Joshua Talks ‘Last Comic Standing’

Joshua Gomez is one of the “talent scouts” for the early rounds of NBC’s Last Comic Standing, and he’s taking his judging duties seriously. Mostly. Read what he had to say about the gig to Zap2It:

Sure, the comedians auditioning for Last Comic Standing are under considerable pressure. But what about the people judging them?

“Of course we’re rooting for them,” says Kate Flannery of The Office, one of several current and former NBC stars who serve as “talent scouts” for the early rounds of the show’s sixth season. “I mean, I was. You want people who made you laugh earlier to kill in front of a huge audience.”

“I don’t want to look like a sucky judge either,” adds Chuck‘s Josh Gomez, who helped narrow the field in San Francisco.

Last Comic Standing kicks off its sixth season Thursday with audition rounds in New York and Tempe, Ariz. Sopranos and Tonight Show regular Steve Schirripa and Law & Order: SVU star and veteran stand-up Richard Belzer scout the Big Apple, while Kathy Najimy (King of the Hill) and Fred Willard (most recently of Back to You) do the honors in Tempe.

Comedy being subjective, of course, the talent scouts brought their own preferences to the table. Which raised some issues for Gomez.

“I have a very sick, sick sense of humor,” Gomez says. “So I wanted to send every Viking-helmet-wearing — if they were wearing an outfit, they were going through.”

Veteran Last Comic viewers will recognize the problem here: The folks in the goofy costumes usually don’t have much funny to say (last season’s Mel Silverback being the rare exception, and even his shtick wore thin after a couple episodes). He also came to realize that wacky outfits weren’t enough to carry comics in front of a live audience.

“To see them in front of an actual — a drinking crowd, mind you, a heavy-drinking crowd — no, but to see them in front of a real crowd was so different than coming up there with two people sitting there,” he says.

The scouts are not the final arbiters of who goes on to the next round; they collaborate with the show’s producers on their choices. (After some controversy in an earlier season about who got to make the pick, the producers have been fairly open about the process.)

“At the end of the show, the talent scouts came into the room with us, and it was a joint decision with the producers and the talent scouts,” executive producer Peter Engel says. “I don’t think we had any real disagreements.”

Host Bill Bellamy will also do some scouting of his own, hitting cities not on the LCS audition calendar and offering spots in the semifinals to a handful of comics.

“I noticed that the crop of talent has been, like, elevated,” Bellamy says. “I think when comedians see that we really put real comics on the show, they have a better respect for the show and want to be a part of it.”

And then they run into the likes of Gomez and Flannery, who — even if they feel bad about it — have to send the majority of the people they see packing (“They’re actually dream killers,” Bellamy cracks).

“I think it’s kind of like ripping off a Band-Aid. You have to tell them, ‘Thank you, but come back later,'” she says. “But I saw a lot of potential. I think it’s really cool to be on the other side of the fence. And at first I was a little sick to my stomach about it, but you get used to it. And it’s an honor because really you’re helping people reach their dreams.”