-Our next guest is a very funny comedian and actor
you know from his work in the Apple TV+ series "Physical"
and the film "Babylon." His new special,
"Rory Scovel: Religion, Sex and a Few Things in Between,"
is streaming now on Max.
Let's take a look.
-You ever google "porn addiction"
just to see where you stand?
[ Laughter ]
Get to the website. It's like, "How often do you masturbate?"
It's like -- Don't [bleep] ask me questions.
Show me other people's answers.
I'll decide what rock bottom is!
-Please welcome to the show Rory Scovel, everybody
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
You are -- You're pleased with the clip we showed.
-I like that. I like that a lot.
Let people know where I stand right out of the gate.
I'm not afraid to talk about porn and masturbation.
Here we go. -Here we go.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Oh, not everyone applauded, though.
-Yeah. -"We are not!
Some of us aren't!"
-This is a fantastic special. -Thank you.
-You shot it in Minneapolis, where I also shot my special.
I think genuinely great audiences.
Is that what drew you to do it there?
-Yes, absolutely. Every time I play Minneapolis,
I feel like those audiences really show up.
I feel like they're supportive.
They're there for the show, and I think you -- As a comic,
you start to track that as your career goes on.
What are the places that like me the most,
especially if we're taping it for permanent reasons?
It'd be great to have their support.
So, yeah, that was why.
-We were talking backstage. I was complimenting you
for how this is so -- I mean, it's so well-written,
but it also has a real looseness to it.
But that wasn't necessarily the plan.
There's a lot of things in this special
that happened night-of that are wonderful
that you just sort of found on the night.
-Yeah, I think it's trying to be in the moment and be present.
And, you know, some of that came
out of me not remembering some of the jokes.
So I was like, "Ooh, I better pivot and try to find something."
-You're married. You have an 8-year-old daughter.
-That's right. -How how does your family feel
about them being talked about on stage?
[ Laughter ]
-Not -- It's not bad.
There was, uh -- As this --
My wife is in the special a lot. Like, I talk about her a lot.
And so I did have to come home --
One night after running it, I came home
and I was like, "You should see it.
You -- I might need a signature.
I might need you to sign something that it's okay for me
to expose us in this way."
She -- But she gets it.
She's had to put up with it for 20 years,
so she -- she gets it.
Uh, other family members -- I haven't heard from everybody.
-Yeah. -Um...
[ Laughter ]
My in-laws, we sort of warn them not to.
We were like, "Eh, you know, watch it at your own --
Your own risk. If you want to watch it, watch it.
If you don't, totally fine."
And I haven't heard from them,
uh, which makes me think they watched it, so...
-You have a -- You're open --
For example, this might be not a thing for in-laws.
You're open about taking mushrooms a bunch.
And you compare the difference in taking mushrooms
to going to church. -Yeah.
-And why don't you lay out for my audience
the question you asked?
-Well, I've done mushrooms about 30 times.
I've gone to church. I grew up Catholic
in the South -- uh, the Bible Belt.
I've gone to church thousands, I guess.
And I asked the audience, you know,
which one do you think I've talked to God the most?
[ Laughter ]
And if you get it wrong, you have to kill yourself.
You have to. So now how are you voting?
Yeah.
-You, uh -- There's another really nice moment that happens.
It feels like maybe unplanned,
where you admit to the audience you tried too new a joke.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I -- I just said it.
It was based on religion, and I had just said something
about, uh -- [ Laughs ] the attractiveness of Buddha.
So I'll leave it there so that some people are like,
"Oh, maybe I should watch this."
Um, but it -- Me just saying that got a bigger response
than the joke itself that night.
And I was like, "Oh, this is not the space
to try out new material,
the night that we fired up the cameras."
So, yeah.
-Uh, you're also very honest about the planning
you've put into how you would handle your family
during a climate event.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wondered, you know, if the world is --
If it's the end -- If it's the end and, you know,
the institutions have fallen apart,
the pillars of society have fallen apart,
you know, is it --
what's too early to murder-suicide your family?
What -- You know...
[ Laughter ]
And not everyone's gonna laugh at that, but...
But smart people will, and that's all that matters.
But, uh, yeah, like, you know, like, it's day one.
Is, like, day one, like, kind of shady?
Yeah. And "shady" is the "term."
"Whoa! You already killed your family?!
That's pretty shady, dude. That's shady."
-That is the word that you use. That is the word.
That's what -- The investigators will say
"shady" right off the bat.
-"He seemed pretty shady the way he murdered them."
-Uh, you talked about, uh, your clothes off the bat,
and you wear a shirt --
-Is this tattoos of people but me on their butt?
-Yeah. We only found the one guy,
and we think it might not be you, but close.
-Yeah. It's my wife. My wife has me tattooed.
-So, you're wearing a shirt.
Uh, a shirt with oranges on it. -Yeah.
-Okay. So is this -- How did you come to have
a shirt with oranges on it?
