EO

I was thinking about how you came into consciousness as a celebrity during the early aughts. You’ve spoken about your father, William Novak, a ghost writer who wrote many celebrity biographies, and famously, The Big Book of Jewish Humor, and that as a teenager you had a deep love for ’90s television, specifically The Simpsons and Seinfeld. What made you want to be an entertainer before you actually became one?

BJN

[Laughs.] I wonder what I would want to be if I grew up in a different time or place or environment. I have a friend who said his older brother, who is my age, when he first saw Pulp Fiction, said he wanted to be a filmmaker. Then he saw The Simpsons and wanted to be a TV writer. Those things are pretty related, but even a few years in the exact same suburban home, makes you aspire to be a different thing. And frankly, entertainment seemed like the way to break through, I want to say, ‘the matrix’ although The Matrix hadn’t probably come out yet. It seemed like it was a way to shape the world, consciousness, ideas and not just react to it. I think it’s a good thing now that entertainment is not the only way that is done. You can be an inventor, businessman, asshole online, and be influencing the world’s conversation. But I think the ’90s, when I was growing up, the only people that were inspiring me to do that were being funny, original, and creative. And it was Quentin Tarantino, The Simpsons, Mr. Show with Bob and David, and Andy Kaufman, who was before my time, but blew my mind. I remember hearing that song “Deborah” by Beck, and there was the lyric, “I want to get with you and your sister. I think her name’s Deborah.” [Laughs.] It was such a beautiful song musically and the lyrics were so funny. And I remember thinking, “How is this allowed, to be funny and beautiful? And then Lonely Island came out. I remember I was already working on The Office, but I was like, actually, the songs are kind of cool for real. And they’re funny, but they’re not making fun of what losers they are. They are. But they’re also cool. They also have swagger. There was something that was changing about comedy.

EO

It’s hard to speak in generalities because comedy, film, and media were happening simultaneously in an expansive, exciting way. Comedy as a form and medium did really dominate culture from the late ’90s and early 2010s. It was living in our consciousness.

BJN

I agree, and I wonder if the reason that it doesn’t seem to anymore is because other things have absorbed what comedy was doing. Now, everyone is provocative on X, formerly known as Twitter, and in on the joke and doing things ironically. But I think that comedy was the place where you could break free of the pattern that was presented to you. It was a way of having a meta-awareness that was almost religious. It was, “No, no, I get the joke. I get the joke, and I’m going to point it out.” And The Simpsons was this traditional nuclear family, but they were yellow and spiky-haired and insane and crazy things happened, and yet it was in the shell of a traditional show, but it was so in on the joke. I remember seeing Pulp Fiction and the way that the fourth wall was broken. Even when it wasn’t broken, there was such a sense of authorship screaming through the movie, that this is a movie and someone made this in a state of ecstatic expression.

EO

[Laughs.] Someone on X, formerly known as Twitter, the other day was like, “Every movie is a movie about movies, but you’re not ready for that conversation.”

BJN

I’m ready for that conversation. [Laughs.] There is something a little religious about it. It’s the sense of, I see something higher than the world that we’re accepting, and I can interact with it, I can talk to it, I can point it out, I can express it. And that was comedy. I’m in on the joke. I get the joke. I’m going to share the joke with you.

EO

While I am also the joke.

BJN

Yes.

EO

I think this way of embodying comedy is missing from contemporary culture, entertainment, and general consciousness. Whatever the medium is, or the form, or platform, or delivery. I feel like people are really interested in the aesthetic of the joke, like performing the idea of the joke, being more corny than funny. [Laughs.] So many people seem to like being experienced as the joke but not understanding the mechanics of it. But they’re not interested in being the joke or the punchline.

