Most people aren’t exactly delighted when their precious offspring pour scorn on their parenting, but the moment David Cross’s daughter told him he was “the worst daddy in the world”, he felt nothing but gratitude. The comedian had been struggling to come up with a title for his latest show, until his six-year-old landed on the perfect distillation of her father’s standup vibe: a darkly comic melange of goofiness, pugilism and needling contrarianism. “I was like: ‘Oh, there you go, a name for the tour! Very good.’”
Said show, which he brings to the UK later this month, is not exclusively parenting-themed, explains Cross over Zoom from New York, facial hair fulsome but trimmed back from the wild, grey Garibaldi beard he has been sporting in recent years. Having become a father in his 50s (his wife is Amber Tamblyn, the actor and founding member of anti sexual harassment movement Time’s Up), child-rearing has been a relatively late addition to his usual comic odyssey through “religion, people being fools, pop culture, politics and all that kind of stuff”. For the purposes of the show, Cross has recontextualised the titular insult from a stroppy outburst to a commentary on the culture wars. “The idea is that a lot of people who hear my opinions on certain topics – especially in America – would think that I’m a terrible father because I believe in diversity. I’m woke, or whatever the fuck you want to say.”
When it comes to standing in opposition to conservative, Christian, so-called “family-friendly” America, Cross is no novice. He began performing comedy in his native Georgia in 1982, the week before his 18th birthday. Having witnessed “awful, corny, hacky” local open-mic sets, he decided that as a staunch outsider (“I looked weird; I had an earring, I didn’t wear nice clothes, intentionally”), he could provide an alternative. By the early millennium, he would become one of the defining figures of cult gen X comedy. In his Grammy-nominated standup show, Shut Up You Fucking Baby!, he railed against corrupt politicians, the religious establishment, societal hypocrisy and crappy pop culture in righteously vitriolic, impeccably cynical and expletive-riddled style. And as co-creator of Mr Show alongside Bob Odenkirk, his sketches would provide a guiding light for a whole new generation of hip young comedians. “Its intricate absurdist humour now has echoes from prime time to Portlandia to Adult Swim,” said the New York Times in 2015.
Yet despite helping to define alternative culture in the US, it was only by playing Tobias Fünke in the 00s sitcom Arrested Development that Cross broke the UK. Fünke – a never-nude “analrapist” (that’s a cross between an analyst and a therapist) spectacularly failing to break into the acting biz – was a highlight of this absurdly clever sitcom, an outrageous, callback-cloaked chronicle of a wealthy California family that is generally considered one of the greatest comedies of the 21st century.
Today, however, Cross does not want to talk about Arrested Development, greeting my effusive inquiries with a look so intensely withering I decide not to press him, lest this interview permanently taint my feelings towards my favourite TV show of all time. “I don’t know if there’s anything to say that hasn’t been said,” he sighs, by way of explanation.
Cross is far more eager to revisit a more recent passion project that has already begun to slide into obscurity. Despite originally airing on Channel 4, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret – in which Cross stars as a hapless American energy drink salesman sent to Britain to flog his wares – is now impossible to watch in this country. “Legally, no, you’re not allowed,” deadpans Cross, as my gaze drifts to the giant poster of the show plastered on his office wall. “That was in my contract. I said: ‘I’m going to work really hard for very little money for years on this project, but you have to promise me that you won’t show it.’”
Todd Margaret played on the transatlantic culture clash; a sour, surreal and slightly sick fish-out-of-water farce; a darkside Ted Lasso. Filming the show was his first proper experience of the UK, despite the fact his father actually hails from Leeds (the two have been estranged since Cross was a teenager: “I grew up very poor and that was partly because I had a shitty dad and he left when we were young,” he says). In reality, he didn’t leave London believing there really was a massive chasm between the two cultures – especially “since y’all copy everything we do about three or four years later”. Well, you guys are badly remaking every successful British sitcom under the sun, I counter. “That’s true, and we Americanise it which means we dumb it down, we simplify it, we take any of the edge out. I remember seeing the American pilot for [a remake of Sharon Horgan’s] Pulling, and it took every great thing about it and flushed it down the toilet.”
