Felipe Esparza is the definition of a self-made comic—unapologetically real, brutally honest, and ridiculously funny. Born in Mexico and raised in East L.A., he navigated a rough upbringing before finding salvation in stand-up comedy. With no roadmap to success, he hustled his way through the L.A. comedy circuit, grinding through open mics, sneaking into free workshops, and shaping his voice in some of the toughest rooms imaginable. His breakout moment came when he won Last Comic Standing, launching him into the mainstream and cementing his place as a comedy powerhouse.
With multiple stand-up specials, a relentless tour schedule, and a thriving podcast lineup—including “What’s Up, Fool?” and “History For Foos“—Felipe continues to evolve, bringing fresh energy to every stage he touches. The next step in his creative journey is “Raging Fool,” his brand-new Netflix special set to premiere on February 11. On top of that, he’s landing guest spots on shows like Tim Allen’s upcoming sitcom “Changing Gears,” proving that he’s not slowing down anytime soon.
Jason Price of Icon Vs. Icon caught up with Felipe to talk about his journey through comedy, the lessons he’s learned along the way, and what it really takes to stay sharp in a business that never stops evolving. He also shares war stories from the road—including a wild night in Juarez with Paul Rodriguez—breaks down his creative process, and explains why “Raging Fool” is his most personal and dynamic special yet.
So sit back, relax, and get ready for a deep dive into the mind of one of comedy’s most fearless voices—Felipe Esparza.
Let’s go back to the beginning since you’ve been in the comedy game for so long. How did comedy first come into your life and what made it something you wanted to pursue?
Oh, man! When I started doing stand-up comedy, there was no social media yet. So, I had to go to a library to look for books on how to do stand-up comedy and write jokes. So, I read a couple of those and checked out a couple of comedy DVDs and CDs that I took with me. It was stuff like George Carlin, Paul Rodriguez, and Rodney Dangerfield. I just went and consumed all that comedy. That’s where I started learning how to write jokes.
What do you remember about the first time you got on stage?
It was an open mic, and just like every other comic out there, I thought I did really well! [laughs] I thought I did great, but I know I was just okay. Since I had never done it before, I didn’t know about timing, which is very important. I didn’t know that and was just talking through my jokes. I didn’t know where to do the punch line. However, after the first open mic, I went to a couple of stand-up comedy classes that were very expensive, even back then. They were like $500. They promised you a set at the Ice House, plus a five-minute tape of your set, but I didn’t have 500 bucks. I also didn’t have anybody who believed in me enough to give me 500 bucks to join the class. So I went there anyway, and I sat in on the free one-hour introductory class, and they started teaching me how to write jokes in that first class. After that, I went to another one called Greg Dean, a standup comedy course, and learned more stuff there. That was it, man. Then I hit my second open mic!
It’s one thing to be told how to do comedy and jump in, but it’s another thing to find your creative voice. What went into finding who Felipe was as a comic?
Took a long time to find out who Felipe was! It was a lot of trial and error. Starting out, a lot of people emulate a comic that they love. For example, if someone in New York grew up watching Todd Berry, they might sound a lot like him. On the West Coast, the people who grew up here might start sounding like Paul Rodriguez, George Lopez, or Carlos Mencia for a while. So, they initially start finding their own voice, depending on where they grew up. Man, I sounded like nine different comedians when I first started off! Look at me now. I have long hair and a trenchcoat! I’m in my Sam Kinison stage! [laughs]
When I started off, I was deadpan. I was like Stephen Wright or Mitch Hedberg, just a deadpan comic. I would sit there and tell jokes with no personality or facial expression. Then I went, I tried to be a political comedian. I will get the newspaper, and I write a bunch of jokes about the Middle East. They were always bombing and throwing rocks at each other, so I wrote this joke. It was totally bad. I said, “There was peace in the Middle East this week. There were no rocks to throw.” I was also performing in very loud rooms where nobody paid attention. You really had to fight to do stand-up comedy because those places were not suitable for stand-up. It was suitable for picking up a girl and taking her home, getting stabbed, or getting your Harley Davidson stolen outside. That was what the club was known for! So, I couldn’t really do deadpan up there because people would start heckling you. I found myself deflecting hecklers all day, and I would fight with them, so after that, I became what I am right now — a wild guy! [laughs]
What lessons did you learn early on that still resonate with you today in your career?
