Joel McHale is the lead of the cult favorite sitcom Community, the man mouthing off every Friday night on The Soup, the host of July's already-newsy ESPY awards, a guest star on the upcoming X-Files revival, and now, thanks to the advertising power of Visa Checkout, is a regular on YouTube preroll. This is all to say: big screen, small screen, smaller screen—the guy is everywhere, having what some in the entertainment industry would call "a moment."
McHale recently stopped by the Esquire offices during one of his rare down moments. We gladly talked to him about his continued efforts to reach singularity and simply become the Internet (you know, like that awful Johnny Depp movie, but funny).
Photographs by Elizabeth Griffin
You're sarcastic...
Really?
Yes, sorry to be the one to tell you. Being sarcastic seems great for comedy, but maybe it's prohibitive if you want to shoot a commercial once in a while. Or worse, early on, when you're booking commercials to stay alive in Hollywood.
Oh, I couldn't get an agent [back then]. But I did do Burger King ads. 40 of them. From 2003 and 2004, right when I got The Soup.
Burgers pair well with sarcasm.
Right when I got [to Los Angeles], I guest starred on Will and Grace. I lied. They said they wanted someone over 6'7". I just wore heeled boots. I walked into the Sketchers outlet on Van Nuys Boulevardand it went well. I got an agent out of it. I had that agent for about a year, and then they dropped me because I didn't book anything. They said, "You're big enough for this agency, you're not a big enough actor for this agency. In four years you can come back when you're bigger." This was in 2002 and so then I got a commercial agent at AKA, great agency, and I started booking commercials. Mostly comedy commercials—almost all—but some non-comedy ones.
What were the non-comedy ones?
I think I did a Ford ad. That was just me sitting on a blanket with a lady. Then I booked The Soup. I had built up enough goodwill with E! just through commercials and Annie Roberts, the casting director, took pity and brought me in. I still technically didn't have an agent at that point.
So you got that job based on your ability to sell stuff.
They knew from commercials that I could tell a joke and I did 200. I did so many. Thank God, because it gave my wife and I an income. When I say "so many"—gosh that sounds like I'm bragging… well, I guess I am—but I could only book commercials and there were no auditions for anything else. I remember thinking, "Man, I got to get out there." And then I booked The Soup. That was what they call a very soft launch, which means we're not going to do anything helps this show, and it was slow. It was the cheapest show in E!network history next to the old Talk Soup. We slowly started to get ratings.
The Soup pushed you into the comedy world, but that wasn't really your home, right? You didn't start in standup.
Nope. I did a few open mics where I screwed around. But it was no act. There was no sort of discipline, like so many comics, to go out every night and work on the act. I was working on acting and improv. So [when I started standup], I took a bunch of Soup jokes and shoved them all together and made a narrative out them and, after I did it 1,000 times, I had an act.
But, clearly, hosting events like the Indie Spirit Awards and the White House Correspondents Dinner does not take years of standup training.
If you think about it, Conan's not a standup. Kimmel's not a standup. So there were all sorts of non-stand-ups doing it. More "TV presenters," as they say. It's more telling jokes off of a page. I probably could've done them by heart because I had rehearsed them so much, but yeah, that was surreal. I couldn't believe [the Correspondents Dinner] happened.
Does the approach change between events, like when you jump from the White House dinner crowd to the ESPYs?
No, I'm going to do the exact same material. But replace Barack Obama with Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady.
Do you know funny athletes?
Charles Barkley could've been a standup if he wanted to. There are really funny athletes and a lot of non-funny athletes. Hopefully we get the funny ones, but you also have to use the non-funny ones because it's for them. As far as hosting goes, I've been hosting the same show for 11 years. So hosting and telling jokes is not a foreign thing. I act as well and I think this is what confuses people.
How hands-on are you with planning ESPY bits?
Well, the great Jack Burditt is writing the opening with friends of mine. So, they've got a bunch of writers and I brought in some of my writers and I told them my ideas and then you just start.
Is there creative control? Will Joel McHale's ESPYs stand out from the other ESPYs?
