Picture this: Viral comedian Eric D’Alessandro
In earlier times, comedians paid their dues by slogging through years of nightclub dates, the majority of them underwhelming, before the standup act became rock-tumbler polished and big audiences started showing up. Then, and only then, was the comedian considered ready for TV and the movies.
Eric D’Alessandro is the complete opposite. In some ways, he is the textbook 21st century comic. He began with a video camera, writing and performing short skits about his family and the other people in his Staten Island, N.Y. hometown.
And because he’s a brilliant mimic, and genuinely funny, the world discovered him. Today, D’Alessandro has 450,000 Instagram followers, 124,000 on Facebook, and 655,000 on TikTok.
Several of his YouTube videos have racked up 15 million or more views.
Yet this Italian-American viral sensation, who performs Friday at the Jaeb Theatre inside Tampa’s Straz Center, was a latecomer to standup comedy.
Video, he says, “is my real passion in life – I love writing, I love shooting, I love editing. But how do you make money doing sketch comedy? How the hell do you get people to see it? I was doing it for a while, and then I was like ‘You know what? Everybody that I love, who has made it in the movies, got really good at standup.’ All my heroes like Dave Chappelle, Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy – they all were killers as standups. Chris Tucker. These people are monsters.”
He started turning up at open mic nights in Manhattan. Hundreds of open mic nights. “It was terrifying,” he says. “Lots of imposter syndrome. I felt like I didn’t belong up there. When you do really small shows, and there’s no one in there, no one’s laughing, it’s as shitty as it gets. You do enough of those and you kind of become bulletproof.”
In the Big Apple, D’Alessandro explains, “open mics are just other comics waiting to go up. So it’s not like you’re gettin’ real audience members lookin’ to laugh. You’re just getting six other guys with their heads in their notes, not even listening to you. So it’s just getting used to no one laughing and how to think on your feet.
“It was tough in the beginning. But I’m so glad I went through that.”
A child of the 1990s, D’Alessandro grew up glued to the family TV set. “Everybody romanticizes the ‘90s, but to be a child absorbing all of that … there was just so much. Especially like Black comedians, who were all my favorites. Def Comedy Jam, In Living Color, and then you had the Wayans Brothers show, Jamie Foxx had a show, Martin had a show … so much incredible things. I feel that the movies that were made during that time, and the TV – All That was a great kids’ sketch show – there were high quality things being made that I would still laugh at today.”
For example, the 1996 Wayans Brothers film Don’t Be a Menace to the South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. “To this day, I cry laughing just thinking about that movie randomly.
“Comedy was as much a thing to me as food. Or the clouds in the sky. My brothers were hysterical, my best friends were hysterical. Staten Island is a very funny place. My dad’s funny without trying. And it was just such a part of our identity.”
Even as a little kid, he reports, “I loved pretending, doing these little skits with my friends and pretending we were in shows. I just wanted to do anything creative. I always wanted to have a Chappelle Show or something like that, where you just get to have fun messing around with your friends.
“I was the weirdo walking around with a camera when I was 11. Now, every kid’s making videos on their phones but back then it was kind of a weird thing to be into. And so when YouTube came out, I sort of had this head start because I was already really into making videos. I got a pretty good following in Staten Island and Jersey, Brooklyn, those areas.”
The jokes about his home turf, D’Alessandro explains, plays in every part of the country. “I think everyone is interested in New Yorkers because they are so specific, and they are very funny.”
“They’re a little crazy. They’re very eccentric, and loud, and energetic.”
Tickets for Friday’s performance are here.
