“F*** the Haters”: Matt Rife on Comedy, Controversy and his Serious Acting Ambitions
Roughly five minutes into Matt Rife’s new special, he lays out the framework for his audience. Rather than rely largely on prepared material, as he’s currently doing on tour, he’ll be devoting the next 60 minutes entirely to crowd work, a first for Netflix, which is committed to releasing this hour and another one after it.
“This is just me and you guys. I don’t know what you’re going to say. I don’t what I’m going to say,” Rife explains as his Charlotte, North Carolina audience whoops with excitement. “And I just want you guys to be aware, you are equally as at fault for how this goes as I am.”
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The hour, he continues, will be built around a singular theme: dreams. It’s a subject that Rife knows a thing or two about. After all, he is, admittedly, living his. In fact, earlier this year, he became the youngest comedian in history to sell out the Hollywood Bowl — and that came after he joined Taylor Swift as the only other live act to crash Ticketmaster’s site due to the wild demand for his ProbleMATTic world tour.
Lest you’ve somehow missed Rife’s rapid ascent, the 28-year-old shot to selling-out-arena-level fame after his crowd work went viral on TikTok. In the two years or so since, he’s amassed 19 million followers on that social media platform — and another 8 million-plus on Instagram. He also released a controversial and hugely popular Netflix special, 2023’s Natural Selection and then signed a development deal for a Netflix sitcom that he’d write and star in. More recently, Rife announced a forthcoming memoir and, in this interview, a strong desire to follow in movie star Ryan Reynolds’ footsteps.
Now that Lucid has dropped on Netflix, he hopped on the phone to discuss it and so much more.
I’m trying to keep track of where you are.
Just touched down in Oklahoma, exhausted and wonderful.
I imagine that could just as easily describe your last two years.
I know. Everybody always goes, “Oh, you’re lucky all this has happened while you’re still young.” Like, at 28, you’ve still got all the energy for this. And I’m like, really? I’m so tired. (Laughs.) But no complaints. If being tired is my only worry, I can take that.
OK, let’s start with how you landed on doing a special that is entirely crowd work. It’s usually only a portion of your show, though I know people often assume it’s all you do.
Ah, you read the comments. (Laughs.)
Walk me through the decision.
Well, a few things went into play. The main thing was that crowd work has become something that I’ve been so predominantly associated with over the past couple of years, and I really do feel like I perform it at one of the highest levels. So, it felt like something that I could do really well, and it hadn’t been done at this scale before, being on Netflix and working with a great production. And it’s fun to try something that Netflix hasn’t tried before.
We’re also in the middle of a two-special deal with Netflix right now; Lucid is the first one and then I’m going to do another one next year. So, as I’m building that next hour of material that I’m touring right now, I wanted to put out something that could work any time and that’s one of the great things about crowd work. And I don’t want to downplay it, but this was kind of a side project, like, “Oh, we could just do this for fun in the meantime.” Plus, I knew a lot of my fans missed the fact that I didn’t do any crowd work in [my last special] Natural Selection, which was on purpose, but they were such good supporters of that and I wanted to give them the thing they loved and felt they missed out on. And it buys me even more time to figure out what it is that I want to put in my next special.
There’s a moment in this special where you have a mother and daughter—
(Laughs.)
OK, so you think I’m going to ask you about the mom in the crowd who says she teaches women how to give blow jobs and the daughter who manages her business, but my question is actually about the mother who’s a special needs teacher and her daughter, the behavioral therapist.
Oh, yes, two wildly different families! (Laughs.)
Wildly. Anyhow, they crack some jokes on the subject, but you opt for a different route, mostly just thanking both of them for what they do and moving on. Talk to me about that choice, and is it one you would have made earlier in your career, when there were fewer eyes on you?
I wasn’t worried about anything. I just felt that them leaning into it and making light of a noble profession that they work in was, in and of itself, enough. We didn’t need to dive in. And her daughter wasn’t actually special needs [as the mom joked that she was]; had she been, that might’ve opened a different avenue of where to take that conversation. But I don’t shy away from anything, and it has nothing to do with the amount of eyes that are on me. I have disabled people at my shows all the time and sometimes it’s just a sweet interaction and sometimes I roast the shit out of them. It’s really case by case — it comes down to just reading the room, the person and the conversation. And for me, in that moment, I was just like, that’s enough and I do appreciate what they do for a living.
At another point during Lucid, you address the fact that people take issue with crowd work as though it were somehow an easier, lesser form. Was that premeditated?
