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<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI access this madwoman part of me that can be really helpful. We were never allowed to show anger or anything as children, and showing off was not acceptable. You can do anything onstage, and it\u2019s not seen as vain. That\u2019s the job.\u201d
\n Photo: Andrew Max Levy\n <\/p>\n
Comedian Chris Fleming arrives at my hotel in an absurdly tiny seafoam-green car, an object that looks more like a gag gift than a street-legal vehicle. The car is a Nissan Figaro, an obscure\u00a01950s-styled convertible with chrome detailing, tiny round headlights, and a right-side steering wheel. Fleming is six-foot-two, and when he sits in the driver\u2019s seat, his knees fold up nearly to his chest. The top of his voluminous curly hair sticks over the top of the Figaro\u2019s roof frame. He looks like he\u2019s driven straight off the pages of Richard Scarry\u2019s Busytown and onto the streets of Pasadena; he is Lowly Worm bopping around town in an apple.<\/p>\n
In podcasts, internet-comment sections, the replies to his viral Instagram videos<\/a>, and stories from his friends and colleagues, Fleming is described as a Muppet, a fairy, a prophet, a cartoon. I ask Conan O\u2019Brien, who produced Fleming\u2019s new HBO comedy special, Live at the Palace<\/a>, how he\u2019d describe Fleming to someone who\u2019s never watched him perform before. \u201cI would say somehow a six-foot dandelion stumbled on some cocaine and tore itself out of the earth,\u201d he says. Minutes later, O\u2019Brien is still attempting to describe Fleming, and he eventually lands on the image of \u201cthe goop that\u2019s inside a lava lamp.\u201d<\/p>\n Fleming\u2019s work is a hyperspecific, manic, digressive observational comedy buried inside a cloud of performance-art strangeness. A classic Fleming joke<\/a> begins with him positing the existence of \u201cgirlos\u201d \u2014\u00a0a subgroup of women who exist in opposition to \u201cgirlies.\u201d He starts dissecting the girlo as a woman who might have been gay if only she\u2019d been born after 1995, \u201cthe Sapphic Meridian.\u201d Now, he says, the girlo is someone who\u2019s sure she\u2019s not gay because she was once attracted to Colin Firth. At this point, the joke veers into tangents. Without any clear sense of direction, Fleming calls Firth a Tofurky and also \u201ca British man poorly pirated by a team of lesbians.\u201d The Firth line is a typical Fleming move; he loves a joke about celebrities, an offhand observation that\u2019s not quite mean but still manages to be completely devastating.<\/p>\n Then his body starts taking over. He sprints around the stage while acting out girlos who \u201cplant their feet\u201d when they flirt with each other \u201clike the mighty sequoia.\u201d By the end, he\u2019s drifted far from the original setup, through so many divergent ideas and bizarre conceptual corners, that the initial impulse is miles in the rearview mirror. Suddenly, the joke\u2019s careful observation of gender turns onto Fleming himself. He has neither the qualities of the \u201cdivine feminine\u201d or the \u201cdamned masculine.\u201d Both groups, he says, treat him like \u201ca visitor who\u2019s washed up onshore.\u201d He hurls himself prone onto the stage, squirming like an undiscovered marine animal emerging from the deep. On the video clip<\/a> of that joke posted to Fleming\u2019s Instagram account, a commenter notes, \u201cThe person who has to track chris moving around on stage like some kind of daddy-long-legs-in-a-toddler-tumbling-class in order to film these clips deserves an award.\u201d<\/p>\n Live at the Palace is the 39-year-old comedian\u2019s most high-profile platform yet after over a decade of cultish alt-oddball projects, including his web series Gayle<\/a> from 2012 to 2015, the 2018 YouTube special Showpig<\/a>, the undeveloped TV pilot I\u2019m the Mayor of Bimmi Gardens, and 2023 Peacock special Hell<\/a>. With a more mainstream bent, Fleming might have gotten here earlier in his life, and he admits that when he was young, he half-assumed he\u2019d have been more famous by now. But he has not taken the parasocial track of the comedian with a hangout podcast who offers himself up for easy knowability, and he shudders at the thought of reshaping himself to fit corporate dictums. \u201cI hate a company man more than anything in the world,\u201d he says. He now has a devoted following, but it\u2019s taken 15 years to reach a level that allowed him to sell an HBO special, perform shows in theaters, and buy a Nissan Figaro on a whim. (It was about $30,000, and he acknowledges that he shouldn\u2019t have bought it before confirming that a booking for a Red Robin commercial in 2023 would not fall through, which it did.)