Nick Swardson Says ‘Real Comedians Double Down’ When Censored
Comedians are like class clowns, says Nick Swardson.
“When you tell the class clown growing up, ‘Hey, don’t do that!’ guess what that kid’s gonna do?” he told The Los Angeles Times. “He’s gonna go harder.”
If you’re guessing Swardson is that grown-up kid, you win a prize. Like many comedians, he was born with that “you can’t tell me what to do” gene. “When you try to censor me, I’ve done this for 30 years, I don’t blink an eye, like ‘Go fuck yourself,’” he offered. “Don’t tell me what I can’t say on stage. I’m gonna say some crazy shit. And I don’t give a fuck. So if you’re offended, leave my show. And why are you here? Real comedians double down.”
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The key to speaking your comedy truth? “You’ve got to commit to it, and you’ve got to stand by it,” he explained. “If you’re gonna put something out there, you can’t pull back — comedians are the last resort of just calling shit out.”
Swardson finds himself in an unlikely career renaissance as Gen Z discovers his old movies and TV shows from the 2000s. “I’m always shocked when I meet people in their 20s and they’re like, We love Reno 911!’” he told the paper. “And I’m like, ‘How do you even know about that?’”
Swardson suspects it's because young comedy fans know he’s all in. That, and they love bare buttocks. “I’ve done so much insanity,” he said. “You have to be willing to completely lose your fucking mind. Like when you watch guys like Will Ferrell and he’s running around streaking in Old School, showing his ass. When I did the movie Bucky Larson, I was naked; I did A Haunted House, I was naked in that too.”
While Swardson goes all in, that go-nuts approach sometimes gets him in trouble. In March, for instance, the comic made headlines when he had to be escorted off a Denver comedy stage for what appeared to be heavy intoxication. Just a fluke, he claimed! “I don’t party like I used to, I don’t drink like I used to, so I want to get away from that image where people think I’m like some lunatic,” he explained, proclaiming he doesn’t do drugs.
Well, except for that one time. “I mean I did edibles in Colorado, and that ended up on the fucking news — the one time! There’s like so many horrific things going on in the world, and they just decided to put me on blast for getting too high in Colorado?”
Go ahead and put Swardson on blast — just don’t tell him what he can’t talk about. “Let’s have a good time man,” he offered the L.A. Times as a piece of hard-bitten wisdom. “Life’s too short.”