
Jeremiah Watkins (Volume 8)
June 1, 2025
Matt Misisco


2025 Moontower Comedy Festival Series
The 2025 Moontower Comedy Festival is blessing us with 2 weeks of comedy, live podcasts, and after parties! Comedy Wham is featuring our favorite conversations leading up to and during this year’s festival. Enjoy!
Recording from the Stephen F. Austin Hotel lounge during the 2025 Moontower Comedy Festival, Valerie Lopez settles into her eighth interview with Jeremiah Watkins — a record for the podcast. (Yes: it’s really 8, the number that looks like an uppity infinity symbol; infinity is, of course, the number more times we want him to come on the show!). We’ve been lucky to have Watkins so many times, but each visit still feels like a big “get” and special treat. “This is one of the highlights of my year,” he admits, calling Moontower Comedy his favorite festival for its curated chaos and community vibe. (We can’t help but think that the yearly sit-down time with Lopez makes the festival that much sweeter.)
2025 sees Watkins going strong, arguably stronger than ever, with a full spate of projects — stand-up, production, podcasts, and TV development — each demanding creative bandwidth. As he works to give us more, the sheer number of projects is requiring more of Watkins, down to even simple things like time management.
Watkins and Lopez touch on a perfect example of this controlled frenzy : a 6:30 p.m. Stand Up on the Spot show bled into a 7:00 p.m. Dr. Phil: Live set across town, requiring near-surgical timing. (More on both of these shortly.) Rolling from one show to another is stressful enough without tight time windows like these, but in discussing them you get a feel for how he’s maturing some key skills to stay cool under pressure. “I’m a good compartmentalizer,” he says, “[I’m] trying to take it moment by moment”.
For Watkins, Stand-Up on the Spot remains his “100% creative control” fortress. With weekly episodes featuring comics riffing on crowd suggestions, it’s a logistical beast. He’s adapted: an AI tool handles rough cuts, an assistant refines them, and older sets fill gaps when gigs like Moontower devour his schedule. “Consistency is everything with YouTube,” he notes, but survival means flexibility; if it doesn’t make it bigger, onto a network, he’s fine with that too, wanting it to be “accessible to everybody”.
Watkins’ role in Adam Ray’s viral Dr Phil: Live has been a riot, as well as a riotous success. The show, most definitely not starring the actual Dr. Phil – and so much the better for it – routinely sells out venues, with audiences drawn by big name guests, and performers who are so very clearly enjoying the hell out of putting it on. It hardly feels like “work”, and when success called, and Dr Phil Live landed a streaming spot, Watkins remembers cackling loudly and thinking: “I cannot believe this is the thing that got on Netflix”.
Watkins’ newest venture, Thousand Percent Productions, formalizes a decade-long collaboration with musician-comedian Avery Pearson. They met at a Hollywood Improv open mic where Pearson accompanied him on keys — they had instant synergy. “So many people thought we’d known each other for years,” Watkins laughs. Their production company landed a national Einstein Bros. Bagels campaign out the gate, and now produces comedy specials (Josh Wolf, Jack Jr.) while eyeing films. For Watkins, it’s a director’s runway: “I’ve wanted to direct movies for a very long time” .
Perhaps Watkins’ most personal project is Red Fuzzy Rug: an animated kids’ pilot co-created with his wife, Maja, focused on social-emotional learning. Inspired by Maja’s teaching and research, it draws on the feels and tenets of Magic School Bus, and makes inclusivity the order of the day. “It’s kind of creating a a safe space for kids on this red fuzzy rug, where – whatever they imagine – it comes to life,” as Watkins describes it. The cast is outstanding, including Tiffany Haddish, Jodie Sweetin, Joanna Hausmann, and Libbie Higgins; but keep an eye out for even more big names in the future.
For someone I tend to think of as the embodiment of “frenetic” energy, the Jeremiah Watkins of 2025 certainly doesn’t disappoint. As he notes: “the highs are higher and the lows are lower”, putting an extra coat of urgency on things. With these kinds of stakes, Watkins is coming to peace with relinquishing control — selectively. He trains editors to articulate his vision rather than redoing their work (“It makes me a stronger director”). He outsources edits when Moontower looms. Yet some habits persist: he *still* writes checks for his agency, a stubborn relic in a Venmo world. And it wouldn’t be a Watkins appearance if Valerie didn’t check in on the printer (ye vaunted Brother laser) Valerie gifted him years ago? “Third residence, still going!”, he confirms.
Whether hustling between venues, pitching Red Fuzzy Rug, or eyeing stand-up specials (Daddy and Family Reunion are streaming on Prime & YouTube), Watkins’ ethos is motion. But it’s wonderful to hear and see the strides he’s making in his career discipline and personal prioritization; trying entirely new concepts, knowing when to put family first, and even just acknowledging the reality that there’s a limited amount of time in each day to make his many dreams into realities.
He’s just going to make sure he uses every last second of it.
Follow Jeremiah
- Website
- Jeremiah Watkins — www.JeremiahWatkins.com
- Thousand Percent — thousand-percent.com
- X — @jeremiahstandup
- Instagram
- Jeremiah Watkins — @jeremiahstandup
- Trailer Tales — @trailertalespod
- Red Fuzzy Rug — @redfuzzyrug
- Facebook — Facebook.com/Jeremiah.Watkins
- Youtube
- Jeremiah Watkins — Youtube.com/@jeremiahwatkins
- Stand-up on the Spot — Youtube.com/@standupots
- Trailer Tales / Scissor Bros — Youtube.com/@TrailerTalesPod or Youtube.com/@ScissorBros
- Red Fuzzy Rug — Youtube.com/@RedFuzzyRug
- Jeremiah Wonders — Youtube.com/@JeremiahWonders
Jeremiah can be seen and heard:
- Specials
- Latest Special: Jeremiah Watkins: Daddy
- Debut Special: Jeremiah Watkins: Family Reunion (Amazon, Google Play, Apple TV)
- Podcasts (available on Youtube and your favorite podcast player)
- Trailer Tales
- The Scissor Bros
- Jeremiah Wonders
- The Building Years
- Album — Regan and Watkins (2019)
- Hosted Shows — Stand-up on the Spot at The Comedy Store and around the country
- Previous appearances on our podcast
- Jeremiah Watkins: “You’re the Best” (2017)
- Jeremiah Watkins Returns, 2018 Moontower Series (2018)
- The State of Jeremiah Watkins (2019)
- Checking in With Jeremiah Watkins: From Father to Bros (2021)
- Jeremiah Watkins: Still the Best (2022)
- Jeremiah Watkins: It’s Daddy Time Again (2023)
- Jeremiah Watkins Checks In, Volume 7 (2024)