I learned something valuable from this comic, which I didn’t think even knew how to read at the time. [laughs] He told me to always go over my set out. He told me to carry a tape recorder to record my sets and carry a notepad so I could write down any joke that came to me. As soon as a joke comes to you, write it down! I did that for a long time. But now, I have my phone, so I just record my set and write down my ideas. Those are some things that I have always taken with me. You know, for many comedians, it’s hard for them to listen to their own voice after a one-hour set or after performing seven shows in a row. But you really have to go home on your day off and listen to all seven shows. A lot of people don’t. A lot of comics say they don’t like doing that. They don’t like recording their set. They just remember it or write it down on the paper. For me, I like doing all that stuff. I like recording my set, listening to it, and then writing down the new jokes that night or a new moment that was funny. I will listen to those sets all day long. I might listen to the same show four or five times before I finally start taking notes. I like doing that as part of my creative process.
Is there a time when you felt you really came into your own as a performer?
I think that has happened in the last couple of years. If you’ve seen my set on “Last Comic Standing,” when I won and beat their asses, I was still kind of deadpan and nervous on stage. What I have now is a lot more confidence! That is something I didn’t have when I first started. Right now, I won’t say I’m fearless! I’ve done shows in Australia and all over the world, so I have been building that confidence. In the beginning, I was nervous, man! A comedian would kill the room — absolutely destroy it! After the comic has left the stage, people are still thinking about that set. So, back in the day, when I was following that, it would really throw off my set. But not anymore, man! I just look at my wife with her big ass boobs, and I know I’ve made it! [laughs] I just feel confident, bro! I feel like all these buff guys are flexing their muscles, but then I take out my trench coat and have muscles, too! [laughs] I’m gonna win the crowd over basically without trying. I don’t know what it is. I guess it comes from all the experience; I’ve been doing it for a long time!
You are definitely a seasoned pro at this point in your career. What’s one of your most memorable experiences on the road?
Well, as a young comic, you’re like a baby out in this world, you know? But it’s different from energy, being a singer, actor, or Broadway performer. When you perform as a comedian in a small town, you’re usually there for five days. Two or three hundred people see you every night, so you’re pretty famous in that town for that week. Everything is new and exciting! I remember being on the road in El Paso, and Paul Rodriguez was headlining somewhere nearby. He was doing a corporate gig or something like that where he was making hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we’re performing at a regular club, The Comic Strip in El Paso, where they’re paying us Chico’s tacos! Paul Rodriguez kidnapped us, bro! He kidnapped us and took us to Juarez. He didn’t even ask if we had passports! He grabbed one random guy and said, “Hey, man! Do you want to go to Juarez, Mexico, and have tacos?” The guy said, “Are you Paul Rodriguez? Hell yeah! Let’s all go!” So, Paul Rodriquez made me eat the other comedians go in a van! He had picked up on two girls, and he took those two girls and us to Juarez to have tacos.
We were eating tacos at a taco restaurant. Like, it was happening, bro! There were a lot of people! We were just regular Mexicans in Mexico, bro. When we got to the border, though, there were already too many people in that van, and nobody had luggage. Of course, we’re only there for about an hour and a half. The border patrol pulled us all over, and they were searching us and stuff. [laughs] They were just busting our balls. They wanted autographs and photos. And there’s a picture of us. You can look it up. It’s Paul Rodriguez, Gabriel Iglesias, Armando Cosios, and me in front of the border with our hands on the hood!
As a young comic, it was a great experience to hang around with a big shot like Paul Rodriguez, you know. I remember we made it back, and he was changing his clothes. Gabriel Iglesias and I were still in the room. He never told us to get out. So he finally closed the door on us. Our friend was standing outside waiting for us and said, “Bro, I thought you guys were going to go in the shower with him!” [laughs] We were just so starstruck, man!
That’s hilarious. I imagine you could probably write a book on the lessons learned on your journey as a comedian.
Yeah, fool. Live life, don’t do drugs, and don’t hurt anybody. Just try everything once, man, if for no other reason than to just find out that it ain’t for you. As a young comic, if you live close to the show, try to hang out after the show and meet people. That was my problem at the beginning. I would do my show and just bone out, but I didn’t really meet too many people. Then, when I started hanging out, it was all the bad people.