BJN

Well, I’ve never been interested in being consumed by the joke. And I’m not a very personal comedian, at least not in the straightforward sense. I find my life boring. I don’t think I'm good-looking enough to play the good-looking guy or repulsive enough to play the... I don’t know. [Laughs.] I don’t think I’m that interesting. So, my comedy or my writing is about, well, what is interesting to talk about? Rodney Dangerfield would be a classic example or Charlie Chaplin. They make themselves the joke, and maybe that’s a purer comedy. I’ve never gotten there.

EO

How did you find your material? What were you doing before you got to Harvard? And why did you want to go to Harvard?

BJN

I pretty much always wanted to do this. I wanted to be an inventor when I was a really little kid.

EO

An inventor of what?

BJN

Oh, you know, I saw Back to the Future. I wanted to invent time machines and exciting technology. I think one of the things I can’t reconcile is how the future and technology is only thought of as dystopian now. I can’t imagine Back to the Future being made now. That wasn’t about the dangers of time travel and big-tech controlling time travel. It was fun to think of what technology might be capable of back then. It was such an optimistic time compared to now. I don’t know who’s to blame exactly, but it’s an incredibly different mindset. Back then, being an inventor was very fun, joyous, mischievous, optimistic. I think if I was born a little later, I would have been a hacker or something. I loved pranks. I loved outsmarting the system out of joy, not out of profiting from it, because it was always my religious spark. And that’s what comedy was. There’s a system and logic in what is.

EO

Because you were fourteen years old in 1994? So much culture was burgeoning in the ’90s, specifically in music, television, and cinema.

BJN

I cannot get over it, and I don’t think it’s just because I’m from that era, but the way the culture shifted between 1989 and 1994 is wild. If you see pictures from 1994, you see Tupac Shakur in court, you see Kurt Cobain already dead. You see Pulp Fiction sparking. By the way, the movies from 1994 alone are like The Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Four Weddings and a Funeral. That’s ’94 alone. And then think of what 1989 was like. It’s like Mötley Crüe. Still, those five years to come of age, when the whole culture revolved, and it was, by and large, a happy revolution. Even though the two people I mentioned, Tupac and Cobain, were both dead in the early ’90s. Artistically, it felt revolutionary.

EO

Why?

BJN

Because to me it did. It just felt so different. Again, it’s hard to separate being a teenager at that time from I truly believe that those were an incredible five years.

EO

I fully understand the feeling. I was fifteen years old in 2009. And it wasn’t just my experience, the social fabric being woven at that point in time was concerned with the same movies, fashion, and music. All those movies, how those studios approached it, and the ethos and the residue of each of those was so different and new. Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up came out in 2007, so a few years earlier, and Superbad as well but still…

BJN

They’re just remaking all those movies that came out around that time again now. And fashion, I don’t even know, it’s more your field, but Kate Moss came out of nowhere. [Laughs.] These were shocking, new innovations in every creative field. And I mentioned The Simpsons, Seinfeld–like TV–Conan. Everything now is compared to that time period. It feels like a cultural arbitrage where everything is, How can we be as marginally different as possible to gain a slight bit of cultural profit off what was done five seconds ago? But you don’t have things that have a heartbeat coming from out of nowhere. So that was a very inspiring time. And I don’t feel as inspired by these times. I think it’s part of my job, as one of the people who is an adult now, to be part of the people inspiring the world. I mean, I’m an adult now, but it was easier when everywhere you looked, something new was lighting you up. And I was lucky.

EO

We’re gonna talk about Harvard. How did you land there? I was doing a little research and The Lampoon was started in February of 1876.

BJN

[Laughs.] I wasn’t around.

EO

I know, sadly. But I think that that whole trajectory and legacy is cool and specific. That’s not something a lot of people will experience. It’s an institution for comedy. It’s rare. And you were a part of it.

BJN

I was. I think it’s a very glamorous and polarizing name, but I don’t think that it was that central to anything for me. You know?

EO

Okay. I understand.

BJN

I mean, I would’ve done this anyway. I heard about that place and wanted to go there, but I would’ve done this anyway.

