Have you heard the one about the Wall Street lawyer who walked into a bar and ended up with his own Broadway show? That may sound like the setup for an old joke, but the real punchline is Paul Mecurio’s successful second career in comedy, which has seen him win Emmy and Peabody awards for his work on The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. I recently spoke with Mecurio — whose acclaimed one-man off-Broadway show Permission to Speak returns to Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center Jan. 18 — about his unconventional path into stand-up.
His early interest in comedy:
I remember asking to stay up late to watch the comedians on the late night shows — Carson, Letterman — and then I would go into school and I would do their bits. I would be like Rodney [Dangerfield] in the locker room in high school [and] make funny voices. I was always a cutup; I was voted class clown in my high school, but I had no aspirations to be a comedian.
His first break into show business:
In law school, I started to write. I was just studying constantly, but I would lie in bed and write different sketches. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them, but I was just getting these kooky, funny, quirky ideas for comedy [which] led to me making short films. When I was a lawyer, I bought a camera early on and started making films — again, I don’t know why — and I made one and submitted it to a bunch of festivals. It got into the HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen [and] I saw my movie on a big screen. They had a luncheon for the young filmmakers, and I was having lunch with Woody Allen and Albert Brooks and Spike Lee in a rich executive’s mansion in the hills of Aspen … and then I just went back to my life.
His stand-up comedy debut in a Manhattan bar:
I was really nervous; I was cotton-mouthed, and I was really just rushing to get through it. I thought to myself, “If I just keep talking, it won’t look like I’m bombing.” I would probably look back at it now, and just see like a marginally funny five-minute lecture, as opposed to a set of stand-up. But I did get a couple laughs off stuff that I said, and I remember that was sort of like a drug.
Concealing his stand-up career from family and co-workers:
I lied to the people at work; I was doing these M&A [mergers and acquisitions] deals, and I told them my mother was sick so I went to Rhode Island, but I was really at Aspen. … It started to be [this] secret double life that I was leading. I couldn’t tell anybody at the law firm that I was doing this, because they’d be like, “This isn’t appropriate.” I was hiding it from my girlfriend, who is now my wife … [after finding out] she said, “Well, I thought you were having an affair, because you were supposed to be at the office all the time, but there they were nights you’d come home and your suit reeked of beer and cigarette smoke.” That became my life, and it was getting more and more stressful; the two worlds were converging, and I couldn’t keep them apart.
Making audience members the stars of Permission to Speak:
It’s always been weird for me to go on stage and just launch into my act. I will do it, but I like talking to people, and I have a lot of curiosity. Somebody will say something, and it leads to another question, and then it leads to another question.
I was getting these golden moments: crazy stories, fun, interesting, sometimes serious. The premise of the show is we’re nameless, faceless, divided — especially now, politically — but if we get together and share stories, we realize we have more in common than we think, and maybe we don’t have to be so divisive; maybe we can kind of see each other for who we are as human beings and connect better.
People have said it’s like a fun, giant group therapy session; it’s a nonjudgmental space. … The only people I won’t pick [are] if somebody’s trying too hard to be picked, because then they want to try to take over.
Working with director Frank Oz:
Try being directed by Yoda: The guy’s never freaking wrong! [And] he’s a true artist. … He takes everything he does very seriously, and he has an amazing eye. He makes sure that the show is not just about getting laughs every second; he really balanced out the show, and made the focus the humanity, making it about the audience and not just about me.
He feels like there’s some thing that I have that gets people to open up, and he feels very strongly that we need a show like this. There’s a humanity the show that’s really important to him that we not lose.
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This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2025.