Some of us have spent quarantine baking. Others, gardening. Michael Rapaport? Buying an incredible amount of Jordan sneakers.
“I went insane buying Jordan sneakers,” bemoans the comedian as he tells host and Publisher Brian Calle his top tips for surviving quarantine on this week’s episode of the L.A. Weekly podcast.
“It’s probably best not to have an amazon password,” wisens our guest. “Monitor your online shopping. Covid is real but so is debt – credit card bills come in and that’s fucked up.”
His last pieces of advice?
“Allow yourself to be negative. You can be fucking pissed off. There’s nothing wrong with being negative as long as you can control it,” he supports. And, “you have to put yourself on some sort of schedule … when it got really fucked up it was so easy to just lay around. You have to do some physical thing.”
Not one to mince words, Rapaport is known for his straightforward, blunt delivery. So much so that Brian was a tad concerned about the direction this podcast would take.
“I don’t even know how to avoid being offensive at this point,” admits Rapaport. “Because of social media there’s so many opinions and you know, everybody gets offended about something.”
“So, yeah, I’ll probably say something that offends someone,” he laughs.
As a comedian with longevity that’s rare in the industry, how does Rapaport approach his craft in an age where everything a celebrity says is put under a microscope?
“I think you just have to be honest with what you’re trying to get across. There’s a difference between being mean spirited and trying to be funny,” he explains. “For me, as long as I’m aware of what I’m saying and why I’m saying it – if I’m clear on what my agenda is – I can stand behind what I’m saying [and I’ll be okay].”
Born and raised in NYC, he started his career in comedy in 1989, traveling to L.A. to do stand up and acting.
Since then, he has appeared in over 60 films and TV shows (Friends, Boston Public, Prison Break, Justified and Black-ish) since the early 1990s, and is currently starring in the Netflix series – one of our absolute favorites – Atypical.
Some of his other notable film roles include: True Romance (1993), Higher Learning (1995), Metro (1997), Cop Land (1997), Deep Blue Sea (1999), Beautiful Girls (1996), Mighty Aphrodite ( 1995) and The Heat (2013). He also directed the award-winning documentaries, Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (2011), The ESPN 30 for 30 and When The Garden Was Eden (2014).
Rapaport is also known for his outlandish appearances on the Howard Stern Show on Sirius XM Radio and Bravo TV’s Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. He’s also the host of the world wide phenomenon “I Am Rapaport Stereo Podcast.”
Needless to say, the guy is busy. Busy being funny.
Since his acting career has taken off, he has bounced in and out of stand up comedy as his schedule has allowed. He recently got back into it, returning to the comedy stage in Los Angeles at Tommy T’s Comedy Club, October 23- 25th.
What made him get back into it? Simple. He had something to say.
“I love the medium of stand up because it’s a never ending space to express and articulate yourself,” he explains. “As much as I’m always going to love acting, when you do stand-up comedy you have no one to blame but yourself. You’re the performer, you’re the editor, you’re the director, and I just felt like the stage was calling me back.”
While he’s known for being very vocal about politics in a loud, comedic way, he doesn’t want his shows to become rallies. “I’m not a political comedian,” he clears up. “I do talk politics, but it’s well into the show. It’s not the end all be all for me.”
“I’m just excited about being back on tour,” Rapaport shares. “I just love it.”
To check him out yourself, view his tour schedule on his Facebook page.
Listen to the podcast here: Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Cumulus Los Angeles.
