Is Ari Shaffir A Big Troll or ‘America’s Sweetheart’?

America’s Sweetheart, Ari Shaffir’s new Netflix stand-up special, bears a title that flies in the face of the hilariously edgy jokes you’ll hear during the comic’s latest hour. “I’m a big troll,” Shaffir laughed as he explained the special’s ironic name. “I like to rile people up. I’m a habitual shit-starter.” 

What to expect from the new special? “I’m trying to take every single thing that people say, ‘This is too serious,’ and I’m gonna be like, ‘Let me show you how to find some joy out of that,’” he says. The message of America’s Sweetheart? “Guys, chill the fuck out.”

I recently spoke with Shaffir about the state of comedy in 2025, the legend of working the door at the Comedy Store and how the advent of podcasting permitted provocative comics to be themselves. 

“You see it everywhere in America, people yelling at each other. Everyone’s so mad about everything. But that’s just not the world I’m seeing. ‘It’s all going to hell!’ Really? We’re in the best place we’ve ever been economically and socially. ‘No, it’s shitty!’” 

“All my friends are like, ‘I heard New York is a war zone.’ I’m like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. ‘Crime is up!’ Crime is nonexistent. I was talking with my buddies, and Mark Normand mentioned getting on the subway. Joe Rogan was like, ‘You take the subway?’ Because he’s heard these reports about how terrible it is. Which is not true. And Normand’s like ‘Yeah.’ Rogan goes, ‘Why?’ And Normand goes, ‘It's faster.’”

“I wanted to do this (comedy special) without a theme. I’m gonna do a 45-minute Van Halen album, just a bunch of songs. They don’t hold together, they’re not supposed to hold together. The topics are pretty different.”

“Mitzi Shore set up (the Comedy Store) top to bottom where the older kids would help the younger kids. There’s a direct line from Door Guy, which means fresh off the bus, wide-eyed newcomer, never-been-on-stage kind of guy, straight to massive theater act, sitcom star, movie star. Some of them literally wore that same shirt standing at the door 10, 12 years earlier.”

“Sebastian (Maniscalco) is this massive comedian. He was a door guy, he’d run over from his day job.”

“What Mitzi would say is, ‘I want you to watch it. These other comics, they’re better than you. Or they're worse.’  She had this whole plan. It really drove everybody to be like, ‘I want to be as good as them. I can get advice from people who are experts in the field.’”

“It’s also heart-wrenching when you can’t get on stage and everything’s going south. You’re seeing these other people succeed and doing so well. It might drive you to quit. It drove a lot of people to quit. But you know, Michigan Engineering fails 80 percent of students the first year on purpose. Hey, if you can’t hack it, you should transfer. You should get a different degree.”

“The real influence on me was the people I saw every night, doing one part of a thing better than anyone else. Freddy Soto and Joey Diaz, they were the most natural, the most themselves. Joey Diaz, he goes up on stage and he’s the same exact guy. There’s no other version of him.”

“You see these different people doing one tool or one weapon really good. You’re like, ‘Show me how to do that.’ Rogan would show me how to just go at a crowd. Gabriel Iglesias and Felipe (Esparza) were telling me, ‘When you do these Latino rooms, you gotta go at them harder.’ All these guys, it was just so cool to watch them all. It just slowly seeped in.”

“With comedy, a few things happened with podcasts. A big one was Adam Carolla. He was on a radio station in Los Angeles. They switched formats and had to pay out his contract. And they’re like, ‘You can’t get another job. Get another job, you lose your contract.’ And he was like, ‘I have this massive following from Loveline and my own show. What if I do an internet program?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, that doesn’t violate the contract so you can still get paid.’ And he started a podcast. Around that same time, Tom Green started an internet talk show.”

“I would go on morning radio, so would a lot of comedians, to promote shows. There were a couple of guys who were good at it — Frank Caliendo, Bert Kreischer where he’s coming with a bottle of Jack. Caliendo would take calls as John Madden. But for anybody else, it was tough because when you’re talking about dark comedy, it’s not the right format. If you’re this impression guy, it’s perfect for you. If you wanna sing some comedy songs, perfect for you.”

“So we have to wake up at 6 a.m. to go to these shows, to not be ourselves. And it was annoying. And we always talked about it. ‘God, I wish we could do this in the afternoon.’ ‘I wish we could curse.’ You’d let one curse out by accident and they’d go, ‘Whoa, whoa!’”

“And then Carolla showed us the way. There were other people doing podcasts, we just didn’t know about them. We’re like, all right, ‘Let’s start trying it.’ We did it with Rogan, just like a webcam at his house. We opened up the laptop, we crowd in and we talk to 1,000 people. ‘No way, that’s four digits of people! That’s nuts!’”

“There was no money in it. No sponsorships. Just shooting the shit with some fans. The dream was maybe we’ll sell a couple tickets that way.” 

“And then Rogan got more serious about it. Convinced me to do a podcast and Tom Segura. And so we all did our own. And then it got bigger and bigger. Now it’s lost some of that outlaw, do-whatever feel because money got involved. But who cares? It’s a small price to pay for selling so many tickets. Now we can reach our fans.”

“Having fun and selling tickets — it’s all we ever wanted.”