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The summer he was 17, Jay Baruchel and his friend ruined open mic nights at comedy clubs across Montreal. "We had had this weird sketch where we covered this Fed Ex box in tinfoil and pretended it was a robot. Then my friend would get real liquored up and do the voice of the robot. [So] there I was, talking to a Fed Ex box. Cuz that's what the Rotary Club wants to see on their night out."
Sure, Baruchel’s first foray into stand-up comedy was not as stellar as one might’ve imagined. But a renaissance is dawning. A Baruchelian coming of age, if you will. This silver screen golden boy will soon become the fourth Montrealer (and second NDG-er) to ever host a Just For Laughs Gala—an honour Baruchel does not take lightly.
"Fuckin' A, eh?! I am proud to be a local performer [who gets to do this]. I didn't even know it was four. So me and William Shatner, eh? The two Anglos, the two NDG boys—that's awesome! There's a degree of importance to it, 100 percent. I'd like to say, and this is the God’s honest truth, that this is the only place in the world where I care what people think of me. So I really don't want to mess up. But I'm also just kinda psyched to do it."
Working with his writing partner, Jesse Chabot (with whom he is also co-writing the second installment of his hockey film franchise, Goon), Baruchel has been busy cooking up some tasty bits for his show. "We're in the process of figuring it out. We're trying to take a bit of a break from working on Goon 2 to come up with some stuff for me to do. [There’s] one bit that I'm particularly excited to show the world that I'm very, very proud of and it's kind of, yeah…it's fucking crazy. We're going to do some pretty weird shit, it's going to be awesome. I've been blown away with how cool [the people at Just For Laughs] are with all our ideas, so, yeah—it's going to be really interesting."
With stand-up stalwarts like Amy Schumer, Hannibal Buress, and David Pryde on the gala roster, Baruchel knows he’s got to bring his A game to gala night. And leave the Fed Ex robot at home. "I've gotta hopefully be as funny as I can be, and if not funny, then accessible in some way. But really, the comics are doing the heavy lifting. I'm just the pretty face on the poster. And then the real funny people take the stage after. But really? I'm scared shitless."
