Ayo Edebiri will be reading at Difficult to Name on Saturday, April 14
I saw your perform at "It's A Guy Thing" in January and you did this character of a male warm-up comic who's stressed out about warming up the crowd for "It's A Guy Thing" and I almost died laughing. Your stand-up is equally hilarious. How do you decide when to do a character versus telling jokes as yourself?
First of all, thank you so much! I don’t do characters very often and he was totally inspired by the concept of It’s A Guy Thing. He does so many things that I don’t do when I perform and I get to interact with the audience a lot, which I love.
When I do stand up, I really love telling stories that are weird and personal. But every now and then it’s fun to embody someone else completely outside of my POV. I don’t know if I really have a process beyond that. My brain will just be like “this is a thought and this is how you should perform it.” And I just have to be like, “okay brain, sure!”
You work at The Rundown, which is a really hilarious late night show. What's it been like being part of a show as it finds its way and becomes something great?
It’s pretty much a dream. I’m always learning and being challenged in the best ways. It’s also an office full of firsts for me—my bosses are all women, and most of them are black women. It’s kind of insane to me that that’s my normal now. That’s exciting on its own, but when I think of a future where that’s not novel, that feels even better.
What can people expect from your performance?
Well, I’ll be there, so that’s one thing. I like when things get weird, so you expect that. It might just end up being weird for me personally and no one will notice. And that’s ok!