Latest news with #StandUpComedy
South China Morning Post
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Netflix drama Forget You Not: Hsieh Ying-xuan, Chin Han lead Rene Liu-directed melodrama
Lead cast: Hsieh Ying-xuan, Chin Han Netflix advances its robust slate of female-fronted Taiwanese drama series with Forget You Not, written and directed by Rene Liu Ruo-ying and starring Hsieh Ying-xuan as a middle-aged woman who uses stand-up comedy to process the everyday challenges in her life. Chief among these obstacles is her all-consuming relationship with her elderly father, played by Chin Han, while Wallace Huo Chien-hwa, Wang Po-chieh and Julia Wu Zhuoyuan round out the cast of this broad yet wholly relatable melodrama. Ever since her mother walked out on them when she was just eight years old, Le-le (Hsieh) and her father, Kuang-chi (Chin), have only had each other to depend on. Play When we first meet this headstrong 45-year-old divorcee, she is on stage at a comedy club, microphone in hand, regaling an elated audience with tales of how her father has repeatedly let her down.
Fox News
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Daily Show' star who recently became US citizen says becoming American is like joining 'evil empire'
Ronny Chieng, host of "The Daily Show," compared becoming a U.S. citizen to joining an "evil empire" during an appearance on Variety's "Awards Circuit" podcast on Friday. Chieng, who was born in Malaysia and moved to the U.S. as a child before returning to Malaysia at age seven, described his eventual return to America in 2015 as "30 years in the making." He said he came back to the U.S. to pursue his career in stand-up comedy and that it was a "weird time" to become an American. "I turn down offers to tour overseas all the time," Chieng said. "I've got no interest in it, because I came from there. I've been trying to come here… so it makes sense for me to get citizenship, because if I do leave the country, I know I can come back in to the stuff that I've been building here." Chieng told Variety that the type of things that attracted him to America were "Back to the Future" and "Seinfeld" and not "the Iraq War." "It's like you're joining this evil empire, but that's not why you joined it. It just so happened, the evil empire had some really nice TV shows, and they do stand-up comedy in The Death Star," he said. Beginning his tenure on the "Daily Show" in 2015, Chieng noted that "this Trump thing" is all he's known, saying that since he came to America, President Donald Trump's "shadow has been looming or in charge." "He's [Trump's] been talking s--- for a long time now. We're used to him talking s---," he explained. "He's been throwing chaos in the mix for a long time now. So in that sense, it doesn't feel like anything new in terms of coverage." Chieng also compared covering Trump's second term on the "Daily Show" to "being in an emergency room," describing the non-stop coverage of the president as "outlandish." "You kind of get numb to it, because it's always a car wreck every day. It's something new coming in, and it's something you have to comment on," Chieng said. "It seems outlandish, but at the same time, it's been outlandish for nine years. So is it outlandish? That's the feeling."
Fox News
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Comedian Nate Bargatze talks the importance of his Christian faith, says he goes to church ‘as much as I can'
Stand-up comedy superstar Nate Bargatze is opening up about the importance of his Christian faith. In an interview with Esquire published Monday, the Nashville native talked about how influential his faith is on his life and on his stand-up material. "It's a good thing to be around. I think it makes you feel grounded," he said, adding that he goes "[to church] as much as I can" when he's home from touring. Bargatze, who was No. 1 on Billboard's Top 10 Highest-Grossing Comedy Tours of 2024 list, has joked about his Christian upbringing in his stand-up but not in the harsh, deprecating way that some other comics can when they want to bash religion. Esquire mentioned one of the jokes from his recent Amazon Prime special, "Hello, World," during which the comic said, "I had '80s and '90s Christian parents." "Well, that's the most Christian you can get of the Christian. I think Jesus had more fun than I did." The comedian told Esquire he couldn't watch "The Simpsons" growing up and described his born-again Christian parents as "the most strict." In a 2023 interview with Fox News Digital, Bargatze also discussed his strict, Christian upbringing. "I grew up that way," he said. "I come from a Christian family and Southern Christian, so I wasn't allowed to watch anything, which I talk about in the special. And so growing up and only watching clean comedians, it was just how I was going to be. And it would feel forced if I was not." He also described how his parents' influence directly shaped his clean, family-friendly style of stand-up comedy, noting that he can't imagine doing raunchy comedy even now because, "I still feel I will get in trouble," he said. "I'll get in trouble and I will disappoint them. I don't want to disappoint my parents," he said, adding that he feels this responsibility even more as their firstborn son. "I just can't imagine cursing in front of your parents," he said. "Still, even now, I'm 43-years-old, and I still just couldn't do that. So that's how I write. I think I write my comedy to — a lot of it is to make my parents laugh. I want them to be proud and be like, 'Oh, come watch my son do comedy,' and not be offended by it. I just don't have that in me to want to offend someone or make someone feel bad." Bergatze also talked to Esquire about have been sober since 2019, telling the outlet he gave up alcohol because he thought it was holding him back from advancing his career. "I did not have a control on it to… I would go too hard with it. But I knew, if I want to go where I want to go, this is in the way," he said.
