Under Buress

“I’m like ‘Yo, ninjas kidnapped my family, so I had to learn standup comedy to entertain them in order to get my family back!’” Hannibal Buress chuckles. “Instead of explaining I got into standup through open mic gigs. Because that ain’t going to sell no tickets.”

Ever since the smooth but vengefully sarcastic Chicago-born comic fell foul of a college newspaper, which printed that he “was the most popular comedian in [the] price range of $2,000,” making it harder for him to charge more than that in the future, the 29 year-old has endured a relationship of mutual wariness with journalists.

This frustrating episode became a withering routine in his debut Edinburgh show and featured in his television special Animal Furnace, though it’s not risking Fest’s reputation to suggest the former Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock writer is pocketing considerably more these days. Securing an Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination and the Rising Comedy Star Award at the Montreal Festival recently, Buress is burnishing a glowing reputation. 

Nevertheless, faced with the same “goofy” questions journalists tend to fall back on, he hears himself becoming “unfunny and robotic,” so “I switch off the genuineness and start uttering weird shit.” As a measured, low-energy performer, reportedly suffering jet lag and less than enamoured with his Edinburgh accommodation (“the toilet is in a different place to the shower! That’s a horrible fridge! This place cost $2800!”) I’d begun to worry when I was told he was running late for this interview. My concerns deepened when I heard he’d have a documentary crew with him. And would it bother me if they filmed our conversation?

I needn’t have stressed. In the US, Buress’ status as The Eric Andre Show’s notional straightman, drily reflecting on his manic co-host’s unpredictable outbursts means he’s at ease in front of a camera, sucking down crisps and explaining that his aim for his new show, Still Saying Stuff, is for it to be “solid… I don’t think I’ve gotten worse, more people should turn up…” He’s also prowling for an Edinburgh girlfriend. 

Contrary to his low-rev onstage appearance, he’s adopted an ethic of working really hard and gigging constantly from erstwhile mentors Louis C.K. and Chris Rock. Prior to Animal Furnace, the latter instructed “you’re doing a special so make sure it’s special and not regular. You want it quoted by people because it relates to their lives.”

After making a documentary in the lead up to recording the show, he realised he hadn’t seen anyone capture the “crazy intensity” of Edinburgh for a US audience. “It’s almost mythical man, there’s no way to show it.” So, this year, a two-man crew are following him all over the festival. "The Fringe definitely makes me a better comic… an opportunity to get this new hour tight.” And a better cook, he muses, notwithstanding that “bullshit mini-fridge.”

There’s much greater openness to him than you might imagine. Despite being a 30 Rock writer for just one season—the lure of performing comedy outside New York proving too attractive—he enjoyed a recurring, onscreen cameo as a homeless bum in Tina Fey’s self-referential sitcom. Incredibly, he confirms, he was so committed to succeeding as a standup in his early days in the metropolis that he had spent time sleeping rough rather than sloping back to Chicago. He downplays this bleak period though. “I just didn’t want to apologise to my sister,” he smiles ruefully.  “All I had to do was humble myself and apologise for my mistakes and she’d have let me stay. So it doesn’t seem that crazy. Which is crazy. I could have changed that situation with one phonecall.”

On a lighter note, answering to Tina Fey as your boss is “strange man. I’m still a fan, I was a fan while I was working there. She wasn’t in the writers’ room often because she was actively running the show. But once a week she’d pop in for 20 minutes. One time, she was sitting next to me, I left, then came back and her phone was on my phone. I was like: ‘Yo! Tina Fey’s phone is touching my phone! Tina Fey’s phone is touching my phone right now man!’ I was 28 years-old.”

With more collaboration than SNL, where “40 sketches get submitted for each episode and only nine are used,” 30 Rock was a tough, joke-heavy creative environment. “Sometimes when you’re pitching stuff it’ll take an hour to get a joke right. Other times someone says something, someone else says something on top of that and boom! It’s in the script. If everybody laughs, that’s undeniable. You’ve made a room of top comedy writers laugh.”

After being in C.K.’s sitcom Louie he’d love a broadcast vehicle of his own, and is acutely conscious of this at the moment, with a current development deal with Fox and an ongoing project with Hollywood star Jonah Hill. “It’s very much time. I have to figure out what it is, write it up and get a pilot together before my clock ticks out.” Meanwhile, he’ll be keeping tabs on the US basketball team’s shot clock during the Olympics. But as a touring comic, he rarely punches out early, estimating that he only spends 12 days in his current home in Los Angeles at a stretch. With a show in Alabama the night after Edinburgh finishes, “I’ll work till I’m dead man. I got bills to pay and vices to feed!”