Emil Wakim’s Parents Finally Understand His Job Now

This week, we’re highlighting 24 talented writers and performers for Vulture’s annual list “The Comedians You Should and Will Know.” Our goal is to introduce a wider audience to the talent that has the comedy community and industry buzzing. (You can read more about our methodology at the link above.) We asked the comedians on the list to answer a series of questions about their work, performing, goals for the future, and more. Next up is Emil Wakim.

Tell us a story from your childhood that you think might explain why you ended up becoming a comedian.
I went to an Irish Catholic middle school, and in second grade, our teacher, a legit nun (the only one left in the school — I think she was genuinely 90 years old), decided we should do a reenactment of the Stations of the Cross as a class play for Easter, and I was “randomly” picked to play Jesus. It was such an insane thing — like, we did a kids’ version of The Passion of the Christ; that was their idea of a fun thing to invite parents to. Like, my parents took off work to watch their son get crucified by 12 white children.

I also remember wanting to turn the role down because I found out there was a scene (station?) where I had to wash the Apostles’ feet, and I had OCD when I was a kid and was super-germaphobic. I told my parents I wanted to turn the role down, and they were like, “This is a great honor. You can’t.” So I went through with it! I had robes on and all that shit. We walked around the school outside, and I washed 24 feet and then was fake murdered! An unpaid role! Not even SAG! There is a tape of this somewhere — I know there has to be! But yeah, I feel like there were a lot of those moments growing up, where I remember just being like, This is gonna make me permanently weird for sure.

If you were immortalized as a cartoon character, what would your outfit be?
I love this question. I’d say it would probably be this booger-green cardigan and these dark-brown corduroy pants, but I feel like my answer to this changes every couple weeks. I’m always buying a pair of pants and being like These are me forever. Like a month ago, it would’ve been a pair of light-brown corduroys.

Also, am I getting immortalized in the summer or in the winter? I’ve been wearing a lot of, like, ethnic-uncle tank tops this summer, but I’d worry that would make my character gimmicky — he’d be a very “I’m walking here” energy guy, and I want to go for more of a series regular role.
Like Peter Griffin has a long-sleeve button-up with the sleeves rolled up, so I should probably be doing, like, smart casual. Okay, sorry — my answer is still the cardigan and pants.

What’s your proudest moment/achievement of your comedy career so far?
Doing Fallon was probably the highlight so far, especially for what it meant for me at the time I got it. I was new to New York and desperately needed a credit or something to feel validated and be able to get booked on things. It’s still crazy to me that I survived it. Just the anticipation leading up to the taping was crazy. I was so anxious, it didn’t even register. I’m shocked I could fall asleep at all the night before. It’s like when you have an early flight or a test in the morning, and you’re like, Okay I absolutely need to fall asleep right now and get eight hours, and your brain is like, What if we got a shitty four? ;)

It was also huge for my parents, because it was finally a thing where all their friends and co-workers knew what it was, so it gave them a lot of closure that they could stop wincing when they tried to explain to their friends that a JFL audition was a big deal or whatever. A blurry screenshot from the YouTube video of me shaking Jimmy Fallon’s hand is both of their phone wallpapers still, which is cool but also a bit much. Every time I’m in town and we’re at a restaurant, my dad will show the waitress his lock screen and be like, “What do you think? He was on Jimmy Fallons.” (Not Jimmy Fallon — Jimmy FallonS.)

Which comedian’s career trajectory would you most like to follow?
I feel like Ramy has the coolest career right now. Being able to work on a special and a show and then put it out and then go back to work on the next thing without having to check in every day and post stuff all the time online? That seems pretty dope — just working on stuff that you care about and not having to be, like, an “influencer.” I also think it’s cool that a ton of comics are moving to non–L.A. or N.Y. cities at a certain level. Like Chad Daniels, Kyle Kinane, Rory Scovel — being able to tour whenever you want to your own fans and also have a house and own land?! That seems nuts. I guess that’s the monetary goal; aside from the art of it, I would love to have a driveway or a garage one day. Having a backyard with a pergola and some string lights — that’s really making it to me. I just need a small legal cult of maybe 500-to-1,000 people in every major city that will come see me every time I’m in town.

