Jeremiah Watkins: Still the Best

This arti­cle marks our fifth con­ver­sa­tion with Jere­mi­ah Watkins, and we’re going kick off with a cel­e­bra­tion of Watkins’ inau­gu­ra­tion into the Wham of Fame — an hon­or bestowed upon him by his good friend and fel­low LA com­ic, Avery Pear­son. (Stay tuned for our inter­view with Pear­son lat­er in this 2022 Moon­tow­er Series!)

Giv­en Watkins’ sta­tus as our most fre­quent guest, the Wham of Fame is pleased to cel­e­brate his suc­cess­es. And since Sep­tem­ber 2021 (our last Moon­tow­er con­ver­sa­tion), Watkins has had sev­er­al suc­cess­es worth cel­e­brat­ing. His solo pod­cast, Jere­mi­ah Won­ders (launched in 2018) has flour­ished, not to men­tion his pod­cast with Steve Lee called Scis­sor Broth­ers (launched in 2021). With Jere­mi­ah Won­ders being one of my per­son­al favorites, I’ve loved see­ing the show land big­ger and big­ger guests — a sure indi­ca­tion, of his own ris­ing star­dom in the com­e­dy world. Yet anoth­er sign of his veloc­i­ty in the grad­u­a­tion of his long-run­ning Standup on the Spot show­case (where comics solic­it audi­ence sug­ges­tions and impro­vise their sets) from a stan­dard live show to a full-fledged series record­ed at the world-famous Com­e­dy Store. The Com­e­dy Store does­n’t allow any old Joe Schmoe record in its venue, so the fact that Watkins’ trade­mark show was giv­en the bless­ing cer­tain­ly cements him in Com­e­dy Store his­to­ry. Right along with his cel­e­bra­tion of the 50^th Anniver­sary of the Com­e­dy Store, where he was moved that the famous wall of pho­tographs toward the Orig­i­nal Room includ­ed 3 pic­tures of him. We’d be remiss if we did­n’t men­tion that his son just cel­e­brat­ed his first birth­day — a fact that Watkins is incred­i­bly proud to celebrate.

Much of our con­ver­sa­tion dur­ing the 2022 Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val cen­tered around two themes — what’s changed in the five years since our first inter­view togeth­er and what the next five years may hold. From the for­mer top­ic, we took stock of Watkins’ evo­lu­tion from ensem­ble per­former to solo per­former. Of course, the lat­est shift away from ensem­ble play­er, hit me a bit hard. Every time I’ve attend­ed Josh Adam Mey­er’s God­damn Com­e­dy Jam at Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val, Watkins has served as Mosh Pit, the hype man for the Jam. This is the first year that he’s stepped down from his role as Mosh Pit and while it’s a sad moment for me per­son­al­ly, it was a nec­es­sary move for Watkins. Over the last five years, he’s delib­er­ate­ly made the shift from the ensem­ble play­er to bet­ting on him­self. Watkins affirms this by say­ing ​“it’s def­i­nite­ly a men­tal­i­ty more and more all the time of bet­ting on myself even far­ther and far­ther, and real­ly putting all the chips on myself”. This shift is evi­denced by the con­sis­tent tour­ing he’s been doing as a head­lin­er, the devel­op­ment of his act­ing and voice-over career, and the launch of his new web series Standup on the Spot. As he puts it, focus­ing on standup is allow­ing him to focus on who he con­sid­ers him­self to be at the root of his iden­ti­ty. Said anoth­er way ​“For many years I was in some­one else’s car, and now I’m dri­ving the car that I own.”

Watkins has been doing Standup on the Spot for 12 years and the recent momen­tum he’s enjoyed has not only allowed him to bring the impro­vised standup show on the road — as a sup­ple­ment to his head­lin­er shows, as well as a fes­ti­val show (includ­ing sev­er­al years of appear­ances at Moon­tow­er) — but has allowed him to bro­ker a deal with The Com­e­dy Store to film the show at the Store for release on his per­son­al net­work as a web series. The series offi­cial­ly launched on April 25, 2022 and you can catch new episodes by fol­low­ing Watkins, as he is a ded­i­cat­ed pro­mot­er of his many projects.

Anoth­er new­er Watkins project is the afore­men­tioned Scis­sor Broth­ers pod­cast with Steve Lee. The pod­cast just turned a year old and has gar­nered him a lot of atten­tion; for­tu­nate­ly, it has been very pos­i­tive. Watkins laughs, ​“I think we have one of the most pos­i­tive YouTube com­ments sec­tion of any. Because we real­ly try to put that out there. … we’re just not about hav­ing any neg­a­tive peo­ple in our lives.” And if you spend any amount of time around Watkins, you’ll see that.

With his recent suc­cess, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask what he thought we’d be talk­ing about in five years. He hopes to con­tin­ue sur­round­ing him­self with pos­i­tive, syn­er­gis­tic peo­ple, and he envi­sions his DIY work and pro­mo­tion efforts will have paid off even more in the future. It was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to note that in our very first con­ver­sa­tion five years ago Watkins men­tioned a goal of being on a sketch show — either Sat­ur­day Night Live or one of his own cre­ation. That aspi­ra­tion remains, and he (and we) would love to see that come to fruition five years from now. As long as Watkins con­tin­ues to move for­ward with the same veloc­i­ty as the last five years, we have no doubt that we’ll be talk­ing about a whole new slew of accom­plish­ments and suc­cess­es dur­ing our ten year recap con­ver­sa­tion Of course, the true beau­ty of Jere­mi­ah Watkins is that even with all the hard work he puts into his standup career, he is a loy­al fam­i­ly man, and an incred­i­bly nice guy to boot. (We dou­ble dog dare you to find any­one that has an ill word to say about Watkins). Real­ly though, we could­n’t sum­ma­rize the state of Watkins any bet­ter than his good friend Avery Pear­son did: ​“You’re the best.” We’ve been say­ing that since 2017, where the title of our first inter­view with Watkins was sim­ply ​“You’re the Best”.

Thank you to Avery Pear­son for the orig­i­nal song ​“Wham of Fame”

Fol­low Jeremiah

• Web­site — www​.Jere​mi​ah​Watkins​.com
• Twit­ter — @jeremiahstandup
• Insta­gram — @jeremiahstandup
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​J​e​r​e​m​i​a​h​.​W​a​tkins
• Youtube
  • Scis­sor Bros — Youtube​.com/​S​c​i​s​s​o​rBros
  • Jere­mi­ah Won­ders — Youtube​.com/​J​e​r​e​m​i​a​h​W​o​nders
  • How to Get Fired Series — Youtube​.com/​J​e​r​e​m​i​a​h​W​a​tkins

Jere­mi­ah can be seen and heard:

• Debut Spe­cial: Jere­mi­ah Watkins: Fam­i­ly Reunion (Ama­zon, Google Play, Apple TV)
• Pod­casts (avail­able on Youtube and your favorite pod­cast player)
  • The Scis­sor Bros
  • Jere­mi­ah Wonders
  • The Build­ing Years
• Album — Regan and Watkins (2019)
• Host­ed Shows — Standup on the Spot at The Com­e­dy Store
• Video Series
  • Standup on the Spot (debut April 25, 2022)
  • “How to Get Fired” video series fea­tur­ing Josh Wolf