Gianmarco Soresi Worries “Constantly” About Becoming a Bad Comedian

Photo: Courtesy of Gianmarco Soresi

“As [comedians] get richer and busier and spend less time on stage, they get worse.”

Words by Nick Connellan · Updated on 26 Nov 2025 · Published on 19 Nov 2025

After almost a decade playing small clubs on the stand-up comedy circuit, Gianmarco Soresi is finally getting his flowers. The limber New Yorker is getting the TV-show appearances and, barring actual stadiums, booking the biggest rooms cities have to offer.

While this is an exciting era for him, it’s also a perilous one for a comedian who’s made such a name for his crowd work. How will his chats with fellow theatre kids in the audience translate to spaces where every response has to be repeated into the mic? That remains to be seen. But Soresi is committed to his craft, and ensuring his comedy doesn’t suffer from its own success.

When we reached him in Denver this week, he also told us how much he loves Australian sushi, which comedians he’d invite to dinner, why he’s so exhausted right now and how crowd work can backfire.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I assume it’s almost dinnertime for you. What are you having?

“I had an incredible breakfast. I got an eggplant sandwich, half of it to go. It was an indulgent breakfast. The person who made the pastries knew who I was, so they sent me a free scone, which I had not budgeted for. So I’m just gonna have a salad and protein and just try to stay healthy desperately.”

If you could invite one comedian, living or dead to have dinner with you, who would it be?

“God. I think the ones I haven’t really talked-to talked to. I’d talk to [John] Mulaney, for sure. Jon Stewart, I’d love to talk to. And I’ve been lucky enough to have dinner with Anthony Jeselnik and I would certainly do that again.”

I can’t see you guys in a room together. Your comedy styles are so different!

“There are more bones that are similar. You know, certainly not the crowd work. He doesn’t do crowd work. But I learnt a lot from Anthony – just keeping the bar so consistently high with what a punchline needs to achieve, how every joke has to have surprise in it, too. And I try to craft any beat, even if it’s a story, to have every joke reach a certain bar. And I love his long setups. I love his building of tension. There’s more that I’ve stolen [from him], if you look for it.”

Social media is obviously amazing for promoting yourself. But I saw a bit you did about the need to have fresh material, because people are seeing so much of it online. Do you think that makes your job harder than if you’d been doing this in the ’90s?

“To a degree. But you have so many more decisions you have to make now. In the ’90s, if you were so lucky as to be one of the 15 comedians that the powers that be chose to do the HBO special, you were in a good position. You could focus on one hour, and when it came out, it would be seen by a lot of people. You could build your career.

“Now, everything’s more accessible, but you have to produce so much content to get yourself known. You could go on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, had one good five-minute set and tour off that. I do The Tonight Show, and it’s probably seen by less people than the most recent Tiktok video I did.

“It’s complicated in terms of, how quickly do you burn material? Do you hold onto it? Will it become dated? When do you release it? How do you release it? Do you release it as a 15-second joke or part of a 10-minute thing? And that is exhausting. I’m tired. But it also gives you the freedom to respond in the moment. You know, I was able to record a joke about Trump that night off news that happened that day and release the very next morning. So that’s cool.”

You’ve got a team that helps with that stuff, don’t you?

“Yeah, my opener films. We hired another videographer for this trip. I have a social media manager. I have someone who captions, someone who posts. It’s a pretty big, you know, it’s all this stuff I did at some point in the beginning, and just gradually have expanded where I can pass those along, so I can focus more on the comedy part.”

That’s so interesting, because stand-up is seen as this very solitary thing, where it’s one person up on stage with a microphone, but it is, in this day and age, a team effort?

“For sure, for sure. I think the way that it is still very solo is, it’s just me on stage and it’s me writing it. But then there are other times that I wonder, as late night television starts to disintegrate in front of our eyes, where it’s on me to make topical jokes, sometimes you go, ‘Well, shouldn’t I be allowed to have a writers room the way those guys did, or Bob Hope did?’ There are lots of famous comedians who have some version of writers, or a helper, but we still live under the illusion, to a degree, of what it used to be.

“If I’m doing a news program, I might enlist a writer or two to contribute jokes, but at the same time, I want people to know that my stand-up is me, so they feel connected and I feel connected. But then there’s this middle ground of hyper-topical stuff where you’re like, ‘Oh, I could use some help writing these Epstein jokes. I mean, it just happened, and I got two hours before the show.’ So we’ll see. I don’t know how stand-up is going to evolve with the demands, but it will. It will.”

How many weeks a year are you on tour of these days?

“I think 40 to 45 weekends. It’s brutal. I’m really at a kind of a crossroads of being ready to expand into [big] theatres, but we booked a bunch of [smaller] comedy clubs already, and I have trouble saying no. It’s hard, when you struggled your whole life to fill up rooms, to say, ‘Yeah, don’t add a show where I could fill up the room with people who want to see me.’ So you push yourself.”

How do you feel making that transition to larger venues? So much of what you do is about that connection with the crowd and forming a bond with them. It’s a bit harder when they’re further away.

“It definitely is. I think about it a lot. The economic forces really demand that you move up and go bigger and bigger and bigger. But I’ve seen the comedians, especially comedians who do crowd work, that when they really move into large venues, it just doesn't click. You talk to someone in the front row, no one in the back can hear it, so then you try to repeat it but that kills the music.

“My hope is that if I start feeling that strain, I carve out a way where I do the bigger theatre, and the second I feel okay about ticket sales, I book something small, so I can have that connection and work out the new material and do the crowd work. And, you know, justify it by building a social media company. I can do the smaller show and make a lot less money, but it’s worth it because I get to capture a more sincere connection.”

There’s bit of a tradition of that here. There’s a famous rock bar in Melbourne, Cherry Bar. Chad Smith from Red Hot Chili Peppers went down there and played drums. He didn’t tell anyone, after they had filled out major stadiums. It was awesome, there was something like 15 people in there.

“You gotta make the time. That’s why a lot of comedians get bad. As they get richer and busier and spend less time on stage, they get worse. I take it seriously. It’s something I have to constantly check in with and ask, ‘Am I doing what I need to keep making good comedy?’”

You’re really known for your crowd work. Do you think people almost come expecting to share their craziest stories?

“Some people have a story to tell and it can backfire, because sometimes they want to be funny. Sometimes an audience member has a great joke, and I will always, always embrace it. Please take some of the slack off me. But I find that when an audience member just wants to tell you the facts, that’s going to be the funniest thing. So it’s navigating who’s over-eager and wants to be on the stage, and who wants to give me the tools to play with, you know?”

How did you find Australian audiences on your first tour here?

“I mean, amazing. You got to remember, it’s not even reflective of whatever city I’m going to. These are people who’ve been following me for some time. And this is their first time seeing me in person. I really get an unfair advantage. It’s like if you have a long-distance relationship – the first time you see each other, it’s going to be a very nice time. And that’s the warm welcome I get whenever I go to Australia.”

What are you going to do here when you’re not on stage?

“I think I’ll be there for maybe two weeks total. I’m really excited to go back. I know it might be cliche as a visitor, but I didn’t get enough animals last time. I did see the quokkas, but I want to see some kangaroos. I want to see some koalas. I like animal stuff, so I’m going to do that. I’m really excited for the food. I loved – I think it was Sydney – the sushi. My god, the sushi shops. So I’m going to eat and do nature stuff.”