EO

Before? Even if you went to another institution?

BJN

Sure. It’s like someone who wants to be in comedy, they audition for Saturday Night Live. Like they really want to be on SNL, but if they don’t get it, they’ll still pursue comedy, they’ll still end up in something, you know?

EO

But what did you learn from that? Obviously, it’s different because it’s undergraduate and it’s not a professionalized institution like SNL, but it has some kind of currency, does it not? Or what was it at the time? What was the context around it at the time?

BJN

I think it’s not as relevant as it might seem. [Laughs.] It was very cool and it was very weird... I don’t know. The Office was much more formative to me. Standup comedy was much more formative to me.

EO

But where do these things come from? I saw the clip of you from March 2004 on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, where you landed the reverse psychology joke. I read that Greg Daniels saw you perform on Conan and then invited you to work on the American iteration of The Office?

BJN

I think I was doing standup around that time. And that was my opening joke, and I was starting to get heat around that time from a lot of different areas for writing and comedy. I did a showcase that Greg Daniels was at and that’s how I met him and then I started working for him on The Office. Around the same time I booked Conan.

EO

How did that happen?

BJN

I remember Greg emailing me, “Great job on Conan,” so I think that I definitely was already working with Greg, but The Office hadn’t come out. That was the era I was in. [Laughs.]

EO

In terms of these narratives that are assigned to us, when do you feel like you got your first start? When did you feel things started to pick up for you?

BJN

I think when I started doing standup in Los Angeles.

EO

You weren’t doing it before. But you were doing it in school?

BJN

I was a writer. I wrote for Raising Dad, starring Bob Saget. That seemed like the start to my career because I was twenty-one years old and got the staff writing job on a sitcom. But it was not really a start because that show was also a dead end. It was not a show that got picked up or any respect. A former Raising Dad writer wasn’t any currency that I could run on. [Laughs.] And also, even if it were, I remember when the show got canceled, my agent saying maybe I could get hired on Reba, and I thought, “Wait, that’s the best case scenario?” Like, “What path am I on?” And by the way, I applied. I didn’t get that job.

EO

[Laughs.] Though Reba was a serious sitcom of its time…

BJN

Yeah. But I didn’t have anything to say about Reba. I didn’t want to be on Reba. I would’ve taken it because they told me it was a good thing to do. But yeah, I didn’t even get Reba, so I applied for The Wayne Brady Show. I applied for anything that would take a packet. And I didn’t get anywhere. I also wanted to see what else I was capable of, so I started doing standup.

EO

What did that mean to you at the time? How did you create this formula or how did you realize your material?

BJN

I just carried a notebook around, like I do now, and I wrote down everything I thought was funny. And then I would just say it. You know, it tended to be one-liners. And I was like, “Look, I can write a joke and I can say a joke, is that all there is?” And that was some of it. It doesn’t make you a great comic, but it can get you on stage.

EO

So writing is the nucleus of the thing. Aside from your dad having been a writer, how did you know that you were good at that? And how did you know that that was something that you wanted to pursue?

BJN

That was always the one thing I could do in school. If I had a bad grade in biology, I would write an essay on a biologist for extra credit. I would write funny things to make my friends laugh. If I had a crush on a girl at summer camp, I would write her funny letters all winter. I knew that’s what I could do. I just didn’t think it was cool.

EO

What did it mean to do that? Did it feel like this kind of sacred space?

BJN

No, it was the opposite. It felt like if I had been good at sports, that would have been cool. If I had been stylish or... I wasn’t a cool kid, but again, my dad was a writer and it was a very workman-like type of writing. So, to me, it was like he was a dentist and everyone told me at school, “Hey, you’re pretty good at dentistry,” and I was like “Okay. Great, thanks for letting me know.” So, that wasn’t exciting to me. I wanted to be someone cool and glamorous, and I had this random skill that wasn’t very interesting but that could get me a good grade at school or a laugh from a girl or whatever. I remember when I saw Pulp Fiction, I realized, “Oh. Wait a second. Somebody wrote this movie. That guy is really cool. That thing they said I could do, writing, that might be my ticket to being a cool person.” I never thought writing was interesting before that.

