Steve Lemme and Kevin Heffernan Say Farewell…Potentially
December 4 may be the last time Broken Lizard fans can catch Steve Lemme and Kevin Heffernan performing stand-up together.
Potentially.
Steve Lemme & Kevin Heffernan: The Potential Farewell Tour premieres on Comedy Dynamics on Tuesday. Lemme promises that the title isn’t a cheap marketing gimmick; potentially.
“Oh, it’s not a gimmick,” Lemme said in a phone interview with The Interrobang. It’s farewell. It’s over. I’ve had it. We’ve been working together pretty steadily for 25 years now. I’m sick of the guy. This is the end.”
“Potentially,” Heffernan interjects.
“Potentially,” Lemme concedes.
The Broken Lizard members (Lemme is best known for his role as Trooper Mac Womack in Super Troopers; Heffernan will forever be known as liter-of-cola loving dispatcher Rod Farva) began doing-up together in 2010.
“We did a tour with Broken Lizard in 2009,” Lemme said. “We were all friends and enjoyed doing the tour, but I think Kevin and I just really enjoyed doing stand-up. Our background was sketch comedy. Stand-up was exciting. The other guys were probably a little burnt out, but we kept doing it. We kept going. We had the bug.”
Stand-up also provided a unique opportunity for Broken Lizard fans to come out and see two of their favorites from films perform live on stage.
“It seems to work well,” Heffernan said. “We have a good chemistry, a good back-and-forth onscreen. I’m usually the asshole, and he’s the one putting up with me. But then sometimes he’s the asshole, and I’m the one putting up with him. The thing is, that’s our real relationship off-screen. We’re just a couple assholes dealing with each other.”
Heffernan said he and Lemme also do their best to appease comedy audiences who may not necessarily be familiar with their films.
“Broken Lizard has a pretty rabid fan base, and the fans of the movies turn out for the stand-up shows. But we also try to draw people who don’t really know the movies and draw a broader audience,” he said. “We do some audience interaction and talk about the movies, maybe do a Beerfest beer chug or things like that. But we also do some traditional stand-up to appeal to that other audience.
“I think people are always hungry for the kind of comedy we provide. We’re not divisive. We’re not angry. We’re just hanging out trying to have a good time and make people laugh.”
Regardless of whether or not this special turns out to be the end of the line for their stand-up run, the Broken Lizard has been quite busy in recent months. Super Troopers 2 was released in April 2018, 17 years after the original. Lemme said the group is considering doing Super Troopers 3, as well as Potfest, a follow-up to Beerfest, as teased at the end of the original movie.
“I would say we’re very likely going to be filming a movie next year,” Lemme said.
Lemme and Heffernan have also been hard at work with the development of Tacoma FD, a comedy scheduled to debut on March 19 on TruTV. You can expect to see some familiar faces from the Broken Lizard universe turn up on Tacoma, Lemme said.
Comedy Dynamics is an independent comedy production and distribution company that releases content to multiple streaming platforms.
Read more comedy news.
Latest posts by Dan Murphy (see all)
- Letterkenny’s Mark Forward: “I just want to make funny stuff” - March 23, 2020
- Did You Hear? With Kashmere! November 11 - November 11, 2019
- The New and Improved, Did You Hear? With Kashmere! September 30 - September 30, 2019
