comedian

Comedians Jo Koy and Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias are used to delivering big laughs on large stages. But in the world of major L.A. venues, there’s big, there’s massive, and then there’s SoFi Stadium.

The show starring both comedians was billed as a record-breaking feat for stand-up when they sold out the 70,000-seater. Though the pressure to fill up the stadium was off, it still remained to be seen how the two comics would make their most dedicated fans laugh from more than a football field away. By that criteria, Saturday night was definitely a win.

Kicking off the early portion of the show at 7 p.m., fans were already filling the seats as opening acts from Iglesias’ camp, including Matt Golightly, Joey Guila, Alfred Robles, Martin Moreno (who celebrated his 58th birthday on stage) and ventriloquist funnyman Jeff Dunham got the crowd warmed up for about an hour before Iglesias took the stage first.

Comedians Jo Koy and Fluffy perform Saturday at SoFi Stadium.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

It was almost 8 p.m. when Iglesias emerged following a video skit playing on the jumbo screens and the stadium’s massive halo scoreboard with his funny misadventures of a routine doughnut run at Randy’s Donuts that turned into the plot of “Sons of Anarchy” spinoff “Mayans M.C.” featuring lead actors Emilio Rivera, a.k.a. Miguel Golindo, and Clayton Cardenas, known for playing Angel Reyes. Reyes caused the first major eruption of noise in the crowd by pressing a detonation device that triggered columns of smoke that filled the stage as Fluffy made his entrance in a white flat cap and custom Los Angeles button-up to greet the sold-out stadium.

“Thank you for being here, all I have to say is we did it!” Iglesias proclaimed as the crowd cheered.

Pointing and waving to fans in the nosebleeds, he took time to embrace the moment that topped his previous triumph of performing at Dodger Stadium.

Fluffy takes the stage at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Though the stage couldn’t have been bigger, both comedians used their ability to make a large event feel intimate by drawing the crowd in through storytelling and making them feel like they were part of a conversation. Iglesias set the tone of his set right away by telling us about the chisme (a.k.a. salacious gossip) surrounding his newly married stepson that weaved into stories about his travels all over the world including his controversial stop at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

Iglesias also took a pause to relate one other historic fact about the two stadiums in L.A. he’s now been able to sell out.

Santino Villalovos of Tracy, Calif., shows his Fluffy tattoo during the Jo Koy and Fluffy show at SoFi Stadium.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

“The two biggest shows in comedy were Dodger Stadium and SoFi Stadium. … And what did they both have in common? They both featured a Mexican,” he said.

Even though he thought about retiring as a comedian after filling up Dodger Stadium (twice) to film his special “Stadium Fluffy,” Iglesias said the SoFi show inspired him to keep pushing himself. And alongside Koy he knew they could do it.

Fans react to special guest Jamie Foxx during Jo Koy’s performance at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Saturday.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

“Jo I know you’re in the back, thank you for trusting me man, we did it brother. And I’ll say it in front of an entire stadium, love you. Things like this for me is a huge deal because it inspired me and gave me another reason to keep doing what I love to do. And tomorrow I’m gonna be in the same situation I was after Dodger Stadium — what am I gonna do now? But until then I’m enjoy the hell outta tonight and I still have more stories to share with you.”

Fluffy’s most controversial (and true) bit of the night was breaking the news to his fans that his name is mentioned in the Epstein files, which sent collective shock through the stands.

“I’ve never been to the island, I’ve never been on the plane and I have never met Jeffrey Epstein,” he clarified.

Fans light up SoFi Stadium during Fluffy’s set on Saturday.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The comedian said that according to reports in the Epstein files, the late convicted pedophile apparently tried to buy tickets to his show at an Improv in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 2014 but was told by his assistant via email that both his shows were sold out.

“Jeffrey Epstein, one of the most diabolical human beings to ever walk the face of the earth. Had the ability to connect with politicians, with influencers, with celebrities. He put people in very compromising positions. He got people on planes. He put people on islands. He was involved in trafficking. He was able to accomplish all these evil, crazy things, but at the end of the day, he still couldn’t get tickets to see my show,” Iglesias said.