EO

How did that evolve? How did you nurture it after you had that clarity?

BJN

Also, I won a writing contest when I was in fourth grade, sponsored by Mott’s Applesauce. [Laughs.] I had a lot of validation as a writer, but I didn’t think of it as anything special. And then when you become a teenager, you start to worry, “What’s my place in the world? How am I ever going to get anywhere?” Suddenly, that was a marketable skill in life.

EO

But were you a reader growing up?

BJN

Yeah, I was a reader, but I think it was really when it synced up with the glamour.

EO

What glamour?

BJN

The glamour of the great dead writers, the artists, renegades, and outcasts. The Jack Kerouac vibe and all of that. [Laughs.] Once I became a teenager and was...

EO

Brooding?

BJN

And I was like, Oh wait, this is an emo field. These are cool people, are tortured souls, and they’re brilliant and misunderstood and dangerous. It’s like wanting to be a rock star and realizing, Oh, I could always play guitar. It's hard to know how much was organic and how much was aspirational to think, This seems cool.

EO

What were you reading?

BJN

I read Nietzsche and didn’t understand a word. I just thought it was a cool vibe to sit in the library and read Charles Baudelaire and Friedrich Nietzsche and Carlos Castaneda. I just read whatever seemed cool and literary and esoteric, and I didn’t understand any of it, but I felt cool.

EO

What did you understand?

BJN

What did I understand?

EO

Because your work, even your comedy, seems really cerebral. But it seems embodied at the same time. [Laughs.]

BJN

It's like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood going on over here. What are these Manson girls? [Laughs.]

EO

What were you doing in college beyond The Lampoon? What was happening that affirmed that you should pursue writing and that you should then move to LA?

BJN

I was so certain of it from around age fourteen. I mean, that is one lucky aspect of my life. I just knew. It didn’t even occur to me that I wouldn’t do that. You know what I mean?

EO

So what happened when you graduated? Were your friends headed here? Were you coming alone? Also, what was it like being in school until the year 2000?

BJN

Probably a lot like now, except with no cellphones. [Laughs.] Coming here, I had a job on Raising Dad, which I told you. I moved out and lived on Alta Vista and Fountain with my roommate, Steve Jepson Gomez, who I saw yesterday. He started doing standup with me, too. He did a character based on his family called “Los Father.” And we would go to open-mic nights. He got more laughs than I did for a long time. I was very lonely. I borrowed his family van from his house in West Covina, drove this windowless van to the Paramount lot for my job, and eventually got a Honda.

EO

What was it like finding and navigating the comedy scene in Los Angeles? Was there a pre-existing vibe that you could inhabit?

BJN

I think it was a lot harder before the internet. Or at least it took me a lot longer to figure out where everything was. I would read LA Weekly and try to piece it together. But on my first night of standup, we did it at an open mic at the Hollywood Youth Hostel. And it was a terrible, terrible set. Shortly after 9/11. Most of my jokes were about 9/11. And it was a foreign audience that mainly didn’t speak English.

EO

Yeah. I mean, honestly, I liked your Paula Abdul joke. [Laughs.]

BJN

It’s not something I would do now, but I said whatever I could then. A lot of the theme of my standup was like I felt it went without saying that everything said was the wrong thing to say, which I still think is very funny. [Laughs.] It would be great if we went back to a mindset where, like, of course the whole joke is what you’re not supposed to say. But now you have to explain it and then it’s not fun anymore. But yeah, a lot of my earlier stuff took on that tone. I would go to Largo and watch standup constantly there. And there was this spot called M Bar that was really exciting, that Scott Ackerman ran. Zach Galifianakis, Louis C.K., Patton Oswalt, and Sarah Silverman were stars of the scene.

