Jeremiah Watkins (Volume 9)

Nine volumes in, and Jeremiah Watkins is somehow still surprising us. When we sat down with him in the lounge of the Steven F. Austin Hotel during Moontower 2026, he had just come off a week of sets — including one where he barely made it inside before the show started because, as we already know about him, pre-show Jeremiah is not available for socializing. "I'm real weird about going near the audience until the show has begun," he explained, completely unapologetically, which is very on-brand. The man knows himself.

What he's been up to since we last checked in is, predictably, a lot. Red Fuzzy Rug — the animated preschool show he's developing with his wife Maja — is still in the works, navigating the genuinely brutal landscape of selling to networks. The Trailer Tales podcast is thriving, with co-hosts Chelsea Lynn and Libbie Higgins respectively holding down sold-out shows at the Comedy Store and in Vegas while Jeremiah was in Austin. And Stand Up on the Spot keeps building toward its goal of becoming a touring brand that can walk into any city and sell tickets on the name alone.

But the newest thing — the one that lit him up to talk about — is a Trailer Tales feature film he wants to write and direct himself. "That's the next goal for me," he said, with the easy confidence of someone who's been quietly stacking skills for years. He's directed shorts, sketches, music videos, even specials — but a feature is a different mountain, and he's clearly ready to start climbing it.

If you've seen Jeremiah headline, you already know the crowd work is not a bit — it's a whole philosophy. But what's interesting is how deliberately he deploys it. When we reflect on his headlining run in San Antonio at The Riot River Walk (a show I happily traveled south for last December) — the show with the bedazzled jeans guy and the wild south-of-the-border story — it wasn't random. He made a call. "I sensed a wild energy about the different people in that crowd," he said. "And I was like, I'm gonna mine this."

That instinct is what separates him from comics who lean on crowd work as a crutch. His upcoming special, Crazy Pizza — already shot, already edited — is the deliberate counterpoint. Zero crowd work, no audience cutaways, just Jeremiah and the material. A statement piece.

Jeremiah's has always been a team player and he knows that his success as a headliner often means finding the perfect partner to open for him. He's been taking Austin local Joey Smith with him as a featured act, mentoring in that quiet way where you don't quite realize it's mentorship until someone gets real about it. The bigger portrait here is someone who has learned to read the room — not just on stage, but in the industry. When we asked about whether comics resent having to be their own marketing teams, agents, and editors, he didn't sugarcoat it. "Nobody likes that they have to be their own team anymore," he said. But he also made clear the alternative is worse: staying funny in a vacuum while the world moves on without you.

We ended our annual conversation this year with a question about the hard stuff he's faced this past year. Jeremiah shared something genuinely heavy and personal — the loss of his friend and fellow comedian Alex Duong, a Comedy Store regular, Roast Battle champion, and fellow young dad whose daughter and Jeremiah's sons had grown up in the same orbit. He watched the memorial over Zoom, alone, because he was here at Moontower. "He's somebody who I love very much, not only as a comedian, but as a person," he said quietly. The comedy community showed up for Alex's family in a big way, and someone at the memorial said something that stuck: his daughter had just inherited a whole lot of aunts and uncles.

Not long after that, a distribution deal for Crazy Pizza — described as "a life-changing amount of money" — collapsed when the HBO/Netflix merger killed it before it could close. Two brutal things in one year. But Jeremiah, being Jeremiah, doesn't linger in the loss. "It's a bummer, but I didn't have it before," he said. "My life is still good."

We closed, as we always do, with his one-word vision for the future. This year: intricate. Which, honestly, fits. There are animated shows in development, a feature film on the horizon, his first Australian tour dates, and the Crazy Pizza comedy special on the way. Volume nine is in the books. We'll see him at ten. That's a promise.