If the World Has to Be on Fire, I’m Glad We Have Caleb Hearon to Get Silly With It

Our current social media moment means all kinds of people can get famous for all kinds of things. It can happen so instantaneously that singers or guitarists or drag queens can convince themselves that making viral videos for a few months counts as paying their dues, so that now they’re ready to take their place among their peers on platforms offline. (And it doesn’t only happen to artists: I’m not sure what Haliey Welch’s aspirations were before she was “Hawk Tuah Girl”; I do know she went from having no public profile at all to being the subject of a documentary about her downfall in less than one calendar year.) 

Comics are also in this category, but what works in a short clip online may not stretch to an hour: Whatever Sarah Cooper’s fans found enjoyable about her videos lip-syncing Donald Trump speeches, it didn’t translate into her 2020 Netflix special. You might worry that the same is true of Caleb Hearon, whose first special Model Comedian airs on HBO and drops on HBO Max tonight. But don’t: It proves he’s got the goods.

For starters, Hearon was a seasoned stand-up and sketch performer with enough stage experience to have auditioned for Saturday Night Live as far back as 2019. It was only after that unsuccessful audition that Hearon started posting comedy clips on his social media accounts. It’s why he credits his two SNL auditions for the career he has now, since it couldn’t have happened without the following he gained from posting his characters and bits online.

Hearon is busy as an actor in movies (I Used to Be Funny; Sweethearts), and on TV (Fargo; Overcompensating). He’s about to co-star with John Cena in the Netflix film Little Brother, and will soon star in the feature film Trash Mountain, which he also wrote. As the host of the podcast So True, Hearon is a gifted and effortlessly funny conversationalist; he uses his platform not just to elevate stars like Ego Nwodim and Fortune Feimster, but also activists like The New York Immigrant Coalition’s Murad Awawdeh and queer historian Justin Hinds. 

Can MrBeast say that? I personally can’t fact-check it because I’m never going to engage with MrBeast’s “work,” but someone can let me know if I’m wrong.

Hearon wisely doesn’t assume HBO viewers already know him as the viral video star patiently enduring his “friend vent when they’re clearly in the wrong” or the podcast host who’ll cheerfully detail his backup plan to start doing Christian comedy when he wants to buy a private jet. “The world’s on fire, but I’m like, ‘Let’s get silly with it’” is one of the first things he says in the set (recorded in Chicago in June). This tells us Hearon is politically aware, but not a Maron-esque doomer. He then launches into being so “Midwestern aunt-pilled” that he can find genuine pleasure in anything from a woman playing with a dog to a curio for sale at an antique mall. This tells us that an adorable cornball is behind even the most savage jokes we’re about to hear. 

As someone who’s listened to every episode of So True, I can report that these first few minutes are an efficient and well-crafted introduction to Hearon’s work and persona. If there are any complete Hearon neophytes in the crowd, this opening should also get them on side: Who could do anything with a Midwestern aunt than embrace her, then take her straight to Applebee’s?

Conventional wisdom says that if a comic has any physical feature an audience member will note at first sight, that comic has to defuse the audience’s own judgments about it with a joke. The late Louie Anderson had a bit about making fat jokes first, “'cause if I didn’t, you guys would sit out there and go, ‘You think he knows he’s that big?’” Hearon swiftly arrives at the critiques he gets from people who may want to cut him down by telling him he’s fat (his word, not mine). But unlike comics of previous eras, Hearon’s jokes on the topic are about how boring it is for haters to mock his weight: “Do your research and say something actually hurtful to me. If you said, ‘I saw this guy jump into a body of water and he did this (plugs nose)’? That would ruin me.” 

It’s a deft turn: Hearon is prepared to deprecate himself; he’s just going to focus on burns that aren’t so first-thought. (Not to mention that holding one’s nose when you jump in a lake is Midwestern aunt-coded for sure.)

As the hour goes on, Hearon is an appealing mix of vulnerability and confidence. He’s clearly got empathy for the reproachful grade-grubber he used to be — one who asked for gifts like a business suit and a clipboard; who’d hold student council meetings hostage with rants beginning “IT’S JUST INTERESTING TO ME…”; and who judged his friends for fooling around with their partners. (“I just thought I was going to see you in heaven, but I guess that’s off.”) Bringing in his late father, with whom he had a challenging relationship, through stories about Hearon’s coming out as gay softens Hearon’s characterization of his father’s depression and Hearon’s own mental health struggles. (“My dad pretty much invented depression, you know what I mean? I’m a bit of a nepo baby in that way.”) 

Hearon’s description of his father’s incoherent politics — “My dad was the type of guy who, in the same breath, would say ‘Everybody deserves healthcare and I will stand on that, also Hillary Clinton is a lizard’” — lets Hearon segue back to the world that’s on fire, and that he wants to have fun with. Hearon dismisses leading figures in both electoral politics and the online commentariat (“Ben Shapiro — I will put you in Tupperware and put you away”) before getting to the cynicism of GOP transphobia: “There’s like 12 trans people, and they live in my building.” He also decries tepid messaging from the left that doesn’t rise to the moment, like “Trans People Exist”: “Of course trans people exist! They owe me money.” 

In an earlier joke, family members tell a young Hearon they don’t care if he posts about being gay on his social media, he just has to “stop being fucking annoying” about it, which may be the most important note Hearon’s ever received: His political material is strong and clear without being strident or pandering. 

If I had one knock on Model Comedian, it’s on Hearon’s joke about overhearing a straight man say he tricks women into giving him blow jobs by saying he never ejaculates that way, “and it makes them want to give me blow jobs even worse.” Hearon calls the stranger a genius and adds a tag: “He’s Huckleberry Finn-ing getting his dick sucked! I just picture him outside of a nightclub every weekend painting a fence white. ‘Sure would love to come from head! Seems nobody around here has what it takes! Unless…?’” 

This straight stranger is, of course, Tom Sawyer-ing getting his dick sucked. It gives me no pleasure to make the correction, but I was once a reproachful grade-grubber with a clipboard too. 

If I had two knocks on Model Comedian, it’s that I would have been happy to watch it at twice the length. Hearon is only 30; it’s exciting to think about how much more he still has to show us.