Jason Leonard

lafayettecomedy@gmail.com

The other night I was catching up with the AMC series, "Better Call Saul," and the next day I was calling Joe DeRosa, who plays the role of the slightly crooked veterinarian.

DeRosa, who performs here in Lafayette on March 25 at JP’s Bar, is a comedian, writer and an actor. You may have recognized him from the "Inside Amy Schumer" show on Comedy Central, and FX’s "Louie."

He was a writer on the "Pete Holmes Show," which aired on TBS, and appeared in numerous bits. He also voiced a character in Grand Theft Auto V.

BUY TICKETS:See Joe DeRosa perform in Lafayette

DeRosa has released four albums, in addition to his Comedy Central special. I spoke with DeRosa about his comedy, writing roles, and how he ended up acting.

Lafayette Comedy:One of the local comedians and myself were discussing the "Pete Holmes Show" and his Podcast, "You Made It Weird." It seems you guys were cemented as friends for a long time. Was all of the material on the TV show stuff you had performed together before, or specifically written for the show?

Joe DeRosa: Definitely a combination. I think most of the stuff I did with him on the show was based on our friendship and things. The "Seinfeld" bit was a thing he and I would do with each other pretty frequently. He and some of the people at the show came up with the format of it being a puppet. That was a big one.

He did a thing called What’s Wrong With Joe, where he would do an impression of me. We just watched that recently when I was with him briefly as his new show for HBO. We played that bit for the room and I was saying, I still can’t believe people get this. It’s so weird to me. It almost didn’t make it on to the show, because there were people who were like, this is an inside joke. And it made it. We did it twice. Very weird.

LC:How much time did you have in-between episodes?

JD: It was very in-the-moment writing. A lot of the time stuff got written the day of. The monologues and the taped sketches were the most prepared things where we were stock piling before we were shooting. The live bits in studio and anything that would be some sort of interaction between Pete and a person in the room, would be written the day of or day before.

For "Seinfeld," Pete wouldn’t know any of the material. He didn’t know any of the jokes before we shot, so before we rehearsed it we would have to write double jokes. He didn’t want to know what the puppet was going to say. So everything he is saying is coming out of his mouth for the first time and any time I am responding to it, none of that was scripted.

LC:What year did you begin doing standup?

JD: Late 2001. The Laugh House in Philadelphia became my starting club.

LC: Do you remember your first time doing standup?

JD: I spent that night writing material for the first time, and I took it on stage the next night. I’m sure by my present standards it was a disaster. It was tough. A lot of the stuff didn’t go over because I didn’t know how to write jokes or material.

I thought all I had to do was say my opinions, and the harsher they were; I thought they would be funnier. And that wasn’t the case, but I skated by enough that I wanted to try it again.

I remember a kid I went to grade school with was there, and I hadn’t seen him in years. He came up to me after and told me that I offended him and I shouldn’t say those things.

That was certainly fuel to keep going.

LC: At what point did you transition from doing open mic to featuring and headlining?

JD: It was faster than I thought it was going to be. I was in Philly for a year and a half, and then Big Jay Oakerson convinced me to move up to NY. He also started at that club in Philly. Within that first year of being in NY I think I did my first TV spot, and was somehow living off of comedy, but not comfortably in anyway.

LC: Was there one show that changed the game for you or was it a gradual process?

JD: It’s gradual. It’s all gradual; well at least in my case. The best thing I can say is that there were life-changing moments, career-changing moments, but it never like a defining moment. There were mental moments and they are more important to me.

I remember doing a Thanksgiving show with Dave Attell, Greg Giraldo and Jeff Ross at the Tower Theatre in Philly, which is near where I grew up and I would watch my favorite bands.

Someone said let’s all go out on the stage together, and I was certainly the rookie player. I just remember standing on stage at The Tower Theatre, with these three guys who might as well have been Beatles to me because I admired them so much.

My life was certainly the same the next morning, but to me as a comic, that’s a nice moment where you can say, I’m part of this. They included me. To me, it is more moments like that.

LC: How did you get into acting?

JD: I don’t know. I was a theater major in college. They gave me nothing, and those were free non-paying roles. I could not get booked in anything. I wrote a one-act play, and the theater department read it and said, "No, you are not allowed to product this here."

Things just come through here and there. I don’t think I am a good actor. I think I’m just good at playing certain kinds of parts.

LC: A crooked veterinarian of all things.

JD: Certainly odd, and certainly not what I expected. For "Better Call Saul," when I auditioned, it wasn’t made known what the role would be. I didn’t find out until after I got the part. It’s a lot of fun being a part of the show.

Catch Joe DeRosa Thursday, March 25 at JP’s Bar. Hosted by myself, this show will feature Houston’s Gabe Bravo and Baton Rouge’s Tim Smith. It all kicks off at 9 p.m.

Tickets are on sale for $10 in advance at lafayettecomedy.com

Jason P. Leonard is a comic, beardsman, musician, educator, husband, and father. He likes jokes, sad songs, & ice cream. Follow him on Twitter @thejpleonard.