Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock are Best F*cking Friends

It takes a certain something — some rare combination of hubris, talent, fearlessness, timing, ego, incisive wit, charisma — to command a room full of strangers with nothing but a microphone and the sound of your own voice. It’s not something just anyone can do. Chris Rock even calls it “freakish.”

“If you walked in one day, and you went to your kid’s school,” the comedian says, “and there were 500 kids listening to your kid, you’d think your kid was the devil or something — my kid’s possessed!”

Rock delivered this observation in the company of his longtime friend and fellow legend Jerry Seinfeld on an episode of the Netflix series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The installment is memorable not just for the brilliant orange 1969 Lamborghini Miura P400 S Seinfeld drives, but also for the way it captures the easy back-and-forth between the friends. Hoping to recapture that magic, Queue brought the two men together once more for a wide-ranging discussion that touched on everything from football to their favorite places to perform — and began with a question from Seinfeld about Rock preparing for his presenting duties at the 2020 Academy Awards.

Jerry Seinfeld: So, the Oscars, where’d you work that stuff out?

Chris Rock: New York for a minute, but then the last four days it was me and Steve Martin. We’d meet up at my hotel. We were at the Chateau Marmont — just me, him, [comedy writer] Jon Macks, and my friend Chuck. We would just throw jokes back and forth.

JS: That must’ve been great.

CR: It was so much fun. I barely know Steve. It was like I got to work with one of my idols, and we constructed the sets. Here’s the greatest thing ever: We go to rehearsal on Saturday. We’re working it out. We liked it, but I didn’t love it. I got him to go to the Comedy Store. It’s me and Steve, Saturday night at the Comedy Store, reading jokes onstage together. Steve hasn’t been in the Comedy Store in like 40 years. People see me here all the time. They see Chappelle. Steve Martin walking in is like George Washington coming off a dollar bill and just doing a State of the Union. By the way, his ad libs . . . he’s so funny. Being onstage with Steve Martin Saturday night before the Oscars was the highlight of that week.

JS: Were you worried that people were going to blast out that you guys were going to be on? Didn’t everybody in the audience figure it out?

CR: Yes. A lot of these clubs, they do really beat you down with the “no taking pictures” thing. There were no pictures taken that night. Maybe only from the club. What I said to Steve was, “The picture of you and me onstage at the Comedy Store is so much cooler than a picture of us in tuxedos at the Oscars.” That’s the picture you want to go viral. That’s some cool shit. Remember that night when it was me, you, Amy Schumer, and Aziz Ansari back to back?

JS: And Dave Chappelle — at the Comedy Cellar, 2017. That was great.

CR: That’s cooler than hosting S.N.L., or anything I’ve done. That’s some legendary shit.

JS: Where are you more exposed when you shouldn’t be: there, stand-up comedy, or the N.F.L.?

CR: There’s a reason quarterbacks are the craziest guys in the world. There’s something a little scary about being a fucking quarterback — more so than even fighting in boxing or M.M.A.

JS: I know you love your wide receiver. That’s what you said, I’m “like a black wide receiver.”

CR: Jerry Seinfeld has the confidence of a black wide receiver.

JS: Comedians are not good at a lot of things that have to do with larger productions, but one thing we’re great at: spotting talent.

CR: I remember Wanda Sykes. I didn’t even have a show, but once I saw her I was like, “One of these days, I’m going to have a show, and she’s going to be involved.”

JS: We know who’s got it.

CR: Talent I spotted throughout the years that people have gone, “What are you, nuts?” — that I was way ahead on: I get a deal at HBO. I bring in . . . this woman that I found. “No, no, no, no, no, no.” Who did that woman go on to be? Wendy Williams. HBO would not make the show with Wendy Williams. Here’s a real good one. About five years ago, six years ago, a famous producer goes, “Hey, man. We just had a really good experience. Bring me some talent. We should produce something together.” I find this girl I like on Instagram. I think this is the funniest woman I’ve seen in like 20 years — we should develop a show. “No, I don’t think it’s right.” What is that person’s name? Her name is Cardi B. She didn’t have a record, anything. I thought she was funnier than every woman out there, and I was right.

JS: Wow, that’s great.

CR:Oh, Jerry — are you going up?

JS: Yes. All the time. I go to Gotham. I like Gotham. If you think about it, Gotham is Catch A Rising Star blown up. It’s the same shape.

CR: The thing about Catch that was great is it was so small. You never felt empty seats.

JS: I like empty seats. I won’t go out on the weekends, it’s too much. What’s exciting in comedy now? Anything?

CR: What is exciting? Here’s what’s exciting. I’ve been saying this for a few years: This is the golden age of stand-up. There are more great stand-up comedians right now than there have ever been at one time. It’s more diverse. A lot of times diversity can be a watering-down process in stand-up. It’s not. There are some great voices and great styles.

JS: Yes. I saw this Indian guy Vir Das on a Netflix promo on Instagram. Did you see where he does part of the act in Hindi and part of it in English? Really funny guy. That’s a great thing that Netflix does — bring in all these people to us.

CR: The other exciting thing is that there’s so much money to be made. The parking lot at the Comedy Store, it’s like the Lakers’ parking lot. Every car is $100,000. Motherfuckers are making bank. It was not like that before. It was, like, Arsenio’s got a Jaguar and George Lopez opens for whoever.

JS: I remember seeing Robin Williams pull up in a BMW 5 series and going, What must that be like?

CR: If you sell out the Funny Bone in Saint Louis and you take the door for the weekend, that’s $40,000 for you playing a club. . . . Now, if you have a following, you’ll get a special. If you make people feel a certain way, somebody’s going to fucking give you an audience or give you a platform. The playing field leveled. I always say art is subjective, comedy is subjective. Killing isn’t. Can you go on the fucking stage and blow this motherfucking room up right now? I can come in this motherfucker like the fucking Taliban and leave nothing but bloodshed wherever you fucking look on any given night, follow anyone. If you’re one of those, you’ll be fine.

JS: That’s the good thing about it. I think, ultimately, that standard never changes. I feel most comfortable looking at comedy as part sport, for just what you say. In the sport of comedy, no matter what happened in the game, the score is what happened. They won.

CR: Stand-up comedy’s fucking fair. You almost can’t do that with any other art form.

JS: Nothing has that — like you say — the killing, the sound of the killing in the room. They go home that night, “We saw this guy, we saw this guy.” Everybody knows how everybody did.

CR: We do have a tendency to view comedians that are from New York or L.A. as being the actual comedians and actually famous. We do have this thing that if it’s going on in Largo, the Cellar, or the Store, that’s comedy. It’s like, no. I’m sorry, Bill Burr is fucking just as funny as anybody, but he works in the middle of the country. You got to value the middle of the country as much as the coasts.

JS: We’re saying that comedy is part art, part sport.

CR: It’s part art, part sport.