EO

Was it more of a local fame? What was LA’s comedy scene like in relation to New York?

BJN

Sort of a combination. I mean, it was definitely part of the national standup culture, in the sense that these names I’m saying were influential names in comedy. I mean, people didn’t have Netflix specials that instantly went to the top 10 that were seen around the world. It was a little bit more of an incubated scene. And LA, I think, was more abstract and experimental than New York, which when I did see it, New York was more grounded in reality and crowd work. The LA alternative scene was more experimental and ironic, and I thought it was really cool. I remember seeing Fred Armisen do his Fericito character. Just blew my mind. [Laughs.] He was this band leader who came on with the mariachi band, and he hired the mariachi band. He’d walk on stage and he would just crack jokes, and he ran out his whole time, and they never played, and then they all walked off stage.

EO

Oh, my God. [Laughs.]

BJN

I couldn’t believe that a man would go to this expense and lengths to do this. It was just magical. This commitment to the bit at Largo. And he probably lost money on the gig, right? They probably gave him one-hundred bucks and the band cost him two-hundred, but it was just funny enough that he had to do it. I just admired that so much. That was really cool. I loved Mitch Hedberg. I saw him live a couple of times.

EO

Were you taking notes in the crowd? Were you at your table writing notes during the sets?

BJN

Um, stealing his act? [Laughs.]

EO

No, not stealing. Observing.

BJN

He was more of an inspiration, even though I was also doing one-liners like Mitch Hedberg. He wasn’t even always a great writer, though he was often a great writer. It’s so weird to have a one-liner guy where his spirit is actually so much the joke and so much of the magic. Even though I was also an aspiring one-liner writer, I would watch Mitch Hedberg. He was a magical figure. That was pure joy to me, Mitch Hedberg. Demetri Martin or Emo Philips were also doing very well-written one-liners, but it was more like, “Okay, sure. I wish I had written that one joke. I wish I’d written that joke.” But Mitch Hedberg was like a unicorn.

EO

What was The Office like? Had you even experienced the show as a viewer before you got intercepted into that universe?

BJN

I had seen the British Office. I knew they were developing an American Office.

EO

What was the reception of the British Office here?

BJN

It was a cult phenomenon. People passed burned DVDs around.

EO

No.

BJN

Yeah, from England. And you had to find the right DVD player to play the right DVD because sometimes it was the international format. But it was so important that people passed this thing around because it was that different.

EO

And different to the experimentality permeating in L.A.?

BJN

It was so raw and emotional and mean and drab. It was just all the things that weren’t really on American television. It was like you had to borrow a DVD from someone who had burned it and their player to watch it. I watched it, and it was great, and I heard they were doing the American version.

EO

How did you hear about it?

BJN

I don't remember exactly, but...

EO

Like little whispers about town?

BJN

Yeah, it was probably in Variety or something, or another comedian mentioned it, or my manager said, like, “Have you heard this?” I don’t know. Or, “Oh, here’s the DVDs, they say they’re making an American version.” I don’t know what it was. But everyone knew they were making one, and there was a lot of skepticism that the Americans were going to ruin it. I was terrified that that would be true, both before and after I worked on it. But when I got the job offer, I also thought, I had worked on Raising Dad, most shows are aspiring to do something lame. They’re aspiring to copy a show that’s already lame. At least The Office is aspiring to be one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen. So I thought that that was a good reason to try. Even if we fell short, at least we were emulating something great. And it wasn’t just great, it was real. It was really an admirable show.

EO

But what was real about it?

BJN

It was a show that truly could have been mistaken for a documentary. [Laughs.] I think some people probably did mistake it for a documentary. That is not how a comedy would be presented on American television. The heartbreaking, thwarted crushes and drabness and misery and tedium and ego and all of these things presented as they really were by people who looked like real office workers and had the rhythms of real office workers and there was no music. Obviously, there was no laugh track, which was unusual then, too. I mean, it was just so, so different and refreshing.

