Since posting 6 second videos on Vine almost ten years ago, Noel Miller has kept fans entertained through any artistic medium he can get his restlessly inventive hands on.
However, his magnum opus thus far seems to have arrived on his Youtube channel on Tuesday of this week, with Stop Crying; his first ever hour-long special.
Though Miller’s humble beginnings may have made for a steady start in the game, Noel says he brought a V12 engine to this Rat Race, and refuses to slow down on his objective to bring funny, compelling art to his audience.
Leaving us all with content that begs the question, “How the hell is this free to watch?”
Over his illustrious career, Miller refuses to pull any punches; offering up short-films, weekly topical videos, hard-hitting Griselda reminiscent bars, original show ideas, and multiple podcasts a week as one half of the TMG Podcast network.
“I would say I’ve definitely arrived at a point that I’d always dreamed of landing on, which is just getting paid to be creative.”
NM
After adding 60 shows to his internationally sold-out “Everything is F#&ked” tour last year, Miller knew that he had arrived as a stand-up comic, and was hyped to show off his craft to fans that knew they were in for something that is distinctly “Noel”.
“It really meant a lot that I could kind of put up flyers in so many different cities, and every single one of them would blowout”, says Miller on his long haul long-form success.
For Noel, stand-up comedy is a return to home that he loved long before “all the internet stuff”, and ‘Stop Crying’ seems to be a love-letter to the art form itself.
After years of creating some of the best content on the internet, this Jack of all trades undoubtedly has a preference for one. Post-watch, it’s clear to see why his is stand-up comedy.
Read our full conversation with the man himself below.
Noel Miller interview with Esquire Middle East
Tell me about picking the name for the special. Did you have other titles in mind while creating the hour?
NM: This is a tough one to answer because the phrase is very integral to a very important part of the special but, I didn’t actually have any other names.
This one kind of happened naturally one, because of the material and two, as I would do the show, it’s funny how many people heard that growing up and just how common that phrase is. Over time I just realized that it was powerful in and of itself. It seemed like an easy choice, honestly.
Your special is self directed and we know that you’re well equipped in that department with all the music videos and short films you’ve put out. A first special seems like enough pressure as it is though. Is there a reason you wanted that part of the endeavor under your control? Or did you always assume off-rip that you’d be directing it as well.
NM: I kind of assumed just because there’s definitely a lot of pressure when making a big creative piece like that. I figured that I ultimately want to decide how it’s shot, where it’s shot, and I just wanted the experience of being able to produce my own.
Anytime I have an opportunity to learn more as a director and just about creative production, I take full advantage of it. It definitely was an added layer but I had my go-to crew and it made it smooth. It was great.
You’ve been vocal about wanting to make a movie someday and spoke about how watching Talk 2 Me by fellow YouTube creators made you realize what a daunting process that would be. Did directing your special make you more or less interested in making a movie? Is that like comparing apples to oranges or were there some lessons learnt?
NM: Lessons learnt for sure but yeah, I think they’re two totally different things. I will say, making all the promotional material for it, that definitely inspired me to pick back up on pursuing a film and it got me gelling on a concept almost instantly. So I think I might try to do something indie very soon.
They’re very different so I wouldn’t associate my experience with the special with being able to tackle a film. But nonetheless, it did give me a bit of confidence in sort of taking on a big task and filming something that is longer than 15 minutes, per se.
In your special you joke about how it’s a lot of your audience’s first time seeing stand-up comedy. Did that inform the way you write your jokes or structured the hour at all?
NM: It informed some of the material but stand-up is stand-up. You still have to stick to the craft and you can’t trick your way around it. So as far as writing the jokes, I kept that as authentic to me as possible and the way I learned coming up. But yeah, it did inform some of the material.
It was a funny observation that I learned over time. When I first started performing again, I didn’t really factor that it was some people’s first time seeing stand-up. And so acknowledging that kind of just opens up a door and it enables people to be comfortable.
