Sophie Buddle Serves Up (Volume 4)

“I have been lov­ing Jon Stew­art back on The Dai­ly Show…it’s the sec­ond com­ing!”

Right off the bat, 4‑time guest Sophie Bud­dle has won me over, both with her praise of TDS (as we in the know, or we who like acronyms, call it), and the admis­sion of her go-to karaōke song. I sup­pose we should say ​“going-to” karaōke song, as Bud­dle claims her Jew­ish her­itage (anoth­er thing in com­mon with Stew­art) has ren­dered her tone-deaf and thus unable to sing in front of oth­ers. (My own lack of tone and care for my fel­low cit­i­zens, alas, means I shall remain silent in sol­i­dar­i­ty.)

Until the day Bud­dle over­comes this road­block, you’ll have to catch her in some of the ​“bou­tique” appear­ances she has been mak­ing this year. Bud­dle has toured with Tay­lor Tom­lin­son, a rel­a­tive up-and-com­er you may know from her 2 to 4 amaz­ing Net­flix spe­cials. (Read this arti­cle slow­ly enough and you may emerge only to dis­cov­er a new one is out, no doubt even bet­ter than the last.) You may also have caught Bud­dle on After Mid­night (host­ed by Tom­lin­son, who picked up the torch from Chris Hard­wick). Lucky for us, Bud­dle is now a Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val vet­er­an with her 3^rd appear­ance for the 2024 edi­tion. This fes­ti­val’s high­light for audi­ences (and Valerie per­son­al­ly) was get­ting to watch her open (and crush) for Marc Maron.

With a shoutout to Jon Stew­art at the top of the con­ver­sa­tion between Bud­dle and Valerie Lopez, it’s nat­ur­al to won­der if the Cana­da-born-and-raised Bud­dle is real­ly that into Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. The answer is an emphat­ic yes, as it turns out she’s a vora­cious con­sumer of news be it of the polit­i­cal or cul­tur­al genre.

​“I’m always read­ing the news, it felt like a waste [to not make it into mate­r­i­al],” Bud­dle jokes. At the same time, she insists ​“I try not to mon­e­tize every hob­by of mine”, not­ing that’s a dan­ger in the cur­rent cre­ator econ­o­my, if for no oth­er rea­son than the com­ments. That said, her shows aren’t all pol­i­tics, and in fact hew edgy — as Bud­dle will be the first to admit. The whole inter­view is rapid-fire, with Bud­dle’s tim­ing – and pas­sion to share naughty terms – keep­ing Valerie and this writer on their toes. Trust me, this is an episode that deserves a lis­ten to get the full expe­ri­ence.

It was an instinct Bud­dle had to fight when tour­ing Cana­da with Rick Mer­cer (the North-of-the-bor­der Jon Stew­art), in front of audi­ences quite a bit dif­fer­ent than your aver­age fes­ti­val show. ​“I was­n’t real­ly doing my favorite jokes,” she recalls of work­ing ​“clean”, but per­form­ing for fan­cy-dress the­atre audi­ences ​“feels like you’re doing art”.

Pol­i­tics and art; are there two top­ics peo­ple love more to talk about, or with such poten­tial­ly eso­teric lin­go? Bud­dle might argue that the rapid­ly chang­ing slang of the youths can be dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate as well, and has tak­en it upon her­self to con­tin­ue teach­ing her dad the lat­est terms each year to help keep him cur­rent. Last year was ​“thirsty” (and boy, was it); this year is ​“rizz” (as in charis­ma, nat­u­ral­ly). As a father, and writer, I’m thank­ful she’s doing her part to keep the elder­ly as bussin’ as we can be.

So what’s in Buddle’s future, besides her cur­rent ongo­ing quest to legit­imize ​“Dol­phin-train­er-Core” fash­ion? (Lis­ten to the inter­view, it’ll make sense even if it’s not your style…yet.) Giv­en the mul­ti­ple calls she’s received, Bud­dle insists she’s buck­ling down to update sophiebud​dle​.com. She has an hour of mate­r­i­al she thinks can be turned into a spe­cial, and is enjoy­ing her con­tin­u­ing deep dive into her ​“lit­tle polit­i­cal things”, to see if it ​“turns into any­thing inter­est­ing”. Her tour­ing strat­e­gy remains ​“on the road, always on the road”, which sounds exhaust­ing but brings her to places like Austin, for which we’re always grate­ful. Her tour­ing sched­ule has an addi­tion­al ben­e­fit for her long-time boyfriend — he gets to see sur­faces in their shared home in Los Ange­les.

If the cur­rent cli­mate can be called any­thing, ​“inter­est­ing” is a sol­id choice, though may we also sug­gest ​“apoc­ryphal” or ​“Fast­Pass to Insan­i­ty”? It’s come­di­ans like Bud­dle (and the afore­men­tioned Stew­art) that both help us make sense of the mad­ness, and make us feel, per­haps, a wee bit bet­ter, and that things may actu­al­ly turn out less than ter­ri­ble.

And if it doesn’t, I hear that Sophie Buddle’s moth­er coun­try is quite nice, and real­ly not that far of a dri­ve, all things considered.

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:

• Com­e­dy Cen­tral Spe­cial Com­ing Soon
• The Tonight Show with Jim­my Fal­lon — link
• Debut Album (2020 Juno Com­e­dy Album of the Year): Lil Bit of Buddle
• Pod­cast — Obsessed with Sophie Buddle