David Cross Calls ‘Mr. Show’s Jay Johnston ‘A Lucky Traitor’
Ever since comic actor Jay Johnston participated in the January 6th riots, his former comedy compatriots have kept relatively quiet. Bob’s Burgers co-star Kristen Schaal stopped the pretending on a recent episode of David Cross’s Senses Working Overtime podcast, asking the Mr. Show star about his old castmate: “What about Jay Johnston? Are you going to see him?”
She took a long sip of her coffee and batted her eyes, knowing she’d just thrown a grenade into the room.
Cross didn’t even know hooking up with Johnston was a possibility. “Oh, he’s out of prison?” Schaal scoffed — as far as she knew, Johnston never set foot in a jail cell.
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If that was true, Cross observed, “What a lucky traitor.” But he had no intention of seeing his old Mr. Show partner. “I don’t even know where Jay is,” he confessed. “I don’t know if he’s a Proud Boy yet…”
“He is,” Schaal insisted, though it was clear she didn’t know for sure. “That’s why he was there... I think. It was a Proud Boy celebration. So proud. And they’re boys.”
Schaal isn’t exactly a reliable narrator. Her grasp of the details regarding Johnston was a little slippery, but as it turns out, she mostly got it right. The voice of Bob’s Burger’s Jimmy Pesto pleaded guilty to participating in the event, earning a one-year prison sentence. A judge called out Johnston for his “spread of disinformation about January 6th and his lack of remorse for participating in the riot.”
But as Schaal said, Johnston never set foot in the pokey. “I was supposed to go into prison in about two weeks,” Johnston told Michelle Tafoya in early March. But with a new administration in office, the comedian received a pardon. “I was just very blessed that that happened, but it doesn't take it off your record.”
Except when it does. Johnston told Tafoya that in addition to his pardon, the charges were retroactively dismissed. No prison time. No blemish on his record.
As for Schaal’s assertion that Johnston is a Proud Boy? He’s a “known associate” of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, but officially, that’s as far as it goes.
Despite Johnston’s jail-time escape, his IMDb remains blank since the indictment. A sympathetic Tafoya pointed to Mel Gibson as an example of a Hollywood star who was finding his way back after being exiled. It’s an interesting example. While Gibson is guilty of loathsome behavior, he hasn’t stormed any government buildings.
Johnston admitted that if the election had gone a different way, he’d be in prison right now. That’s why he calls himself “very blessed” — and why Cross called him a “lucky traitor.”
