A little over a week before he headlines Spokane Comedy Club, comedian, actor and voice-over actor Ron Funches filmed a Comedy Central special at Seattle’s Neptune Theatre.
He anticipates the special will be released either late this year or early next year, but don’t expect to hear many jokes from the special during his run at the comedy club, Thursday through June 30.
Funches recently spoke to The Spokesman-Review about the special, what Spokane audiences can look forward to, his origins in comedy and more, a conversation often punctuated by his signature giggle.
Q. How did the special taping go?
A. It went very well. It went awesome. I had a lot of friends and family show up to support me, people traveling as far away as from New York to Seattle to come see me, so I felt real supported and I think I did a very good job. I’m excited for people to see it.
Q. Did you do anything to celebrate afterward?
A. We got hamburgers at this place called Dick’s Drive In and I smoked a joint and we hung out and we laughed and we talked. Very Northwest.
Q. Why film in Seattle rather than Chicago, your hometown, or Portland, where you began your comedy career?
A. I wanted to have a place where people who supported me from the beginning, if they wanted to come to the show, they could come and visit. I didn’t really want to do it in Portland proper because I didn’t want necessarily a home game. I didn’t want it skewed totally in my favor. I wanted to get real reactions. Seattle in general is a place where I’ve had a lot of good sets before, and I felt that it was an audience that is smart and nerdy and similar to the style I liked to do. And also there’s a shelter there, Mary’s Place, that I knew about in the past and I wanted to be able to donate money to them.
Q. Will we hear some of material from the special in Spokane?
A. Probably. My main plan is going to be to try to play around and avoid that as much as possible, but when I start not doing well, then you’ll definitely start hearing some of the tried and trues.
Q. Do you do a lot of crowdwork when you’re on stage?
A. No, I don’t like it. I’m not a fan of it personally. I think it makes people uncomfortable. I think when people come to a show they want to watch a show, they don’t want to be in the show. At least that’s me. But sometimes it can help you generate material. Mostly what I mean by playing around, maybe I’ll introduce a topic and I’ll try to find a joke about it onstage. But if it goes for too long and people aren’t enjoying it, then I have to go with the real jokes because I know people paid money.
Q. I couldn’t find mentions of previous Spokane shows in our archives. Have you performed here before?
A. I’ve been there a few times. The only reason why you wouldn’t have known is because no one cared and they were horrible. They were in little bars and truck stops and the hotels … This will be my first time at the actual comedy club there so I’m excited. I’m hoping it’s a bit different from the truck stops.
Q. I read in a feature that you were quietly funny when you were younger, not necessarily the class clown. How did that lead to you stepping onstage for the first time?
A. I had a love of comedy as a child. Along with cartoons I’d watch a lot of things like “I Love Lucy” and “Benny Hill” and stand up. I grew up watching and was really interested in it, but I didn’t think it was a real job. Then I had my son when I was really young and I was going to have to find a job so I worked at a bank for awhile, then my son got diagnosed with autism. I was like “Oh, I have to find a career. I might need to make a lot of money.” … I started doing open mics and really focused on it and was like “I need to get through this as quickly as possible and do my own shows. Whatever I can to make money as well as get better.” That’s what made me try it for the first time and then I fell in love as soon as I did it. I was like “This is my career. This is what I want to do.”
Q. Was acting and voice over work always part of the plan or did that come along as your comedy career developed?
A. It came along naturally. It wasn’t like, “Oh, I want to be an actor.” People were always saying, “You have a weird voice,” but it was more like they were making fun of me, not saying, “That would be good.” They were making fun of how I sound for being a large black man with a white voice.
I’m always interested in trying new things and I got the chance to audition for a few things, and they didn’t go well but it was exciting to me and it made me feel just as excited as the first time I had done stand up. I was like, “Oh, this is just a new passion I didn’t know I had.” So I pursued it and took acting class and was lucky enough to have people who want to work with me so I try to shut up and learn and get better because it’s really, really fun and a different craft from doing stand up. I learned a lot about my life from acting and it actually helped my stand up a lot.
Q. How so?
A. My standup opened doors for me to do acting and also allows me to have a character that I can take to acting instead of someone who’s a blank slate, who doesn’t know how to write their own material. The acting just makes performing better because I’m not looking down at the floor and being nervous. I look people in the eyes and I connect with people and I can get a laugh more off of looks and physical movements. I didn’t have that before I got into acting.
Q. Besides the special, what can we look forward to from you in the future?
A. I’ll be working on more “Trolls: The Beat Goes On.” There will be more episodes on Netflix as well as a movie. I did a movie with Disney with Bill Hader and Anna Kendrick where I play a Christmas elf, so that’s fun. It seemed like good casting to me.
Then I’m working on other projects, got a lot of irons in the fire. I’m going to start my own podcast pretty soon. It’s a comedy self-help podcast where we’re trying to get better. We’re following the journey of me getting better and then whoever listens and joins along in the community, it’s all of us trying to get better health-wise and spiritual-wise and creativity wise. In any capacity, it’s all about getting better because that’s what I want to do.
Q. You’re like a motivational speaker.
A. I wouldn’t say that because they usually know what they’re talking about and have things to back it up. I just lost a bunch of weight and I was poor and now I’m not so I want to talk to people about it. If I can help anyone follow their path – they can’t follow my path – but we can all push each other along. I’m all for it.
