![]() ![]() But very rarely will someone be like, “What the fuck is going on?” You know what I mean? It’s literally just a matter of once you’ve been working with someone for quite some time - and the same with writing or acting or other jobs, - where you get a feel while they’re doing something, where you know where it’s going to go, where you can kind of join in, and where you can create it together. Schwartz: There are no baseball signs that we’re throwing each other to do things. But I think it’s just that we’ve been doing it for so long that we’re able to navigate, and also with each other, I’m able to trust Thomas that if we’re in this situation and I don’t have anything that he probably has something or vice versa.Īre there non-verbal cues or signs? How do you let him know, “Okay, this isn’t going well”? If we get into a corner or we can’t figure out a way out. Yes, there are some shows where we literally play ten characters each and you never know what’s going to happen. Let’s get into this, let’s push a little harder.” Because the best improv is always when you don’t see us working hard at all. But if there’s a moment that feels like, “We’ve got to get some laughs.” It feels like that moment exactly that Thomas mentioned. We’ve been very fortunate in that we’ve been playing together pretty well for a while now, so there won’t be a show that totally bombs. ![]() I think, for me at least, a lot of that happened. Schwartz: I think a lot of that fear occurs at the beginning while you’re failing and failing and nobody’s seen you perform and you can’t get laughs. It’s kind of problem-solving as opposed to panic. But here’s this high thing… “this is what you’ve been waiting for, I hope it’s good.” But even when we’re trying to do a scene, and it happens from time to time, we’re in the scene, or if there’s just like 15 minutes in the show and we’re kind of like, “Huh, not sure where this is going to go here.” Our little writer brains are maybe struggling to latch on to something. Improv is like, you just want it to be free. And the extreme is Netflix, there was so much pressure. Like, when we first played Carnegie Hall because it was like such a milestone for us, so we just wanted the show to go well. The closest thing is maybe a little bit of anxiety. ![]() Middleditch: It’s just entirely exciting. How do you deal with the challenge of extending way out beyond a five-minute thing and keeping track of all these characters - I imagine fear plays into it at some point. Two-person, five-minute shows and then a little bit longer, then I moved to LA, and then he moved to LA, and we started doing it there and some people started coming, and then we started doing a 30-minute show. Schwartz: When Thomas came from Chicago, I saw him on stage and he was clearly so fucking good and so funny. ![]() Middleditch: Now listen up to me! I moved to New York from Chicago, and I didn’t have very many friends and Ben was kind enough to go get pizza with me! So we got some pizza, and we talked about doing some improv and then we did two-person improv at a night called School Night at UCB where we’d do like five or eight minutes, a real short set, and then we just kind of hit it off and then it was just something that we did here and there until I demanded that we start taking it more seriously. Middleditch: Yeah, that’s what people need, right? Schwartz: And the crazy thing is I started doing two-person improv with him and then he kept killing my pets and I was like, “Why?” And he goes, “Just to show you, I still have the power.” It was so fucked up, I respected him so much that I was like, “Let’s go on tour together.” Thomas Middleditch: I poisoned many of his pets and he said, “What’s it going to take for you to stop poisoning my pets?” And I said, “Do two-person improv with me.” So tell me a little bit about your background performing with each other.īen Schwartz: We were rivals for many years. Uproxx spoke with both recently about leaning on each other in a scene, the allure of longform improv, hitting the stage post-fear, and why they’re never going to be on Cameo. Middleditch and Schwartz is, quite frankly, like nothing else currently on Netflix (it’s available to stream now). Silly and inventive, the task at hand is grand with both posting up as a reliable scene partner for the other while jumping between multiple characters, carrying the thread of a story, and occasionally breaking the fourth wall to comment on what’s happening. The controlled chaos of an improv show gets expanded to a full hour in Middleditch and Schwartz, a Netflix special/collection of three distinct taped performances showcasing actors Thomas Middleditch and Ben Schwartz’s command of a form that they’ve been practicing for years. ![]()
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