- My buddy Jim Gaffigan is like,
we're all kind of doing the same special
over and over again.
(both laugh)
- My shows will be about being Chinesey,
a bit of dating, whether or not I've
lost or gained weight that year.
- Yeah, 'cause I could literally list,
me being married with my children,
whether or not I gained weight or lost weight this year.
- And being Chinese.
- Yeah.
- [Announcer 1] This is What a Joke.
- [Announcer 2] With Tom Papa and Fortune Feimster.
- [Announcer 1] On Netflix Is a Joke radio.
- Congratulations on your special.
It's really, really great.
- Oh, thanks.
Did you watch it?
- I did watch it.
It's very funny.
Yeah.
- Thanks so much, man.
That means a lot.
It's right up my alley.
It's a treat when you get to see something
that is seemingly made for you.
- Wow.
That's, that's high praise, indeed.
I really appreciate it, Tom.
Yeah, I've never been a standup who's like,
(Phil makes exertion noise)
and be like push, push jokes onto people.
I just, it either works or it doesn't, you know,
- And, it seemed like it was very timely
in an evergreen kind of way.
Like, I, there's been,
I've seen a couple people like turn some stuff out
in the middle of the pandemic or just post pandemic
and, and you could tell like, it's,
this isn't going to have a big shelf life,
but yours, but you did a good job of,
- Thanks man.
- Addressing it, but I think it's going to last.
- I really appreciate you saying that.
That is exactly the kind of detailed observation
that I love to talk to other comics about,
because that was exactly my thinking at the time
was like, I can't not talk about it,
but I also want people to be able to
enjoy this special in six years
when we'll be suffering from
a whole different pandemic, I imagine.
And they won't even remember what this one was like.
- Right?
I can't wait.
- You know, I mean, if you look at,
I always think of graphs, I studied engineering.
I always think of graphs.
And if you think of like the stories,
like they're big waves and you can
talk about those for a long time.
But if you zoom in there's all these little waves, right?
And like, there are specific stories
within the pandemic, which are gone.
They're the little waves.
They're gone in a week.
You know, we've had some crazy stories here
that I feel sorry for people who, like,
wrote jokes about running out of toilet paper.
Cause like, we're now, we're like,
oh yeah, I forgot about that.
I forgot about the whole toilet paper thing.
- Yeah.
The Tiger King.
- Oh yeah, of course. I bet there's someone out there who's
written like a killer hour about Tiger King
and having not enough toilet paper.
And now he's just trying to flog it. Like guys, remember?
Guys?
The thing we're told to look out for,
bots and hackers and Russians.
And then we found out none of them knew how
to tick a box that says I'm not a robot.
And that seemed to solve the problem for some reason.
But now with the coronavirus, now,
threat is the most abstract it's ever been.
Now threat is like, a surface.
Be careful of a surface, everyone.
No, you should be fine.
As long as you stay clear of them surfaces.
They'll get ya.
Awful to find this out.
Home alone, just watching the news like,
oh shit, surfaces?
A quick scan of my flat.
Fucking surfaces everywhere.
Death trap, that place.
Didn't realize I was living in "Saw III."
- How do you approach your hours
or your specials, your longer sets?
Because, and did it change with this crazy year?
Because I know like you've had, you had real success at,
at the Edinburgh festival and,
and it seems like it's a little bit of a
slightly different approach than the way
the U.S. comics go at it.
- Yeah, at the Edinburgh festival
system that we have in UK,
every comedian's work cycles built around it.
So every year you come up with a new hour.
And the Edinburgh festival has sort of always
kind of rewarded thematic strength.
So comics who have a show about a thing
or about a story that comes around at the end.
- Yeah.
- They're obsessed with it.
Obsessed.
- That's true.
- I've always had more of a, I guess what you could call
an American approach in that I've,
just always loved pure standup and I've
just come up with bits and then another bit,
and then another bit, and then I squish them all together.
- Well, I mean, I don't,
we're just getting to know each other and
I don't want to profess to be your manager or anything,
but if you could have something really,
if you could create some kind of horrible story
about your childhood or some kind of
really vile sexual exploits,
I think you could probably change all that.
- Yeah.
Nothing scandalous enough as that.
I've not led an interesting enough life basically
to come up with this amazing like boundary pushing hour.
- Yeah.
That's how I always feel.
All you need is like, maybe just do, just do your act.
It's very funny and thoughtful.
And if you just have a cigarette hanging from your lip,
maybe the critics at the festivals will be like,
he, Wang's a little edgy this year.