EO

But what was it like actually developing the show? Because, on the internet, people are like, “Why does this guy have an opening credit and he’s not even in most of the shots?” or whatever. Were you part of developing the original fabric of the American version? Were you one of the first people cast?

BJN

Yeah, I was cast because I was early in the process. I met Greg Daniels early on. I was cast and hired as a writer at the same time.

EO

How important is the acting and the writing to you? Are they equally intuitive?

BJN

I think whatever you can contribute, you do. So, if your character is not going to contribute or you can do something funny as a performer, you should, and if that week or season, you’re inspired to be writing a certain storyline, you should. Contribute where you can.

EO

What was it conceptualizing that project from the early stages?

BJN

I mean, that was all Greg Daniels's doing. That was all his. He guided us and he encouraged a lot of rambunctious arguments and opinions from the original writing staff. But he was the conductor of the orchestra.

EO

What did you feel like your instrument was within the orchestra?

BJN

My point is that I had multiple instruments, and sometimes you pick up the tambourine and sometimes you pick up the oboe. Whatever was needed or I felt I could play.

EO

You experienced celebrity in a really specific and uninterrupted way, in a way. It ended right as social media started to take form. Because it ended in 2013?

BJN

Well, it depends when you consider social media taking off. Remember people were watching videos on the internet on Youtube and iTunes right as the show started. Our show was pretty different from what was on television but was finding an audience largely because a new generation was watching and responding to that kind of show.

EO

While you were doing that, did you not collaborate on any other projects? Or once you actually started to inhabit that role within that world, did your motivations change?

BJN

It was a pretty all-encompassing project. We had a few months off, and we would do movies or...

EO

How rigorous was it as an experience?

BJN

Incredibly. It was two full-time jobs, really. So it was 5:00 a.m., 6:00 a.m. call-time many days as an actor, and work till 10:00, 11:00 p.m., 12:00 a.m. at night as a writer, and sleep when you can, take a nap in your trailer.

EO

Like there was no time to think about anything else?

BJN

I mean, if we had a hiatus. I did a few movies during breaks, and Mindy wrote a book. You could do some things, but it was mainly the show.

EO

How do you feel now looking back on it? It sounds like boot camp.

BJN

I feel really lucky. I think it was such a rare education to work with such great people and have an audience that was so broad and that demanded twenty-two minute episodes, twenty-two episodes a season. You had to be funny. You had to pass as a documentary. There were so many things that you had to deliver that were so hard to do.

EO

Then you ended up actually moving into this space of writing a book. How did that happen?

BJN

I just wrote a book. And then a second book. When The Office ended, I wanted to clear my mind of all these ideas I had, and I started outlining what could be a movie and what could be a TV show. So many ideas just were the idea themselves and they turned into a short story collection.

EO

How do you structure your process? Is it just intuitive? Is it hyper-conceptual? Do you have collaborators?

BJN

On different things, there always is a collaborator on some level, whether that collaborator is a producer or an actor, or whoever you’re doing it with at the studio. I have an animated project right now with a good friend I wrote. I have another movie I might write for a director, another movie that I will direct. But it will take a great producer to get it all to come together. So, I think you need to figure it out each time.

EO

It's such a hard thing to talk about the world of Hollywood because it’s like this hall of mirrors, everyone’s respective careers and how the pieces come together is extremely different. There’s never the same puzzle pieces or false starts.

BJN

Yes. I think, especially now, it’s changing so much. There used to be such a reliable factory of a television. There were this many TV shows a year, this many romantic comedies come out in theaters a year. There were certain expectations of entertainment that you needed people to have those jobs and you could try to get your foot in the door in that job. Now, I feel like that people starting out not only have to get their foot in the door, they have to invent the job.

EO

No, literally.

