Plenty of Hollywood stars started out in improv: Amy Poehler, Bill Murray, Mike Myers – they all got noticed on the improv stage then moved on to loftier things. What makes Ben Schwartz different is that, even as his Tinseltown career rockets – he is in Apple TV+’s The Afterparty and the forthcoming Nicolas-Cage-as-Dracula movie Renfield, and is the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog – he just won’t leave his much-maligned first love behind. “With the specials and with this tour,” says Schwartz, “the goal is to show that improv is fun, exciting and freeing. That, like standup, it can be done successfully in front of thousands of people.”
Those Netflix specials, under the banner Middleditch & Schwartz, are three fantastic long-form improv shows (not sketches, but a whole, hour-long story) performed with his occasional sidekick Thomas Middleditch. It is the streaming platform’s first experiment with live improv. The tour is Ben Schwartz & Friends, which has been circulating North America in the (rare) gaps between the 41-year-old’s acting work, and is coming to London. “I can’t tell you how excited I am to get on that stage in England and do a show,” says Schwartz, his motormouth positivity buzzing across the transatlantic Zoom line.
Schwartz started out as a dogsbody at the NYC improv club Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), paying with his labour for access to the work of Poehler, Tina Fey and co. Soon improvising himself, he carved a niche with sketches and contributions to the Funny or Die platform and the web series Jake & Amir. “Since the beginning,” he says, “I was always like: ‘I’m going to find a way to do this.’ I tried everything. I freelanced writing for David Letterman. I freelanced for SNL. I did commercials. I tried standup. I tried everything, hoping something would stick and I could be in this industry I loved.” Aged 29, he sealed the deal when cast alongside Aziz Ansari as the unjustifiably cocky Jean-Ralphio on Poehler’s hit sitcom Parks and Recreation.
It was a career-making turn – but it didn’t break Schwartz’s bond with improv. OK, so making up comedy on the hoof pays “zero dollars” and is afforded near-zero credibility in the entertainment landscape. “Any time I tell people I do improv,” says Schwartz, “their only reference is their friends’ class shows at college. And my class shows were horrific! I didn’t know what I was doing. So I think people’s perception is based on watching performers starting out, who haven’t put the hours in. They have nothing to point to, like a special from anybody, to say: ‘Look how good this can be!’”
That’s where Middleditch & Schwartz comes in, although even that was a hard sell. “Netflix said: ‘What’s going to happen on stage?’ And we said, ‘We don’t know.’ They said, “But you’ll have an idea?’ And we said, “We don’t have anything.’” What persuaded the channel was Schwartz’s rising stardom, and the novel commercial argument that, whereas standups take a year to develop each set, “every time we do a show,” says Schwartz, “it’s a new special. I can give you two new specials every day. We filmed for one weekend and Netflix got three pieces of hour-long content.”
With his new tour, Schwartz continues the same crusade: redeeming the reputation of improv for delirious, thousands-strong audiences. One of his tricks is to dragoon celeb pals – improv virgins all – into taking part. Don Cheadle, JJ Abrams, Stranger Things’ Joe Keery – “I just want to share it with them. And then watching the audience watching these people do it for the first time, that’s such a fun thing.”
It’s all about the fun for Schwartz. “Improv doesn’t pay like the other things, but it’s the thing that makes me happiest.” I can imagine his agent pulling out their hair that their hot-property client keeps disappearing off on improv tours.
“I film Monday-to-Friday, get on the plane, do my shows on Saturday, and by the time Monday rolls around, I’m acting again. I’m so tired. But in a million years, I couldn’t have thought I’d have done any of this,” says the self-defined “little Jewish guy from the Bronx” who is starring – well, voice-acting – alongside his childhood hero Jim Carrey in the Sonic the Hedgehog films.
“But let me tell you a fun story,” he says. “I was interning at UCB, way back when, to pay for classes. I did the garbage, I gave people their tickets. And at the end of the show, after everybody had gone and we’d cleaned the theatre, me and my friends Adam Pally and Gil Ozeri [later the sketch group Hot Sauce] would ask the manager, ‘Can we just get on stage for 10 minutes, right now?’ And so we’d go on stage, in the dark, and do shows for nobody. And we would make each other laugh and laugh.
“And those are some of my fondest memories. I get emotional thinking about it. Improv is playtime for me. And I’ll keep doing it until people don’t want me to do it any more.”
Ben Schwartz & Friends is at Hammersmith Apollo, London, on 27 July
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