Weather 
It’s just before 1 a.m. and Jo Koy is outside. Days before the Tuesday release of the stand-up comedian’s sixth Netflix special, he‘s gone live on Instagram standing on Sunset Boulevard next to the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. The poster for “Blue in the Face” is behind him along with his usual crew of family and friends. It’s late, but he spends a few minutes promoting the special and then encouraging people watching to find the Netflix posters and take pictures of themselves in front of them.
It’s a long way from the era when Koy was sending VHS tapes to comedy clubs hoping for a spot on the lineup or attempting to work retail jobs. Today, Koy says he’s living out the “bonus features” of his career. After all, he sold out SoFi stadium with friend and stand-up comedian Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias, he’s done multiple sold-out shows at the Kia Forum, and sold out comedy tours nationally and internationally. He’s also recently been working with Martin Lawrence on his show “Martin Lawrence Presents: Pass Tha’ Mic” where he’s one of the evaluators of comedians on the show. If you ask him what could possibly be next, he still sees more ways to create, direct, and help up-and-coming stand-up comedians shine.
Koy has long been known for his stories about his family but “Blue in the Face” takes things further as a humorous meditation about remembering and grieving his stepfather, who died in 2023.
The Times spoke with Koy about his new special, what keeps him going with comedy, and wellness (he’s trading late-night wings for celery sticks and hummus).
For the special coming out, what can people expect to see this time around?
I opened up a lot. I got to talk about my stepdad. That’s a whole story about my stepdad and what he meant to me as being a, you know, a product of a divorced family, and then, you know, then the stepdad comes into my life, and, you know, that was the one thing I really really needed when I was a teenager. So it was fun to talk about him, but it was also sad because usually when I do jokes on my specials, I usually retire the bit. It’s kind of like, you know, it’s the end of that story. But I’m just happy that it’ll forever live on Netflix. And, you know, he passed away a few years ago, so it’s kind of like my homage to my stepdad.
There’s so many stand-up comedians who think about how to incorporate grief on stage. What was that process like for you?
One thing I want to do is just tell my truth, right? And I say this all the time, we always go through drama. All of us always have drama. That’s always like some kind of topic after work or some shit. It’s like, “Oh my God, you’re not gonna believe the drama I just went through.” And then about five years later, you’re like, “Can you believe we did that? Can you believe I went through that drama?” It’s like it becomes a joke later on in life. It’s kind of like a perfect example of the logo for theater. It’s like comedy and drama. They go hand in glove. What I’m trying to say is sometimes those things that we go through, it’s just comedy, man. It’s like no matter how much we look at it, the humor is what saves us. The humor is what gets us through. The humor is like laughing about something that was just so stupid, or something that was so traumatic. It’s just our way of dealing with it. So for me, it’s kind of like therapy. It’s like yeah, it’s a lot of drama, or it’s a lot of trauma that I go through. But once I say it on stage, it starts to feel better. I feel good. So it’s not really a hard process for me. It’s kind of like my indirect way of going to therapy.
“Jo Koy: Blue in the Face” is the comedian’s sixth Netflix special.
(Adam Rose / Netflix)
At this point in your career, how has your decision-making about which opportunities to go for changed since the beginning of your career? How do you know when to say no or what to say no to?
I don’t know. I think now I’m at that age where I’ve seen it all, and I’ve seen every audience that I could possibly see. And when you hit something like SoFi Stadium, you tend to get to that point where you’re like, man, this is my Super Bowl. It’s kind of like a football player is like, you know, it started off with playing catch with his friends in the backyard to like dreaming about playing the Super Bowl, and then you play the Super Bowl, and it’s just that was the pinnacle, and I loved it. And now I’m in auto drive, and it’s the best part of the DVD, which is the bonus features, and that’s what this is right now. I get to just live through my bonus features right now because everything I dreamt about when I was a kid it happened, and now I’m just creating things for fun.
I’m fascinated by how much traveling you’re doing. How do you manage the stressors of not just performing, but traveling not just for yourself, but also with your crew of people who are also coming?
It’s kind of like my adrenaline and my excitement that gets me going. I think at the beginning of the week I always go, “Oh man, I gotta go to Tacoma.” But man, the minute I land in Tacoma, I’m just like the excitement builds. It’s like I’m counting down the minutes to get on stage, and it just motivates me. So it’s just this passion. I can’t explain it. There’s no way I can explain how much I love it, and the traveling is about the only time I have to work. And if that’s all I have to do to work, then I’ll do this forever. But it doesn’t break me down at all. It’s like I’m a weird breed. I enjoy it. Everyone has a bed that they lay down on every night. Well, I have a plane that I get on every week…. I love that.
