With five Netflix specials, a podcast network, a best-selling book and performing 300 shows for 700,000 fans on his last tour, you’d struggle to find someone who is currently as prolific in the comedy space as Tom Segura.
By design, Segura is a very busy man. While sharing the stage with John Mulaney and roasting Tom Brady at the Netflix is a Joke Fest this month, the 45-year-old found time to connect with his fans at his 2 Bears 5k fitness event, demonstrating his relentless (and borderline ridiculous) dedication to both his craft and his audience.
Now, the comedy titan is bringing his tongue-in-cheek humor to the Middle East for the first time, with a highly anticipated performance at the Etihad Arena on May 25, as part of the Abu Dhabi Comedy Week.
We caught up with Segura on his lunch-break between writing sessions for his upcoming Netflix series (due to drop in 2025) to delve into his passions, the evolution of his comedy, and his exciting new projects in television and film.
ESQ: Your upcoming show at Abu Dhabi Comedy Week will be your first time doing stand-up in the Middle East. How much do you research a new place you’re performing at for on stage material?
Tom Segura: You never want to go into a place completely ignorant, but when I do international shows I try to do the show that I’ve developed.
If you’re doing bits where you have references to things that are very American, sometimes you go like, “Oh okay, what’s the equivalent here?” But going in thinking, ‘I’m just gonna do a show that hopefully hits all the notes that these people would want to hear in this market’ – I don’t I don’t do that.
ESQ: I love that Chris Tucker story you tell about him asking whether he should do another Rush Hour movie on a plane. Have you met Chris since that day or will Abu Dhabi Comedy Week be your reunion?
Tom Segura: That’s hilarious. I think that will be the next time that I’ve seen him and I fully expect him to be like, “Huh? Who?”. I’ll remind him in great detail if I run into him. Sometimes that backfires though. I’ve done that where I told Serena Williams all about the time that I flew with her and I told her story. She was so unamused and I bombed.
ESQ: It’ll come as no surprise to fans who watched your self-produced 69 Minutes sketch-show last year, that a six episode series is coming to Netflix in 2025. Has a TV show been a long-time coming for you or did Netflix catch you at the right time in a moment of inspiration?
Tom Segura: Television and film development, that process is always very taxing. It’s long, it’s arduous and I’ve been through it. So I had this idea of shooting something I wanted to shoot and I could’ve called an agent to set up a meeting. Instead, I was like “You know what, I just want to go shoot this”.
The original idea was that I would put it on our same pay-per-view platform that 69 Minutes aired on. When I was getting ready to get it on that platform, I showed it to my agents and they said, “You’ve got to let more people see this”. We showed it to Netflix, and then they acquired it. It was kind of an accident that they ended up with it.
ESQ: How much freedom are you getting from Netflix in the making of the show?
Tom Segura: So far, it’s been unreal: “Go make the show you want to make.”
Now, we’re early on. I’m at an office right now in the writers room on the show. So this is day four of the writers room, and we’re going to be writing for a month and then we do another couple of weeks I think in July.
Netflix has been really supportive. It remains to be seen though, they haven’t been given scripts yet so I don’t know what they’re gonna say when they actually read the scripts, but it’s been a good process so far.
ESQ: You released your debut Novel of essays, I’d like to play alone please in 2022 and Sledgehammer a year later. What’s more pressure? A fifth special or a first book?
Tom Segura: I think I’m just so used to specials. You always have this moment of genuine panic when it’s about to debut because you’re just like, “I hope this is good. I hope people like it”. It’s very familiar.
There’s something that feels way more vulnerable about handing in your writing because at least when you perform, you’re in control of how the words are said in the cadence, gestures, facial expressions, tone; all of that is your instrument. You’re doing it. When you write something, you just hand over pages and you feel very vulnerable. So that was scarier for sure.
ESQ: It’s been more than two years since you last did an episode of Tom Talks. Are there any plans to bring it back any time soon?
Tom Segura: I have a lot of fun doing other shows but [Tom Talks] is the most fun I’ve had, only because it’s a total wish-fulfillment type of show for me. I only did those episodes with people I really wanted to talk to just kind of like, how you should do anything. I want to do this podcast with the guys that chased Pablo Escobar, I want to do one with Deion Sanders, so that was a dream. The only thing that has kept me from doing that is just at certain point, you accept that you don’t have the bandwidth to just keep adding things to do.
With touring being this aggressive and demanding; when you get back, there’s only so much time. If I didn’t tour for a living, I’m sure I would do it again. If I stopped doing one of the podcasts, that’d be the first thing I’d try to bring back.
ESQ: Who is someone you’d really like to talk to on the show?
Tom Segura: There’s so many. I had a brief interaction with Mark Cuban and I really wanted to talk to him. I’ve always wanted to interview Denzel Washington. I’d want to interview Pacman Jones. There’s Christiane Amanpour, she’s on my list. Just people that I find interesting.
ESQ: I read that your therapist once said you like to live in a “narrow emotional bandwidth”, but you’ve said that you’ve recently gotten out of that a little. How did you make that change?
Tom Segura: I just lived in such a way where I felt restricted. I think what kind of pulled the plug on that was getting injured for some reason. I’ve discovered that it’s fairly common for people that have had traumatic injuries; they break out of their emotional shells. Physical therapists will tell you that people just kind of feel almost this new lease on life kind of thing. It’s not quite a near death experience, but it’s sort of parallel to that in a way.
The way that I’ve changed is that I’m more expressive and I just say what I want to do more. You kind of have this thing where you realize there really is just one go at all of this.
So you’re like, “Yeah I want to do it, let’s go skydiving”, and do the things that you would kind of internalize and end up restricting yourself on. I’ve just been able to open up on that stuff more. It’s just a better way to live life for me.
ESQ: You’ve become some what of a North Star for comedians in reaching the heights you have on your terms. Can you tell me about any challenges you’ve faced recently career or otherwise and how you overcame them?
Tom Segura: The main thing is that you really do want to keep dreaming. I swear to you, I moved to Los Angeles in 2002 solely because I just wanted to do movies. I became successful in this other lane of entertainment but I’ve never really deviated from wanting to do movies.
It’s kind of like what we were just talking about, where there comes a point where you almost feel shame to express that you want to do that because you’re not doing it. People say, “well, that’s not for you, you’re in this other thing”. But I’ve just continued to just keep saying it and I keep talking about it. Now I at least have multiple movies in the pipeline cooking where I have a writer writing this one for me, I’m writing one with this other guy, I have producers that are pitching the other movies. So I just feel like it’s closer and closer to happening, which is exciting.
It’s not a given. People over the years as I got more successful in stand up would say “Why don’t you do movies?”. It doesn’t work like that. You don’t just demand a movie! So part of it is that you have to remain humble. You have to accept that it is its own process and you have to go through all the steps. I don’t really get to skip any step because I’ve done well in stand up, it’s the same thing for me as anybody else.
Tom Segura will be performing his ‘Come Together’ world tour at the Etihad arena on Saturday, May 25.