BJN

And prove that it will make somebody money. And they have to negotiate their own salary and everything. I guess every generation figures it out for themselves. But I don’t know how this generation is going to be able to.

EO

Yeah, because the way you talk about it, you’re like, “I was there,” and I’m like, Yes, but it’s so different now. Because the expectations and demands for us as artists-consumers are so unbalanced because there are so many platforms. Your generation was lucky because you were able to take your time and identify specific goals and learn the jobs as you went along. What is your experience of how the standards are or what it means to break into this industry? So many things are being produced or developed, rather, but never see the light of day. Or that there’s an industry of people developing things that are never realized. That you could be a working writer but never had anything shown on screen. That’s like the flip side of what we almost never talk about publicly.

BJN

Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a version of it where people pay you to do that, and there’s a version where you do that on your own. So, I think there’s always been both of those, but probably now, it’s more of the latter.

EO

Has streaming changed the way you and your cohort occupy space within contemporary media? It’s really specific because you guys set the standard for what came after with these shows.

BJN

Who set the standard?

EO

I think shows like The Office. I was looking and it’s been twenty years since the final episode of the British Office.

BJN

Oh, wow.

EO

You guys got to really experiment with the form.

BJN

I think that we, the American Office, got to be incredibly experimental with what we made. But I don’t think we got to experiment with the form. I think we were handed the British format and the NBC marching orders. And then we, under Greg Daniels who protected and guided us, got to be incredibly creative with what storylines we wrote and jokes we made and takes we did and what we improvised. I don’t think we were tasked to be experimental with form. I think we were lucky that we could fulfill this very experimental form.

EO

The habits of how media was structured and consumed at the time had longer staying power. People really did live with the jokes that you guys made, and they had a longer shelf life than most jokes are experienced today. I think that it was a very specific type of television and genre that informed humor on a social level. I mean, you have Succession, these really great shows now, that deal with similar worlds, but it’s a different type of writing. Like we’re inhabiting a different type of consciousness. Do you know what I mean? I was thinking about The Office as a situational comedy. It’s so much about creating environments to inhabit or creating a sequence or a storyline to inhabit that I think is really interesting. In more contemporary shows, it’s also about mirroring this real world, imposing this really intense logic onto the real world or something.

BJN

I love observational shows. I don’t know why there are so few right now.

EO

I'm curious if you view yourself as an observer, in terms of why you don't think that your life is the most interesting thing. Are you responding to things that you see mainly in the world?

BJN

Yeah, I am. [Laughs.] What do you want me to answer?

EO

I’m just writing this essay in my head. The interview format is a way to present the parts of people’s lives to an audience in an interesting way.

BJN

What are you most interested in in an essayistic sense?

EO

I’m just curious about you. We all decide to inhabit this space in a different way. What has kept you motivated within this space?

BJN

I think there’s two ways to go. You can be self-conscious. You can try to be very self-conscious or very unselfconscious. And I think that my path and inclination and compass is to try to be as unselfconscious as I can be, and repeat back what I hear, what I notice, sort of the way a photographer doesn’t invent the street that they come across, but they’re an editor, really, more than a photographer. They know when to click and filter what they saw and what they want to show someone. I think that the unselfconscious way to be a writer is to see what really is funny or heartbreaking or ironic or exciting about the world. And how do you present those moments in a way that people would enjoy it?

EO

Well, what have you learned? What are the secrets? What are your secrets?

BJN

Well, I think one theory I have is that it’s best to be either a very self-conscious artist that is really expressing a particular voice purposefully or try to be an unselfconscious artist in which your voice is going to come out anyway. But you’re not getting in your own way. I think the danger is being in the middle and thinking about yourself in a way that distracts you from noticing the rest of the world, which is actually your real self. Your real self is you as a vessel of what you come across, what you notice, what you see, what you love, what you feel like repeating. There’s this essayist, I think it’s Elaine Scarry, who said, “Beauty brings copies of itself into being.” That when you see a sunset, you want to paint it. And when you hear Borat say, “My wife,” you want to imitate it, for the same reason. I don’t think she used those examples, but it’s the same idea as something speaks to you, and you feel compelled to share it, repeat it, and make it yours.

