Kevin James Doyle

Interview: Kevin James Doyle, The 30 Year Old Virgin

Leave a Comment

© Sarah Cobb/Jeremy Stanley

Kevin James Doyle’s debut show The 30 Year Old Virgin is now available as a comedy special to stream into your own home. MoodyComedy chats to Kevin about the origins of the show…

Hi Kevin, how has 2020 been treating you lately?

I live in New York and March, April and May were really, really terrible. I rarely left my apartment and you heard ambulance sirens all day. Now people are taking the virus seriously but there is less heaviness hanging over the city. Also, Autumn is my favourite season and there is outdoor dining at most restaurants which is nice. And it was just my birthday a few days ago. So lately, it’s been ok.

You recently filmed your comedy special The 30 Year Old Virgin; how and when was that recorded?

I recorded it at a beautiful church in NYC called Calvary St. George’s back in January. I knew they were friendly to the arts but I was a little nervous because the content of the show is not what I would call church appropriate. The room had a comedy-club-in-Game-of-Thrones feel which I thought fit the vibe of the show. The first night a reverend with the collar and everything was in the front row and I was just crossing my fingers he didn’t shut the taping down as I was talking about blow jobs.

What is the premise of this show?

I grew up in a Christian home, I was saving sex for marriage, I got engaged, called off the engagement a month before the wedding and found myself living in New York City a 30 year old virgin. A lot of the stories and jokes I had been working on fit within similar themes and then without spoiling anything, once I had sex for the first time it was quite a medical and emotional roller coaster and I thought… there it is… I have the ‘climax’ for my show.

Will your ‘TalkBack’ interview events be covering topics you discuss in your special? What can people expect from these interviews?

I was excited to discuss my show and the work of other people I respect. I wanted some way to bring people together to talk about the themes from the show because I think they are things everyone has experienced… love, guilt, pleasure, break ups. Even though the story is specific to me, I think everyone relates to 90 per cent of the show. Even if most people aren’t virgins at 30, they are fascinated by it and everyone has something unique about their sex life. Hopefully it wet your appetite to go watch the special. The most exciting thing about these interviews is that they are not recorded, they are happening live and we take questions at the end, so you can put me on the spot.

Have you been working on any other comedy projects during lockdown?

I host a podcast with a few friends called The Bradshaw Boys. We are three guys watching Sex and the City for the first time and we are approaching the end of season six now. It has been an amazing journey and a great thing to do in quarantine because it gives us a chance to watch TV and hang out for a few hours each week. We transitioned to Zoom calls for the podcast pretty easily. Since Covid we have had on Kristin Davis, Sarah Jessica Parker and a few other cast members. I think moving to recording with Zoom has made the podcast even better because it makes scheduling stars like them much more easy.

THE 30 YEAR OLD VIRGIN IS AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON AMAZON PRIME AND APPLE TV

Kevin James Doyle: The Edinburgh Interviews 2019

Leave a Comment
Who? Kevin James Doyle
What? Loud Blond Bald Kid
Where? Laughing Horse @ Bar 50 – Marquee (Venue 151)
When? 13:45

What are your feelings as you enter into this year’s Edinburgh Fringe season?

I am excited to be coming back; my first Fringe was 2017 and I was going in completely blind. I think I will be much more prepared this time around and also have a better understanding of what I am trying to accomplish. And I am excited to see other shows, some of the shows I saw in 2017 have still stuck with me so I am just excited to explore what is there and be inspired by it.

What is the premise of your Edinburgh show this year?

It is an hour of stand-up and storytelling about adolescence and growing up. I found a journal from a theater camp I attended when I was 15 years old and it is so painfully earnest. I started to read some excerpts from it onstage and people found it hilarious, especially as I was cringing at how embarrassing it was. Through that I found so much more material about first kisses, bullying kids, getting bullied, pubes, trying to be cool and all the things that we all went through and are glad is behind us.

What is the biggest obstacle you face(d) while putting this show together?

I just filmed my previous show The 30 Year Old Virgin for a comedy special and the best feeling in the world is doing material that works and you are in the zone with. Just a month later I had my first full performance of Loud Blond Bald Kid and it was a great reminder of how much new material doesn’t get better without time and constant reworking. I always was surprised how many tender and emotional aspects of the show I have had to push into, because some of the pain from that time in life can be easy to dismiss and it’s been interesting trying to make those painful stories truthful and funny.

Has your attitude towards the Fringe changed at all in recent years?

I appreciate it more than I did before. After doing it once I knew I wanted to do it again and that I had to know what I was going to bring and know that it needed to be good and by the end of Fringe it could be great. We just don’t have anything like this in the US and it forces you to drill down into what you want to say and why that is beyond just ‘I want to be funny’. I appreciate how it challenged you to separate yourself and be in competition with 3000 other shows because it forces me to ask ‘why should they come to your show?’ and then hopefully have a good answer for myself.

Do you have any other Edinburgh show recommendations?

Dan Soder and Emmy Blotnick are both amazing New York comedians that people should not miss.

Where would you like to be in a year’s time?

I would like to have The 30 Year Old Virgin out in the world for people to find and to have filmed Loud Blond Bald Kid as a comedy special and be getting ready to be writing a third hour of stand-up and storytelling about whatever is most important to me at that time. I think I have an hour in me about God and religion, I grew up in a conservative Christian home. And hopefully have more material out there for people to find me and sell more tickets to my shows.

GET YOUR TICKETS FOR KEVIN JAMES DOYLE: ‘LOUD BLOND BALD KID’ HERE

THE EDINBURGH INTERVIEWS 2019