Christian Finnegan took some time earlier in the week to talk with tableau about the Laugher Arts Festival at the Paramount, Chappelle's Show and Katie Couric.
tab: I think a lot of people in the audience will either know you from Chappelle's Show or Best Week Ever. When you started out as a comedian did you ever think that you would be on such popular gigs?
CF: No, no certainly not, I've been very fortunate so far, and "Best Week Ever" has been a real gift to my career.
tab: How do you prepare for a show? Where do you get your information?
CF: Honestly, you try to kind of sleep with one eye open in sort of the way you go about life.
I'm very fortunate in the sense that I have no marketable skills and my options are very limited. To this day, I live in sort of an, uh, arrested development sort of state. ...
What I like about comedy is that you can kind of be a mercenary ... You're sort of a little self-enclosed unit.
tab: So how do you feel about working with other comics? Do you usually enjoy that?
CF: Oh, I love that. I always love working with people who I admire and stuff, and this show next week specifically ... I'm looking forward to. I used to work for Colin Quinn for a year; I was on the writing staff of "Tough Guy." And I'm such an admirer of Colin ... and I'm excited just as an opportunity to see him. And I've never actually seen Caroline Rhea. I've met her a couple times, she seems like a wonderful person, but I've never seen her live.
tab: You've worked with Colin Quinn and you've also worked with another really popular comedian, Dave Chappelle, how did you get involved with that show?
CF: I was doing stand up around New York and as was Brennan, who was Dave's writing partner, and Neal and I became kind of friendly just from doing the New York circuit. And he mentioned me at one point. He's like, 'Dave and I are working on a show and we're doing a bit that you might be right for and would you want to audition for it.' ... Then I got the script .... And I thought, oh very funny, when you needed a pathetic guy to have his girlfriend totally ravished and humiliated utterly, I was the guy that came to your mind.
tab: Thanks.
CF: And sadly he's really right. I mean, Neal didn't know me that well, but that character, Chad in the Mad Real World, was really only me with the volume turned up maybe one notch. ... It's ... not a huge stone throw from what I am. I remember reading some article about that sketch when it was really popular. It referred to me as high-voiced and effeminate, almost a eunuch. I thought, 'Wow, kind of harsh -- and strangely accurate.' tab: I guess being a comedian isn't really a career that you can leave at the office after you clock out.
CF: Yeah, it's hard because you don't want to get mad at somebody for just wanting to enjoy what you do as a comedian, but a lot of people can come at it with an attitude ... I told you I'm a comedian -- how about you just trust me on that and not make me prove it to you.
tab: How was your time on The Today Show?
CF: It was always fun. The segments would happen so quickly. You'd walk in and before you know it, you'd be walking out. And it would just seem all kind of like a weird dream.
tab: Katie Couric's an alum of U.Va. How was it to work with her?
CF: Katie Couric -- I probably shouldn't tell you this -- there was one time on the show that I felt like she was sexually propositioning me. She probably wouldn't have seen it that way. We were getting ready to do our segment, and the segment right before ours was Katie getting a mammogram. So she walks over to us and she says, 'Well, you guys I know you've always wanted to see my breasts.' And I said, 'Yeah Katie, it's been weeks.' And then she looked at me, very locked on eye contact, and said 'Well, come up to my dressing room after the show and we'll see if we can change that.' ... Yes, she was joking but I'm going to pretend that she was serious -- just for me.
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