Since it's coming out of my mouth, yeah, we have creative control. By nature, it will be different because I'm different.
Oh, you haven't been hosting the ESPYs for the last few decades? I thought you looked different last year.
Right, I am not Drake. I am not a Canadian hip-hop artist. Yet.
This year's ESPYs is buzzing louder than in the past.
It's on ABC, now. So that brings a heck of a lot of attention.
And big money.
Yes, we're going to spend $50 million on the opening number. We've hired Baz Luhrmann to shoot 15 miles of film.
The media went nuts when it was announced that Caitlyn Jenner would receive the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Did that create pressure on what you do?
I mean, yeah, it's one of the things that people are up in arms about it because it's "controversial." Caitlyn has become controversial for reasons I don't even need to say. But there's no doubt of Caitlyn's accomplishments in the '70s as Bruce. There are other deserving athletes. There are deserving athletes every year. People have said, "But what he did was in the 70s." I didn't realize there was a time limit. The accomplishment is great. I think it's courageous what she did and I guess people are disagreeing. It's very divided. I am focusing on making funny jokes and making those jokes land. That's all I care about.
Maybe that's more difficult when there's controversy playing the side.
We've made [Jenner] jokes on The Soup for the last weeks. The first one was, "Finally, there's a chick in the Kardashian family who knows how to go easy on the eyeliner." You know, it's your duty as a comedian to make jokes. So I tell jokes and so far, no one's complained. But then again, maybe no one's watching The Soup.
Have you ever received a complaint over The Soup?
We had a sheep on in the last two weeks and people were like, "It looks like that sheep is stressed out." I've gotten tweets like that.
What does a stressed out sheep look like?
I was like, "What the fuck?" That sheep was so lovely. Whenever you'd stroke it, it'd lean against you like a dog. I was like, "This is like a cool dog." It didn't seem stressed out at all, it seemed happy. It's funny, when it comes to animals, people freak out. But we made a [Caitlyn Jenner] joke because when the special aired on ABC, we aired at the exact same time live. We made a joke and were like, 'We know nobody's watching.' We were like, "Please. Somebody write in. Somebody complain. We need to know that somebody's watching."
The Soup is your ol' reliable. Community is becoming that way too. Whenever people think the show's over, it's back.
I've only been on shows where people are like, "Oh, wow. That's still around, huh?"
Now that Community ended its sixth season on Yahoo!, is it actually over?
All of our contracts ended this season. They would have to significantly increase some of the pay of some of the actors, I think. For so long, we were on NBC against The Big Bang Theory and we would get some numbers, which were actually very helpful to the Thursday night numbers, but they canceled us. And thank God for Yahoo! Screen. I really do think there'll be a movie.
I've seen Yahoo insinuate that on Twitter.
I think what has to happen is that Dan [Harmon, creator] needs to write the script. It's a tall order for someone. "Go write a brilliant movie script on a beloved show that you've been writing for six years. Go! Just go ahead and do that!" I don't think that is something that's like, "Let me just have a long weekend." The cast would do it. We would all do it.
You think there's one more story to tell?
Much like a Japanese general in World War II, or any war before that, the only option is success. If there isn't, then it's suicide. I really do think there'll be a movie. It might be false optimism, but I really think there will be. The more people read and talk about it, the more it gets stirred up. I think it'll be bigger than Pitch Perfect 2.
Now you're filming a role in the X-Files revival. Who do you play on that?
I play a guy named Tad O'Malley and I'm a host on a news show. I contact Scully and Mulder.
You get your own episode?
I get a couple. Believe me, I thought it was a prank when my agents first called.
You were in your early 20s when it was first on. Did you watch it?
I think I have seen every episode. At one point, someone mentioned that I was a fan and David Duchovny was standing there and he said, "Are you a fan?" and I said, "Yes, yes I am, Mr. Duchovny. Please don't be mad. You guys have no idea how big of a fan I was." And they were like, "Ok." They were so cool about it because I was like, "I know you're a huge Soup fan, right dude?" It was still a dream come true.
