Reno 911! Star Thomas Lennon: The Last 8 Things That Made Me Laugh
The benefits of being an improv sketch comedian—especially one working during a global pandemic—are not lost on Reno 911! star Thomas Lennon. Having played dozens of eccentric characters throughout his career (most notably a flamboyant police lieutenant), Lennon, like many impressionists, felt a call to action when Netflix’s Tiger King premiered last month. Fortunately for the 49-year-old, all the accessories needed for a convincing portrayal of Joe Exotic were already in his closet. After sorting through a variety of blonde wigs, handcuffs and prison jumpsuits, Lennon showcased his transformation during an interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
“Not only did I have a full setup to do Joe Exotic, I had many, many options,” Lennon jokes. “A life in sketch comedy has led to me having pretty much all the stuff you need to have a functioning sketch comedy show in my house.”
By now, Lennon’s wife, Jenny, and 10-year-old son, Oliver, are not fazed by his DIY backyard shenanigans—which is to say that the star has adapted rather seamlessly to self-isolating life, developing new characters on Instagram and creating short-form teasers to celebrate the impending return of Reno 911! The six-season sitcom, which debuted on Comedy Central in 2003, premieres its long-awaited reprieve today, May 4, thanks to the newly-launched mobile streaming service Quibi. For Lennon, promoting the new season—which will consist of 25 episodes, ranging six to eight minutes apiece—has meant Zoom calls with all of his returning cast members and finding ideas for the show’s own TikTok account with Quibi executive Doug Herzog. “The phone call started with I have integrity, I'm never going to do anything stupid on TikTok,” Lennon recalls of one conversation, “and it ended with me basically agreeing to do a dance-off between my Joe Exotic and Lt. Dangle.”
While a mockumentary cop show might play differently considering the events of the last decade, Lennon believes the new season contains the best episodes they’ve ever done. “All the questions you have about, ‘What the fuck would they do today?’ will be answered,” he says. That includes the return of old pranks (Dangle’s bicycle being stolen) and relevant gags, like local teenagers filming some poor firearm practice with their phones. “To have everyone back together was a real joy,” Lennon says. “And we're much closer now than probably we were then. I think we've all grown a lot comedy-wise.”
In the midst of isolation, and in between interrupting his fake colleagues on Zoom, Lennon has found plenty of other sources of laughter. Here, he takes us through the last eight things that have made him laugh.
1. Oh Hello: The P’dcast
There were a couple times listening to Oh Hello where I honestly felt like I might be having a stroke or something, because my laughing was so intense. Somehow not seeing them actually takes it up a notch, which I think is really weird. It's even better because of the intimacy of them in your ears. [Nick] Kroll's totally fake pitches for ads like Subway or Quizno's..."You like sweaty meats? And puffy bread? Quizno's!" I believe one of the pitches was, "If you're in the Cincinnati airport and it's 1994… Quizno's!" I never thought they would be so smart. I know those guys are brilliant, but the fact that their podcast is about [investigating Princess Diana's death], and then when the music kicks in, it’s just fucking wonderful. The other wonderful thing about Oh Hello is I didn't realize how sort of mean [John] Mulaney's character is. [Laughs.]
2. TikTok
There's a lot of TikTok that's just young girls in yoga pants dancing around—which, by the way, the world needs that also, god bless. But sometimes it feels like an FBI check to see if you click. The one that I just watched today, it's my favorite thing I've ever seen. It's two girls drinking wine, set to Enya. One's holding a glass of wine with her mouth below the stem at the base. They both lean back and she puts the glass of wine into the girl’s mouth behind her. I think it celebrates everything good about America right now. There's another kid who's killing me on TikTok who does conversations of Obama and Trump, he's so good. There’s also a guy, @iammoshow, the cat rapper. He's fucking wonderful. He does exactly what you think. He's got cats and then he does some dancing and rapping with them. There's nothing else like that. This is an era where people are so funny that I almost can't believe it. The creativity that's flourishing right now because of the horrible circumstances, people are getting funny as fuck in their garages.
