Tommy Tiernan remembers the day he became 'addicted' to comedy
The Derry Girls actor reflects on his comedy philosophy
In 1996, Tommy Tiernan's life changed at a Denis Leary comedy show in Dublin. Tiernan, an Irish comedian, performed in the support slot for Leary.
Up until then, he had only performed for crowds of 50 or 60 people, as the stand-up comedy scene was a "new thing" in Ireland in the '90s. But Leary's show brought in around a thousand people.
"I can remember the roar at the end of my set changing me physically," Tiernan tells Q's Tom Power. "I could feel it hit my chest, the sound of the roaring. And I just got addicted to that."
Before he got into comedy, Tiernan was an actor. But after that night opening for Leary, he says "acting never stood a chance." Even after landing a role on the popular Netflix show Derry Girls, he still prefers to perform stand-up comedy than act out someone else's words.
"I feel alive and connected to other people when I'm doing stand-up," Tiernan says. "They've given you their attention. So what can you do with that? If you think of people's attention as an actual energy, as an orb of interest, what are you able to do with that?"
This philosophy also became the premise for his chat show, The Tommy Tiernan Show. His guests include both celebrities and regular people, but he doesn't know who they'll be until they walk through his door. Some of the artists he's spoken with include the late Sinéad O'Connor, Hozier and Eddie Izzard.
Even after years of doing stand-up, Tiernan gets stunned by his guests. When O'Connor came on his show in 2020, he looked visibly scared (he admits he's still scared of her, even in death). But he believes that's part of his job.
"Anxiety is the price you pay for authenticity," he says.
For Tiernan, hosting the show is like going on a blind date. "You would ruin the possibility of actual connection in the blind date if you rehearsed meeting the person," he says. "If you sat down and had a list of questions that you wanted to go through, that would ruin any hope of an authentic encounter."
With all his accomplishments, Tiernan still prefers to be on tour. He's currently on tour, with Canadian stops in Toronto, Calgary, Victoria and Vancouver this fall.
In his opinion, stand-up comedy is one of the most authentic forms of art that can tap into the audience's darkest thoughts.
"It's kind of theatrical confession," Tiernan says. "They [the audience] sit in the dark. But what they do is they send their darkest, wildest, unspoken, maybe even unthought thoughts to the stand-up comedian. And everything that's inside the head of an audience member could possibly come out the mouth of the comedian."
The full interview with Tommy Tiernan is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Tommy Tiernan produced by Kaitlyn Swan.
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