George Lopez and Paul Rodriguez have always been the coolest people to me. They are the type of people who always have my back, even though they don’t get along, but who cares now because I’m friendly to both of them! [laughs] George Lopez took me to the World Series Game Five against the Houston Astros, and we were right behind the Dodger dugout. I was high-fiving Kershaw from my seat, bro! Paul Rodriguez gave me good advice twice. He was the first comic to give me a lot of money and take me on the road. He even bought me a suit. Paul Rodriguez told me this: “Be nice to everybody because you’re going to meet the same people on the way up in your career as you will on the way down.” That was the first thing.
When I started, there were a lot of Latino comedians who would never plan Latino rooms, bro. They would never walk into a room where the whole audience was Mexican American in LA because they wanted to cross over to a wider audience. They wanted to perform at the Improv, The Comedy Store, or The Ice House, so they would never want to go to the East Side to perform. They would go, “Nah, bro. I don’t do those beaner rooms.” So they lost out on a lot of fans by not going to those rooms. Paul Rodriguez said, “You know what, man? Don’t worry about crossing over to a mainstream audience or white people. If you’re funny, like really funny, they’ll cross over to you!” That was the second thing, and that’s been the model for my career!
You’ve been hard at work on “Raging Fool,” a new special coming to Netflix this February. Can you tell us a little bit about developing the material and the behind-the-scenes of bringing this whole thing to life?
There are some comedians out there, man, who’ve been doing comedy a long time. They have a killer hour that they do on the road, but it has never been recorded. They are great comics, but no one has seen their one-hour special, so they are the unsung heroes. They’re on the road killing it, bro! People come to see them and are blown away.
I do the same thing as they do, but people have seen my jokes already. So, I have to go out there, bro, butt naked with no material, and try to come up with new jokes all of a sudden!. So, what I do is see what jokes I didn’t put up on my special. For example, with “Raging Fool,” which comes out on February 11 on Netflix, I see the jokes that my wife edited out. I work with the material that didn’t go up. From there, I write topical jokes like “President Trump wants to make Greenland part of the United States, and they want Canada to be the 51st state. But I live in California. Maybe we want to be a providence of Canada! We want maple syrup all day. How did that sound, the Vancouver Dodgers?” So, I do have topical jokes to play with along the way, and then when the Topic is over, I just replace it with a new topical joke. Along the way, I’m also building a real set I will have in a year and a half. It’s always evolving.
“Raging Fool” was taped at the Crest Theater in Sacramento. I was curious to know what went into finding the right spot to shoot the special.
My wife, Lisa O’Daniel Esparza, has executive produced and edited all my specials. This time is her first time directing a special. She went out with the other producers to Sacramento, and they went to look for a lot of locations to film. Sacramento had one of the better theaters with nice curtains we could play with. We hired an award-winning lighting guy. This kid could make the ugliest curtain in the world look like the curtains behind Nikki Glaser at the Golden Globes! [laughs] So we had the best lighting guy, and one of the producers had already done a lot of specials for Netflix. My wife set up a good team, and when you see it on Netflix, you’ll see how those Curtains look magical because of the lighting. Also, the way the Crest Theater is set up is perfect for a live show.
What do you consider the biggest takeaway from the experience of putting together “Raging Fool”?
One of my tracksuits! [laughs] I have “Raging Fool” on the back of my tracksuit on this special, and I can’t find it. I think somebody kept it as memorabilia! That was the biggest takeaway, man! But seriously, like I said, it was my wife’s first time directing and a really good experience. It was a good team behind it, and I really like the way it came out, man!
How did you land on “Raging Fool” for the title of the special?
I don’t know if you saw “Raging Bull” with Robert De Niro, but we took the same idea with the black and white aesthetic, as well as me punching. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll remember that bar where he gets drunk at the end and does stand-up? That bar is called Jimmy’s Corner, and it’s in Manhattan, New York. It’s actually a boxing bar. I got drunk there one night and remember looking around and thinking, “This was meant to be! This is where they shot Raging Bull! Robert DeNiro did stand-up comedy here as Jake LaMotta!” I thought, “Ya know what? Let’s call it “Raging Fool!”
I love it, and it’s the perfect title! You mentioned working with your wife all of these years. What has that expe been like for you?
Oh man, you know, my wife is a genius, and I’m street smart, so we balance it out. We’ve been together since 2006, and we’ve been married for 10 years. We’ve been working on specials together since 2011. So, in a comedy sense, we know what we like. We’ve even pitched a bunch of sitcoms already, and we are supposed to have a meeting sooner or later to pitch another show.
That leads to my next question. You have so many irons in the fire between performing, writing, social media, and podcasting. That can’t be easy. What does a typical week look like for you?
