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TV’s Howie Mandel on standup comedy: ‘That’s my primal scream’
For TV fans with long memories, he’ll always be boyish Dr. Wayne Fiscus from the 1982-88 medical drama St. Elsewhere.
Game show aficionados will peg him as the longtime host of the high-stakes Deal or No Deal.
Since 2010, Howie Mandel has been a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent, the hugely popular upscale remake of the old Gong Show (with a stronger emphasis on actual talent, as opposed to novelty acts and jokey, 1970s-style tomfoolery).
The likeable native of Toronto is also a judge on the northern edition, Canada’s Got Talent. And he’s one of the producers of the current Deal or No Deal Island.
Mandel began his career, however, as a standup comic – there’s something about being all alone on a stage, he told the Catalyst, with a single microphone, no “cues” and no “marks” he has to hit, that he finds extremely liberating.
When he’s not taping in some TV studio, he’s on the road, doing standup.
Mandel will be onstage Thursday (May 22) at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Find tickets at this link.
St. Pete Catalyst: I have one question for you, my friend: Does America actually have talent?
Howie Mandel: Yes. Yes it does. I’m trying to sell tickets to my show, so if America didn’t have talent, why would you buy a ticket to see me? Right? I think there’s talent everywhere. It’s just that it’s not everybody’s taste.
But, yes, America’s got talent, and that’s why you should come see me. Although the people who are fans of America’s Got Talent shouldn’t bring their children to my live show. Because America doesn’t always have editing! My show is very improvisational, and in the moment, and anything can happen, and it’s not like what I do on AGT.
It’s been 15 years on that show. Haven’t you seen it all by now?
Every time I think I’ve seen it all, I realize I ain’t seen nothin’ yet. When people ask me what I look for, I look to be surprised. It’s anything and everything, and things I haven’t even thought of. I like the opportunity to, in my own mind, go WTF? Like, what are you doing? What IS that? How did you even come up with that?
And I can’t tell you how much of that there is. Especially this year; this is our 20th anniversary. So I think that people have been released, if nothing else, to do things that we’ve never seen before.
Early on, we had this one guy called Horse. He had this ability to have things thrown, shot and dropped into his nether region, and survived it. And this was even before Jackass, so he ended up with six episodes on MTV. So being slapped in the nuts turned out to be more valuable than singing an ABBA song.
You have a multi-faceted career. Why do you always come back to standup?
I never left standup. People always go ‘I loved it when you did standup.’ Standup is my thing. I was a standup from day one; I did a Young Comedians special. And then, because that’s what people did, I went to meet with a sitcom company. And they gave me a ‘sitcom’ called St. Elsewhere. That was MTM, that was their first drama.
I didn’t set out to be a dramatic actor. And while I was doing that, I was doing standup. And then I got a Saturday morning cartoon (Bobby’s World). I didn’t set out to do that; they knew that voice from standup. And I continued to do standup.
I didn’t want to be a game show host, but I did Deal or No Deal, and I still continued being a standup. Now I’m a judge on a talent show – and I’m still a standup.
And I produce a podcast (Howie Mandel Does Stuff) with my daughter – but really, I still do standup.
And it’s not always to tour. I drop in several times a week to a local club here in L.A., or even after a concert in a town, if there’s a club open I’ll drop in, if I’m staying in that town overnight.
I love my time onstage doing standup. That’s my joy, that’s my love, that’s my primal scream. That’s why I do. And the other things are jobs.
You must have to make time for it. And I can’t imagine it brings in the dough like those high-profile TV gigs.
I do it for love. And I do get paid for it, but that’s not why I do it. I’ll do a lot of other stuff for money.
I always say the check that you paid me, you paid me to leave my home, get on a plane and stay in a shitty hotel. My time onstage is free.
Tell me about your standup.
This is raw, unproduced. That doesn’t mean that there’ll be some adult-only kind of material, but because I’m interested in being in the moment, anything can happen. Anything can be said. I open it up to the audience, it’s very interactive. It’s very improvisational. Obviously, after all this time doing what I do I have a lot of material to pull from, but I think it’s more fun just to be taken off that path, and know that whatever you’re going to see that night, in that moment, has never happened before and will never happen again.
Obviously, there are things I will plan, but the best parts of the evening are things that aren’t planned.
You’ve always been open about your OCD and germophobia. Are you sick of talking about it?
No, and I think we gotta keep talking about it. Mental health is paramount, is my big soapbox. And I think we need to take care of our mental health the way we take care of our dental health.
And the biggest problem with any issue that entails mental health is there’s a stigma involved. You wouldn’t say ‘Can I ask you one more time how your back is?’ if my back went out. You could be in an office anywhere, and you go ‘I can’t lift that, I have a bad back,’ and everybody will hand you a card to their chiropractor.
But if you said ‘I don’t know, I just can’t deal right now. I can’t stop crying,’ or ‘I can’t function,’ or ‘I can’t think,’ nobody’s going to say ‘OK, take an hour off and go to the psychiatrist.’
But it’s got to be as normal! If you had a toothache you would do that, but we don’t take care of our mental health … I just want it to be part of the curriculum, and part of the conversation.
Yes, it’s always a struggle. As I talk to you right now, I’m medicated. I have a good medical support system and family support system. So there’s never a fear of talking about it too much. And I’ll keep talking about it.
