Interview: Zach Zucker on Clowning and Stamptown on Netflix

If you’re a fan of comedy, you’ve probably heard of Stamptown. Created by École Philippe Gaulier graduate Zach Zucker, a popular clown in his own right, the production company has put on shows in over a dozen countries over the past decade. Its most popular show, also named Stamptown, recently premiered on Netflix and is currently touring in the UK.

Recently, we had the chance to speak with Zucker about Stamptown. We discussed how he first got into comedy, what it was like to film the show for Netflix, and even how much of an impact audience members have on the show!

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How did you first get started in the world of comedy? 

Oh man, that is a big one! I had to take a fine arts class, and I heard that acting was an easy A and was fun. I was like, “Okay, sign me up!” Against all odds, I managed to be unique in myself and get a B-! But I did have fun, and then I took it again the next year because I was like, “I really need to get an A for my GPA this year,” and I was put in the advanced class because that was what was left if you did a full year of it and kept going. My teacher was like, “Hey, you're cool, and people are gonna do what you do, so if you fuck around, get out of the class. But if you're here to take it seriously and enjoy yourself, which I think you would enjoy, then stick around.” And that really resonated with me, so I responded well to that and gave it my all. 

And then a little bit through my senior year, my teacher was like, “Hey, I think you’d really like Second City downtown in Chicago,” because I grew up in Chicago. And I went down there and I saw Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson, and then these other performers - Katie Rich, Holly Laurent, Timothy Edward Mason, and Edgar Blackmon. They just did the most amazing live sketch improv comedy revue, and this was like the heyday of Second City as well, or kind of the end of them being like a powerhouse. And then that kicked off a whole course that got me to move to LA when I was eighteen years old, and just go for this, even though I knew nobody and had zero experience. 

And can you tell us a bit about the creation of Stamptown itself? 

Yeah! So Stamptown - the production company - came first, because it was a way for me to produce without saying, “Zach Zucker presents, Zach & Viggo.” It didn't really necessarily have the greatest ring to it! But that came from dreaming when we were in Étampes in France, where the clown school [École Philippe Gaulier] was. And Stamptown is named after Étampes - a little homage to where our clown school was. But it started as a response to Zach & Viggo not getting booked a lot. A lot of people were saying that what we did wasn't comedy, and at the time, I was like, “What the hell are you talking about?” In hindsight, two annoying guys in lycra doing prop and physical comedy . . . I understand why people didn't necessarily want us there, but we were so much more than that! 

I kept seeing all these traditional, boring acts getting booked on these stand-up nights. We really wanted to be comedians, so we didn't even consider or even know much about variety. It wasn't until we started doing spots our first year in Edinburgh when the only people that would book us were the cabaret mamas, the drag queens, and the circus variety acts. So that's where we developed that circus flair! But we didn't start doing the show until two years later, in 2017, and, at that point, we made it a haven for all the people that couldn't get booked on the other shows. We're like, “Hey, come here, this is way more fun. You guys are awesome. I'd way prefer to watch this than watch the same version of the same person do the same version of their set nine times in a row!” It started off with mostly just weird alternative comedy and performance. Then it moved into, “Oh, let's put some music on here,” and then, “Oh, we should have some drag,” and then we were like, “Well, we should probably put circus in there!” I can think back to all the different iterations of when it all went in there!

And how did you create the character of the MC, Jack Tucker? 

We were four years into our careers at this point, and Viggo and I mostly performed together, but then he had a job, so he had to leave early. And I was like, “Well, I got to learn how to perform both!” And we were both doing solo shows, but the solo shows were not MC-able characters. I had hosted Stamptown as me, and he had hosted some as him when I was gone. But we wanted a more functional device to run the show through. But even then, we weren't even thinking about it at the time. The first time I did Tucker was on a Stamptown in Edinburgh, 2018, but I had been doing versions of a terrible comedian who goes to a place and keeps saying the worst joke.

I find that horrific cringe stuff to be really funny, and Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington, who does Neil Hamburger, were two big influences on the character. Seeing our friend Zoë Coombs Marr two years earlier doing her character Dave, seeing John Kearns, who has a comedy persona alter ego. It was finding these people with these persona alter egos. We had struggled with Tucker, then took it to Australia, but got our absolute asses kicked down there! The show sucked, and it was so bad for so long. But when you're so bad every single way, you eventually learn how to do it right. Or you at least learn what you could do to do it right, and it's up to you to do it right! So it started there, and then he became the host. 

