By Peter Lindblad
It takes a lot to offend comedian Brad Williams. In fact, he owes his career to the politically incorrect humor of Carlos Mencia, a comic known for stepping over the line on occasion.
At one of his stand-up comedy shows in 2003, Mencia was telling jokes about little people. Williams, who was born with achondroplasia, which causes a kind of dwarfism, happened to be in the audience.
While Mencia’s quips had most of the crowd in hysterics, everybody around Williams was squirming in their seats – except for Williams.
“He was onstage making midget jokes,” recalled Williams. “The audience is laughing, except the audience directly seated around me. It was like, ‘Ha, ha … no, no, no we’re not laughing.’ And he’s like, ‘Why aren’t you laughing? These are funny jokes.’ And I raised my creepy little hand, ‘Hey …’ And he called me up onstage and he asked me, ‘Are you offended?’ And I said, ‘No, keep going. It’s funny.’”
Only 19 years old at the time, Williams casually answered Mencia’s questions, “… because one thing comedians always are is we’re always curious. We always want to know.”
The inquisitive Mencia asked Williams about his life. In typical fashion, Williams responded with complete candor, and the audience was in stitches.
“I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was just answering honestly, and maybe that’s where my style originates from, just being honest onstage,” said Williams.
That incident took place almost 20 years ago. Since then, the energetic, insightful and incredibly funny Williams has become a highly sought-after comic, appearing on such television shows as “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “The Tonight Show,” “Mind of Mencia,” and more. The high he got from being onstage with Mencia was like nothing he’d ever experienced.
“With the answers, the audience laughed, and I was like, ‘Whoa, this is the greatest feeling ever,’” said Williams. “And I dropped out of college (University of Southern California) with a year to go (laughs). That was a fun phone call to make to the parents. When I tell people I dropped out of college, some people freak out and I go, ‘Dude, I was majoring in communications. We didn’t lose anything in that deal.’ In fact, you could argue I’m doing more communicating than I would have been doing in a job with my degree.”
Williams’ refreshingly honest, no-holds-barred comedy comes from the perspective of someone, as he says, “is only about hip high.” Expect a stream of observations about relationships, what it’s like living as a dwarf, sex, pop culture and current events when Williams performs two shows Sept. 16 at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison. Not too long ago, he did shows in Appleton at the Skyline Comedy Club, a place he also loves.
“Wisconsin fans are really awesome, they love stand-up comedy,” said Williams, a native Californian whose wife has family in Wisconsin. “Yeah, it’s a really fun city to work in and where the club is, it’s kind of this hipster-y neighborhood and you have places you don’t normally expect to find in Appleton, Wisconsin … we’ve got some great friends in the area and if I’m reading the tea leaves, Wisconsin area might need some laughs, because it sounds like Aaron Rodgers might be going. But you know what? I will not abandon you Wisconsin.”
That is, until his next gig in some other state. Williams has been a touring comedian ever since that fateful night with Mencia, who got Williams started as his opening act, with Williams appearing on both the “Mind of Mencia” and the popular “Punisher” tours.
“All that happened because I didn’t clutch my pearls when the comedian onstage said the joke that applied to me,”said Williams. “I don’t get offended when somebody does a bad dwarf joke. I just kind of go, ‘Oh, that’s unfortunate that they aren’t informed.’ They don’t know or it’s a lazy trope and they’re just like not really trying that hard. But, yeah, I’m more like, ‘That sucks.’ Never do I think for a second, ‘Ooo, that comedian said something and it’s about me and my group and it didn’t make me laugh and I was slightly offended by it, and now they should never work again.’ God, no. No.”
Given his stature and condition, Williams has a unique viewpoint on the current debate over “cancel culture.” He doesn’t exactly shy away from controversy. To him, it’s just the nature of the business.
