Comedian Theo Von speaks at length in his latest podcast about his “choppy” New York City performances for an upcoming Netflix special, which went viral and led to concerns about his health.
Von fans expressed concern over a video, taken at the Beacon Theater taping this past weekend, in which Von is seen telling an audience member, “I’m having a long month, I’m trying not to take my own life.”
The video was accompanied by online reports from fans that the taping was disjointed and that many people walked out. “MAGA Comedian Bombs Netflix Special: ‘Failure of Epic Proportions,’” went the Daily Beast headline.
Von addressed the criticisms and concerns on the latest episode of his podcast, appropriately titled This Past Weekend With Theo Von. He stressed that about self-harm are unwarranted.
“You know that if you’ve listened to this show before or seen anything, you know: I say stuff. I would never take my own life. I would never take my own life,” Von said. “Okay? You hear that Israel? I would never take my own life.”
If you’re wondering what he meant about Israel, welcome to the sometimes confusing world of listening to the Theo Von podcast. Some comedy fans have accused him of being pro-MAGA since he welcomed Donald Trump and JD Vance to his podcast and attended Trump’s second inauguration.
But he has also welcomed prominent liberals like Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna, expressed dismay over Israel’s bombing of Palestinians, and said he would have attended any president’s inauguration.
Theo Von on ‘Messier’ NYC Netflix Taping
Theo Von also disclosed that he had recently stopped taking antidepressants to prepare for the taping.
“I just kind of self-weaned myself off. And the reason why was because I wanted, like, during the comedy show, I wanted to have a little bit more emotion during it,” he said on the podcast, video of which is here if you can’t see it above.
“I just wanted to have some more feelings. … If you ever take antidepressants, or if you haven’t, they kind of take away your feelings, so you just kind of stay in this space where you’re OK. And it’s nice, it’s a safe space, but… you’re like the astronaut that kind of stays on the ship sometimes.”
That metaphor is the kind of perceptive, poetic turn of phrase that draws many to Vonn’s work even if they don’t align with his politics.
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Von also said he was rattled this month by the shooting of Charlie Kirk, and his nonconsensual appearance in a Department of Homeland Security video celebrating arrests and deportations. The video, posted on DHS’ X feed last week, opened with Von saying, “Heard you got deported dude, bye” and featured trap-style beats.
Von objected on X: “Yooo DHS i didnt approve to be used in this. I know you know my address so send a check.”
He added: “And please take this down and please keep me out of your ‘banger’ deportation videos. When it comes to immigration my thoughts and heart are alot more nuanced than this video allows. Bye!”
Von elaborated during his podcast that he made the “heard you got deported” quip about a year and a half ago when a fan asked him, in a parking lot, to send a message to a friend who had recently been deported. He didn’t even know if she was serious, he explained: “I didn’t know if it was real or not.”
He added that he had complicated feelings on immigration, and that his own father emigrated to the United States from Nicaragua. “One of my prized possessions I have is his immigration papers when he came here, and I have them in a frame,” he said.
He also said he believes ICE crackdowns may be part of a broader move toward the United States becoming “a surveillance state”: “I feel like they’re doing a lot of bookkeeping in the country right now, because we’re going to get into a surveillance state, and everyone is going to have to be on the books,” he said.
Theo Von on Charlie Kirk
Von also said Kirk’s shooting, during a public appearance at Utah Valley University, made him apprehensive about his own public appearances.
“We get to do the job, right, which is performing, speaking in front of strangers,” he explained, adding that he and everyone had “just seen this thing with Charlie Kirk, right?”
“Like, we all watched somebody get lit up. We all watched somebody get murdered casually on our phones, right?” he added. “There’s no warning on a lot of videos you see.”
He said seeing something so violent adds to “a lot of stress,” — “some of it I was aware of, and some of it you just don’t know you’re aware of.”
He said that in the days before the taping, he received a jarring call from “a high government official saying, ‘Hey, if you need some extra security in your neighborhood or some extra police cars on patrol, let me know.'”
Add that stress to the already high pressure of recording a Netflix special. Von said there were several last-minute changes to the taping of the two shows. (Comedians taping a special usually record at least two performances, for added coverage and takes.)
“There’s a lot of last-minute choices to be made. It seemed to go messier than the past specials that I’d taped, right? It seemed to be a lot more confusion,” he said.
“It was just little things,” he elaborated. “Like the second I got on stage, the first show, I couldn’t feel any moisture in my mouth… You ever remember that feeling if you were in high school, when you got high, and then you were standing there talking to your friends and you were just too high and you were just literally standing there, just trying to pretending to be yourself a little bit? So I had a little bit of that going on, and it started off choppy the first show.”
At one point during the second taping, as he tried to deliver his routines in order, “I didn’t feel like myself. I felt like I was trying to kind of pretend to be myself,” he said.
He also didn’t use a Teleprompter, though one might have helped, he explained.
Still, there were elements of the show he was very happy with.
“The second half of the first show went good,” he said. “And there were some beats that I got that had, like, an emotional piece to them that I wanted, and that felt exciting.”
He said his team is editing the special together, and they’ll see how it turns out. Von also stars in the upcoming comedy film Busboys, with David Spade, which they both produce and co-wrote.
Main image: Theo Von on This Past Weekend.