On your Twitch stream over the pandemic, you coined this “Turn up on tragedy” motto and spoke about a friend telling you the importance of perseverance early in your life.
Can you tell me about how a younger Noel found that perseverance in himself while being a bed-less college dropout at your dad’s house?
NM: I guess at that time I was pretty aware of where I was financially and my projection of where I was headed given my situation.
So I think a lot of my perseverance came from the fact that there wasn’t much to look forward to, so it could only be up from there. I had I still had life left to live, so it’d be worth pursuing.
I think I always had enough conviction that one day I could accomplish some of my ideas.
A lot of people may think Noel didn’t “make it” until his mid to late 20s but they don’t see the come up in audio engineering and being a developer all those years. Can you tell us about that part of your life and what you learnt from a quote on quote “slower” come up than we see now in the TikTok world?
NM: When I became a developer, as far as money was concerned, it was not looking good. I kind of found my way to development on accident through my wife Aleena who was working at an advertising agency at the time.
At that moment, I was trying to build a website because me and some old friends were trying to start a small production company. We had no idea what we were doing, and it’s pretty bold to try to start a production company when you have no money, and no clients, and barely any gear.
So it was ambitious, to say the least.
Aleena was working at this advertising agency and kind of talking to some of the developers there, and she said, “You know, I feel like you’re not too far off from these people and the way that they think. You’re smart enough to do the job”.
When I eventually became a full-stack-ish web developer, at that point I thought I was doing great. I had a decent salary and I had made a career as someone who didn’t finish college. I was thinking, “alright cool. I’m set”.
So I think what that overall allowed me to do was live life that you’re kind of supposed to live at least in the American experience. I got to hit all those beats. So with the come-up kind of happening later, I think I got to really appreciate it, and I did not take it for granted one bit.
That slower burn to success in entertainment- it gives me a lot of points of reference. So if I ever get in my head, or I’m overthinking stuff, it’s very easy to kind of point back and go, “Well, you came from there to here. So you’re doing all right, and you don’t have to be like, perfect today”.
You’ve come a long way since performing at a mic for six people where a guy does a getting arrested prank and completely ends the open mic.
For you personally though, do you feel like you have “made it”? If so when was that realization for you?
NM: I think people associate “made it” with like, super duper stardom and truckloads of money. I kind of define it as just specific goals.
I would say I definitely hit a good percentage of those goals and I just kind of have those remaining big aspirations, you know? Like try to make a successful feature, sophomore and junior comedy specials that are well received.
Right now I’m working on those top, more difficult end of my goal list. In a way, I would say I’ve definitely arrived at a point that I’d always dreamed of landing on, which is just getting paid to be creative. It’s a super tough thing to accomplish and so to be here is awesome.
I think to answer your question of when that hit for me though, I think it would be in the middle of last year, when I started hitting clubs again and writing a new hour. It really meant a lot that I could kind of put up flyers in so many different cities, and every single one of them would blowout, you know? Whole weekend sold out.
I think it it meant a lot in that when I do those shows, people saw what I was trying to do, and they’re massively supportive. And I thought, “Man, this is super special”.
Because they’re coming to see my individual ideas and you know, to get people out of the house to pay to see someone talk is a tall order. And so for people to come out and support, I think that’s when I really felt like I was in a good spot.
It’s a surreal thing and it’s given me something that I’d always hoped. I wanted to be able to travel and understand these different walks of life and stand-up has enabled me to scratch the surface on that.
A first special is a huge milestone for you. Has doing this made you think about the other goals you have in stand-up specifically?
NM: I think that stuff is important. it’s been kind of surreal when I pop into clubs and people either working there may recognize me or maybe the booker knows of me, and I’ve even had comics, you know, just kind of tapped me on the shoulder and say, “Hey man, I follow what you’re doing, you’re doing great.
I think that was something that felt further away but now it feels a bit closer.
I think like getting passed at clubs is important. But also, just showing the community that you care about it. For me stand-up is not something that I was told to do. I just genuinely love it, and I care about it, and I cared about it before all the internet stuff.