Jo Koy reveals himself with the Jabbawockeez at SoFi Stadium.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

After a brief intermission, things transitioned to Jo Koy’s portion of the show featuring warm-up sets from TikTok skitmaster King Bach and longtime friend and stand-up star Tiffany Haddish, who came to the stage looking ready for the red carpet with a flowing silk dress, hair blowing in the man-made wind to deliver her brand of high-energy stories about becoming a real estate tycoon in South-Central.

When it was Koy’s turn to enter the stadium, he slipped in undercover, dressed as one of the Jabbawockeez — the legendary masked hip-hop dance troupe that danced onstage to a medley of West Coast hip-hop dressed in red with acrobatic swagger. At the end of a brief routine, Koy unmasked himself as one of the dancers, eliciting cheers from the crowd as his son helped him change onstage into his regular attire, Dodgers hat and a jean jacket.

Jo Koy performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Saturday.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Always a man of the people, his set also reminded us that he’s also a man of the pets, specifically dogs, launching into a long bit that felt worthy of a slightly more adult version of a Pixar movie. But beyond jokes and stories, Koy kept coming back to the idea that laughter, more than fame, marketing or money, is what helped the comedians’ big plans for SoFi come together.

“This place is full, all the way to the top, people laughing and having a good time. I know there’s a lotta s— going happening in the world right now but guess what, we don’t wanna hear it right now. We came to have a good f— time. I’m not here to debate s—, everybody’s in here, everything they said wasn’t supposed to happen happened. Look around, every f— color of the rainbow is in SoFi Stadium tonight.”

Jamie Foxx, left, sings with Jo Koy at SoFi Stadium.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The vibe of the set was all about escaping the problems of everyday life. For most of the night that was taken care of by comedy. And sometimes that escapism was aided by the power of R&B. Twice during the night Koy shocked the crowd with special guest sing-alongs, first with Babyface coming out to serenade the crowd with a brief yet un-relenting hit fest he wrote and/or sang including “Can We Talk,” the ‘90s hit he wrote for Tevin Campbell, and the Boyz II Men anthems “I’ll Make Love to You” and “End of the Road.”

The second surprise came courtesy of Jamie Foxx, who popped out in shades and 10-gallon hat to sing the Ray Charles homage-driven hook of Kanye West’s “Gold Digger.”

Aside from any historic accolades, Saturday night was the culmination of a show that was a year in the making and a victory lap for the careers of two comics who’ve been in the game for decades. It was also a moment where comedy’s past met its stadium-size future in the L.A. comedy world. Though it’s hard to say when the next big comedian will have enough fans to fill a stadium in L.A., Saturday didn’t feel like it was the last time comedy fans will show up to fill SoFi for a pair of comedians who put in the work to make themselves a team worth rooting for.

If David Nihill was a philosopher, his credo might be “I digress, therefore I am.”

Instead, Nihill is a comedian. Kind of. “I don’t know if I think of myself in those terms,” says Nihill, whose “Cultural Appreciation” special has 2.5 million views on YouTube. “I wouldn’t even call mine comedy specials.”

Nihill is a conversational storyteller who rarely even moves on stage. “I don’t know how to do performance,” he says, “but I do know how to talk.”

His current show, “Taking Tangents,” which takes him to Irvine, Pasadena and Los Angeles from March 13 to 17, is a wide-ranging collection of tales, with some material shifting from show to show. We’ll come back to it, but first, a few tangents.

Growing up in Ireland, Nihill, 47, struggled to learn, hampered by dyslexia — “I came in the lowest five percentile in the whole country of Ireland for spelling, and I didn’t even spell my name right on the test” — and an aversion to math. He was made to feel inferior because of his difficulties. “I was 100% in the ‘I am a moron’ category,” he says.

Nihill was shoved into a vocational program and most of his friends dropped out of school. He stayed in, but even when his father offered to buy him a Super Nintendo for certain math scores, Nihill fell short. His father bought it for him anyway, he says, “but I sold it and bought myself a motorcycle even though I was 15 and not legally old enough to drive.”

He finished high school and became a poorly paid, overworked apprentice electrician. That was enough to motivate him to go to college; there, he figured out how his brain worked and how to learn. He even developed a passion for reading: His last show, “Shelf Life,” wove in dozens of book recommendations.

