On May 1st of this year, Margaret Darby, a staff writer for the Deseret News penned an article on North America’s most successful comedian in the past two years, the “clean” comic Nate Bargatze. Much of her article is reprinted below:
‘For comedian Nate Bargatze, creating clean comedy that a range of people — from kids to grandmothers — can enjoy is a fulfilling “calling,” he said in a recent interview with The New York Times. Appealing to nearly everybody goes against the grain of the comedy world, but Bargatze has always been up for the challenge. And he’s excelling at it. In 2024, Bargatze put on the highest-grossing comedy show of the year, outperforming comedy juggernauts like Jerry Seinfeld and Adam Sandler, per Billboard. He has hosted “Saturday Night Live” twice (side note: his two brilliant, intelligent, and hilarious George Washington sketches are two of the most watched sketches in tv history).
“When I started in comedy, some comics would be like, ‘Well, I’m not for everybody,’ and I’d be like, ‘Why would you not want to be for everybody?’” Bargatze told The New York Times. “Most of the comics I was around were the complete opposite of everything I did,” he added. “I didn’t want you to notice that I was clean… You learn how to hide it, because if you walked up and said, ‘I’m clean,’ it’s going to be like, ‘This guy’s not cool.’”
Creating clean comedy is “very, very hard” work, Bargatze says, but he is motivated by “a bigger purpose.” “I am second to God. Second to your family, second to the audience, second to everybody,” he told the New York Times. “You live to serve, so it’s very much a calling in that aspect.” He continued, “I just want to make something where all of them can be in the room together. It’s driven by a bigger purpose for me, but everybody has their own things. I do really good with grandmothers, and I always loved that because I don’t think there’s much being made that they could go to.”
Bargatze said he is “grateful to be a vessel” for the work he is doing during a January appearance on stand-up comedian Anjelah Johnson-Reyes’ podcast, “Funjelah.” “It can’t be about me,” Bargatze told Johnson-Reyes. “Because if it was about me, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. That‘s why I can handle it, because it’s not about me… what I believe, it’s on God.”
On several instances, Bargatze has shared how his Christian upbringing has guided his comedy. “I come from a Christian family and Southern Christian, so I wasn’t allowed to watch anything,” he told Fox News in 2023. “And so, growing up and only watching clean comedians, it was just how I was going to be. And it would feel forced if I was not.” During a 2023 conversation with comedian Joe Zimmerman on his “Nateland” podcast, Bargatze said, “My parents grew up Catholic, but I was raised Baptist.” He added, “So I have all of the Catholic guilt, without any of the fun of Catholic, and then just the strictness of Baptist. Which is the most strict. Not as much now. But when we were growing up, Baptist was the most…they could get disappointed real fast at you.”
Please do yourself a favour and go to youtube.com and watch the Nate Bargatze comedy specials you can find there, as well as the two Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketches on George Washington. God has blessed us with Nate Bargatze. Enjoy!