-It's Illuminati-based, for sure.
Um -- [ Laughs ]
No, that's a -- that's a Father's Day gift
that my wife, uh, bought for me.
And, uh, I immediately made fun of it when I got it.
-Yeah. -And I was like, "What?
Why did you get this? I'm not gonna wear this."
And then I just had it in the closet.
And at some point I decided.
I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna wear this shirt."
And I'm not -- I'm not even kidding.
That day, three separate people were like,
"Oh, that's a badass shirt."
And every, like -- But the first time, I was like,
"Oh, yeah, you think so?" And they're like, "Oh, yeah, I love it."
And I was like, "Oh, yeah." Then we got to the third one.
I was like, "Oh, you know, thanks.
Heh-heh! Ha ha ha ha ha! This?! This thing?!
I shop. I shop and I buy!
I buy -- [ Laughs ]
I buy what I like, and I don't care the cost!
I find out the cost at the register."
-Uh, I had the same --
My wife said basically -- This is almost the exact words.
"I hate how you dress on stage."
And I was like, "Fine. You pick an outfit."
And she picked what I thought was the dumbest outfit.
And then that night afterwards,
people were like, "You look great. I love that."
-I know. I know.
-And you're like, "Oh, so they do know better than me."
-Yeah. And it crushes everything.
Your whole perspective of what you wear
and what you think you look like.
-"Oh, no, no. You look like [bleep] all the time.
Let your wife handle this." -Yeah
You put on what you thought
were the dumbest clothes you've ever worn,
and for the first time, people were like, "Hey!"
-Yeah. I mean, I legitimately was like,
"There's oranges all over it, babe.
I'm a cool guy. I can't look like this."
-Hey. We found, doing our research for this, that you...
you have a LinkedIn page. -Yeah.
Anybody wanting to be successful in business does.
-We also noticed that you have one connection
and three followers.
[ Laughter ]
-Yeah.
I said, anyone who "wants" to be successful in b--
I didn't say they "are."
-This is a blinding amount of white space.
-Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. It's not -- It's not --
You know, there's no aesthetic here.
It's very much the template.
-You don't feel like the hubbub of connections.
-Yeah. -Why did you set up
a LinkedIn page to begin with?
-I was -- This is gonna sound so creepy.
I was looking for a friend from high school.
I had tried all the usual places any of us would go --
Facebook, Instagram.
Um, and I then was like, "Oh, maybe LinkedIn."
And so I made a profile just to find him. And I did.
And when we met up, I go, "I don't want to freak you out,
but I made that just to find you.
I don't want -- I don't want that to ruin drinks.
But I'm a little creepy! I'm a creepy boy!
I'm a creepy boy looking for you." Yeah.
-You -- -"Also, here's your subpoena."
And then I just leave.
[ Laughter ]
-I like that you somehow got the job to deliver a subpoena,
and you're like, "I know that guy!
That's one of my old high-school friends."
-Yeah. "Holy [bleep]."
-You, uh -- Your first stand-up was an open-mic night.
South Carolina? -South Carolina.
-[ Scattered cheers ] -Okay.
-Oh, really? Whereabouts?
-Laurens! -Ah. Mnh.
[ Laughter ]
Oh. [ Laughs ]
Oh. Crap! [ Laughs ]
Like, any of those places can compete.
"No! Mine's better! My town's better."
Uh, yeah, I went to college in Spartanburg, South Carolina,
and my first night of doing stand-up,
when I finally was like, "I'm going to try it,"
you know, there weren't really any shows.
And I found an open-mic poetry night,
and I asked if I could do stand-up.
And they were like --
Literally, I called the venue,
who doesn't care about the show at all.
And I was like, "Can I do stand-up?"
"They were like, "We -- Yeah. Okay. Great."
I told like 40 friends. They all showed up.
And I -- I -- All the poets were like,
"Do you mind going last so that everyone stays?"
[ Audience groans ] I know.
And I was just like, "Yeah.
I don't even know what this is at all."
And then I asked the bar. I just double-checked.
I go, "And you're sure it's okay
that I do stand-up and not do poetry?"
And they were like, "You brought all of the business.
You can do whatever you want
for as long as you want to do it.
We don't care about the show anymore."
Um, and so, yeah, I just went up at the end
and I just tried to talk about topics
with my friends in the crowd, and it was --
-And did you feel like -- When you walked off stage
that first night, were you like, "I'm going to do it again"?
-Yeah. 100%.
I tasted that drug, and I was like,
"I got to get some more of this. This was so much fun.
I want to, like, totally dive in and pursue this now."
-Well, it's wonderful, man. I'm so glad that all happened.
I am such a fan of yours.
Thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate it.
-Thank you. -Rory Scovel, everyone.
"Rory Scovel: Religion, Sex and a Few Things in Between"
is streaming now on Max.
We'll be right back with more "Late Night."