Tell us everything about your worst show ever. (This can involve venue, audience, other acts on the lineup, anything!)
This isn’t necessarily my worst show — the really bad ones are probably fully blacked out subconsciously — but I did do a show at a nudist community in Indiana one time. It was a private community in the forest, and you had to go through a gate to get in, and it was just a bunch of Southern Indiana nudists living in RVs around a campsite. They drove little golf carts to the middle of the commune, where there was, like, a town-hall gazebo where they had events and maybe orgies or something? It was wild, because it was Southern Indiana, so statistically some of them had to be conservative politically, which is so funny to be a conservative nudist?

The show ended up being kind of fun, shockingly. It was like 30 naked 40-to-50-year-olds just sitting in mismatched chairs in this cabin. I remember for the first couple minutes of my set, I was doing extremely mediocre, and I think it was because they thought I was making fun of their lifestyle (which I was). But then I told them I’ll do a strip-poker thing, where every time a joke didn’t work, I’d take a piece of clothing off. And then I just pulled my pants down around my ankles and did the rest of my set in my boxers. They loved it and were super-fun after that because I, like, bought into their thing. The lesson is: Always pander to the audience.

What have you learned about your own joke-writing process that you didn’t know when you started?
It’s still kind of all over the place. I wish I had a more efficient way of just sitting down and writing and churning stuff out, but I think I learned I have to be, like, going out and doing things and participating in day-to-day life for ideas to come, which is such a bummer. Like, I have to go have small talk with the barista and be present and look around me all the time for the magic of life and blah blah blah.

What’s the biggest financial hurdle you’ve encountered since becoming a comedian?
Did you guys know you have to pay your taxes? That really blindsided me. I couldn’t believe we were all really doing that. I was like Well, clearly no one is gonna check up on the little guys, and then I got audited the first year I filed taxes as a comedian. The IRS sent me a letter (so intense already — like just send an email, you creep), and they were like, “Hey, you owe us like way more money.” I called my dad and started ranting about how Bernie should’ve been the nominee and something about Jeff Bezos or something. It’s so annoying you can’t use that as a reason. Like in court for tax evasion, I feel like I should be able to be like, “Yeah but, Your Honor, capitalism?! America?!” And then the jury would stand up and applaud me. But I do pay all my taxes on time now, I think.

At the end of the movie 8 Mile, Eminem’s character, B-Rabbit, starts his final battle rap by dissing himself so the person he’s battling has nothing left to attack. How would you roast yourself so the other person would have nothing to say?
Probably something about my eyebrows? I don’t know. I hope it would just be that. I truly am terrified of roasts/rap battles, because I’m scared to know what the thing is that is obvious to people that I think I’m playing off or hiding well. Sometimes when a guy comments something racist in a YouTube comment on a clip of mine, I’m relieved that he didn’t say anything more specific that I would actually be offended by. Like, I’d way rather be called a terrorist than someone being like “This guy is cringe.”

When it comes to your comedy opinions — about material, performing, audience, trends you want to kill/revive, the industry, etc. — what hill will you die on?
I mean, obviously crowdwork should be wiped off the face of the planet, but I feel like that’s hack at this point to say — almost as hack as asking someone what they do for a living! Am I right, folks?! No, but in all seriousness, shortform content is melting my brain, and I think it should be outlawed — unless my clips start doing good, then it’s awesome and it’s the future. I do have to admit, though, that I’m bad at crowdwork, which is probably part of the reason why I and so many comics shit on it — because it is a skill. It’s just a skill that is ruining the world and may even lead to the downfall of civilization.

What is the best comedy advice, and then the worst comedy advice, you’ve ever received?
This isn’t my story, but I tell it as often as I can with full credit: Geoff Asmus (a great comic and dude) was doing a show somewhere in the Midwest, and a magician was opening for him and I guess just absolutely crushed, and as he was getting offstage and bringing Geoff up, he whispered to him, “They’re pigs. Feed ’em slop,” and it’s become a motto amongst a bunch of our friends. It’s just so perfect. It’s so funny for a magician to have that amount of darkness in them. I truly think about that like once a week.

And the best advice was from Jared Thompson, who’s the owner of the Comedy Attic in Bloomington, Indiana, which is my home club, and it’s literally just “Be funny, be nice.”

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