So I think above all, that’s the most important thing for me to get out there- is that I don’t treat this like a cash grab or something. It’s something that is a craft to me and I intend to get sharper at it over time.
When speaking to billboard about your music process, your producer Amon said “He has a very interesting story to tell, and it’s about time he tells it.”
It seems you felt the same way with your special because you really open up like you never have before. Is stand-up the medium you find it easiest to open up like that? If so, I’m curious to know why.
NM: I think because standup gets to be 100% what I want it to be, and there’s no pressure to do it for the money, or to keep the lights on- which is a privilege, through and through. I think it’s easy to open up because I get to sort of craft the points and things I want to get across.
Bombing is seen as a negative but really with stand-up, there is that ever-green that you can try to say something again. Whatever point you’re trying to make, whatever jokes you’re trying to get across, you do have the benefit of time.
So I think opening up on stage just becomes easier because it’s not like when you film media for YouTube or something else where the first thing you say gets printed and it gets put out.
This set has changed so much and there’s kind of this weird ever-evolving process that can draw out some really funny unique moments which in turn, you can give back to the audience.
You’ve opened up in your music too or even talked about how it’s hard to open up on Bus Back on your Push EP.
That’s sort of the other side of that TUOTragedy motto, It seems that your first inclination in the face of tragedy is to find the funny. I’m curious, Are you able to turn off that comedy brain of “being on” in your regular personal life or is that in itself something you have to fight?
NM: I would say maybe in years-passed it was harder to turn off. I think these days I’m a bit more comfortable just acknowledging my feelings or whatever and being a bit more, I guess “vulnerable” if you had to choose a word.
Push is funny because it was like the other extreme, where I was used to just kind of being goofy all the time. So I think I went for something that felt really dramatic and serious. I think that helped me kind of find that middle ground.
So yeah, these days it’s not too hard to kind of sit with whatever feelings I got and talk about them.
With music, you’ve given us fire punchline bars and even some hard hitting talk-that-talk style tracks like PACEMAKER. Are you looking to release some more music? What direction do you think you’re leaning in for future releases?
NM: There’s definitely going to be some music. I hesitate to say how much just because currently very focused on stand-up and definitely want to be digging my heels into the director route.
I think music is something I did in high school with my friends, and I’ve always done it growing up, so it’s always kind of there. So I can’t say I have any plans for like, full albums in the near future but I got music-friends that try to push me back into it casually.
I think rapping specifically, it’s just fun to kind of scratch the punch-line itch and just say funny out of pocket stuff.
I hear that “Comics want to be musicians and musicians want to be comedians” a lot but you’re in a weird place where you’re able to do both successfully. What do you think it is about these two career paths that one side is so deeply interested about wanting to do the other?
NM: I think they both romanticize each other’s work. I think comics maybe want to be musicians because music just looks a lot cooler. You know, it’s more exciting.
And when your comedy doesn’t work, it’s f**king horrible. When you have a room of people just staring at you it’s abysmal, but I think comics forget that it happens to musicians too.
Fundamentally, comics view music as maybe a little bit lower pressure and when music comes out, you kind of get to know that it works. So if you’re a successful musician, that means people like your music, and they’re going to come see you.
I think a scary thing as a musician too, is you don’t get the benefit of trying stuff over time, and I think musicians maybe believe being a comedian is dope because comedians kind of appear like they’re just up there being themselves.
Maybe musicians feel like they’re constantly putting on a persona or it just takes more out of them and maybe it would be easier to just get up there and talk.
I think both things suffer from the same tropes so it’s just a “grass is greener” situation.
Is there a difference in how you approach writing a comedy song for a TMG project vs a working on a solo Noel rap song?
NM: I think in my personal music, I’ve tended to skew a bit vague and maybe a bit dramatic. I think I’m a bit choosier with it, and then I think with TMG my focus is just more “What’s like the funniest thing I could say right now?”. So yeah, they’re definitely different schools of thought.
