it with us.

My second year of college, I started performing comedy at an open mic. It was good to do open mics with the kids. It's a good, safe spot to start, you know?

Carolines is the best. It has great sound, you can hear from the front all the way to the back with the same quality. If you want to see the top comics, go to Carolines.

The Punch Line is one of the best clubs in the world. It's an intimidating place if you're a younger comic, but the community is so lucky to have a place with such a high threshold and standard.

Live comedy in a club, with an audience - it's hard to recreate that experience in a digital world. With Zoom, your face is there the whole time, and you feel like you have to always be on. You feel like you always have to be paying attention, and it can be exhausting.

If I was at the Comedy Cellar at midnight you yelled at the back of the room. But you, for television, play it to the camera because yes you're communicating to the people at home using the studio audience that's right in front of you as a guide for that.

I never go see live comedy shows because I just sit in the audience thinking, "Here's what I would say. Here's what I would do if I got up there." It drives me crazy.

Sometimes during my set I invite volunteers up on stage to get speed-roasted and I'm worried that I may have hundreds of people rushing the stage all at once. Luckily I'm a black belt in karate and I can fend them off.

I would love to be able to play anywhere, but to me the sweet spot is clubs and theaters, just because I feel like you lean in to tell a joke. You don't back up. Comedy lives in that area. I've played amphitheaters, big clubs, and pool halls, and the most fun rooms hold anywhere from 500 to 2,000 people. That intimacy is where comedy really lives.

I can pretty much guarantee that if I do a show in a comedy club, there will be someone who will come out of the audience and tell me the worst joke ever. It's just a guarantee.

I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."

Granted, not really a joke, but how often do you get a mic in your hand? You know? So. I am sorry but don't anybody trip on my soap box on the way out. Don't anybody trip over that. And the chip on my shoulder's a little heavy. I have back problems now.