The A.V. Club Interview: Chris D'Elia

Marah Eakin: Your stand-up is pretty animated, and you do a lot of crowd work. Are you like that off the stage? Do you talk to strangers?

Chris D'Elia: It’s funny that you say that, actually, because I’ve always said that crowd work is flirting. There are a lot of videos online of me doing crowd work, because when the Laugh Factory films the set, I always tell them, “Don’t put the material I’m working on for TV.” So I said, “If you have any good crowd work moments, you can put those up.” They put those up, and now I think a lot of people think I’m the guy who does a lot of crowd work, which I am, and I love doing it, I really do, because it’s fun for me. 

But I feel like crowd work—to me—I feel the same if I’m on a date with a girl and if I can get into that mode where I’m just fun and flirty and there’s a connection at the date, that’s how I feel when I’m onstage with a crowd. I feel like I’m trying to seduce them and make them laugh. And I feel like if somebody throws me something, then I can just throw it back. I’ve been doing it so long, and I’ve played so many weird clubs, like bars and coffee shops, it’s like... Eminem is so good at freestyling, but it’s not that he’s making stuff up; he knows what rhymes already. He’s got a database, and he knows what words rhyme with what words. It’s not like he’s just figuring it out now; he’s worked and trained in the trenches, and I think that’s what a lot of comics do with their crowd work. It’s like, they’ve been in the situation; if something pops up, they can remember another time when this kind of a thing happened.

The A.V. Club Interview: Chris D'Elia / by Marah Eakin / June 12, 2012