It has proved to be a slow, but steady, comeback for comedian John Crist who has come out on the other side of “cancelation” to a series of sold-out events in his first tour since the pandemic.
One of the final stops on his Emotional Support Tour will see him taking center stage at the Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land on Sunday, March 3. “This is the final leg for the tour,” Crist announces. “Shoot,- I don’t know why we saved Houston for way at the end.”
This return to selling out major venues was far from guaranteed for the Atlanta born joke teller. In 2019, Christian magazine Charisma News made allegations about the comic ‘sexting’ and ‘harassment’ of women in relationships, which led to an abrupt end of his then-current tour and to Netflix pulling a planned special from their release calendar. According to CNN, Crist claimed to have “received regular professional treatment for [his] sexual sin and addiction struggles.”
Nearly five years later, Crist is clear-eyed in his evaluation of emerging on the other side. “I mean, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” he says in a serious tone. “Especially in today’s age, it’s kind of like the same with America. They say the threat to America is not going to be someone coming over here with a gun or an atomic bomb, it’s going to be on the internet. It’s gonna be on the power grid. That is where people are the most vulnerable.”
“This is my first tour out of COVID and all that stuff,” the 39-year-old performer says. “and it felt like everyone was alone in a lot of ways, more isolated in their homes and whatnot. Everybody was seeing the news and observing stuff about the culture, and the media and it started to seem like, this doesn’t connect. This doesn’t add up.”
The antidote to that loneliness and confusion, both for the comic and his audience, seemed to be clear: live stand-up comedy. “That’s what every show in the city is,” Crist says, “it’s people gathered together in whatever city you live in. You think: you are alone and isolated and you are the only ones thinking these things. But then, an entire theater of people get together to laugh at the silliness of the culture and world around us.”
For some performers, the sheer expansiveness of a venue like Smart Financial might pose unique challenges for a comedian looking to connect with a crowd. Crist describes the factors that affect his decision making on such a large stage. “We actually did it last weekend,” he assures. “We were up in Canada and we were doing a bunch of those hockey arenas, which are huge. But we [went] to Zanesville, Ohio last weekend and the biggest theater they have is about 1,000 or 1,500 people. So it does matter. The size of the venue does matter. Especially down in Texas. It’s a joke, but everything is bigger. So we always bring in more stage, more production, more lighting and more just to blow it up.”
“I think we’ve played Smart Financial Centre once before and yeah, it does look like a Coliseum on the sunset. That thing is a monster! We’re thrilled to be back.”
“Let me tell you,” he continues, “a lot of people want me to be this big anti-cancel culture guy, or like ‘fight for freedom of speech!’ But dude, I was performing in church. I was performing in a bunch of churches and not behaving like someone performing in churches should be behaving like. A lot of times certain outlets want me to be the freedom of speech guy, but I don’t know. If I worked in church, I would have kicked me out too. You know what I’m saying?
“After all this time, and selling out all these shows, it would be a little bit of a crutch for me to look back and blame something like that or carry something from that. The people that have been my fans have been my fans for a long time and can kind of read between the lines of the media and what people say about people, and are thrilled to be coming back out to the shows. I don’t have to do a lot of convincing, you know what I’m saying? I just put out great content and people come to the show.”
For those who have qualms engaging with Crist’s content in light of what has been alleged, the comic appears to have made peace with that fallout. “What’s the best way to say this?” he asks. “Anybody who has read something about me and then has deemed that ‘we’re not gonna watch that guy’s videos’ or something? That’s fine with me. All good. The church, and those Christian people, I love those people, man. I would get crushed publicly on the internet, but privately? That’s the community of people that saved my life. I got nothing bad to say to them. And if you come out to the show, it’s the same things we’ve always been joking about since day one of my career. So, I haven’t changed at all.”
After the negativity online surfaced, Crist took an eight-month break from posting on social media and returned with an Instagram video detailing his road to recovery. While he did own certain mistakes, Crist still contends the not everything was reported as he saw it. “I mean, if you’re gonna get down to the specifics of it,” he starts. “There are a lot of things about what has been said about me that are wildly inaccurate. Which still on the internet today, people say things about me that are untrue. So I don’t want to admit that everything, which is far from true.”
“But it is true that I needed to take accountability for my actions, and what people don’t like is we’re all human, we all have needs and insecurities and imperfections. When somebody you know gets caught doing something, or gets called out or held accountable, they blame this person and that person. They say: ‘it was their fault, I was under too much pressure, I needed this, I deserve this’ – that’s what people have a problem with. But instead if someone gets caught with a DUI, instead of going ‘It was only that one time, or I wasn’t that drunk’ – you just say, ‘Yeah, I messed up. I went across the line’ and nobody is responsible for that except me.”
Crist continues: “I was doing a lot of shows at churches and I knew that whatever drinking and carrying on wasn’t appropriate. I knew what the rules were. So if you’re taking accountability, it’s not even necessarily the actions – I knew what the rules were. It’s like if you work at a company, and you wear jeans to work. If you wear jeans to work and you get fired, you’re like: those were the rules of the company. It’s like, I knew that getting drunk after performing a show at a church was against the rules. Like, there are not formally written rules- but I knew that was unacceptable to that culture. So I paid the consequences of that, and I got no problem with that.”
One of those consequences however, led to a successful pivot for Crist. With Netflix benching his special, he instead bet on himself and released his special directly to YouTube – reaching a wide audience with 3.7 million viewers to his 2022 special entitled What Are We Doing? as well as nearly 3 million checking out last year’s John Crist Would Like To Release A Statement.
“It’s interesting,” Crist concedes. “because we shot the special, right? You shoot the special and it’s probably an hour and 20 minutes. You gotta cut it down to 53, right? So I remember going to my agent, because I was gonna edit it the weekend after. I go ‘who are we editing this for?’ If we’re editing this for Netflix, I’m gonna take out some of these more Christian or conservative jokes. But instead if we’re gonna sell this to the Daily Wire or Fox Nation, I’m gonna take out some of these bits where I’m making fun of these more conservative or Christian family or friends or whatever.”
“So I go: ‘who are we selling this to, how should I edit this?’ And he says, edit this how you want it to be edited and we’ll figure out the rest on the backend. I think that’s important because all these media outlets have this kind of angle that they like to feed their customer base. So you go directly to the customer. A lot of guys like me, and I’m not putting myself in these guys’ territory, but like Joe Rogan. You really can’t cancel a guy like Joe Rogan, because he goes straight to the people. But if you work for CBS or CNN or Fox, they can cancel you because you can lose your job. But if you are Tucker Carlson now, you talk straight to the people. So there is no ‘governing body’ to cancel you, which as a comedian, that’s traditionally pretty important to go directly to the people who rock with you and care about your content.”
As primarily a Christian comic, Crist thinks the niche-ification of comedy is the way of the future. “It’s a little bit more diluted out there,” he posits. “It used to be there was only one comedy club in Houston, and you got to it and it’s a guy like Jay Leno or Jerry Seinfeld and its applicable to everyone: the everyman type of comic. Now you have Christian comics, Jewish comics, Muslim comics, Black comics, Latino comics, female comics, lesbian and gay, every type of niche genre. Something exists for everyone.”
Crist’s performance is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Sunday, March 3 at the Smart Financial Centre, 18111 Lexington Blvd, Sugar Land. For information, visit smartfinancialcentre.net. $41-167
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
