After reaching the highest heights a comedian can achieve in 2024, as the #1 touring act with over a million tickets sold, Nate Bargatze is preparing to pivot. He’ll switch gears soon to place his full focus on building out a “TV clean world” of film, TV, podcasts and more with Nateland Entertainment, his rising media company, on which we were first to report in 2023.
In the inaugural episode of Deadline’s Comedy Means Business podcast, Bargatze clarifies that he’s not retiring from stand-up. What he’s moving away from is the all-consuming nature of the most expansive, globe-trotting touring a comic can do. He’ll do so, he says, because he understands “how much obsession you have to have, how much focus you have to have” to get to where he is currently — and what he needs to do to achieve the same level of success with the ventures he takes on next.
Bargatze has said that he intends to make the professional transition after his next couple of tours and specials. And certainly, he’ll remain plenty busy going forward, as someone who enjoys nothing more. He speaks with us in between work on his first big feature starring vehicle, the TriStar family comedy The Breadwinner, about his carefully considered vision for Nateland, his ambition to help cultivate “the next wave” of comedy stars, and his hopes to make Nashville the next big destination for both the consumption and production of entertainment.
Set to host the Emmys for the first time in September, he also discusses his thoughts about how he’ll approach that role, the status of his new hour of stand-up, and his firm belief that “comedians should be bought into more.”
The Comedy Means Business podcast will run biweekly on Mondays, along with a stand-up-focused newsletter — though we’ll be running up to a pod a week for the first month. We’ll be back next week with an episode highlighting Long Live the State, a documentary on the iconic sketch group The State and their MTV series of the same name, which is coming off its Tribeca debut.
