With new comedy special ‘Never Mind,’ Reggie Watts’ lack of preparation lands right on time

Reggie Watts has a thing about timing. Generally, he doesn’t pay attention to it unless he’s trying to create a beat on his loop pedal that will become the backdrop of a nonsensical joke or parody he just thought of to make you laugh. After seven years of waiting to make a new comedy special, trying to prepare for it never occurred to him because it’s that lack of concern that ultimately makes his comedy land right on time with audiences that tend to love what he does even if they can’t always define it.

Recently, Watts talked with The Times about his new special, “Never Mind,” which premiered on the music-centric upstart streaming platform Veeps to capture the soulfully sidesplitting, spontaneous magic that comes alive at his shows.

Your new special is probably the closest to capturing the vibe of your live stage show on tour with so much musical, spontaneous magic to it. How do you feel about it, and have you actually watched it?

I watched it when it premiered [earlier this month], and that was actually the only time I saw. Maybe I saw it once during the edit and that was it.

Your whole ethos revolves around trying not to prepare for anything you do onstage, but when it’s recorded like this, do you ever bother to evaluate and think “Oh, what was I doing there? What was I thinking there?” Or is it kind of just like enjoying it as a piece of art starring yourself?

It’s kind of like reliving that moment for sure, kind of remembering what I was doing in that moment. It’s a weird feeling. And sometimes I wish I would have worn something different, but generally I just kind of relive it and try not to be too critical.

And I understand there were some cool people in the audience. Apparently Rick Rubin was among the people who showed up?

Yeah, “the Rube” showed up. He was cool, he just kind of bought a ticket and came to see me, so that was pretty sick. I mean, I know him loosely through music. I met and I sat with him for two hours at his house once. He was deciding whether or not to jump on a project I was doing with Eric Andre at the time, and I was signed on as a producer, and so he wanted to meet me first to figure out if he wanted to do it. And yeah, so I had a good conversation with him there, and we kind of know each other loosely from around the music industry. So he was aware of me beforehand, but he completely came to my special show on his own.

You make a joke early on in the special, asking, “Is there any musicians in the crowd?” and then getting into babbling about a bunch of recording–studio jargon. Even though a lot of what you were saying is so off the cuff, it just sounds like you’re an engineer in every studio I’ve ever been in as a musician. Does some of that material seep into your comedy from being in the music business for so long?

Anytime I’m anywhere in any situation, I’m always kind of like finding the ridiculousness in it. But, you know, studio is a very specific place. And if you’ve ever been in a recording studio, there’s a certain way that they work, and I think being up there and thinking about music a little bit more while I was out there, all of that came to the surface. I also knew there were a lot of musicians in the crowd at the special taping. Josh Conway, the producer, the drummer for the Marías, was there, and María [Zardoya, frontwoman of the Marías] was there and I had so many friends that play music or do something, do something in the music industry [who] showed up. So I knew that when I was talking about that stuff … it would go off.

You’re also talking about music from the lens of the ’90s as a premise for the special. What was the ’90s like for you as a musician? Did any of that sort of seep into your consciousness as you were doing this?

Part of what I liked about the idea was I got the opportunity to kind of talk with the ’90s kind of project, basically, like I was doing a show trying to tap into what I was like in the ’90s. So it was just a cool opportunity to kind of dig in. Music back then was, like, very different than it is now. Home studios weren’t really super popular. Record labels were on a constant hunt to find the next big thing like Fiona Apple, Green Day or whatever was out there. As musicians a lot of us were in a constant state of wondering if we can get that kind of a deal or wonder if we could get noticed by this label, or wonder, you know, that kind of a thing. It was like, kind of just like a thing I always wanted to do. Oh, cool. I want to do more of them too. Yeah, you know, explore time periods and kind of do comedy from that perspective.

I think you have plenty of allies in that scenario, like doing stuff like that given all the musicians, comedians and musicians who do comedy you have in your phone contacts.

I think in the future, how I really want to do it is, I just want to make it as, like, period-accurate as possible. I’m really grateful for Veeps and the opportunity to do a special with them, they’re a little scrappy and they have a decent budget, but it’s definitely scrappier than all my other specials. So they pulled it together. I think we did a great job on it, but, you know, we couldn’t hire production designers and costume people to help audience and period-accurate clothing. But I would definitely love it in the future, if I can get that level of production where you can get that, like, the same quality as, like, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” feel like that time period they worked so hard to make me look like that. And I would love to look like whatever time period I’m doing the special from.

The other thing that struck me about your special was that it sounded like you were trying to take it out of the realm of the current day by joking about ’90s to avoid talking about culture and politics of today. Yet your special dropped during probably one of the crazier weekends in politics, with Biden dropping out of the presidential race against Trump. Weirdly, your timing was dead–on for people searching for a comedic break from what is going on in the world.

I think, I think probably more than ever, comedy is the last line of defense of our sanity. And I think that’s why you’re starting to see a bit of a boom from other streaming platforms to start buying comedy. It gives us a natural reaction to the stresses of our common society. Comedy is going to always have an important role in helping people cope with reality, whether it is escapism or whether it’s commenting directly on what’s going on to give it a lighter context, it’s super important. So I think in these times we’re going to definitely be, you know, doubling down on comedy.