Pete Lee, Self Proclaimed People Pleaser, Accomplishes That 100% in His New Showtime Special, Tall Dark and Pleasant
Pete Lee is killing with kindness. Lee is a people pleaser and he’s ready to admit it. Whether its getting a standing O on the Tonight Show, giving Nikki Glaser her very first O, or crushing it in his first Showtime Special, this Wisconsin born-Minnesota built-New York-LosAngeles-polished comedian delivers. His new Showtime special, Tall Dark and Pleasant, premieres tonight, July 9 at 9pm. And the result is a nonstop hour of laughs that will somehow manage to appeal to just about every type comedy audience. It may be the first special to be filmed and released post-quarantine, with no masks or other covid protocol and the feeling of watching this crowd enjoying a normal night out is exhilarating.
It’s Pete’s first hour special and it seems like everyone in comedy is excited for him. Pete has the reputation as the nicest guy in comedy, and that’s only partially due to all that self-admitted people pleasing and his mid-west accent. Pete is truly a nice guy (and not in the annoying way) and as he’s moved through the country from Wisconsin, to Minnesota, to New York City, and eventually settling in Los Angeles, he’s just collecting friends and fans everywhere he goes.
Case in point, I’ve barely been talking for 2 minutes about his new special when Pete is already going out of his way to make sure to promote New York comedian Ryan Reiss, who opened for Pete at the taping in Tempe, Arizona. “I give full credit to him for the crowd being super hot,” Pete says before telling me all about Ryan, in case I didn’t know him already. “I flew him down to Arizona, because I wanted to have a professional warm up guy. He’s also doing a documentary right now about warmup guys,” he tells me, promoting Ryan’s project before we start talking about the special. I know, super nice guy. Pete and Ryan are friends, but that’s not the only reason he picked him to warm up the crowd for him at the taping. Pete is also 100% a pro, and he knew Reiss, who works at The Comedy Cellar in New York City and does warm up for Late Night with Seth Meyers, would take the job seriously. “I mean, he was telling his process beforehand about how he talked to like four or five other professional warm-up guys trying to figure out exactly how he should warm it up for me since my comedy is pretty specific.” Because Pete’s comedy tends to hover around “wholesome,” at least in tone, he says he likes to have a comedian who is dirty- but not overboard dirty start the show so that “they can crack the room.” Unlike other “clean” comics, Pete isn’t clean because he’s aiming toward a family crowd. And he’s not straight edge or what we used to call a “goody two shoes”. It’s just his personality to be really really nice. He explains how this translates to the stage:
“I’m kind. I’m a sweet person. So I learned a long time ago that if I’m saying a lot of swear words on stage, it sort of erodes my credibility as a kind person. That’s the only reason why I’ve made the creative choice to not swear a lot on stage. But the subject matter that interests me is a pretty vast on the spectrum of dirty to clean. I’m fascinated with everything from motion sensor sinks to….. my closing bit in this special is about porn,.” He says. But he tackles porn through the view of innocence. “What would the sweetest person you know who sees porn think about porn.”
That also applies to talking about drugs. “When I touch on the subject of doing cocaine one time, I’m like, here’s what that looks like when I try it on. I also feel like me doing those kinds of things is way more relatable to the audience than somebody who’s the bad boy comic that’s like, “Oh, I’m so dangerous. I’m such a piece of crap and this is how I do it.” A lot of people have tried cocaine, but they’re just a regular person when they do it. And they’re a little bit weirder than they normally are. And then two days later they get back from that vacation and they got to take their kids to a soccer game. So I feel like my view of it is relatable to the average person.”
Pete’s goal throughout the special is to make the audience feel. He does this even while talking about something as trivial as motion sensor sinks (a signature bit for him that has killed on the Tonight Show). “I make it emotional. Why is this thing ignoring me? This sink is literally triggering my abandonment issues. So the audience can feel that.”
That emotion, he says, is what differentiates Pete from his friends who are some of the dirtiest comics in the business. “They elicit an emotional reaction through filth. I’m just doing it a different way.”
Whatever he’s doing it works. Pete connects to people instantly when they see him perform. Before his first appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, it was his dream to get on that show, to get love from Fallon and get a standing ovation from the audience. It’s an ambitious dream- Tonight Show audiences don’t really give standing ovations to comedians. But after Pete’s first appearance back on 2017, he got that standing ovation, formed a friendship with Jimmy Fallon and is working with Fallon on a pilot for television. He’s also appeared on the show so many times now that he’s running out of suits to wear.
Whether he’s explaining his style on stage or even in bed, he says the secret is to care. On a recent appearance on “The Nikki Glaser Podcast,” Nikki shared the story about how Pete was responsible for her first orgasm. Her cohost, Andrew Collin said to Pete, “I don’t get it. What did you do to her?” Pete answers casually, using his most innocent mid-western attitude: “I just cared. I just cared a lot. That’s all I did seriously.”
People pleasing.
“Like the person that is truly me is the person that wants to choose the middle seat on an airplane, because I want to talk to people. The person who I really am is like the guy that sits down that is like, “Don’t talk to this person.” Because I know that that’s annoying, but, “Oh God I want to talk.” And then I try to act cooler than I am. I think that through faking it till I make it, I’ve gotten a little bit cooler than I really am. But I’m always fighting against that instinct within my own soul and brain.”
Tall Dark and Pleasant is a slam dunk people pleasing killer debut hour. Pete’s ability to find and translate whats hilarious and relatable about being that middle seat guy have taken him to this moment, and it’s exciting to see it pay off for him.
“I feel so proud of it. It feels unreal. And then when the first taping happened and it was just like lightning in a bottle, I was just up there going, “Oh my God, none of the things I worried about happened. When I walked out there it was like a dream. I mean the crowd was so much fun. I was really lucky to have a crowd that had a lot of fans in it, which made it much easier for me. And also for some reason, Arizona is a Haven for Wisconsin people. There were tons of people wearing Wisconsin shirts in the crowd and identifying themselves as… it almost felt like a Packers away game filming that special.”
Watch Pete Lee, Talk Dark and Pleasant debuting on Showtime TONIGHT, Friday July 9th at 9pm ET.
