Gabriel Iglesias Shares His Nickelodeon Experience & More At Netflix Is A Joke Festival

Back in 2022, at the inaugural Netflix Is A Joke Festival, Gabriel Iglesias sold out two nights at Dodger Stadium. This culminated in his Netflix special, Stadium Fluffy. This year, he wasn’t playing at Dodger Stadium, but he still had a fun packed show planned for the audience at the Hollywood Palladium.

The show had a lot of surprises in store. Given that Netflix brings in all the top comedians, there were tons of people to choose from. Iglesias even told the crowd, “I hand picked every single comic on this show tonight except one.”

Some of the biggest comedians working today - including Jimmy Carr, Matt Rife, Deon Cole, Heather McMahan, Liza Treyger, and more - all took the stage. The audience was getting a good show, though a few comics in, they started to get pretty rowdy. Treyger especially took most of the heat from hecklers, but she handled it like a champ, leaving the stage saying “I’ll never forget this show.”

Finally, Iglesias took the stage. Even after 8 openers, he still gave everyone 110%, staying onstage for over an hour and bringing Monday night into Tuesday morning. After recently taping a special, he’s working on some new bits. In his set, he talks about what he’s learned over his 27 years of comedy, TMZ headlines, and buying food for a family at McDonald’s.

Because this was something of a special show, Iglesias also broke out some stuff that he doesn’t normally perform. There was a unique-ness in the air. One of which was going off of the recent news about Nickelodeon in the headlines. He’s told the story on a podcast before, but this was his first time onstage telling it. Nickelodeon - particularly the show All That - was at the center of a new investigative documentary detailing abuse by the show’s creator, Dan Schneider. Iglesias was on the show from 1999 until 2000. While he didn’t have any stories like what’s detailed in the documentary, he did know Dan, and had a traumatic story of his own.

A lot of times, he tells the crowd, they’d have him dress up in drag. This is something other cast members discussed in the documentary. In one particular instance, he was dressed as a cheerleader and running onto the stage for the ending. As he was running, the wig he was wearing obstructed his view and he hit a beam, causing him to be knocked unconscious.

He was rushed to the hospital and they were doing some tests. During that time in the hospital, some Nickelodeon lawyers showed up asking him to sign some papers that would say he wasn’t holding the network liable. “I signed it because I didn’t want to be a problem.” Despite doing as asked, he was let go two episodes later.

Even with a story this heavy, Iglesias managed to fill the night with lots of laughs and even a few crowd favorites. There was a lot of reminiscing going on, which only added to the specialness of the occasion. He talked about his early days as a headliner and the best advice he ever got when he was starting out: Don’t be filthy.

Overall, Iglesias gave everyone what they came for and then some. It will be interesting to see how much from this night winds up in his next hour. Whatever does make it in, rest assured it will be funny!