During our conversation via video after a New York show, I’d ask one question, then follow Nihill as he ambled through his personal history. He started with a story about jumping off a cliff in Greece and shattering his leg — a part of “Tangents” — then going to Australia, before he stumbled into a master’s degree studying business back in Ireland (despite botching his application). A new friend there took him to his first-ever comedy show in Glasgow — there are even tangents within his digressions — before getting him a job with Enterprise Ireland, the government’s investment fund to boost Irish business overseas. That landed him in San Francisco, part of the “Cultural Appreciation” special. He left to pursue business opportunities in Mexico but, due to a hurricane, somehow ended up in Chile, spent a year wandering north toward America, and then scored an internship in Colombia.

Nihill is a conversational storyteller who rarely even moves on stage. “I don’t know how to do performance,” he says, “but I do know how to talk.”

(Jim McCambridge)

Eventually, Nihill’s story works its way to his current career, which began by accident. “It was never a dream or a goal,” he says. A friend in San Francisco had suffered a spinal cord injury and Nihill wanted to run a fundraiser, but dreaded public speaking.

That leads to a minor diversion, back to a college public speaking course in which Nihill was so terrified that he got drunk before his presentation and introduced himself “as an exchange student from Southern Yemen.”

In San Francisco, he started doing live comedy to overcome that fear. Meanwhile, his business background led him to see an opportunity and he created FunnyBizz, a company and conference where comedians help teach business leaders, like Kevin Harrington of “As Seen on TV,” how to use humor to communicate. The business bankrolled Nihill’s early days in comedy.

While Nihill has lived in America for years, most recently in Los Angeles, he remains passionately Irish, which shapes his shows in several ways.

In Ireland, “your nature is to just default to funny stories.”

He says American stand-up is about taking a topic and making it funny, aspiring for a five-minute joke-filled late night TV spot. Irish comedians say, “This thing happened to me and I think that’s funny. Let me just repeat it.”

The new show is named after “tangents” so that Nihill can go down different rabbit holes each night if he wants. “My head is always doing 60 different things,” he says, and he loves keeping his storytelling “free form and unfiltered,” whether he’s in a pub or on stage (or, apparently, in an interview).

The new show’s subjects will be familiar to Nihill’s fans: his parents, his foolish behavior (there are drunken college-age antics in a story that somehow eventually weaves in White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt) and Irish culture. “There are few countries that punch above their weight in social justice and social impact,” he says, and he always looks to draw connections with other cultures around the world. But the observations and connections he draws are new.

In New York, he added a bit about how 35% of Jamaicans have some Irish roots, quipping “imagine how fast they’d be without that” (in a nod to legendary sprinters like Usain Bolt). But for Nihill, that joke only works if it’s couched within the larger context of the cross-cultural connections, including the fact that Jamaican-born political activist Marcus Garvey drew upon the Irish independence movement for inspiration.

“There has to be some social value to doing it,” he says, although he’s quick to add his comedy isn’t overtly political. “My dad’s a teacher and that lives inside of me. Humor can be the ultimate tool for social activism. I am deliberately getting people to expand their minds in understanding these connections. I want comedy that makes everyone feel good and maybe learn something.”

Nihill on stage at Hollywood Improv.

(Jim McCambridge)

That “feel good” part is central: While he discusses his mother’s death from cancer last year, he leaves out a beautiful but poignant part of their final days together. “I’m deliberately avoiding that,” he says, because he wants to maintain an upbeat mood.

He digresses to tell me the story, however, and it’s literally longer than this entire article’s word count. “A very long answer to a very short question,” he admits, before swerving into a tale about back when his father had overstayed his visa in New York — it involves his dad being interviewed on CNN, getting into a bar fight and avoiding deportation because the immigration officer hailed from County Cork and Nihill’s dad burst into a song from there, earning him a six-month visa extension. The humanity of that scene “in contrast to a 5-year-old being dragged off to a detention center” may end up in a future Nihill show.

Nihill loves sharing the stories that come from observing and listening to people but says he doesn’t love the spotlight, which, he admits, makes comedy an odd career choice. He says he prefers telling stories to just a few people.

“With comedy, the best part for me is that before a show I eat half a chocolate bar and I leave the other half in the hotel room,” he says. “After the show, I get to finish it. That’s true happiness.”