Jim Carrey jumped on the main stage at the old Ice House in Pasadena, one of the oldest comedy clubs in the country, the other night.
He was one of the biggest names at the TV Critics Association’s winter press tour so far. But while he struck a pose similar to his standup heyday and coiled up with a sly look behind his grey beard, he decided to hand off the spotlight to other comics who are part of the Showtime series he’s producing and was there to promote, “I’m Dying Out Here.”
Carrey so far doesn’t appear in the Showtime series, set in the early 1970s, that starts this summer.
“I, for a very long time, have wanted to do something about this era,” Carrey said. Back then, the road to comedy stardom came through appearing on Johnny Carson’s couch on “The Tonight Show.”
“We all came out and gathered around the heat of that and were hoping for the best,” Carrey says.
He had that chance as a young comic, but he also had to struggle like a couple of other characters depicted in the series.
“I lived in a closet when I first came to L.A. I met somebody at the Improv who said they had a room, and it turned out to be a closet,” Carrey says.
“For the first year or so I was here, I lived in that closet. So that’s a really great thing for me. And I woke up the next morning the very first morning that I lived in the house to walk out in the kitchen and find a beautiful young girl making bacon with no pants on. And I went, ‘Wow.’”
“The line ‘Hollywood, brotha’ is kind of was how I described it. The whole thing just wraps up in that, ‘Hollywood, brotha!’”
Comedy was changing in that era, Carrey says. “We were coming out of the ’60s. We were coming out of Vietnam and Nixon. And it was a very intense time, and that helped give birth to a new attitude and a new desire to express yourself and say those edgy things and those edgy truths. And it changed comedy.”
The new series, exploring the ins and out of a fictional L.A. comedy club, features Melissa Leo, Ari Graynor, Michael Angarano, Clark Duke, Andrew Santino, Erik Griffin, RJ Cyler, Al Madrigal and Jake Lacy.
Carrey says he’s proud of the cast and what the show’s other producers have been able to create. “They really captured the feeling of the era and the feeling of the camaraderie and the competition and the smartass quality of being a comic. I mean, you know, oftentimes it wasn’t who was funniest on stage; it was who was funniest at the bar or who was funniest in the parking lot. That’s what mattered to comics. And they’ve so captured the feeling, and I’m super proud to be a part of it.
“And Melissa Leo, at the center of it, is unbelievable. And I think you know, she’s not playing Mitzi Shore [legendary owner of the Comedy Store], but she is a tribute to women like Mitzi, who were pioneers,”
For all of the nostalgia it churns in him, Carrey is quick to answer when someone asks whether he’d want to return to the stage.
“No,” he snapped. “I’m in the process of shedding layers of persona at this time in my life. So I’m very happy to be here for these guys.”
Eventually they will all have their own careers “and then, somewhere around episode 40, I think they will start to question it and go, ‘Oh, wow, that’s not actually me,’ and they’ll start to strip it away, which is what I’m in the process of doing.”
“I’m Dying Up Here” starts June 4 on Showtime.