Being all over the country and being at this for years, you have a considerable fan base that you come face to face with on a weekly basis on tour. Can you tell me about any fan interactions that made you feel the weight of how beloved you are?
NM: Not to cop-out or whatever, but I genuinely feel like there are a couple scenarios that happen often that are pretty amazing. First of all, if they’re reading this, or hearing this: Massive thank you to all the people that support what I do.
One, when I just perform shows and they’re there and then especially the people who just will wait for hours for me to pop-out of the venue just to say what’s up and take a picture. That’s always a great experience but also just a great reminder of how much people really enjoy what I put out there.
That’s kind of a big reason I stopped doing meet and greets, you know? If people are willing to wait for it, I’m not going to charge them to take a picture and say “what’s up” to me. I’ll just do that as like, a bare minimum kind of thing.
I think also feel it when I run into different people in different cities, and they have random stories like, “oh yeah, I saw you in Philly. And I went to the Saturday Late Show”, and it’s kind of like this cool thing where they’ll jog my memory and we have this mutual experience.
I feel that they really care about what I do. Seeing them after my shows it always just reminds me how much this group of people love what I do and it’s very surreal every time.
The thing about being funny to me, the attempt in itself comes with an attempt at being liked. With the huge views, approval from some of your peers in the stand-up world, and the loyal fan base internationally, has that cup sort of been filled for you?
NM: I don’t think I strive to necessarily be liked. I think what I strive for is that I hope people enjoy what I’m putting out, but I think trying to be liked is like a slippery slope.
Because then if you’re not being authentic to yourself, maybe you’re putting on something that just isn’t true to you. And then the media you start putting out; you don’t feel like it reflects who you are.
Then you’re kind of in this weird space where like, “oh, man. I’m doing something because I feel like I have to, not because I want to”. So I think a good aim to go for is, “do people seem to be enjoying it?”.
If some people don’t like it, that’s alright. You know, if what you’re making is liked by everyone, I think you gotta question that too.
I guess to answer your question, I definitely found a group of people that enjoy what I do. So now, my focus is giving them new, fresh things to look at and just try to keep them entertained.
With all the different mediums you’ve worked in, you’ve really cemented yourself as a renaissance man as you’re kind of like the internet’s Donald Glover. Having your hands in so many different pots though, do you find that it creates more mental clutter and burnout possibility, or is it more a system of you being able to follow inspiration across those different mediums?
NM: I think the internet just causes things to move so much faster than they did before. I obviously have a big window into that and I have a window into traditional media.
The tough part is when you’re on the internet, podcasting [for example] becomes a popular medium, and then a lot of people start doing it.
So I think a big key to my creativity is just trying to comfortably break convention without having all my eggs in one basket. With the TMG set, the podcast landscape was really growing, a lot of people are doing it. That was like an opportunity in “how can I exercise maximum creativity to potentially bring our show something that is vastly different from everyone else?”.
So then that’s when I came up with the ship and from there, I just tried to stay creative and keep working on different things because I think they all kind of feed into each other.
When you’re working in different mediums, you can always take something from one, apply it to the other, and get really cool features to add that you may not have otherwise thought about, just by working on one singular thing.
I’ve heard you say that “the key to having a successful set is starting with something you are passionate about” and I think that really informs all that the creative work you release. From getting to ride on the top of a car Tom Cruise-style for the Crow music video, to creating and hosting your own game shows, what’s been your favorite project to work on over the years?
NM: The special is like, bar none my biggest accomplishment and favorite thing I’ve worked in the last year and a half because it’s much more than just the special. It’s all the places I got to go, all the different things I got to see, getting to tour internationally, all that stuff changed me and grew me as a person.
There’s two next to the special that I’m really stoked about. It would be the Hot Laps project and definitely the Lumberjacked short-film. [Lumberjacked] was me, trying to take advantage of a brand deal in the weirdest way possible.
