Telling stories with love and anger

I began my Zoom with Jared Freid by setting the ground rules.

The topic of discussion was Mr. Freid’s Netflix comedy special, “Jared Freid: The Family Plan.” I told him I’m a sympathetic interviewer: “I’m aware of the pressure comics are on to always be funny. But I’m a professional, and I want to tell you there’s no need for you to feel pressure to be funny during our talk.” 

Pause. Then, Jared: “That’s what I want to tell you, but I can’t. You have to be very funny to make this work.”

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Fortunately, Mr. Freid, 41, got my unusual sense of humor and delivered funny. As he did in his special, which is largely about Jewish family ties. Specifically, the family plan of the title is for his mobile phone. His mom and dad still pay it. 

“I don’t know what a cell phone bill looks like,” he says onstage. “If I want to upgrade I have to call home.”

It gets worse: he still goes on vacation with his parents, inevitably concluding somewhere along the journey that “no free trips, no cell phone bills are worth it.” 

Apparently, the prime purpose of Freid family vacations is to find other families who squabble more than they do. As he tells his audience, “You need to find another family to argue so loudly you and your family can come together and talk about those losers.”

 Jared grew up in a largely secular Jewish family in Needham, Mass. He attended Hebrew school, was a bar mitzvah, and attended Camp Cedar in Maine, which, he notes, “is not a Jewish camp but a camp full of Jews.”

He has a younger brother, Harrison, who is on the coaching staff of the Chicago Bears. That job, we agree, is a lot cooler than being a comic. “Just ask my dad. He’ll brag about my brother all day long and he’s like, ‘the other one thinks he’s funny.’”

Dad is Jerry, who was in the wholesale liquor business; mom Kim was a homemaker but also worked at Bloomingdale’s as — wait for it — a personal shopper.

Dad was okay with his oldest son becoming a comic. “He saw it as a business entrepreneurial move. He knew it would take me wherever I wanted to go.

“My mom didn’t get it because she was like, ‘How do I tell my friends about this?’ I think moms are very much judged by what their children do. Jewish moms, if your son is a doctor, you’ve done a good job at being a mother. My mom always used to tell people I was a writer, instead of a comedian, because that was easier to get across.”

Yet Kim, Mr. Freid tells me, was always there for him. In fact, he recalls the moment she came aboard the Freid comic express.

“I was doing a show in Connecticut, and my parents came down from Boston to watch the show and I’m bombing. Not one laugh. Nobody laughing. It’s just going horribly.

“At one point I hear this huge laugh from the corner of the room. I’m almost surprised. Like the entire room kind of looked over. That’s how bad I was doing. They were surprised to hear a laugh at a comedy show. So everyone looks over, and it’s my mom laughing at how badly I’m bombing.

“I just remember looking at the crowd and going, ‘This is how bad this is going, I’m embarrassing myself in front of my mom, and she thinks this is funny.’ The whole crowd laughed at how much my mom was laughing and how bad I was doing. And, then, I was okay. I got them. Now they like me. And I went back to doing my act — and started bombing again. They went back to not laughing.

“But I find that moment very specific. It’s like from then on, for whatever reason, she got it. She loved the fact that I’m telling stories about my family that are completely true, and I’m telling these stories with love and some anger. I love them, but I also get enraged by my family.

“I think everyone can understand that — especially Jews, because our families are all characters.” 

Consider Mr. Freid’s grandma.

“I did a show in Boston, opening for Steve Sweeney, who is like a local Boston comedy legend. I’m so excited, I invite my grandmother to the show. And she comes.

“When I get off the stage the owner comes up to me and I’m thinking I did so great he’s going to invite me to come back. But, instead, he goes, ‘Jared, your grandmother is pouring her own drinks.’

“I go, ‘what?’ He goes, ‘She’s pouring nips [airplane-serving-size liquor bottles] into her glass. You got to tell her that the way we make money here is by selling alcohol, and right now she’s stealing. You got to stop her.’

“I remember I go up to her and I go, ‘Nana, the owner saw that you’re pouring your own drinks’ and she looked at me and goes, ‘You can tell him to go shit in his hat.’

“So now I’m the new guy. I’m the new guy who needs to go back to the owner with a message from my mobster grandmother about going to the bathroom in his own hat. But that’s how everyone was like in my family.”

Clearly his family is an endless source of funny. “If it makes me angry, it’s going to be funny. That’s kind of my motto. If it’s making me upset, I can make it funny.” 

For example: “I’m sitting across from my father [on the beach] at Delray Beach, Florida, and he asks me how much I weigh. I thought that was ridiculous question. I have body issues.” 

And that became one of the major themes in the special.

“No therapist would believe that was happening,” Mr. Freid says. “Who would believe this? We went to dinner the other night and they were holding up pictures of me when I was thinner — while giving me food. My dad going, ‘Look what he used to look like,’ and my mom passing me the lo mein.”

Even Rob Lowe got involved. Mr. Freid was upset that Rob Lowe, whose main job the last 40 years is to be gorgeous, is a spokesperson for the Atkins diet. That gives people the impression that if they follow the Atkins way, they can look like him.

What he should be saying, Mr. Freid tells his audience, is “I’m Rob Lowe. You’re never going to look like me. But you can look less like you.”

Mr. Freid ran into Rob Lowe: “I went up to him, because I made a promise that if I ever meet him, I’ll say something. I said, ‘Rob, I’m Jared Freid. I’m a comedian and I’ve been talking about you onstage every night for the last two years.’

“And he goes, ‘You have the bit about Atkins. I heard it’s hilarious, and I got to see it.’ He couldn’t have been nicer.”

One of the benefits of Mr. Fried’s approach is that it has an almost universal theme that (particularly Jewish) people around the world can connect with. He remembers being approached on an overseas tour by Australian mishpoche, who direct him to nearby delis and invite him home for dinner. 

“It didn’t seem weird at all,” he said. “Meeting people who are so alike and can connect through my family stories. It’s really a beautiful thing.”