{"id":566584,"date":"2026-07-24T21:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566584\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T21:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:23:10","slug":"chris-flemings-hbo-special-sparks-career-surge-and-new-movie-roles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566584\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Fleming’s HBO Special Sparks Career Surge and New Movie Roles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChris Fleming looks wistfully on the wave of YouTube<\/a>\u00a0content creators courted by Hollywood after Backrooms director Kane Parsons and Obsession\u2019s Curry Barker notched runaway horror pic hits at the multiplex.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI missed that. Yeah, I missed that,\u201d the American comedian and actor first known for his absurdist YouTube series Gayle, where he played the titular stay-at-home mom Gayle Water-Waters, tells The Hollywood Reporter at the Just for Laughs<\/a> comedy festival in Montreal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe industry didn\u2019t care. But the people cared,\u201d Fleming recalled, which allowed Gayle to run for just over three years to 2015. But it was a long road from a YouTube series that missed Hollywood\u2019s radar to his first HBO<\/a> streaming special, Chris Fleming: Live at the Palace, which debuted in February. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve had a really solid career for the last 10 years or so, where I\u2019ve been able to do theaters for my own fan base. But the HBO special and the success of that has blown things through the roof,\u201d Fleming explained. For starters, he\u2019s in demand for movie and TV series gigs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBefore the special, I was struggling to do one acting gig a year. Now, since the special, there\u2019s been many,\u201d Fleming reports. Besides his frenetic and prancing stage presence and whimsical storytelling, Fleming\u2019s HBO special was memorable for his purple bodysuit designed by Anthony Sartino, who famously created wardrobes for the late rock star Prince.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs to whether streaming comedy specials continue to move the needle with audiences as major platforms increasingly focus on live events and sports, Fleming credits the arms race among Hulu, Amazon, Max, YouTube TV and Netflix with stand-up specials for turbocharging his career.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe accepts that an increasingly fragmented media space means no project or performance can hold lasting firepower for a career like might have happened before the streaming and internet eras overtook the stand-up comedy world. \u201cBut my life before February was a different life than it\u2019s been since February when [the comedy special] came out,\u201d Fleming adds.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor one thing, he\u2019s got two movie acting roles on the go that he can\u2019t talk about yet, one of which has him in Montreal a week after getting a haircut that sheared off his long, wavy locks. \u201cI had to cut my hair to play a normie husband, a religious guy, a new dad. So they wanted me to be unrecognizable, to not look at all like Chris Fleming. That\u2019s why they did me dirty like this,\u201d Fleming explains of being without his signature wolf cut.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Just for Laughs comedy festival wraps this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Fleming looks wistfully on the wave of YouTube\u00a0content creators courted by Hollywood after Backrooms director Kane Parsons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,3284,61,60,126527,4621],"class_list":["post-566584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-hbo","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-just-for-laughs","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}