Talking of things going down the drain, Cross is also keen to discuss “the biggest disappointment” of his career. Last year, it was announced that he and Odenkirk had reunited to create Guru Nation, a comedy about two rival cult leaders who end up joining forces. After a bidding war, won by the streamer Paramount+, scripts were written and a director recruited (Jason Woliner, whose credits include Borat Subsequent Moviefilm). Then, as they were gearing up to film, the whole production got shut down. Apparently, the marketing and analytics department – essentially, the technology that predicts what viewers will want to watch – “couldn’t figure it out”, says Cross.
The experience has left him despairing on two fronts. Firstly, there’s the power AI already wields in the industry, a bind he has neatly distilled into a sardonic rant: “I said to the president [of Paramount]: I don’t know what a computer wants. Will you ask the computer what it wants and then instead of spending a year andahalf on this really cool project only for the computer to say “no”, maybe let’s ask the computer first what it wants, and then maybe Bob and I can go and do that if we’re interested in it?”
Then there’s the idea that it all comes down to demographics. He imagines the marketing department’s thought process: “It’s two old sketch comedy guys, they’re both white dudes, no thanks.” At the end of the day, Cross says, it’s all about short-term profit. “You’ve got these mega multinational corporations saying it’s cheaper for us to just dump these shows. We crunched the numbers and we’d only make £42,000 and that’s not enough – we need to make millions.”
Back to standup, his first love, then, which in comparison to the deep dysfunctionality of streaming-warped TV (see also: the writers’ and actors’ strikes in the US) seems to be a place of relative freedom, an arena where you can bypass profit margins and algorithms. Cross is confident that he’ll “always be able to find an audience” for his live work. “It may not be lucrative any more, I may not be doing Netflix specials for a lot of money, but I can always do it.”
Unless, that is, he gets cancelled – a real threat, if less of an occupational hazard for comedians than certain media outlets would have you believe. He admits he is now gently self-censoring on his own terms. He has only ever done one joke he actively regrets “because the victim is the Native American in it: it’s not smart, I didn’t make a point, I just went with a cheap laugh and it’s out there and I wish it wasn’t.” Yet he has recently stopped doing two more – one involving the phrase “the N-word”, the other about Native American reparations – “because people who were upset by them eloquently and articulately explained why it was upsetting. I agreed with them. I didn’t see it that way and now I do.”
Despite that, Cross believes his perspective on offence has remained fairly consistent over his near half-century in comedy – with one exception. “The one issue that has changed relatively dramatically over the past six or seven years is pronoun changes, which I found so annoying for no other reason than … it bumps with my idea of correct grammar, I wish they would have chosen a different word than them/they.” However, “the more I knew trans people, the more I got it. Even though intellectually I’m thinking this makes no sense, I would rather have people be comfortable than knowing I was having anything to do with making people – especially people who are so marginalised – uncomfortable and unhappy.”
Unsurprisingly, he has no truck with the comedy giants determined to say the apparently unsayable about trans people. “That Ricky Gervais and [Dave] Chappelle stuff is just like: guys, thanks for being a warrior for me but I don’t need it. I think you just look silly at the end of the day.”
And yet you get the strong sense Cross has a distinctly gen X-flavoured aversion to coming across as too sanctimonious. He does make jokes on these topics, only “in the context of dinner or at a pub. I’ll save it for my friends,” he says. “You can call me a pussy, it’s fine, you go right ahead.” Having made his name loudly fulminating against idiocy, duplicity and piety in all its forms, you might well call Cross many things – but you’d have a hard time calling him that.
David Cross is touring from 12 to 17 September; tour starts Belfast.
