Sophie Buddle is an Exceptional Person

We’ve heard many a come­di­an ori­gin sto­ry by now, so we’re no strangers to the fact that many comics stum­ble into com­e­dy from total­ly unre­lat­ed jobs, degrees, and back­grounds. In fact, rare is it for a come­di­an to be so steeped in com­e­dy from such a young age that it ends up being their only real job his­to­ry. But our guest this week Sophie Bud­dle is an excep­tion­al rar­i­ty for more rea­sons than just that.

At age 14, the local haunts that you fre­quent­ed were prob­a­bly movie the­aters, shop­ping malls, and maybe the occa­sion­al mini-golf course. For a bud­ding 14-year-old Bud­dle, at the top of that list was the com­e­dy club. Every week, Bud­dle and her mom would go watch the ama­teur com­e­dy night at the local com­e­dy club in Ottawa, Cana­da, treat­ing them­selves each to a drink — maybe a mar­ti­ni. (Her mom wasn’t just any mom; she was an artist; she was a cool mom.) Pret­ty quick­ly, a now 15-year-old Bud­dle decid­ed she want­ed to try things out from the oth­er van­tage point: the stage. ​“When you’re a kid, like, noth­ing’s real­ly scary,” she explains of the deci­sion. ​“And we’re watch­ing ama­teur night … So, half the peo­ple would bomb, and I was like, ​‘I could bomb like that.’” Grant­ed, every­one thought Bud­dle was old­er, so she took on a more mature per­sona in her com­e­dy to keep up appear­ances and not get kicked out. ​“I … had all these jokes about sex, and was like, very much not hav­ing sex, so it made no sense,” Bud­dle laughs.

Of course, mere­ly sur­viv­ing as a teenag­er is a hard enough feat in itself, but being a teenag­er with stand-up for a hob­by? ​“It was very dif­fi­cult,” Bud­dle recalls of try­ing to strike the bal­ance between school and com­e­dy, not to men­tion high-lev­el soc­cer. ​“Some­times I would go to a show and ask to go up late and just be like, drenched in sweat from soc­cer,” she recalls. Even­tu­al­ly, Bud­dle came to an impasse with the Han­nah-Mon­tana-esque dou­ble life, and she chose com­e­dy. It just felt right. ​“It’s eas­i­er to work on doing [some­thing] if you feel like you’re good for your age, or you’re good for your skill lev­el, when you feel a lit­tle ahead of the curve…” Bud­dle muses.

That being said, Bud­dle is sure to men­tion that this was a dif­fer­ent time for com­e­dy, espe­cial­ly in Cana­da. The big com­e­dy Renais­sance — from Net­flix spe­cials to Youtube star­dom — was yet to come, and there weren’t any house­hold stand-up names in Cana­da. ​“You real­ly had to do it just because you loved it,” Bud­dle elab­o­rates. ​“There was­n’t a clear future.” It was an espe­cial­ly murky future for female come­di­ans in Cana­da; indeed, Buddle’s own scene had only a few, very periph­er­al women. ​“Back then, I think [male comics] thought it was eas­i­er [to do com­e­dy as a woman]. So, they had kind of a chip on their shoul­der about me doing it,” she recalls. ​“And I think there was a bit of an atti­tude of like, that I was get­ting moved up too quick­ly because I was a girl, and they want­ed, like, a token girl. That was still sort of the mentality.”

Once Bud­dle turned 18, she was on to green­er pas­tures. And by that, I mean Van­cou­ver. Though ini­tial­ly the move was part of an effort to go to fash­ion school — a ven­ture that quick­ly came to an end, as Bud­dle end­ed up drop­ping out — it turned out rather serendip­i­tous­ly: Bud­dle loved Vancouver’s com­e­dy scene. ​“There’s a real com­e­dy lit­er­a­cy in [Van­cou­ver]. So, like, when audi­ences go out, they real­ly know what stand-up is … and they under­stand the pac­ing, and they under­stand nuance; and it real­ly makes a huge dif­fer­ence for comics,” Bud­dle remarks. Not only that, but the rel­a­tive­ly small size of the scene made it so that good open-micers would move up to the same shows that the best head­lin­ers were doing. Bud­dle felt it was as though every­one was get­ting an oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve every­body. The new tal­ent got to learn from the more estab­lished tal­ent, and the estab­lished tal­ent stayed extra fresh by not get­ting swept into their own insu­lar circuits.

