Comedian Ron Taylor Talks Neflix’s ‘Funny AF,’ Kevin Hart’s Roast, More wRich Eisen

Ron Taylor walked into the Rich Eisen Show studio the morning after the Kevin Hart roast, fresh off winning Funny AF with Kevin Hart, with a hour-long Netflix special as the prize and a voice he described as Super Bowl voice from too much yelling at the festival.

The win itself, he said, did not feel the way the cameras made it look.

"I'mma let you know the truth, brother," Ron told Rich. "I didn't think I was going to win."

He had been competing against a comic named Brother Sam who had a cult following the entire run, with crowds chanting Sam's name before he even took the mic. When the host called Ron's name, Ron threw his hands up on stage like he had walked into the wrong building. He did not get emotional with everyone else in the green room afterward.

"To me, I just got a job," Ron said. "It was like, what is everybody so happy for or emotional about? Yeah, I have a job. I just burnt 30 minutes. Now I've got to come up with another 30."

The Hart roast was Ron's first time on a roast dais. He admitted he did not know where the cameras were. He gave the night's best set to Sheryl Underwood without hesitation. She delivered one joke about Shane Gillis that, in Ron's telling, sent laughter cascading from the rafters back down to the floor.

"I didn't even know it could sound like that until she went up," Ron said.

His top five for the night ran Underwood, Hart, Na'im Lynn, The Rock, and Katt Williams, who Ron initially forgot was there.

"I blacked out when he went," Ron said. "Sheryl Underwood, Katt Williams, everybody else."

Then the origin story, which Ron has been telling more often now that the spotlight has landed. He started doing stand-up in Detroit in 2010, inspired by Dave Chappelle. A specific Chappelle quote from Inside the Actors Studio is what flipped the switch for him. Chappelle had read a Time magazine profile of Bill Cosby and walked away with one sentence locked in his head.

"Being funny is a marketable skill," Ron said, quoting Chappelle. "That's when I realized, oh, being funny is a marketable skill. And that's when I decided to get into stand-up."

The path to Los Angeles, in Ron's telling, involved $2,000 and a van. He won $1,000 doing a college show in Michigan. He won another $1,000 on BET's Apollo Live. He used the money to buy the van and drove west.

"I just drove. I said, I'll live in this van. It'll be fine," Ron said.

In LA, friends pushed him to work the door at The Comedy Store. He did not want to do it. He did not know about the lineage.

"It was one of the best jobs I've ever had," Ron said. The list of Comedy Store door guys before him includes Bobby Lee, Marc Maron, Ari Shaffir, and Tony Hinchcliffe.

The Netflix special is the next chapter. The plan is to tour first to build new material on a new, larger audience. The hour gets taped in six months to a year. The venue Ron wants is the Fox Theater in Detroit. The introduction, he decided on the air, should come from Cade Cunningham, partly as homage and partly as an apology. Cade and the Pistons attended a Ron Taylor set at the LA Improv earlier in the year and refused to laugh. Ron called them out from stage. Rich corrected the framing.

"Instead of apologizing, he owes you," Rich said.

The asking-price-for-being-funny part of Ron's career was always the math he made peace with. Now the price is a Netflix special and a return to a town where the haunted theaters mostly don't bother him.

"Fingers crossed," Ron said.