Pete Holmes believes the key to comedy, for him anyway, lies in being real. He’s fond of a quote from fellow comic, the late Bill Hicks, who said, “If you can be yourself on stage nobody else can be you and you have the law of supply and demand covered.” So you won’t hear the 34-year-old comic telling fake stories about crazy cab rides or made-up relatives during his monologues on The Pete Holmes Show, which premieres Oct. 28 on TBS right after Conan. No, the affable funnyman prefers to be himself, and he brought that honesty when he answered our “7 Questions,” talking about his affinity for Saved By the Bell, why he’s into “L.A. douche” food like wheat grass and kale, and how there are no disadvantages to looking, moving and sounding like John Ritter.
1. You’re at a magazine rack and can only pick three titles. Which ones do you choose?
GQ, to save money on cologne. I just want to get the cologne samples. I’m probably going to take Rolling Stone, because every comedian secretly wants to be a rock star, and every rock star secretly wants to be a comedian. And then Cat Fancy.
2. If your DVR only carried three shows, which three would you pick?
Mad Men. I’m perpetually watching it on a loop, because I feel like every episode is almost like a standalone short story. You don’t really have to worry about what’s going on, everybody just looks really good and they’re drinking and smoking and making me feel better about my life decisions. Then it would be Breaking Bad, and Seinfeld reruns.
3. What has been your strangest fan encounter?
I’ve autographed a Bible before. That was a weird one. I actually really liked it. As someone who considers himself still very religiously interested and a spiritually curious person but not traditionally religious, it’s always meant a lot to me to have religious fans and people that enjoy my spiritual curiosities. So that was a weird one for sure, but something that meant a lot to me.
3a. Where did they have you sign it?
Yeah, we talked about it. Do I sign the title page? I mean, I didn’t write it. Do I sign the map? I remember the Good Book has just plenty of blank pages toward the beginning, but I think I went with the title page. It said, “The Holy Bible,” and then it said, “Keep it crispy. Pete Holmes.”
4. Tell me about a time when you were starstruck.
I’ve met a decent number of celebrities, I suppose, but the one that really got me was Mark-Paul Gosselaar. I didn’t say this, but [Saved by the Bell] had so much to do with raising me it was just inappropriate. I just wanted to be Zack Morris so bad, and really thought that if I acted like him and dressed like him and made jokes like him that I would be as cool as he was. Not considering that he lived in this artificial reality. But that was a weird one. An addendum to that, I also met Dennis Haskins, who played Mr. Belding. He texted me yesterday or the day before. He saw a promo for my show and he was just saying congratulations. And MPG, Mark Paul, I’ve seen several times since then, and now he’s excited to possibly do something with us on the show. If I could go back and tell little Pete all this, his head would explode. Big Pete, regular Pete, this Pete that you’re talking to, his head has pretty much exploded. It’s crazy.
5. What are three things you have to have in your fridge or pantry?
This is kind of weird, I like to say I’m the doughiest nutritionally conscious person you’ll ever meet. So, the real answer is a tray of wheat grass, because I’m an asshole, kale and raw chocolate. As much as that answer potentially could make me sound like an L.A. douche, which I’m open to, the reason I eat kale and wheat grass and raw chocolate, raw honey, all these different things is because it gets you high. … You’re getting so much stuff that your body is probably craving and desperate for, you get high. The reason I eat all this asshole stuff is it makes you feel fantastic.
6. What is the main advantage and disadvantage to resembling John Ritter?
That’s a great question. I honestly think there’s no disadvantage to looking like John Ritter. It only makes people immediately kind of a little bit happier to see you. They can’t quite put a finger on it, but after awhile they’ll go, “Oh, Jack Tripper.” Honestly, he is one of my comedy heroes, and I always take it as a compliment. A little side note, I never really made an effort to sound or look like him. I never studied his movements or how he spoke. But it’s not just acting stuff. With voiceover, they would send me out as a John Ritter type and then people say all the time that I move like him and act like him. It just happened naturally. I don’t know how.
7. Who’s the more demanding boss: Conan O’Brien or the cartoon-selection committee at The New Yorker?
Way, a million times worse, was The New Yorker. (Laughs) The New Yorker was the hardest nut to crack of my career, and I’m grateful for it. It’s the only thing I did that made standup look like it wasn’t just a pit of despair and rejection, because you would go in and submit between 10 and 15 cartoons a week, and I did that for a year before I sold one. That’s hundreds, and I thought every single one of them was way better than anything. I was just such a fan of my own work. But I’ll tell you this, a lot of those rejected New Yorker cartoons are in a box in my office currently, and we’ll often go through them and write a sketch based on one of them or take the first line of dialogue [from] the cartoon. So there’s a lot of beautiful comedy recycling coming from all that rejection.
7a. You showed them, man.
Yeah, well, I kinda did. The cartoon editor emailed me to congratulate me about the show and it actually meant a lot. I did want to be like, “Ha ha!” But they put me in the magazine four times and they probably would’ve kept doing it if I had the stomach for it. I made the decision that having been in The New Yorker and currently being in The New Yorker, there’s no difference. No one in public would ever make a distinction between those two things. Once you’re in The New Yorker more than once, you can say you’re in The New Yorker.
Photo: Courtesy of TBS