To kind of make that on a whim, that was a great experience. I felt like that was me trying to exercise maximum creativity- and it was just like a lot of fun.
You’ve voiced your concerns on the “do what works” world of algorithm chasing on Youtube, how do you know what to focus your energy on creatively?
NM: I think I like to keep a lot of ideas percolating. It does make it hard to pick, but I think I’m always trying to choose what feels really authentic for the time, what feels good for that moment, and what feels good in my career.
I’m very privileged in that I’ve had a lot of success in different areas. I think TMG and my YouTube channel, it allows me to kind of hit those topical moments and create short-form content. It enables me to get all that stuff out there and kind of play the algorithm games.
So when I have time to be creative, I try to dial that up to 1000 and take advantage of something not needing to be pressured by money or performance. Obviously, you take a risk because sometimes you make stuff that not a lot of people like, but I think it’s good to always maintain some avenue where you’re trying something new and kind of exploring.
We’re definitely excited about the new season on Hot Laps, did I see Daniel Ricciardo in the in the guest chair?
NM: Yeah, you may have. That might be coming out very soon.
You have a really original style on stage, what are your stand up influences? Do you have a top three specials of all time?
NM: I wouldn’t say I have like, a “top three specials” but I definitely have people that massively inspired me. This one’s a bit morbid, but one of my good friends growing up who passed introduced me to Robin Harris. I loved watching Robin Harris stand-up with him.
At the time, when me and my friend Barry would watch Robin Harris (left) it was kind of like, for laughs. But I would find myself going back to him over and over. Robin kind of always inspired me because his presentation was like he was really saying something that he felt.
His physical comedy was always just hysterical. The combination of his burning passion for whatever he was saying in the moment- it could be something innocuous, like he’s making fun of someone’s f**king haircut. But then the way he’d kind of tag it with physical comedy, that always was just so funny to me.
I think just growing up, I was always kind of that way. I’d always act stuff out and try to make people laugh by being physical. So, when I watched other comics do it, that kind of encouraged me to double-down on it.
A lot of Bill Burr. Again, what I like about Burr is what he’s saying seems very true to him and what he believes. I think that’s the hardest thing to be in stand up, is authentic to who you are.
It’s really easy to get caught up in your idols and every comic talks about it; mimicking who they looked up to. I’d always try to look at the best of the best and see how they’ve accomplished their voice- at least from my perspective.
Outside of that, I would say I was inspired by Patrice O’Neal, and then Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock were some of my first specials that I owned as gifts, and Chappelle, they all contributed in their own way.
What about your top three albums of all time?
NM: I guess I kind of think of albums as like, phases in life and it’s tough to say that an album that I listened to heavily in this period of my life is maybe more important than this other part- which I know is super meta.
I think Toxicity by System of a Down, I’d have to put up there. Obviously, for that time period that album hit for a lot of people but I think it just hit in a pocket of my life when I was young and it just captured that angst.
I have to say Monkey Barz by Sean Price, that’s one that I listened to on repeat. Sean price was a rapper that I just grew up listening to a ton.
And then recently, I gotta shout out my guys Paris Texas- Mid Air. Love those dudes, they’re great people, great humans, great artists. Their music is something that I found in recent years that I really connected with and would listen to a lot.
It kind of feels like a terrible question to ask someone that’s doing so many things, but what’s next for Noel Miller?
NM: I’m really stoked to grind out a new hour. I’ve been sitting on some new material that I’ve been wanting to talk about so I think it’ll be an awesome clean slate.
I’m working on the TMG network a ton and we’ve got some stuff cooking over there- that’s exciting.
Then, Hot Laps- I got a brand-new car to debut, and I want to put some people in it.
I’m hoping to tackle a feature next year, I might go crazy and I want to go indie and self-funded but we’ll see. I’ll put an asterisk next to that one- I have an idea and parts of a script. I don’t want to over promise, but I like to aim high.
Catch Noel Miller on his New Supply Tour in a city near you at noelmillerlive.com.