<\/p>\n \u201cThis is just like Seinfeld doing Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,\u201d I point out to Fleming as we set off for a drive around his favorite spots in Pasadena. \u201cFuck!\u201d Fleming yells, laughing but also sincerely horrified. \u201cThat\u2019s a huge problem if that\u2019s what it\u2019s giving off. Damnit!\u201d That\u2019s the price of a car that\u2019s screaming to be noticed. People notice it then want to understand it. They want to get in it at the gas station. They want to meet the owner and see how he fits inside. I ask Fleming if he cares about cars generally. Is this a hobby? \u201cOh God, no. No, this is pure aesthetic,\u201d he says. He loves his Figaro for its strangeness, for the surprise of turning a corner and seeing an impractical footnote in the history of car manufacturing driven by a flamingo-like person in enormous, bug-eyed sunglasses. But he\u2019s less comfortable with the invitation of it \u2014\u00a0the way it prompts the question, What kind of a person would be driving around in that car? He would prefer to remain alien. \u201cIt\u2019s easier to be seen as an entity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Fleming grew up in Stow, Massachusetts, as an intensely shy kid who nevertheless signed his kindergarten school papers \u201cChris the Comedian\u201d without knowing where he\u2019d gotten that idea. He loved physical comedy and dance. At his older sister Katie\u2019s dance class, a toddler-age Fleming danced along on the sidelines until his mother Nancy told him to stop and pulled him onto her lap. She started feeling wet drips down her legs \u2014 Fleming\u2019s tears, because he wanted to dance so badly. In preschool, he was given a wordless role as Farmer McGregor in a school production of Peter Rabbit and began hamming it up, counting the missing tomatoes and gesticulating at his nemesis rabbit. Around the same age, he played dress-up with his sister and their all-girl troop of cousins. (When they pretended to be the Spice Girls, Fleming was Scary Spice.) Later, he became fixated on pieces of culture like Michael Flatley\u2019s Lord of the Dance and the Yanni album Live at the Acropolis; he spent nine months in high school listening to only the song \u201cSave Tonight,\u201d by Eagle-Eye Cherry, to his sister\u2019s enormous frustration.<\/p>\n \u201cOur mom instilled in us values like kindness and integrity and all those things, but also that comedy is king,\u201d Katie tells me over a video chat. \u201cIf something is funny enough, you can\u2019t reasonably get in trouble for it.\u201d Chris and Katie\u2019s parents were both pharmacists who had their children around age 40, and they raised their kids with a combination of humor and self-conscious, Catholic, New England repression. Chris was perpetually flirting with how far he could push that boundary; he made a deal with his high-school band teacher that he\u2019d do a semester of jazz band, but only if he could perform an unlimited drum solo to the jazz standard \u201cSt. Thomas.\u201d He had never played drums. On a recording of that performance Fleming later texts me \u2014\u00a0a blurry video he took of his old iPod \u2014 an uneven teenage jazz band is suddenly overtaken by an incongruous flurry of percussion, the crowd whooping and laughing when Fleming wallops a cowbell.<\/p>\n His mother recognized his talent, and when he was 16, she drove him to his first open mic in Merrimack, New Hampshire. \u201c\u2018You want to be like Robin Williams, right?\u2019\u201d Fleming remembers his mom saying. \u201c\u2018Well, you gotta do stand-up, motherfucker.\u2019 I was like, I don\u2019t want to do stand-up! Stand-up sucks! I don\u2019t like watching it! I wanted to be in movies, and I found stand-up tedious.\u201d While he revered Williams and had studied his stand-up \u2014 Live at the Palace is inspired in part by Williams\u2019s 1986 special An Evening at the Met<\/a> \u2014\u00a0Fleming was more inspired by Williams\u2019s work as an actor. But thanks to his mother\u2019s insistence, he did that open mic, where he performed a painstakingly planned series of characters all linked by the single fact of wanting to describe that they\u2019d recently seen a deer.