“Here’s one thing about comedians that people that aren’t in comedy, I don’t think they understand. Comedians, artists … we have to be able to have an attempt, we have to be able to attempt to entertain you. In our case, make you laugh,” said Williams, who explained some believe that a comedian should know a joke is going to be offensive before even telling it, but that’s not the way it works. “And it’s like, no, we don’t. That’s why we’re saying it out loud. No comedian bats a thousand. We fail … a lot. No joke comes out a perfectly formed joke. Like, we need that opportunity … because the audience will always tell you.”
Wiliams continued, “If I tell a joke and the entire audience just goes, ‘Ugh,’ then I know, ‘Okay, don’t do that one. Switch it up.’ But we need that freedom to fail. We need the freedom to try to attempt to find out where the line is, maybe slightly step over it, maybe push it a little bit.”
A student of the history of comedy, Williams is aware that comedians have always faced censorship in one form or another.
“George Carlin did an interview back when he was alive where he talked about how, when he was younger, it was the Religious Right he had to worry about, now it’s the Far Left,” said Williams. “So, it’s just weird that it goes in cycles.”
As far as cancel culture goes, Williams’ thoughts turn to comic legend Buddy Hackett.
“He had this quote, which I love, which is, ‘Never trust anyone who never walked the last 10 feet,’ and what that means is, someone telling you, who has never been onstage, who’s never done it, who doesn’t know what that is … someone telling you, ‘This is what you should have done,’” said Williams. “No, I’m not listening to you, because you’ve never walked that last 10 feet. You don’t know what it’s like. The same way the quarterback of your football team doesn’t go to the guy who’s on his couch and say, ‘Now, what would you have done?’ You know what I mean? They don’t know.”
Williams isn’t sure what to make of the whole kerfuffle, as some fellow comics, like Bill Burr, are pushing back against those who want to rid comedy of content they deem objectionable.
“Cancel culture, it’s this weird thing, because some people are saying it doesn’t exist, some say it does … I would say it’s somewhere in the middle,” said Williams. “I don’t think it’s as bad as people say it is, but it certainly exists. Ask Sharon Osbourne. It exists. Ask Kevin Hart how he did hosting the Oscars. It’s out there, but it’s kind of like I said. We created a society where some people are getting offended at absolutely everything and that has bred people that are offended by nothing, and those people are craving it. They’re like, ‘No, no. Go further.’”
Still, Williams is a bit more careful these days, now that he has a wife, in Tae Kwon Do instructor Jasmine Gong, and a baby daughter. He doesn’t want anything he says to negatively impact them. And being married has affected his comedy in certain ways.
“One thing that it’s done is I like going through all these different phases of my life, because my material tends to be very autobiographical and I’ve always said I’m not a good joke writer,” said Williams. “I write my jokes, step 1, walk outside … just funny stuff can happen to you. So, I like that I keep going through these different phases of life to where now the material can adjust and the perspective can adjust and I’m not just up there doing the same thing from the perspective of like, ‘Okay, he was a fun single guy. Now, he’s a middle-aged single guy.’ I didn’t want that to be my timeline. I wanted my material to mature and adjust as I matured.”
Nevertheless, Williams won’t stop being completely open with his audience.
“I’m just more, let me just tell you what’s going on, let me tell you what I’m experiencing … and let me be honest with you,” said Williams. “That’s one thing I always wanted to be with my fans is honest. I didn’t want to do a perspective or a character that wasn’t me. I felt like audiences are too smart for that, and they can kind of sniff that out now. Stand-up audiences are really intelligent now, because it’s kind of like pro wrestling audiences, where the curtain has been pulled back. It’s not this thing anymore that no one knows about. Now it’s podcasts and how many shows have been about the life of a comedian. They kind of all know the deal now. So, yeah, I’m just trying to be authentic with them.”
That extends to Williams’ approach to talking about his condition. Some of it has to do with educating people.
“It’s kind of one of the reasons why I love comedy so much is, every other time you see someone who looks like me in the media, there’s a writer who is writing for them who’s not a dwarf, there’s a director directing who’s not a dwarf … you know, there are other actors, there’s producers, there’s executives … all not dwarves telling the little people story or controlling the message,” said Williams. “That’s one of the things I love about stand-up is I’m the writer, I’m the director, I’m the producer. So, I get to control what’s out there, and it’s one of the only places where you can get an honest look into what that life is like.”
