Tom Papa Weighs in on His New Netflix Special, Sweaty Tom Cruise and the Seinfeld of It All

A funny thing happened to comedian Tom Papa as he prepared to promote his hysterical new stand-up special, Home Free — Jerry Seinfeld stopped by Papa’s Breaking Bread podcast. “We were just planning on talking about comedy in general,” Papa told me. “You know, just catching up with old friends.” 

It was the pod in which Seinfeld walked back earlier comments about the Left killing comedy, landing Papa directly in the middle of a national conversation. As Home Free premieres today on Netflix, we discussed what happens when Seinfeld weighs in on comedy culture, the time Tom Cruise got him all sweaty before his first Letterman appearance and how the podcast revolution has put comedians right back where they started. 

“The cool thing about Jerry Seinfeld is he’s not afraid to go back on things. He’s not set in stone on stuff.” 

“It is pretty amazing how certain people are at such a level where, as they’re saying it, you’re like, ‘I bet people are gonna want to weigh in on this.’ I did a live event once with Jay Leno during the whole Cosby thing, and he said something about it. By the time we left the event, it was already national news.”

“I love when people think about what they’ve done or learned from what they’ve done and then change their position. That’s probably the most newsworthy thing.” 

“When I think about being a young comic, being in clubs and hearing what the headliners were telling as jokes, it’s pretty startling. It was just accepted. About women, about gays. I’m using those terms in a very different way than they were using in their acts.” 

“Even crowdwork, it was such a go-to to attack someone for being gay. The crowd would go wild. Just horrible jokes about women and who they slept with. It completely has evolved and changed.” 

“I don’t feel that it’s been this censoring, attacking thing with my own career. It’s ultimately more of a natural process than some comics will have you believe.”

“There was definitely this feeling that people showed up into comedy that never were around comedy. And they were like, ‘Hey, look at what these guys are saying over here!’  They made a lot of noise, and they tried to call out or cancel certain people because of what they were saying. And now they’ve kind of left again.”

“The first time I went on stage was at the New York Comedy Club. Gary Greenberg, who’s been a writer at Kimmel forever, he was on stage hosting. Greg Giraldo was waiting to go on, and the audience was my six friends.”

“It was totally positive. It confirmed everything that I hoped that it would be. I’d never even been in a comedy club before, but I’d wanted to be a comedian since I was a kid. It was purely having a joke, in the joke structure that I had written, and then stood on stage and delivered — and they laughed at the punchline. That confirmation.”

“I was always funny, but now I was gonna put it in the way that comedians do it. The rush of hearing the laugh, it was a complete home run. I mean, if we were to look at the tape, it would not seem like a home run. It would seem pretty crazy and, I’m sure, filled with a lot of nonsense, but I got up as a stand-up comedian and I did it.” 

“It started probably with Carlin and Steve Martin, all the big ones. Bill Cosby. I loved how Carlin was always saying stuff. And I loved how silly Steve Martin was. And Bill Cosby was just like all family stuff.” 

“When I was in high school, Eddie Murphy showed up. There was one summer where every kid was just doing those routines at the pool. It was crazy. Those were the ones that I was listening to their albums.”

“I kind of miss doing stand-up on late-night shows. The frequency of stand-ups on those shows has really diminished. As soon as you did one, you were like, ‘Let’s work on the next one.’ And to get those five minutes good enough to be on the show, you had to develop half an hour of material that would be whittled down. So it always kept me working, it always provided a structure for me to continue writing and working.”

“Now it’s specials. That’s the thing that keeps you going.” 

“The first Letterman I did is probably the funniest story because I was just trying to go about my day and make it seem like a normal set.  Not stress too much. And Tom Cruise was the lead guest. It was the first time he’d been on in 15 years. He was running up and down the crowd during the break, jumping and hugging people. It was this crazy energy thing. I was like, ‘It’s just like a normal set. It’ll be a normal set.’  

“And just as I was about to go out, a door opens up and there’s Tom Cruise. He’s all sweaty and it's Tom Cruise and he gives me a hug and he goes, ‘Woo! It’s great out there! You have a great time!’”

“Well, this is not going to be a normal set. Nothing about this is normal.”

“NBC had a deal with Steve Carell and they put him on our show (Come to Papa), and we thought, ‘Well, if the president wants him on our show, that will definitely help us.’ Who was not a fan of Steve Carell, even before The Office?” 

“It ended up being the worst thing we could have done. Because they were developing The Office right as we were getting going, and they wanted him for that. He was playing the boss of a newspaper on our show. And they were watching him on our little show, trying to find its footing. And they’re like, ‘Yeah, he could play the boss on this show, The Office.’ We thought it was going to be really helpful and then (NBC) quickly had other designs.”

“People are complaining about what’s going on in Hollywood. A lot of things aren’t in production and a lot of actors are out of work, a lot of writers are out of work.” 

“It’s this big shift in the landscape, and comedians are quietly selling out theaters and running their own podcasts that are heard by millions of people. In a way, it goes back to the beginnings of comedians in their place in show business, where they started out as vaudeville entertainers and doing radio. That’s where funny people were putting their funny out. And now all these years later, podcasts are the radio and we’re standing in those same vaudeville theaters all around the country that those people were playing. It’s pretty remarkable.” 

“Podcasts have given us a ton of freedom. You don’t have to have a network tell you whether or not you can have a show. You can make the show, and if the audience likes the show, you’ll build an audience and you’ll have a show.” 

“If you decide that you’re gonna make your own family, it becomes this gigantic gigantic pursuit. It’s the biggest thing you’ll do in your life and nobody tells you when you’re starting it that it’s going to be over before you know it.” 

“I was decorating for Halloween the other night, and there are no children here. Isn’t that weird? I’m still doing it because, well, that’s what I’ve done for the last 18 years. And then I see a little kid walk by on the sidewalk, and I’m like, well, I guess I’m doing it for that kid now.”