<\/p>\n Fleming graduated from Skidmore College in 2009 with a major in theater and one credit short of a dance minor, but he left without any plan for how to translate the comedy he loved into a self-sustaining career. He\u2019d been working since middle school: His first job was one his dad got him under the table at a country club when he was 12, after which he had stints as a ski instructor, door-to-door paint salesman, barista, and dry-cleaner employee. During college, he spent summers working in New York City. He interned at an advertising-production company, where he was given an unwanted and seemingly unlimited Starbucks gift card originally intended as swag for a commercial shoot starring Heidi Klum, and he spent the whole summer mainlining Starbucks with his friends. (\u201cWe called it Klumbucks,\u201d he says.) Another summer, he was ostensibly in the city to get better at stand-up, but his chief love was his job at the flagship Ann Taylor Loft in Times Square. \u201cI was really good at dressing lady cops,\u201d he remembers. \u201cWe were taught to put our hands on their shoulders and talk to them in the mirror, and I still have that training in my body.\u201d<\/p>\n He moved back home and worked as a substitute teacher for a year after college, which was the moment he realized he\u2019d grown up in a bubble of love and support \u2014 a \u201cbounce-house reality,\u201d Fleming calls it \u2014 and wouldn\u2019t have a career if he didn\u2019t buckle down and spend time onstage building an act. This is when Gayle was born. While living at home, he began performing at Boston\u2019s Comedy Studio and developing a character named Gayle Waters-Waters, a middle-age woman much like his own mother, power-walking around the stage while gossiping about her neighbors, worrying about Christmas cards, and insisting that theirs is a shoes-off house. Comedian Gary Gulman<\/a>, who first met Fleming at a Comedy Studio show, was immediately struck by Fleming\u2019s self-assuredness, in how confident he was onstage even though he looked so unlike the typical, bro-y cohort of Boston stand-ups. \u201cA person who is not comfortable with himself, who doesn\u2019t have the right parents or friends or siblings, is going to try to disappear and blend in. And even then, he was very comfortable in himself,\u201d Gulman remembers. \u201cYou immediately see this guy, and you know you\u2019re not going to get jokes about Tinder and how old Joe Biden is.\u201d<\/p>\n The loop we\u2019re driving through Pasadena is Fleming\u2019s usual writing route; it\u2019s a method he\u2019s developed after years of living here that involves consuming huge amounts of sugar and talking through ideas as he drives in circles around town. Fleming first moved to Los Angeles in 2010 and self-produced Gayle as a web series from 2012 to 2015 while working jobs as an SAT tutor and caregiver and companion for a man with Down syndrome to help pay the bills. Gayle was Fleming\u2019s first breakout, especially a video called \u201cCompany Is Coming,\u201d<\/a> where Gayle preps the house for visitors. In the series, Gayle spends endless time fretting about and gossiping with her best friend and rival Bonnie, played by Fleming\u2019s mother Nancy, who had zero reticence about playing a version of herself; she even joined Fleming when he later toured Gayle as a stage show. Gayle was a send-up of what Fleming\u2019s sister refers to as \u201cintensities my mother perhaps exhibited,\u201d but she loved being involved. \u201cThe thing about my brother is whenever he eviscerates you, you always end up feeling loved and appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Gayle also meant that Fleming\u2019s best-known work was for playing a woman, and in the years since, he\u2019s refused to be defined as any particular gender or sexuality. He wears unexpected, gender-fluid combinations of clothing; in a delicious 2020 joke<\/a> about attending a Super Bowl party at Dane Cook\u2019s house, which he says happened \u201cat the height of my androgyny,\u201d he describes showing up in a sundress. But now, he wonders if Gayle\u2019s breakout success has also \u201cfucked everything up.\u201d \u201cI literally played a woman and had long hair, but the joke was never that I was dressed in my mom\u2019s clothes. I never wanted breasts to be part of the joke, so I wore a very small bra so that I wasn\u2019t totally flat,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that also made it look more dysmorphic, because the bra wasn\u2019t funny, which made it more confusing or more of an amorphous space.\u201d He wonders how much that early performance has shaped the frequent questions he now gets about his identity, but he doesn\u2019t worry about it enough that he feels the need to clarify. \u201cIf a British comedian had played a woman, you\u2019d be like, Obviously that is a man playing a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n He does not think of what he does onstage as gender play, but he acknowledges that he\u2019s cultivated an indefinable fluidity. In the first few minutes of Live at the Palace, he tells the audience, \u201cI released a special two years ago, and it sparked a nationwide manhunt for my pronouns.\u201d There is no next line where Fleming then articulates what those pronouns should be. \u201cTo be a good observer of the world, to accept yourself, you have to accept everything,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI have accepted that people can call me whatever.\u201d Fans edit his Wikipedia page, and the pronouns change \u201clike a seasonal menu,\u201d he says, but that has nothing to do with him. It\u2019s a pragmatic perspective as much as a personal one. When you can be interpreted as almost anything \u2014 gay, straight, male, female, nonbinary, asexual, alien, sea creature \u2014 you get, he says, \u201ccarte blanche to talk about literally anything you want.\u201d<\/p>\n Around 2015, Fleming had fallen out of love with stand-up and was struggling creatively. He had retired the Gayle character, and he didn\u2019t want to play clubs like the Comedy Store. (\u201cWhen you\u2019re like me,\u201d he says, \u201cI do think you have to demean yourself to survive at a tourist-trap club.\u201d) He was frustrated by how hard it was to get stage time in L.A., and he refused to try for a platform like Last Comic Standing because he was certain they\u2019d put circus music underneath his performances. When he first moved to L.A., he\u2019d hoped he might get cast on Saturday Night Live, but he never made it to the camera-test stage after a showcase in front of Lorne Michaels. What eventually made stand-up click again was realizing that he could still access some element of Gayle onstage. He has moved away from recurring characters, but his performance of Chris Fleming As Himself has gotten more physical, raucous, and frenetic. Gayle had given him permission to play with exaggerated, attention-seeking physicality onstage, and in the years afterward, he was able to internalize that those things were not Gayle; they were him. \u201cI access this madwoman part of me that can be really helpful. We were never allowed to show anger or anything as children, and showing off was not acceptable,\u201d Fleming says. \u201cYou can do anything onstage, and it\u2019s not seen as vain. That\u2019s the job.\u201d<\/p>\n As we tootle around Pasadena in the Figaro, I ask Fleming what happens when he does perform in more mainstream comedy venues. He has spent his career making conscious choices to avoid the club-comedy spaces he\u2019s sure will reject him, he says. He\u2019s been disconcerted when he tries to open for more mainstream comics like Nikki Glaser<\/a>, whose crowds wonder what to do with someone who looks like Weird Al and prances around the stage like a My Little Pony. In 2023, he opened for the band Guster for a show that did not go particularly well. \u201cHis references are so deep. You have to go in knowing you\u2019re going to a certain kind of dance party,\u201d Guster\u2019s lead singer, Ryan Miller, says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a restaurant in Times Square. He\u2019s not an Applebee\u2019s, where there\u2019s something for everyone. It\u2019s a specific thing. But then who wants to be that? Who wants to be a suburban mall in Indiana?\u201d<\/p>\n Fleming pulls over on Arroyo Boulevard for a moment to show me his favorite parking lot in the world, and I have to admit that this overflow Rose Bowl surface parking ringed by the San Gabriel Mountains is, in fact, lovely. I ask him if it would be helpful to give mainstream audiences some labels so they more readily understand who he is. \u201cIt probably does work against my career trying to shake that stuff as much as I do, in terms of growth or being easy to digest,\u201d he says. Labels can provide an anchor for unfamiliar things, I suggest. \u201cOh God, you saying \u2018anchor\u2019 right there \u2014\u00a0my heart just sank. That feels like a cage,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m envisioning a cage. Specifically the ones they put you in to meet sharks.\u201d<\/p>\n Fleming agrees to show me his cabin, a small place on Lake Arrowhead about 90 minutes outside of Los Angeles. Like the Figaro, he bought it on a whim after browsing the area on Zillow. This time, he picks me up in a more practical vehicle, a neon-orange Bronco Sport. He pumps a pop selection in the car and pauses to make sure I fully appreciate the new Hilary Duff single, \u201cRoommates,\u201d which he loves despite his disgust for the lyric \u201cLife is life-ing.\u201d We stop for boba on the drive up. He orders green tea and passionfruit every time; at his favorite boba place in Pasadena, the container of passionfruit mix has a \u201cChris Fleming Fuel\u201d label on the back. Fleming used to be more of a partier and decided to get sober two years ago. He now drinks a digestively implausible amount of boba.<\/p>\n Fleming hasn\u2019t done much to redecorate the cabin after buying it in 2024. There\u2019s a two-story vaulted window with a view of the hillside, a keyboard, a sofa, crates for when Fleming drives up with his three rescue dogs (Daysy, Erik, and Luchie, two pit mixes and a miniature poodle), and a vintage Mork & Mindy poster on the wall. He also owns a home in Pasadena, but the mountainous area reminds him of where he spent childhood summers in New Hampshire, and it\u2019s where he prefers to go when he needs to focus on new material.<\/p>\n Beyond fully embracing the Gayle-driven aspects of his stand-up, one of the crucial elements of Fleming\u2019s recent success is how prolific he can be. At a time when comedians can flood Instagram with crowdwork clips<\/a> to achieve constant internet virality without writing new jokes, Fleming has refused to participate. \u201cOh my God, leave those poor people alone!\u201d he says, imagining a crowd of overinterrogated audience members. Instead, he\u2019s his own video editor, producing clips from his touring events or his regular shows at Largo in L.A. It\u2019s tedious work, but Fleming loves the control it gives him and how much more he can eke out of a joke with the right cut or caption. His videos pull in tight on his face to underline an expression and deploy strange fonts so that an Instagram Reel\u2019s usually soulless captions instead help to bolster and magnify his material. He loves drippy horror fonts and Papyrus, which he pulls out only sparingly, like in a section of his \u201cgirlos\u201d joke where he plays Jane Goodall cowering from the terror of an interview with Call Her Daddy\u2019s Alex Cooper.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI just feel like I\u2019m reporting the news. It\u2019s things I\u2019m seeing and observing and feeling. It doesn\u2019t feel creative, it feels reported,\u201d Fleming says as we sit on the cabin\u2019s porch overlooking a sharp slope of pine trees. Once he\u2019s nailed it, a joke no longer feels alive to him, and he fears losing the immediacy by then mimicking a past performance. When prepping for Live at the Palace, director Bill Benz says, he watched tape of a show Fleming performed at New York\u2019s Bell House about a year before filming. Benz then saw him perform the hour he planned to film for the special a few months later and realized half of it was new and that he had to make an entirely new filming plan. \u201cThen I saw him again a month later and it was, again, half new stuff, and at that point I realized it was just going to be a documentary. And of course on the day we filmed it, he did stuff I did not know he was going to do.\u201d Beyond a few specific multimedia cues, Benz says, the shoot had to be largely unplanned, and the crew were told to treat the special \u201clike a wildlife documentary instead of live comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n Fleming is particularly skilled at choosing celebrity subjects. They\u2019re often well-loved figures \u2014 people who live comfortably in a mid-tier Hollywood liberal fondness. His new special includes material on Paul Dano, Zach Braff, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and public-radio personality Terry Gross, a longtime fixture of Fleming\u2019s preoccupation. (Gross tells me she\u2019s \u201cflattered\u201d by the special\u2019s joke, which imagines her cleaning a gun before interviews. \u201cHow does he know? I thought there weren\u2019t any cameras.\u201d) Celebrity commentary is one of the most obvious draws to Fleming\u2019s work; for the right audience, it feels like delicious, petty, sharp but not cruel gossip, with an obvious ring of truth to it. \u201cThe reason he can get onstage and rip into Establishment figures is because he\u2019s truly beholden to no one,\u201d Fleming\u2019s friend, comedian and actor Hannah Einbinder, says. Sometimes he\u2019s full of disdain, like when he mimes an impression of Subway Takes\u2019s Kareem Rahma<\/a>. Sometimes it\u2019s more about Fleming negotiating his own adjacency to fame. The special\u2019s Lin-Manuel Miranda joke is about Fleming accidentally DM-ing Miranda an unedited two-minute-long video of himself breathing heavily outside a Starbucks. \u201cThat did happen,\u201d Miranda tells me before emailing screenshots of the videos as proof. The two are not close; the exchange happened after Miranda commented on Fleming\u2019s Instagram clip about boomers communicating through Bitmoji<\/a>, which he then sent to his parents. \u201cHe\u2019s really a cultural anthropologist for things we don\u2019t yet have language for,\u201d Miranda says.<\/p>\n Fleming does not subscribe to the Tina Fey\u2013voiced articulation of contemporary fame, the one that insists authenticity is dangerous and expensive<\/a>. \u201cAlmost everything I put out about an archetype is actually about someone specific in my life, and I\u2019m always having to apologize, and so why not do that to a celebrity I\u2019ll never meet?\u201d he says. Yes, it\u2019s more likely that he will actually encounter the people he\u2019s joking about now. \u201cI talk about Zach Braff in the special, and I\u2019m going to have to do Jimmy Kimmel with Braff. I\u2019m going to have to go up and say, \u2018Sorry, sorry, sorry,\u2019\u201d he admits. \u201cMy life is an apology tour.\u201d It was always going to be awkward. It would be much worse, Fleming says, if he didn\u2019t at least get a joke out of it. \u201cI don\u2019t think Chris cares at all,\u201d Fleming\u2019s friend, comedian Caleb Hearon, says. \u201cI don\u2019t think Chris is concerned about what parties he gets invited to or if he\u2019s going to meet Colin Jost and have to demur about the bit<\/a>. It\u2019s maybe one of the most charming things about him. I mean, my God, he doesn\u2019t have a podcast, and he\u2019d be making millions.\u201d<\/p>\n Fleming, in fact, loathes the idea of his own podcast and the prospect of sitting and chatting endlessly about his private life for public consumption. He grits his teeth through the appearances he knows he needs to make in order to further his career. Podcasters, he says, are \u201ccharlatans,\u201d and while he doesn\u2019t mind guesting on a friend\u2019s show, most of them feel like \u201cbeing sent to the principal\u2019s office.\u201d Even the ones he likes are a chore. On an episode of Mike Birbiglia\u2019s Working It Out podcast<\/a> from 2024, Birbiglia listens to Fleming tell a story about his childhood habit of perpetually running away from his mother, sprinting off into a rainstorm rather than pragmatically ducking into her car. Has he talked about this onstage? Why not? Birbiglia keeps asking, and Fleming keeps dodging. He rankles at overly personal questions, he says, which \u201cmake me feel like my hackles are up, and I have to protect myself. I feel like I\u2019m at the gyno.\u201d He does not want to winnow himself down to a few telling childhood anecdotes, and he grimaces at the specter of smug self-disclosure. \u201cIra Glass poisoning,\u201d he says with a side-eye glance.<\/p>\n Fleming shows me around the Lake Arrowhead cabin, where he makes us both tofu tacos for lunch and discusses what he reads (plays, mostly) and his love of horror movies. He talks about the fact that all of his physical stunts mean that he keeps hurting himself onstage. He does not exercise or treat himself as an athlete, and as a result, he\u2019s constantly getting bruised, pulling muscles, tweaking his back. He chipped his front tooth by hitting his face on the stool between the first and second tapings of the new special, and he\u2019s still trying to decide whether he should get it fixed or keep the chip as a souvenir.<\/p>\n He does not say anything about his home in Pasadena, but on our jaunt in the Figaro, he shows me a neighborhood where he\u2019d like to buy a house: quiet, suburban, tree-lined. He is in a relationship, but he does not want to offer information about with whom or for how long. There are tender things, like the realities of his parents aging, that he would prefer to remain private. He wants to be seen; no one could work as hard as Fleming has, post as much on Instagram as he does, and choose to drive in such an attention-grabbing variety of vehicles without wanting to be seen. But he doesn\u2019t ever want his audience to feel like they know him. He believes that intimate, vulnerable one-man-show style comedy is cringey and indulgent; of course, to be rejected after telling a story about your childhood would feel different than being rejected for a joke about snacks in Trader Joe\u2019s<\/a>. He insists that all interpretations of him are valid, and he wants to ensure those interpretations are based on the specific things he has chosen to reveal. When I wander into the small lofted upstairs area of his cabin, I see a splay of notes on his desk written in bold black marker. \u201cGirlos,\u201d one of the papers reads. \u201cColin Firth.\u201d \u201cHusband Dan and 6 (3) little psychopaths.\u201d There is a drawing of a child crouched on a ride-on suitcase, notes for a joke Fleming posted online<\/a> in January. I suspect he has put them out on the desk for me to find.<\/p>\n \n Fleming in Live at the Palace. HBO.\n <\/p>\n \n Fleming in Live at the Palace. HBO.\n <\/p>\n Live at the Palace is a worthy attempt to capture the experience of seeing Fleming live. It has fewer performance-art flourishes than his previous Peacock special, which is to its benefit; he loves the sprawling strangeness of mixing other art forms into his comedy, but his work is often more captivating when it\u2019s stripped of ornamentation that takes away from seeing him onstage sprinting and frolicking and grimacing. It\u2019s a more polished presentation of Fleming. He\u2019s in a lush theater with red velvet seats and gorgeous baroque gold details. He\u2019s begun working with clothing designer Tony Sartino, who has made clothes for Prince and Elton John. \u201cI watched a lot of his YouTube videos, and they looked kind of messy. He was just grabbing pieces \u2014\u00a0some feminine, some masculine \u2014 and I said, Oh, I see the confusion here. He needs someone to help him tie it all together,\u201d Sartino says. For the special, Sartino created a jumpsuit in Prince purple with fabric that stretches to accommodate his movement, a high collar, zip-off sleeves for a bit of surprise, and a small bejeweled butterfly on the lower back.<\/p>\n But the special is not too polished. Benz\u2019s video monitors had been set up directly beneath the Palace\u2019s stage. Fleming was slamming around on the stage above them, Benz says, \u201cand when he hit the ground, the ceiling would rattle. It was like being in a bombing campaign.\u201d Around the midpoint of the special, Fleming winds up for a joke about Oreos, which was material Benz had never heard before. \u201cIs that a pile of soot?\u201d Fleming asks, miming a person examining the topping options at an ice-cream parlor. \u201cOh no, it\u2019s just America\u2019s cookie, maimed beyond recognition. Looking like a cartel is trying to send a message. Looking like a witch has been grinding them up all winter.\u201d A woman in the audience begins scream-laughing as Fleming imagines the celebrity equivalent of Nabisco\u2019s disregard for brand identity, this utter lack of care for someone\u2019s dignity and integrity. \u201cThis would be like if you saw Dame Judi Dench selling vibrators on Instagram,\u201d he says, his hands twitching as he uses the microphone to demonstrate. Fleming becomes a Nabisco supervillain, telling a hopeful Oreo licensee to use and degrade the Oreo however they see fit. He becomes a high-schooler stomping on Oreos in the back room of an ice-cream shop. He never becomes the Oreo; if he did, the joke would fall apart. There\u2019d be too much sympathy in watching this cookie get pulverized by unfeeling overlords. The joke ends, and Fleming walks off the stage. But then he strolls back on to add one more thought. \u201cThat exact same dialogue could be copy-paste applied to whoever represents Eugene Levy for commercial work,\u201d Fleming says casually.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n ![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3488c41e3444115df5a269c25f44e36791-chris-secondary.rdeep-vertical.w460.jpg\")
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