BK 50
JOSH GONDELMAN
Comedian
Writer
Jul 13, 2021
It’s hard to find someone in the comedy world quite as well-liked as Josh Gondelman. A stand-up comic, unlikely writer for Showtime’s “Desus & Mero,” and host of the positivity-driven comedy game show podcast “Make My Day,” Gondelman is also the author of the essay collection “Nice Try: Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results,” and a frequent guest on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” (listen to the episode with T-Pain if you haven’t yet—we can wait).
His vibe is upbeat and generous, which makes the makes it all the more delightful when the knives come out.
“Let’s find the warmth and goodness in the world in a fun way—sometimes tongue-in-cheek,” he tells Brooklyn Magazine. “Because I have a very friendly affect and demeanor and personality, people—sometimes in a fun way—don’t realize that I can say sharp-edged things or write sharp-edged things. Sometimes it lies under the radar because I say it all friendly.”
Gondelman was half the team behind the parody Twitter account @SeinfeldToday, which amassed nearly a million followers by coming up with contemporary scenarios that could conceivably play out on the show in the 2010s. He leveraged his viral Twitter fame and considerable writing chops to join the staff at “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” where he would pick up an Emmy and two Peabody Awards. Since 2019 he has been a writer and producer for the wildly popular “Desus & Mero” (which may not be where you’d expect a self-described doofus from the Boston suburbs to land), which is back in in-person production after a year filming at home and over Zoom.
“There is a lot we have in common in terms of comedic sensibility and what we think is funny,” Gondelman says. “People also underestimate the ways in which Desus and Mero’s comedy is very warm and inviting and generous in a lot of ways.”