No, it just came to me in that moment because we’d hit a point in the show where it was just going so off the rails as I’m talking to a woman who really couldn’t even fully hold a conversation. And sometimes the most obvious thing is the funniest thing, and in that moment, it was very obvious to everyone in the room that, like, OK, it’s not super easy to make a joke out of everything. The audience doesn’t just hand you an alley-oop slam dunk every time. I mean, occasionally they do, and it’s miraculous and wonderful, but more often than not, you have to do 98 percent of the work — and in that moment, I was doing 110 percent of the work. And I think in the back of my head, I’m thinking, people say this is the easiest type of comedy all the fucking time, and this moment proves that I have to do so much more work than they imagine. There really wasn’t much more to it than that. I just thought it was funny that people have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.
The growing popularity of crowd work seems to be controversial in comedy circles. A gripe you often hear is that audiences come to shows now and expect them to be interactive. I’m curious, how respectful are your fans when you’re out there doing prepared material?
I would say a large majority of the time, they’re respectful. Occasionally, they aren’t. But there are pros and cons of doing crowd work. You get to interact with these amazing people that you choose at random, but then people at home are like, “Oh, if I buy a seat in the first five rows, that guarantees me a chance to speak to him.” Or they will purposely yell, thinking, “Oh, if I talk to him and he turns it into something funny, I’m going to be in his next clip.” And I can understand how that could be the perception, but it’s not how it works. It’s rarely the loudest person in the room who’s asking for the attention that’s the most interesting person to talk to. It’s usually the least assuming person who probably had no idea who I was in the first place that sparks the best kind of conversation.
So, yeah, people do yell out sometimes because they expect or want to be the person who gets spoken to, and then I’m kind of forced to entertain it. And this is the thing: People will disrupt a show, which is a bad thing, but then because I’m good at it, I turn it into a good thing, and then they’re rewarded for doing a bad thing. But if I just scold them or I don’t turn it into something funny, then I look like I can’t handle a heckler or I can’t think quickly on my feet. So, I’m kind of forced to rise to each occasion, and most of the time it ends up being something wonderful, and we get a good moment out of it for the show, and the whole audience appreciates it. But I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times that people do ruin a moment of the show.
You recently announced a memoir. What are the pieces of you and your story that you wanted to share that you felt like you perhaps couldn’t do through stand-up or even through a scripted series?
Some of it was just reflecting on the present, if that makes any sense. So much over the past two years, specifically, has been really hard to be present for because it’s all happened so fast. It was weeks after I played six sold out shows at Radio City Music Hall, and my friend sent me this one really fucking cool picture he took of me, where I went, “Oh my God, we did six shows at Radio City Music Hall.” I haven’t had a lot of time to really grasp and appreciate, not that I haven’t been appreciative, the level of what I’ve done over the past two years. So, it was moments like that that I [wanted to reflect on], but also more personal things as well.
Such as?
My grandpa passed away in those same couple of months that everything kind of exploded for me, and so he never really got to see what I’ve been able to build. And for anybody who’s familiar with my story, you probably know how important he was to me, and how I wouldn’t be here at all without him. And at first, when he passed away and the first tour before the Live Nation tour took off, I was like, “This is good that I’m so busy, I’m too distracted to be too sad,” but then you never really grieve. And in this book, there are moments where I got to really reflect on and appreciate what my grandpa meant to me and did to get me where I’m at right now and how much I hope that he’d be proud of me. So, the book was really therapeutic in that sense, and that’s something that I haven’t figured out how to talk about on stage.
I was about to say, that’s not yet funny, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be in the future.
Exactly. Sometimes you’re so close to something, or it’s still so new that you can’t find humor in it yet. But once you take the time to really reflect and heal properly, I’m sure I’ll get some bit out of it, and that in and of itself will be healing.
In both the press release for the memoir and the teaser for the new special, you lean into the fact that you’re this very controversial comic. I’m curious about that strategy, and if you’ve ever faced any controversy that’s made you rethink your approach?
To answer your fist question, I think it’s just a creative jab back. I’m sure you can’t print profanity.
Oh, I can.
OK, boom, here’s your headline: Fuck the Haters. (Laughs.) Like, I hear about what [they] say, and I think it’s so funny — and it’s pretty obvious the stereotypes of people who don’t like me, and that’s totally fine. I have no problem with people not liking me. Cool. Stay as far away from me as possible because I make a lot of people very happy, and that means the world to me, and you don’t know how badly those people need to be made happy. So, yeah, for me, it was just an opportunity to comedically and creatively take a jab back because it doesn’t matter how good Lucid is, I could win an Emmy for it, and they’d still say it’s trash. And I try not to give haters the time of day, but I was like, OK, here’s one little opportunity to get in my licks, I suppose.
