Allen Strickland Williams [Interview]

Hello Folks! Happy Wednesday to you all! We have an incredible interview for you all today. We’ve had some wonderful comedians on the site in the past years, and today is absolutely no exception! Today we have some amazing responses from the brilliant Allen Strickland Williams! For comedy fans, Allen is a true household name, and one of the best in the game. For those sad few who aren’t quite familiar with Williams and his unique and brilliant brand of comedy, you are in for damn treat! You’re seriously going to LOVE him. He’s been hard at work with a brand new series that we will all hopefully get to see for ourselves soon! Until then catch him at a live show! Listen to his podcast The Male Gaze he does with Steve Hernandez each Monday! And because I know our readership is loud and proud in our homeland of the Pacific Northwest, he’s coming your way in March! More information below! Be there!

So Folks, please enjoy some wonderful words from the brilliant Allen Strickland Williams!

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When did you first discover that you are a hilarious human being, and that you wanted to make people laugh for a living?

I ran a semi-successful blog when I was still in the womb called Baby Speak. Got some traction around the third trimester. Once the influencer opportunities started rolling in I thought, “Goo goo gah gah. Maybe I got a shot at this thing.”

What was your first paid gig in the world of entertainment? And were there any sort of lessons learned from this experience that still affect your work to this day?

Besides getting paid 20 bucks here and there for some live stand-up spots, I somehow got a gig to write an entire season of an animated show about a dog who, get this, was a little bit of a potty mouth. I wrote an outline and a bunch of episodes about this dirty—and when I say dirty I mean DIRTY—dog. I think the dog’s name was Pussy? Thank god it never got made. At the time it was a lot of money to get all at once, the most I’d ever seen on a check with my name on it. But, it took me forever to get paid, and the money went away pretty fast. That was a lesson in how work can come from anywhere, there’s a lot of bad shit that needs writing, you can get paid even if something doesn’t get made, and that one gig or check isn’t gonna change your life. Which sucks. Because all I want to do is get paid in one of those big checks and take it out to the desert, never to be seen again.

We always like to ask comedians who make their way across the country one thing: What are so unsuspectingly wonderful places for comedy? What are some of those “fly-over” cities that simply don’t get the credit they deserve as wonderful places to perform stand up?

DAVENPORT, IOWA. I cannot stress this enough. Daniel Bush and Sean Moeller have put on some of the best shows I’ve ever done anywhere. And it’s a beautiful town, no matter the season.

I recently heard you on our friend Amy Miller’s podcast, Who’s Your God?, talking about an upcoming project you are working on entitled Unmatched. Without giving away too much, can you tell us a bit about this project? What sort of hilarity should our readers expect to see when the show is finally made?

It’s a show about a world where everyone is monogamous because an app’s algorithm can match you to your perfect soulmate. But the algorithm isn’t perfect, and some people can’t be matched, so they’re living non-monogamously in a world that’s completely built for everybody else.

If you were handed the opportunity, with unlimited resources, to write and produce the biopic of any well known figure in American history, who would it be? Why?

George Washington. And I’d just make him look like an idiot who got really lucky.

What else does the future hold for you? Anything you would like to plug to our readers?

I’ll be headlining in Washington, D.C. at the Drafthouse Comedy Theater on 2/7 and 2/8, and at the Funhouse Lounge in Portland, OR on 3/20 and 3/21.

What was the last thing that made you smile?

Remembering I had my weed vape at my office.