And then Jack Tucker, the host, has a different persona than Jack Tucker in the live show. He's softer and stupider in [Jack Tucker’s] Comedy Standup Hour, and then he's a bit crazier and more in control for Stamptown, just because he has to be for the necessity of the show. But it came from my life of just like, “Am I a bad comedian?” So a lot of Tucker's specifics that make no sense to the show are from pieces of my life that I have put into him that are ultimately inconsequential, but helped me in the creation of the character, to familiarize myself with it. 

And what is it like working with the sound and lighting team for perfectly-timed comedic moments?

It's a blessing, because I'm not very funny without it! Usually, we have Jonny Woolley or Jeremy Elder on the sounds, and then Lily Dawford is our number one on the lights. You just got two more extensions of you who think the same way, who know the piece inside and out the way you do, and are willing to play and go for it at all times. So it's a blessing. I've got two other geniuses who absolutely cover my ass and have my back at all times. They help frame me in a way that makes all of my mistakes look like a superpower!

What was it like performing for the Netflix taping? 

It's funny. Both times I've done specials, I've had to remind myself, “Hey, enjoy this moment!” But it's so hard! Not that I wasn't enjoying it - it's just there's so much happening that you don't have a moment to think about it. It just feels like something way bigger and on a more massive scale. It was just a beast to do this thing, and I'm so thankful for all the hard work everybody put into it. We asked a lot, it demanded a lot, and ultimately, I'm proud of what we put together. But it was a different mission than normally it is when we're doing shows. But none of it was different in a negative way. It was just different than normal, and I'm hopeful we get to do more! There's so much I'd like to explore cinematically, and there's so much more we have to learn. And I just hope that enough people watch this that we get a chance to do more of these, because I really love to do them!

What has it been like seeing the reaction to the Netflix special? 

We released it when we were in Edinburgh, so we were on home-court advantage. There, it seems like everybody knew about it and/or liked it. So, for the most part, pretty happy! The question is always: Are people watching it? And when we're in Edinburgh, in an echo chamber of all of our people, of course these people are gonna - at the very least - know what's going on. But then you remove yourself from that contained environment, and you put yourself in the world. You're like, “Does anybody know? Does anybody give a shit? Is anybody gonna watch it?” But we love a healthy mix of people loving and hating it. It's been a much healthier mix of people enjoying it than not enjoying it, which is obviously the preference!

You mentioned the home-court advantage in Edinburgh. How does the show differ based on where you're performing? 

The audience is probably the biggest thing. In all of these, the biggest ingredients are the audience, the overall climate of the city and the performance scene, the venue, and then who's available. And it's a shame, because I feel like we've never been able to give some cities the prime version of it. That is not a knock on anyone or anything! It's just like, “Oh, we've never had a full budget to bring this show here. We've done some cool shows in this city, but they've never gotten the full thing because of visas, travel, and capacity.” So that is a huge factor - it's going to be different. But I don't think people realise how different that is, and how much that really does affect everything that's going on, the whole creative calculus of the show. I hesitate to say my favorites or places that I enjoy more than others, because I am practising being diplomatic and sweet to everybody! But I really appreciate the UK culture. They just really keep us honest, and they never laugh if they don't find it funny. 

What is it like having so many viral clips of specific bits on social media, and then trying to convince people that there's more than just that?

Our lives have been significantly changed in the last three years, at least in terms of visibility on a larger scale. I struggle to look at the internet as anything other than a series of numbers that I know I need to hit to grow. It's just unfathomable to me that anyone would give a shit about what I'm putting out there! I'm like, “Surely no one's watching these things,” but then they do, and then I get in trouble because I'm not realizing how many people are watching these things! I have a weird relationship to the internet - I think everyone has an unhealthy, weird relationship to the internet, for the most part. But I’m always thankful when it goes well. It's nice to have an immediate response or feedback that it's going well and people like it. Obviously, you can tell it's going okay based on some of the views. But also, it doesn't fully mean that that's the only thing to depend or lean on. We always try to use it as more of a metric of data than anything else, because it's totally different than what we're doing live. I prefer to be a live show creator than a creator-conscious individual. 