I think that’s the job of an artist, a comedian, a writer, anyone who has anyone’s attention, all they can do is repeat what they’ve come across that they think is most inspiring. And the voice in which they do that is their voice.

EO

But what are you consuming to then guide you on this process? Are you constantly seeing art? Are you constantly reading books?

BJN

So much art comes from people who have had incredibly intense and unique personal circumstances. They didn’t see those circumstances out, generally.

EO

No. [Laughs.]

BJN

So then that leads to the question, if you want to be great at what you do, and you feel that you would be fueled by more of that, do you seek it out? I think that’s probably inorganic and a dead end. But that also means it’s not fair who gets to be a great artist or a great writer because it’s not about who is best and who wins. It’s about everyone being themselves and sharing what they have to share. And the audience is the winner, the reader is the winner.

EO

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because if it weren’t for my circumstances I’m not sure I’d do this work. Bodying this work is crazy hard. I’d much rather be on a boat or in the wilderness somewhere. [Laughs.]

BJN

And do you wish you had more circumstances that inspired creativity? Less? Exactly the same now that you’re in a position to control your life more than you used to? What do you look for?

EO

I think that once you’ve been stubborn for long enough then things start to present themselves to you, and then you just know how to trust the process of what you feel and see. I'm really good at picking people. These opportunities present themselves. You meet a person and you just know that they’re sitting with incredible stories or observations. So, for me, it’s like constantly finding myself, but I’m also constantly having to navigate the world. To survive isn’t really the word, but I’m constantly searching for other things–meaning–to ground myself or sink my teeth into. That’s part of it.

BJN

Well, I think we agree how important and creative being an editor is, and that’s it. Especially in an era when we are all flooded with information, creativity, takes, opinions, all day long. Everything is being recorded, everything is being broadcast, everything is being expressed, so it really becomes about creative editing more than creative generation.

EO

No, completely. When I was watching some of your videos, people would always remark,, “Oh, he’s really good at misdirection,” in terms of your timing and telling jokes. Was that something that was a conscious decision on your part? Do you still think about standup comedy?

BJN

I think about it a lot because it was so formative to me, and I’m curious, if I do it again, what I will be like. So I do think about it a lot. [Laughs.] I think I just get on stage and start talking, you know? I feel it would be different from what I did 20 years ago because I’m different, and comedy is different now.

EO

What do you think comedy is now? Or where do we find comedy now?

BJN

You know what, I think comedy isn’t that different. I think that because comedy is different person to person and night to night and set to set.

EO

What do you think the industry wants from comedy right now?

BJN

I think the industry doesn’t know anything. I don’t think it maybe ever did. [Laughs.] But I certainly don’t think it knows anything now. Because that’s the worst version of repeating without listening. If being the type of writer that I want to be is listening and repeating what you hear, I think the industry is often about repeating without even listening. If you really listen, you hear what people want. And I think what audiences are being given is not what they want. And then the industry’s reaction is too often not to look for the type of originality that people really do want.

EO

Whoa. What do you think people want? Like right now.

BJN

Seduced and surprised, right? Isn’t that what entertainment is, art is?

EO

But I think that contradicts your point a little bit because I was listening to the general culture, and taking the temperature of things. [Laughs.] There is such a thing as the audience not knowing what they want and delivering something that wasn’t exactly anticipated but was deeply impactful and effective?

BJN

Correct. I think people want things that mimic what they respond to in real-life interactions. So, I think that they want the kind of storytelling that they get from a friend, and from a parent, if they're a little kid. They want that kind of thing. They'll accept it. But the kind of thing that feels like it was just preloaded onto their television is not as stirring as what feels like a friend rushing over to you saying, “You'll never believe this.” You know?