3. Rob Huebel's Instagram feed and Human Giant sketches
His Instagram is magnificent. I think my favorite video was a "How to," where you take a piece of aluminum foil and then you get your family to shut up for three minutes. I think Rob's tapped into a beautiful level of desperation. They're highly relatable videos. Rob's been on Reno 911! with [his sketch comedy group] Human Giant. The Human Giant exorcism scene, at the time it made me laugh harder than anything I'd ever seen. When you see another sketch group that's really, really good, it doesn't always make you happy. [Laughs.] There's a great Human Giant sketch for this time of celebrity, which is called “Viral Videos.” It’s a sketch about a dude who cuts his penis off to get famous on the Internet, and the next guy who gets famous is someone who makes funny faces. It's a real bummer for the guy who cut his dick off.
4. The Zoom Where It Happens
The funny thing about “The Zoom Where it Happens” is it's one of those ideas where [you think to yourself], You guys were just a couple minutes ahead of the curve! I thought that was the real “Hamilton” cast, but I think it's just Broadway people. I think it came out two nights before we had shot our Reno 911! Zoom meetings. It's really a trip. [Our Reno Zoom] was so unscripted that it was a little stressful. The joke of, "We can't hear each other," "Shut up!" “Who's pooping?" There's a very fine line in those pieces between what was just really happening and what's the character. My prop of a giant glass of red wine, that's not fake. The only difference in doing sketch comedy at home is all the giant glasses of red wine are real.
5. My #HandyTom Instagram character
HandyTom is a [character] I've been doing. A big part of my HandyTom stuff is I really do have a crazy OCD, so I did spend a whole day with the steam cleaner on. I was literally the shittiest Avenger you've ever seen, with yoga pants, a steam cleaner and a Camelback stuck in my mouth to hydrate. The weird thing is that there's a certain kind of crazy that does well during this [quarantine]. I took apart a doorknob, put it back together—it was seven hours of work and I was listening to Liz Phair. It worked amazingly for 24 hours, and then the next day the doorknob fell off again. I screamed so loud they could hear it on the international space station.
6. Porcupine Racetrack
This is a little self-promotional. David Wain, from MTV’s The State, took this old sketch of mine called “Porcupine Racetrack” and he had all of us film ourselves singing it. It actually choked me up to see the whole group together even though we're not really together. We've been preparing to do short-form comedy with no resources since 1988. Little short things that you shoot yourself—that was the thing about The State was it was always do it yourself. We all went to NYU Film School, so everybody was handy with technical things. Unbeknownst to me, I was preparing to do short, crappy comedy from a phone. I've been shooting a sketch almost every day of some kind. My wife came out in the backyard and I was just in like a metal speedo doing weird weightlifting.
7. We Rate Dogs Twitter Feed
I could look at that every day. In a time of turmoil and scariness, everything they're doing at “We Rate Dogs” is fantastic. They're all wonderful. You've got to be real careful with “We Rate Dogs” because it's a major rabbit hole. Suddenly it turns into the nighttime and you didn't realize what happened because you were looking at “We Rate Dogs” all day. The dog ratings—10 is the highest score, but the lowest that they will give a dog is 12 or 13 I believe. It's the best.
8. My son this morning
Oliver jumped into a beanbag chair in front of me and then farted into it. And then he said, "Oh, what was that?" There's no way to look it up online, but it made me laugh. Granted, it was easy stuff. This was low-hanging fruit. It's not his best stuff, but sometimes if you just know your audience. He found my boy scout uniform from the ‘80s in Chicago, where I weirdly was a Life Scout, one short of Eagle, and started wearing it. The weird thing was, when he wore the uniform, he started turning into a really useful guy. It's just this bizarre thing. Like usually, he's dancing around and farting and doing weird stuff, and then he puts on the boy scout uniform and he's like, "Father, what can I do for you?”
I can probably distill [parenting] into one idea. There's your child you have who's a little beautiful baby and you love them and they make messes. And then, one day—and it sneaks up on you—you can teach your child how to reset the Wi-Fi router, and then it's like you've got a little pet who fixes the Wi-Fi! He's the canary in our coal mine, the coal mine being the Wi-Fi. You will love them more.
The comedy duo on Albert Brooks, televangelists, and their personal favorites from Awesome Show, Great Job!
Originally Appeared on GQ
