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Nate Bargatze has been called the “nicest guy in comedy” — and he doesn’t hate it
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Bargatze is opening up about how life has changed since his first Saturday Night Live appearance in 2023
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He’s also gearing up for his first book release and hosting the Emmys in the fall
The actors’ strike that shut down much of Hollywood in 2023 was bad for almost all entertainers, except stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze who was on tour when he got a call from Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels about hosting the show.
“I’d heard that John Mulaney, [Jimmy] Fallon, Pete Davidson, a bunch of SNL folks had been floating my name to Lorne for a while,” Bargatze, 46, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “But then with the strike, they needed stand-up comedians to fill in, so I got the opportunity.”
He says the gig changed the trajectory of his career.
“I was already doing pretty OK on the road,” he says. (It’s an understatement — Bargatze was selling out stadiums, had three Netflix specials under his belt, and was hosting the hit show The Nateland Podcast with comics Brian Bates, Aaron Weber and Dusty Slay.)
“But I knew the importance of it and that I’d be getting in front of an audience that might not otherwise be familiar with me,” he says. And it’s true that the appearance — and the viral clips that followed, notably from the “Washington’s Dream” sketch — shot his career into another orbit.
“I’ve been doing comedy for 20 years,” he says, “but it does feel like it happened overnight. To reach the mainstream has just been a whole other level.”
Jamie McCarthy/Getty
Nate Bargatze performs onstage during the 15th Annual Stand Up For Heroes benefit at Alice Tully Hall presented by Bob Woodruff Foundation and NY Comedy Festival on November 08, 2021 in New York City
Related: Need a Laugh? Here’s How to Watch All of Nate Bargatze’s Stand-up Specials (Including His Latest Netflix Show!)
Now he’s been tapped to host the Emmy Awards this fall, was the highest-grossing comedian of 2024 and he just released his first book, Big Dumb Eyes. “It was fun to write,” he says, of the humorous book of short stories about his childhood, getting his start in stand-up and meeting his wife Laura at Applebee’s.
“The hard part was that between starting this book a few years ago to now, my career really did it explode,” he says. “So it was about finding time to write it!”
Grand Central Publishing
Big Dumb Eyes: Stories from a Simpler Mind by Nate Bargatze
Related: Who Is Nate Bargatze’s Wife? All About Laura Bargatze
A few years before his SNL debut, he was dubbed the “nicest guy in stand-up” by The Atlantic. Looking back on the moniker now, he’s thankful.
“I was fortunate to get tagged with ‘nicest guy in comedy’ and not something else.” he says. “It’s nice! I’m sure it could be many other things, so it’s a good one to get tagged with. I mean, yeah, I’m fortunate that it is that and not something else.”
Despite his nice guy image, he jokes that he’s not immune to annoyances. “I’m not a perfect person,” he says.
The one thing that gets under his skin?
“I wasn’t a fan of the ‘Let’s goooo!’ phase,” he says, laughing. “If it were little kids, I didn’t care. But when it was adults, people around my age were going, ‘Let’s goooo!’ I was pretty frustrated.”
Speaking of kids, Bargatze, who doesn’t swear in his routines — or in real life — says he loves seeing them at his shows.
“I never tried to market myself as a ‘clean comic’ as a sales tactic,” he says. “It was just what I was doing. And I like that families can listen to me in the car, or I can see 10-year-olds at my shows. I’m not making comedy for kids, but if they get a laugh at the jokes they do get, I appreciate that.”
Next up, Bargatze is excited for his first movie, The Breadwinner, expected in 2026, and through his Nateland Entertainment company, will continue to create content that he says the whole family — “grandparents included!” — can enjoy together. Because, as he says, “more family time is always better.”
Nate Bargatze’s first book Big Dumb Eyes is available now wherever books are sold.
Read the original article on People