And then the second part, no, nothing has happened to make me rethink anything. Comedy is just intention, right? So, my intentions haven’t changed because they were never in the wrong place in the first place. If people think I’m this person, then you haven’t done enough research. I mean, I don’t think I’ve done anything controversial. Just because somebody does something that you don’t like doesn’t mean that they’re the devil. That’s crazy. People are allowed to like different things than you. People are allowed to laugh at different things than you. Even in 2024.
You signed a development deal with Netflix earlier this year for what I believe is a gym/workplace comedy series that you’ll write and star in. Do I have that right?
Yes, ma’am.
Where are you in that process?
Right now, my writer and I are passing a couple of different script drafts back and forth that we’ll then submit to Netflix and hopefully get picked up to series. It’s really, really fun. The gym is something that’s very important to me, and I believe should be important to everybody — not just for your physical health but for your mental health. Everybody who goes to the gym isn’t trying to be a power lifter. For me, personally, it’s the one hour I get out of my day that I don’t have to think about work, and I can just focus on myself and it’s a stress relief.
Like, right now, I’m totally exhausted, but as soon as we get off the phone, I’m going to go squeeze in an hour before our show tonight just because I know it’s part of my routine and I really need it. And that’s what the show really revolves around — the mental as well as the physical side of going to the gym. It’s like Workaholics in [the gym] and it’s a really fun world that we’re creating. And it’s just one of the multiple projects that we have in development for next year.
You’ve said acting is a major passion, maybe ever more so than comedy, but, until recently, you hadn’t been able to get your foot in the door in the same way as stand-up. What had the feedback been and how is it changing?
There’s never been any specific feedback. But with acting, to get cast, you’re at the mercy of so many different people, from the casting associate to the casting director to the producers, the director and the network. Whereas with stand-up, once you eventually crack the code, you can create your own opportunities. Acting can not go your way because one person says, “Eh, I don’t like his nose.” Really, it can come down to something as silly as that.
But now, I’m finally in a position where I’m able to create my own opportunities, and I really want to take advantage of that. So, yeah, I’m definitely hopeful for more auditions and to get cast in something that’s fun and will help me grow, but I also want to create things independently, and I’m now in a place where I can develop my own projects and just put them out to my fans. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be comedy, by the way; I’d love to do dramas as well.
Once you’ve had all of this success as a stand-up, it can be challenging to transition to being an actor for hire. Other comics have told told they miss not only the pace of stand-up but also the level of control.
I don’t feel like I need control. I’m at a point now where I want to learn something new. I want to get better at something else. I mean, I’m getting so much better, so much faster at stand-up, and I’m learning how to hopefully prepare for a lifetime of this. And now that I see that that’s achievable, I’m like, OK, awesome, what are some other skills that I can sharpen along the way that are only going to help everything else that I do? The better a comedian I am, the more people are going to want to watch the movies I’m in. And the more movies I’m in, the more people are going to want to see what I do live at a stand-up show.
Are there careers out there that you’d love to emulate?
If we’re looking at comedians transitioning to actors, you have the big three: Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler. Those are the ones who did it best, and I don’t know that anybody will ever do it at that level again. But that’s my dream: comedians who took their fanbase into the theaters with their comedic talents, and then they were able to transition that over to different genres, especially dramas. I mean, my God, Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting is one of my favorite acting performances of all time.
On just the acting side of things, Ryan Reynolds is my idol. That’s who I’d love to work with more than anything, and he has the type of acting career that I’d love to try to emulate. And he’s done everything. The Amityville Horror, I’m a big scary movie fan, and that’s probably tied with The Conjuring for my favorite scary movie of all time. And then obviously Deadpool, which if I had to pick one character to play, it would have been that and he’s just created something so fucking awesome with that franchise.
You talk a lot about your fans, and I’m curious who you see as your core audience at this point. Is it young people? Older women?
It is a mix of everybody, which is so crazy and so cool. Most comedians, and this is exactly why you would ask this question, have a relatively specific audience, whether it’s a specific race or a specific gender or a specific age range — but for us, it’s kind of everybody. There are as many people in their early 20s as there are 50 and up. It’s just people who love comedy.
Before I lose you, anything else on your bucket list?
I just want to do more movies and TV. And I’d love to work with Ricky Gervais.
As in, do a project with him?
Yeah, I think that would be awesome. After Life ended, so I’m sure he’ll do another show in the next couple of years. I just think he’s a genius.
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