An Interview with Reggie Watts

I snuck into the first empty room I could find. It was the producer’s office at the film production company where I am working, and it was also time for my interview with Reggie Watts, a musician / comedian / beat-boxer—a vocal magician, essentially. He also stars in the IFC series “Comedy Bang! Bang!” which just launched its second season in July. 

I was in awe of Reggie when I watched him perform for the first time, and admired his ability to improvise and create such original sounds with simply his voice and looping pedals. Reggie suddenly answered the phone, his voice cheerful and booming, and I quickly pressed the record button. 

—Julia Edelman

REGGIE WATTS: Good morning.

THE BELIEVER: So, where are you right now?

RW: I am right downstairs from you. [Laughs]  Actually I’m in Brooklyn.

BLVR: Have you always wanted to be involved in comedy?

RW: Well, I mean, not necessarily in the beginning, thinking I would have a career in comedy, but I was always interested in making people laugh.

BLVR: How much of your performance is improvised, and how much is planned? Is there any structure to it?

RW: I mean there’s kind of a structure, because I have a set up where I have a microphone and a keyboard on the side, so those are kind of my areas that I can go to.

BLVR: What have you learned from improvising in your shows?

RW: I keep making discoveries now and then, but you really have to free up your mind and not get locked into one specific thing, or way of doing things. Always make sure you’re not falling into too many patterns, to keep it interesting.

BLVR: What pushes you to create new material?

RW: It’s just the love of discovering new things, and talking about what I believe in, or explaining really ridiculous concepts.  As long as I feel like there’s a movement through those types of ideas, it inspires me to keep going. It’s very similar to skateboarding or surfing, something like that, when people have those types of free form sports where they’re just going for it and trying to discover new things.

BLVR: Your performances are often described as “disorienting,” but what do you think essentially makes them so disorienting to the audience?

RW: Because there’s no narrative, there’s no arc necessarily, there’s nothing that really makes sense. It’s very similar to adjusting the dials on a radio or changing channels on TV randomly. There’s no logical narrative, and usually I’m looking for things that are very disparate, so that I’m making sense...