More recent­ly, Bud­dle made yet anoth­er move — this time to Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia. ​“I’ve always want­ed to live in Amer­i­ca,” Bud­dle says. How­ev­er, the actu­al logis­ti­cal process isn’t quite as acces­si­ble as it looks in the movies. Even­tu­al­ly, though, as Bud­dle reached a nation­al lev­el of suc­cess as a com­ic, she real­ized she could apply for the excep­tion­al person’s visa. ​“It’s very embar­rass­ing,” Bud­dle says of the process, ​“because you have to ask all of your favorite comics to write you a let­ter that says that you’re excep­tion­al, and that you’re going to be an asset in Amer­i­ca, and that you’re the best com­ic they’ve ever seen.” On top of that, it required heaps of paper­work — an espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult feat for Bud­dle due to ADHD, not to men­tion that this was hap­pen­ing in quaran-times, so she was stuck home­bound, unable to go out and do what she loves. To add even more insult to injury, Buddle’s debut album had just won the 2020 Juno Com­e­dy Album of the Year award, and COVID not only led to the can­cel­la­tion of the phys­i­cal award show, but also pre­vent­ed her from reap­ing the rewards of get­ting book­ings and press as a Juno win­ner. “[Get­ting the visa] couldn’t have been a big­ger relief,” Bud­dle claims, after such a low time in her life. ​“It was real­ly a light at the end of the tunnel.”

The move to Amer­i­ca has proven espe­cial­ly grat­i­fy­ing for Bud­dle because she is now head­lin­ing all over Amer­i­ca. Indeed, it took Bud­dle a long time to get pro­mot­ed to head­lin­ing gigs in Cana­da. Every­one thought of her as young, despite the fact that many of her male coun­ter­parts with the same length of expe­ri­ence were get­ting to head­line. “… [A] lot of com­e­dy club own­ers and book­ers choose based off of their own com­e­dy tastes and sen­si­bil­i­ty,” Bud­dle notes, ​“which makes sense, but it’s, you know; they’re most­ly choos­ing oth­er men their age that are talk­ing about their wife and their kids or what­ev­er.” In fact, after ten years of com­e­dy, she approached her home club for a head­lin­ing gig to record her album. ​“And they just basi­cal­ly refused,” Bud­dle states. ​“And I said, ​‘Are we ever… Am I ever going to head­line?’ And in so many words, they said no.” It took a switch to a dif­fer­ent club to final­ly head­line in her home coun­try. ​“And so com­ing here [to Amer­i­ca], and then head­lin­ing right away real­ly means a lot to me, because it was so frus­trat­ing for so long.” (Plus, appar­ent­ly Amer­i­can audi­ences are loud­er and more overt about show­ing you that they like you, accord­ing to Bud­dle. That part doesn’t hurt either.)

Speak­ing of hurt, Bud­dle remarks that stand-up is extra near and dear to her heart because it acts as a cush­ion against hard times. ​“It’s help­ful to talk about [trou­bles]; it’s help­ful for me to work through stuff because I nev­er learned how to talk about my feel­ings with my fam­i­ly,” Bud­dle remarks. Not only that, but Bud­dle believes that mak­ing your strife acces­si­ble onstage helps audi­ences too, as they process their own pri­vate strug­gles. ​“So I think the biggest advan­tage to being a standup per­former is when some­thing bad hap­pens to you, there’s an imme­di­ate reper­cus­sion of good things,” Bud­dle artic­u­lates sunnily.

And as our inter­view with Bud­dle (dur­ing her first time at the Moon­tow­er Just For Laughs Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val!) came to a close, it was easy for us to see why Bud­dle con­tin­ues to be, indeed, such an excep­tion­al per­son after all. Con­sid­er this arti­cle as just one more let­ter in tes­ta­ment to that fact (even if she already has the visa now).

Fol­low Sophie

• Web­site — SophieBud​dle​Com​e​dy​.com
• Twit­ter — @sophiebuddle
• Insta­gram — @sophbuds
• Link­tree — Link​tr​.ee/​S​o​p​hbuds
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​S​o​p​h​i​e​B​uddle

Sophie can be seen and heard:

• Debut Album (2020 Juno Com­e­dy Album of the Year): Lil Bit of Buddle
• Pod­cast — Obsessed with Sophie Buddle