You may know the hilarious & spry New York based comic Gianmarco Soresi from his dozens of viral stand-up clips, his fantastic sets on The Late Late Show & Comedy Central, his Shelf-Life half hour special or his very popular Downside Podcast (the podcast where complaining is encouraged and silver linings are debunked).
He's also pinged his signature "Soresi Lean" stance, which we hear is best witnessed at the comedy club (get tickets to see it for yourself).
This past week, Soresi made it over to Netflix to showcase his latest tight 10 minutes of stand-up as part of the new Verified Stand-Up series. A funny night showcasing 10 comics performing 10 sets in one night at New York's Webster Hall. Soresi is in great company with some of the best comedians in the game including Asif Ali, Dulcé Sloan, Isiah Kelly, Leslie Liao, Nimesh Patel, Robby Hoffman, Rosebud Baker, Sabrina Wu, and Vanessa Gonzalez.
His latest set is brilliant & incredibly entertaining, be sure to check it out now on Netflix. We couldn't have been more excited to connect with Gianmarco to talk about his comedy & hear more about this special night.
What was the process like figuring out the material you wanted to use in this set? Did you already have an idea on what material you wanted to use or did it take a bit to work out some extra material?
The biggest chunk of this set came from a never aired Don’t Tell Comedy set I did earlier this year. Never aired because it bombed. I tried doing all my gun show material to open that set and not to blame Los Angeles audiences but let’s just say it went so badly, I called my girlfriend the next day at 6AM from the Delta Lounge weeping (Henry Winkler was also there but thankfully I don’t think he noticed me). But I loved that bit and wanted to get it out there before gun violence in America stopped being a thing.
Did you know who all was going to be a part of Verified before taping? Who all were you looking forward to sharing the stage with? And who did you walk away becoming an even bigger fan of?
I’m still not sure who was there but I walked away being a bigger fan of Jay Jurden who opened both tapings with his signature joke-dense act that fully prepared the audience for stand-up comedy.
The new stand-up series was taped at Webster Hall in New York. Given how tall and wide that venue is and the spacing of the audience being further back compared to your club shows, how did it feel performing in there & what was the energy like in the room?
The bottom line is the ideal circumstances for doing stand-up comedy are antithetical to filming stand-up comedy. Some of the best shows of my life I couldn’t even find a spot to set up my little phone tripod. So when you’re in a bigger space, you just hope that the audience is willing to extend themselves as much to you as you are to them. Fortunately, the team for this taping partially curated the audience from people who were fans of the comics on the lineup. This probably meant there were a disproportional number of Nimesh Patel fans there, but luckily they and everyone else came to laugh.
In the many clips I’ve seen you perform before this set, I’ve noticed how incredibly animated you are given your musical theater background (my favorite reference is how you say you have a PhD in “imagination”). Before you got into stand-up, what were some of your favorite musical theater memories growing up you still look back on?
My best memories are from when I didn’t know I was a bad dancer. There was a musical theater summer camp I did where we performed “Montage” from “A Chorus Line”, a show which I wouldn’t be qualified to be in at even a community theater level. But when I was 16, before the curse of self-awareness, I thought that, hey, maybe I could be the next Ben Vereen so I sang and danced my little heart out with a joy I’ll never feel again. I also crushed an 8th grade performance of The Music Man Jr. and Seymour (of course) in Little Shop of Horrors junior year of high school. I remember on closing night, end of act one, instead of the regular severed body parts I was supposed to feed the plant, the crew gave me a bucket full of dildo’s.
You recently shared how you used to perform at LOL Comedy Club in New York and how you saw your Billboard for your first Netflix set. If you could go back in time and see Gianmarco when he was performing at LOL Comedy Club in Times Square, what would you say to him knowing know you’d later end up on a Billboard promoting your first Netflix set?
I’d say, “stop performing here.”
Kidding of course. I’d probably say, “In three years there’s going to be a global pandemic, invest in hand sanitizer.”
With stand-up, podcasting, & acting up your sleeve, what can we expect next from you in 2024?
Same shit but hopefully, gradually, slightly better.