As you’ve gotten older, when was the first time in your career that you realized you had to make changes to how you take care of yourself and your health?
I think right when I hit my late 40s, I realized I can’t be eating steak at 1 o’clock in the morning anymore. I can’t eat bacon every morning. It started taking a toll, and I could feel it. And I had to get rid of the meat. I had to slow down on the drinking. The 10 Coronas, and the Jameson, I was like, you know, I started to feel it and it wasn’t a good feeling. So now I’m traveling with elderberry and milk thistle and vitamin C and glutathione, like I got all these things that I travel with, and it’s just so funny. But I’m still having a good time. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just I had to cut out all those things that were kind of bringing me down indirectly. It was making me happy temporarily, but you know, it would have its effects, and it wasn’t fun.
Jo Koy is making an effort to eat more healthful foods. He says he was starting to feel the effects of too much meat and alcohol.
(Adam Rose / Netflix)
How has your idea of wellness changed over time?
I just feel better. I’m like down to one meal a day, basically. I’m not scraping my plate like I used to. But then again, I gotta shut up, man. I still drink coffee, and you know. So I guess that’s my unhealthy fix. It’s not even a regular coffee. It’s got all the crap in it. So there’s that, but we’re allowed to have one little crutch, right? We’re allowed to have some. It’s just not a coffee with a tomahawk steak and all the sides. My son is on a health kick and he did this on his own. But he started discovering things that was going wrong with him, and he just cut everything out. He doesn’t drink soda because it made him feel weird. He cut bread because he knows that he was breaking out and getting rashes when he was eating bread. And there’s certain foods that he eats that he knows he gets very clammy and greasy. So he cuts it all out. It’s crazy. Like it’s my son. He’s like, “You should get a salad, Dad.” So he’s my favorite guy to be on the road with because he keeps me in check.
What are some aspects of stand-up comedy you think people can actually step away from now compared to when you were starting out?
I was really, really bad with morning food. But back in the day, it was always a thing that you flew in on Wednesday, just so you could do morning press. And the club would always book, you know, 6 o’clock in the morning and that would go on for about four hours of just doing morning news and radio and all that. And it was so disgusting. It was just so gross. It was like an egg McMuffin, a cinnamon roll, Coca-Cola and just coffee. And then I look at my old pictures of myself back in the day, and it’s just like you could see it in my face, just all that crap. I know that’s another thing about being healthy but that would be the one thing, just take care of yourself early because it’s gonna catch up. But I was really a road dog. So it was like I lived on the road. That’s all I knew. I was happy to be on the road. Give me the chicken wings for dinner. Give me some beer. Let me tell some jokes. And that doesn’t happen anymore. Now it’s like, do you have any more coconut water and some hummus? We’re out of hummus. I asked for celery sticks, you guys. The funny thing is, I’m not even trying to be funny right now…. Back in the day, it used to be like this big metal bucket just filled with ice and like 24 Corona [beers] and chicken wings and onion rings and I would walk into my green room and I was the happiest man alive. If I see that s— in my green room now, I will start yelling at somebody like get this s— out of here, and I’m like, “And no one’s eating this. It’s bad for you.”
How do you tell someone who’s starting out in comedy how to manage late–night culture when it comes to the eating and drinking, since that’s such a big part of the social aspect of comedy?
When I was younger, I was around the old-school vets, so my guys were from the ’80s. Because I started in [1989], [1990]. So I was the new generation of comics in the ’90s, and I’m being mentored by the guys from the ’80s who were really, really bad. Those were the cocaine guys. You know what I mean? It was like cocaine, weed and beer, man. That’s all you need, and some bacon, you know what I mean. And I’m not saying all of them were like that, but it was a different time. They weren’t very health-cautious. Then my generation was very fast foodie. It was just a different time when I was coming up, but now that I’ve noticed … that you can see right now is that these kids don’t drink. The drinking culture is just not what it used to be. And I think it’s more the vape generation and the edible generation … I feel like the comics that I see coming up tend to be on the healthier side. But the late-night culture is beautiful. So embrace it and enjoy it. There are late nights, but the camaraderie of comics is always fun. Imagine surrounding yourself with laughter the whole time. I remember doing a show and going to Mel’s Diner, and I’ll be sitting with all these comics, you know, and just enjoying life.