But I’m thrilled to see that it has translated so well, because I do believe that we've created a nice ecosystem for ourselves of getting people into our world. If you see the shows, you're gonna probably follow us, and then you'll like our stuff on the internet. If you hear me on a podcast, read an interview, or see a clip somewhere, that would hopefully entice you to want to come and see a show. I think we do have pretty high turnaround of follows to engagement to call to action. We can't always mark those numbers, but it's a mixture of people telling me after the show, people messaging me, or people being like, “Bro, I've been watching you for six months, been dying to come to the show. I finally made it, and then it was so much crazier than I thought!” And then they're like, “I’ve got to bring my friends next time,” or, “I’ve got to bring more of my friends!” It's not guaranteed everybody leaves and comes back with all their friends every single time, but it is definitely a possibility that they could do that! We're thankful and fortunate enough that that infrastructure is there, and it's resonating with people, which is really cool. 

Do you have any favourite memories from performing Stamptown over nearly ten years now?

Doing the show the day of the special releasing in Edinburgh was really special. In Walthamstow, we did three shows - Thursday, Friday, Saturday in September. And that last Saturday was pretty peak happiness. Doesn't get much better. It's all OGs. It's a big show, but it's not a long show. Everybody was just cruising, and everyone's set was a ten out of ten. There's times throughout the last month where I was just walking around crying because I was so happy. Ten years of really hard work on the scene and through the Fringe and festival circuit . . . To have it do a victory lap where we're on home turf, selling out every night in the Spiegeltent. I'm seeing my youngsters step up, and I'm seeing my OGs go even further. And we're bringing in new people who are also living, learning, and growing. And when the whole system is thriving, I'm the happiest guy in the world. What more could I ask for? I'm surrounded by my best friends in the best arts festival in the world. For some reason, people give a shit about us, and we get to celebrate this monumental moment. It really does mean so much to me. So maybe more than just one show. It was the experience of watching the Fringe and seeing the culmination of all of our mistakes and successes come together to create an opportunity for us to live in perfect bliss for three and a half weeks. 

What do you hope audiences take away from Stamptown? 

I hope people take themselves a bit less seriously. Being serious is the killer of anything good that happens in life. You have to take care of business, be respectful, and have responsibilities. It's just people who make arbitrary rules and decide when they need to be serious - it’s really boring, and it infects us with the “anti-spirit.” But I hope people leave a little wild. I want people to leave fired up. Sometimes, we want people to leave horny. Sometimes, we want people to leave shocked. Sometimes, we want people to leave feeling very introspective. Sometimes, we want them to feel very resolved and relieved, or held. We really just tailor the experience to what the room needs. We've done two shows on “Charlie Kirk days,” and those are very cathartic. Wild and dangerous! And then when Trump won two years ago in New York, we did a four-hour show because people didn't want to go home. We're like, “We got you.” 

We had a show a few weeks ago in New York that was amazing - the crowd was awesome. I was doing a TV spot that ran late, so I came to the show 45 minutes late. Normally, the show starts at 8:00. The day before, we put an 8:30 start, and I didn't get there until 8:52. We started at 8:58 or something, and I tried my best, but I was so pissed! But I was doing this thing that is ultimately good - I'm thankful I did it. I was very grateful that I had Andy [Needham], who was our dancer in the place of Dylan [Woodley] as the pre-show, out there dancing and vibing for like an hour and 25 minutes, getting people hyped. And they went nuts when I walked in! They were so celebratory, and again, everybody brought the heat that night - you could feel it in the air. It feels primal and it feels raw, and it's like, “All right, we about to go in tonight. We about to fuck shit up. Let's go, you guys ready?” I love when the crowd is willing to take it there, and afterwards I'm like, “Well done, New York!”

How would you describe Stamptown in one word? 

Resilience.  Our ethos is, no matter how many awards we never win, or how many venues don't book us, or how many things don't happen, we're still gonna keep going. You can't stop us. And this is more the come-up narrative. There's no one who's actively ever tried to push us down, but this is us believing it. It's felt at times like parts of the industry were like, “Nah, this ain't it. Zach & Viggo will flame out eventually.” “They're not worth it - it's not going to work.” “Tucker won't work,” or “Stamptown won't work.” For years, it was, “Stamptown can never translate to camera.” I'm looking for partners who are down to ride and want to throw something into this, because again, how boring to live your life saying no! Ultimately, if you don't try, then it'll never work. But if you do try, there's a chance that it could work. So we've taken a lot of nos in our lives, we've been shut out of a lot of places, but that doesn't stop us from doing our thing, which is just travelling around trying to make people feel good and put on a great show.

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