Unmasked with Jim Jefferies

Jim JeffriesIf you don’t already know Jim Jefferies from his gigantic standup career selling out audiences worldwide, or from his critically acclaimed  comedy specials on HBO and Showtime, then you know him from his series “Legit” on FX which just got picked up for a second season.  And if you don’t know him from that either, then you’ll undoubtedly know him soon because he has a huge career ahead of him.   This week, Jim sat down with Ron Bennington to tape a one hour episode of “Unmasked” in front of a live audience at the SiriusXM studios in New York City.

Over the hour, Jim talked about being a new dad and raising a son (“he might be a Nazi…but we know that he sleeps good”), his issues with his mom (who he described as a “fully fledged hoarder”), and how he met his girlfriend (“we employed her as a hooker and then I got her pregnant after that.”).  Jefferies talked a bit about how “Legit” became the “darling of the disabled community”:

 “It was weird that…because we had Billy, and Billy was in a wheelchair and had Muscular Dystrophy and he’s based on an actual person in my life.  But then you have him in a home, and then you have to populate the area, and so obviously we had other disabilities come in.  And then there was a stage in filming where we sort of thought, I think this has snowballed too much.  We’ve let this get away from us.  We had like fifteen disabled people wandering around, and a woman with no legs.  And then there’s a bit where there was a bar scene where I had to have two comedian friends, and I just got two of my mates to come in and do the acting roles.  And then when I got there, one of my mates– I didn’t even think about it–  is a dwarf.    And I’m like, that wasn’t a role that needed a dwarf?  Why did I just book a dwarf for this?  Now people are going to think that I have a hard-on for disabilities.  And then for tonight’s episode we had to have someone kitschy sing the national anthem at a baseball game and we started with Charo… Charo was busy.  And then we had Florence Henderson from the Brady Bunch– Florence Henderson was busy, and in the end, we got Vern Troyer, mini me, and we were like oh great.  And then as soon as he walked up we were like, ‘it’s another fucking dwarf! I don’t know how this has happened.”

He had actually expected to have more problems because of their use of so many disabled characters in the show.  “We were very nervous through the whole thing, and I think the network at times, was nervous with it as well,” but  in the end, nobody had a problem with it.  In fact, “the Muscular Dystrophy people are really happy with it.”

Later in the hour, he talked about wanting to make a change when he began realizing he had been drinking too much:

“The shaking hands when I was drinking at my heaviest was…that to me…I used to almost enjoy that aspect of it.  Because I felt like Keith Richards.  I felt like a rock star because look at me – my hands are shaking.  I could hardly hold a pen.  And I used to find it funny that I couldn’t eat soup.  Because my hands would shake so much, I couldn’t get soup to my mouth, right?  But then afterwards, I didn’t know everyone thought I was going to die.  Until…people now bring it up all the time going – we thought you were going to die.”

Unmasked with Jim Jefferies will debut today, Friday March 29th at 2pm on The Ron and Fez Show on SiriusXM satellite radio and will re-air  on SiriusXM 99 (Rawdog) on Saturday night at 8pm ET and Sunday at 3pm and 9pm.   It will also re-air  on Sirius 206 and XM 105 (Opie and Anthony Channel) this Sunday at 10 am ET & midnight ET.

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DJy-ibUfco]