- I mean, he was kicked out of his venue
'cause it's illegal to smoke indoors, but, yeah.
- So have you, did you have,
I know you were joking about it,
but like, you know, getting a little of the
pandemic racism slipping through the window.
Was it similar to the stories that
we had here in the states?
Cause it did get a little nasty for a bit here.
I think the states has a much larger
East Asian community than the UK.
So I think they're always going to be most stories there,
but yeah, I mean, there'd been some
pretty nasty stuff in the UK as well.
I, like right before the first lockdown,
I was walking like right outside my house
and a guy saw me and just went, oh, Corona.
And like, like walked away, Like tried to get away from me.
Like I had it on me, you know?
- Right.
- He seemed like a bit odd as well,
- Sure, sure.
- But also a rude, bit of a rude thing to say,
but that's the worst thing I got.
I kind of felt while I was in the first lockdown
sat at home, I was just kind of thinking like,
it's kind of lucky that this age of intensified racism
has coincided with an age where
all the racists have to stay at home.
And I just have imagined all these racist people
in their houses, just like,
I want to hit one of those Chinese people
but I can't leave my house.
- Just peering out of their windows.
I think there's a Jew over there.
If only I could mingle.
- Yeah, I'm just gonna have to like order takeaway
and hope the guy who delivers it is Jewish, I guess.
Look, we're just trying to catch up
on all those fights we missed out on in the lockdown.
Think about all the fights that didn't happen for a year.
We've got a lot of catching up to do.
I say those people are real patriots actually.
You know, think about it.
I think they're the good ones.
I'm a mixed race fella, as the name
Phil Wang might suggest.
At some point here, a cultural compromise was made.
Yes, well, my father is a Chinese Malaysian.
Hence the Wang and the rest of my body.
My father is Chinese Malaysian,
but my mother is, uh, normal.
So don't worry.
Got some sour cream on that chili.
Didn't want you to burn your tongue
on that hot, hot Wang, so.
Mama brought the milk.
2018. I was in New York and I went to Yankee stadium.
There was one bit, which I didn't know was legal
in baseball where the pitcher,
instead of throwing it towards the batter,
just threw it to one of the field guys
and me and the person I had gone with
were so shocked by this, we audibly screamed.
(both laugh)
- No!
- We're like, ah!
And we just really didn't know that was possible.
- What were you doing in New York in 2018?
- I was just, I was on holiday.
I just went there for a week with someone I was,
I was sort of dating at the time.
It's a great way to figure out if two people are compatible,
to go to New York, and it turned out we were not.
- Oh really?
- Yeah.
If you want to, if you want to save a load of time,
go to New York.
How early in the trip, did you?
- Hmm, maybe the second of 10 days.
- Uh huh.
Did you do stand up in New York?
- I have done some.
It's funny doing stand up in America.
People are just so enthusiastic.
Americans are just like,
they're happy when something goes well.
And the most positive thing a British person will say
is, you know, that was all right actually.
That's like, that was all right, actually.
So they went in expecting not to like it
and were surprised that a thing
they specifically went to, to laugh, made them laugh.
Whereas in the States they come in already, like,
yeah, here we go!
- You killed!
- Yeah.
What is weird is like getting applauses and stuff.
Cause it kinda messes up my rhythm, so I could like,
so I wanna start my next bit and
there's like an applause and go like, woo, yeah!
And I'm just like, um, right, okay.
♪ What does Papa like ♪
♪ Not just hair North Canada ♪
♪ What does Papa like ♪
- Shaking my provocative little hips.
No.
All right, let's get right to it.
- Tom Papa likes being barefoot.
- I say Tom does not like being barefoot.
He doesn't walk around his house barefoot very much
because he was raised right.
- Well, except that he was raised right
on the Jersey Shore.
I feel like he likes no shoes.
He does read these articles about
getting in touch with nature and how
that's beneficial to your feet.
He's open to being barefoot in those situations
and can see the benefit.
- You all make good points.
I think Fortune is actually correct though.
Even though I will be in those situations,
there's always a shoe right there at the ready.
I'm wearing them right now.
- Yeah.
- Does Papa like Canadian rapper Drake?
- That's a funny one.
- I think he's actually a fan of Drake from
Degrassi The Next Generation,
which he watched with his daughters.
- I'm going to say Tom is not super familiar
with Drake's work because he's more into
the less mainstream hip hop artists.
And I think Drake might be a little bit
too mainstream for him.
- I think he's indifferent about Drake.
I don't think he thinks about Drake.
I don't think he's purposely going to play Drake.
- Again, Fortune is more on the nose than anybody else.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom.