Interview with Nate Bargatze
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Nate Bargatze
Stand-up comedian from Nashville, Tennessee. His specials include The Tennessee Kid and Your Friend, Nate Bargatze, and he hosted the 77th Emmy Awards.
Source: Team Coco on YouTube
These answers are taken from Nate Bargatze (FULL EPISODE) | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend on Team Coco's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was a great moment for you as a comedian?
2008. You were my first late night appearance. They said, "A limo is gonna come pick you up." But it's just a town car. I'm from Nashville, so if you start throwing the word limo around, I'm expecting a real limo. I was still excited, but it was like, "All right." Little deflating.
It was me and my wife. There's people with cameras taking pictures of the guests that are going to be on Conan coming out of the car. Juliette Lewis, I think, was on the show, so they're looking for that. And right when I walk out, one of them goes, "It's nobody." And then one guy did take a picture. He didn't even hold it up to his eye. He just kind of shot from his chest.
With comedians, if we mess up on stage, right when you get off stage you're saying it to whoever the first person is that comes near you, because you just haven't talked to anybody. No one would even be able to tell, but in my head I knew I messed up a joke. So the first thing I said to Conan when he comes over, I'm like, "I think I messed up."
How did your career as a comedian unfold?
I had a joke about getting in a fight. My buddy took a bite out of his hamburger, and he immediately thought someone else did it at the restaurant, and he got up to go fight him, and we had to calm him down. I sent that joke into Letterman, and they told me it was mundane. I didn't know what mundane meant, so I had to look it up. It wasn't a flattering thing. But then I went to you and you let me do it, and that always meant the most to me.
I came back pretty soon after the first time. My managers at the time, back in the New York days, said, "You can't do it again. They don't let people come back." I go, "Well, John Mulaney just came back." And they go, "No." So I went and did the audition, and I got it without them. I wasn't going to tell them. I was just trying to see if I could get on the show and then have them find out with me on the show. Your own team's like, "I wouldn't even try again."
What advice do you have for new comedians?
I always like to think your goals should actually be simple. You'd be embarrassed if you can't get them. And then your dreams should be embarrassing to say out loud. So your goals are like, I'm trying not to hand out flyers. Well, what do I got to do to stop that? That's a realistic goal, because it's just one level. It's achievable. And so you can then figure out, all right, I got to do this. How do you get on late night? And then once you get on late night, you're like, all right, if I keep doing late night and get TV credits, I can do cruise ships if I have to. You can do whatever as you move on.
If you make fun of yourself, you can go as far as you want. But you have to show love, is what I've learned over time. Even if you talk about your family or your wife or even yourself, you have to at least show some love, or people won't go with it.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as a comedian?
Starting out, I always wanted to play Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. It's our arena. For 20 years I didn't really think I would get there, but I kind of daydreamed. I was handing out flyers in New York City and all this stuff, and you're like, "Oh man, what if I can do this one day?" That was the bucket list thing. It was just kind of far away.
Then when I did Bridgestone, we sold the most tickets ever. It was 19,365. I remember that night having a feeling of, what am I looking at now? I've been looking at that dream for 20 years. So then you just got to find something else, and put it out there, and daydream, and do the same thing, and see if it happens.
Has your career as a comedian progressed the way you expected?
It's very different. Some of the hardest parts of this is when you don't know if they know you, because then I don't know what to do. So I always thought, well, if I can get everybody to know, then I'm a little more in control. If you walk in a room, you can just be like, "Hey, what's up," and you kind of know they know you, so you can make everybody feel like it's a fun room and we're all friends. When you're in that middle phase, where it's straight up 50/50, you're screwed either way.
But in an overall perspective, how I try to handle it is I really try to remind myself that it's not about me. I'm living a life of service. You should be serving the audience. Right before I go on stage, I remind myself, this has nothing to do with me. It's not a celebration of me. It's a show for everybody in that crowd, and I need to do the best show for them.
I live in Nashville. We lived in a cul-de-sac. We keep everything as normal as we can, and moving back home was a big part of that.
Describe your style.
It is conversational, and people think I'm up there just talking. But I never was a crowd work person. I'm not good with that. I like knowing what I'm doing. It's very planned, and I know what I'm going to get in with and get out with.
A lot of times I come up with the funny part first, and I'll put that in my notes on my phone, but I don't write out outside of that. Then I just think about it. I'm really big on how you present it and the transitions. Jokes are the easiest thing for comedians. You can throw a script down and everybody can pitch 500 jokes on it. But it's making it make sense, and it's got to flow, and that's the part that I'll let sit in my head. I just think about it all day.
I would feel mortified if I hurt someone's feelings, and that's why I always wrote it inwardly. As long as you're making fun of yourself and putting yourself as the loser, in a way. With my wife, I can make fun of her, but I do it through me a little bit more.
Tell me about a bit or a project that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?
I had a joke about buying iced coffee with milk at Starbucks that everybody talks about. I originally tried to come up with a joke about how I never have milk unless a woman was in my house. My mom, we had milk, and then the little bit I lived alone till I met my wife, there was no milk, and then with my wife, now we have milk. I tried to make that a whole thing, and I could never make it work as its own joke. So in that Starbucks joke, I just put, "I've never bought milk publicly in the history of my life." You hope it's going to be this big chunk, and it's not, and it becomes one sentence in a story, but it really expands that story. So I grab a lot of stuff for parts.
The George Washington sketch on SNL almost didn't make it, because during the table read, I'm used to performing for a live audience. When everybody's kind of quiet and you're reading it, it's just awkward. When we got to the dress rehearsals, it was on the maybe side, and I really liked it, because I knew it'll do good once I'm in front of a crowd. Lorne was like, "All right, we can try it last." We tried it last, and at dress it destroyed, and then it moved up to third.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
With my Nateland company, you realize, oh, I need to have something else, and you put it out there and daydream and see if it happens. We're very early with the amusement park. Obviously this could all crumble and fall apart and go nowhere. I don't know.
I think experiences are something you're seeing even younger kids really want to do. They want to go do something. We used to get dropped off at the theme park, at Opryland, and you could just go hang out with your friends all day. I want to give that to a parent, because for that kid, they get to go be around their 15-year-old friends, and it's part of growing up, and it's the fun aspect, and have a safe place for them to go do that, where you can trust they can do it. I like the old-timey, like, their whole family worked for Ford. People just worked at this company, and they had real pride.
Nate Bargatze's Full Biography
Nate Bargatze was born on 25 March 1979 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for The Breadwinner (2026), Your Friend, Nate Bargatze (2024) and Mike Vecchione: The Attractives (2023). He has been married to Laura Baines since 13 October 2006. They have one child.