One movie that got it right, he says, is “The Station Agent,” which starred Peter Dinklage, of “Game of Thrones” fame. “That was a really good, kind of honest look at someone who’s [a little person] … and I really appreciate him for that and the makers of that film.”
On the other hand, “Tip Toes,” which featured Gary Oldman as a dwarf and also starred Matthew McConaughey couldn’t have failed more miserably.
“It was so bad … and don’t get me wrong,” said Williams. “I’ll always defend the attempt. They took a big swing, but man … it came out in 2003. It’s a romantic comedy. They took a big swing and they whiffed. That’s what you get when you get people that don’t know the story telling about the experience. That’s why I love comedy. I can curate that message that goes out to people in terms of what my life is like.”
An actor himself, who played several roles in the TV show “Mind of Mencia,” has been in situation comedies like “Legit” and “Sam & Cat” and acted in movies such as Christopher Guest’s “Mascots,” Williams also knows what it’s like to bomb, just like “Tip Toes” did. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, he says.
“Any comic who says, ‘Oh no, I didn’t really bomb,’ they’re lying,” said Williams. “We all did. The important this is, it’s not a failure if you bomb in stand-up comedy. It’s an opportunity to learn. And as long as you learn from the bomb and go, ‘Why did that not work? Let’s figure that out,’ and then you figure it out, okay … now, it’s going to help you not do that in the future. And yes, I had some brutal, legendary bombs, but I learned from that and I learned, ‘Oh, this is why it went that way.’ It’s just like playing a video game, where you go like, ‘Oh, you go around that corner and the zombie jumps out and bites your head off.’ Well, don’t go around that corner ever again. Or, go around the corner, but have a weapon ready. That’s what it’s like. It’s just experience.”
Williams’ weapon is his sharp mind, but it helps that he’s a ball of energy onstage. Robin Williams once called him, “Prozac with a head.”
“I get bored onstage, so I’m always moving,” said Williams. “It kind of entertains myself, hope it burns some calories, and it always kind of developed because when I first started in comedy, my jokes weren’t good. They were alright, but they weren’t very good, so I had to hide it with a lot of physical energy. I had to give the audience something to look at, where they wouldn’t get bored with my material … so I had a lot of high energy, so as my jokes improved, that part of my act didn’t really go away. I’m still real high energy. I would love to put a step counter on me. It would probably be like, ‘Wow, I ran three miles.’”
To get a taste of Williams’ act, check out his 2015 one-hour comedy special “Fun Size,” the highest-rated comedy special on Showtime that year. A second one, “Daddy Issues,” arrived a year later, and Williams has received acclaim as an on-air personality as well, with his podcast “About Last Night” and regular appearances on KROQ’s “Kevin and Bean Show” in Los Angeles and Adam Carolla’s podcast.
Thankful for the work, Williams has tried to stay busy during the pandemic. He was one of the first comedians to return to stand-up, getting back onstage in May 2020. Gigs were sporadic, though, as he said he’d have one a month that would basically allow him to break even financially. Williams said he started getting steady work in January of this year.
The good thing is, he feels he’s never going to be short of content, no pun intended. Almost every day offers something new he can use in the act. “Yesterday, my wife was out with my daughter at a grocery store, and someone recognized my daughter from Instagram … like I wasn’t there, so they had no reference point, and they just ran up to my wife and daughter, and we’re still in a pandemic, and they kind of got really close and they said, ‘Oh my god, this is Brad Williams’ baby,’” said Williams. “And my wife almost kicked that woman in the face. ‘Who the hell are you? Get away.’ So, yeah, that kind of stuff happens. Is that a funny story? No, I haven’t figured out yet why that’s funny, but does stuff like that happen every day? Pretty much. You just kind of go with it. So, thankfully, I don’t see myself running out of material any time soon.”