Man, I get up on Monday. We have a meeting with the whole team. Then, on Tuesday, I have to do the “History For Foos” podcast, followed by my acting class. Then, we do the “What’s Up, Fool?” podcast on Wednesday at 8 PM. Then, on Thursday, I fly out to my shows, and I come back on Sunday!
That’s an aggressive schedule. What else is on your radar for 2025?
Tim Allen has a new sitcom on ABC called “Shifting Gears.” It’s with that girl, Kat Dennings. I’m on episode four of that show and did some real acting. Bro, I had to pretend I knew about cars. I’m in the car, bro, fixing things—I don’t even know what I’m fixing!
When it comes to acting, is there anybody you look to as an inspiration?
Eric Roberts, bro! Do you know who that is?
Absolutely! He’s one of the most prolific actors around. “Star 80” and “Best of The Best 2,” on and on!
Yeah! That’s him. I worked with him one day! I had two lines, and he had seven to ten lines in the scene. I read the script twice. I read my line a bunch of times, and I got together with my acting coach, and we worked out the routine for the scene. Even after doing that, I was still nervous about messing up the lines or not coming in at the right moment. Then here comes Eric Roberts, bro. He comes out of an RV with no script, no nothing. He talks to the director and the scriptwriter and looks at his lines. They put it on cue cards, like really big ones. He just looked at them one time and put them down. He comes over to me and says, “You’re Felipe, right? You play Jose.” I say, “Yeah.” Then he directed me a little bit and said, “Okay, Felipe. When I come into the scene, I want you to throw that wet towel right at me!” Okay, so they say “action,” and my character is in front of the table cleaning; when Eric Roberts goes in, I just throw the towel at him!. He goes, “Where the fuck is Julie? That bitch is always late. I’m gonna fire her stupid ass!” And I’m like, “Fuck, bro!” He sounded like a real manager, bro. And he’s got it like that! He nailed the lines. He did four takes, and then we talked. He said, “Oh, it was amazing. what you just did.” He had time to explain that, in his mind, he knew that he the manager of the cafe, and that bitch is late, so he’s gotta be mad. So I’m pretty sure, in his mind, he said, “Me and the dishwasher, we’ve probably been friends for a long time, so we fuck around and throw rags at each other.” So, as soon as he showed up, I just threw it at his ass, and he caught it like always and made a face like we do this all the time. It was wild. So yeah, man, I really admire Eric Roberts. He’s a great actor and very humble. This guy was in “Star 80.” bro. He killed it, and he’d been in other amazing stuff like “The Pope of Greenwich Village” and “The Dark Knight,” But yeah, man, he told me that he had five movies to shoot that day! I really learned a lot from working with him.
Obviously, you have an extremely busy schedule as a comedian. How do you recharge yourself creatively?
A lot of my friends look into conspiracy theories, so I feel like they put a lot of time into arguing with people. Rather than arguing with people about whether the earth is flat or what’s going on with these drones or chemtrails, I figured I could spend all that energy on learning! I like to take that time to learn how to draw, how to do graffiti, how to play ukulele, or how to cook. So I usually spend my free time learning how to do something on the internet. Lately, I’ve been learning about all the types of graffiti so that one day, I can do the history of graffiti on my history podcast. I’ve learned how to play the bongos, bro! I don’t have time for conspiracy theories. I want to learn how to play the piano like Mozart, bro!
What do you look for in the material and projects you want to invest your time and energy in?
It has to be funny, man! Funny, funny, funny! No matter what I am working on, I want it to reflect a part of my life, something that I grew up with or something that I know. Then I want to make it funny, man. I don’t focus too much on making the show for a specific audience or trying to write something that everybody will like. The best line I heard was at the Golden Globes from Jacques Audiard while accepting the award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for “Emilia Pérez.” He said, “Any story, when done right, is universal.” That’s so true, and it really resonates with me.
Thanks for your time today, Felipe. I can’t wait to see what you have in store for us with “Raging Fool.” Keep the good stuff coming; we’ll see you on the road!
Thank you! Bye, fool!
Felipe Esparza’s ‘Raging Fool’ debuts February 11, 2025 exclusively on Netflix. For news, updates and, most importantly, tickets to catch him on his “At My Leisure Tour,” visit www.felipesworld.com. Photos by Emilio Olivas — Check out his incredible body of work at www.emilioolivasphotography.com.
