Just two years ago, comedian Matt Rife was sleeping in hostels, La Quinta Inn hotels and any other inexpensive spots he could set up camp in between stand-up performances.
Despite putting incredible effort into touring, booking shows, starring in MTV’s “Wild ‘N Out,” a reboot of “TRL” and making cameos in television shows “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “Fresh Off The Boat,” success was slow.
Then he went viral.
“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Rife said during a recent phone interview. “You’re used to the 11 years of not having any work at all, and nobody wanted to give you shows or would come to your shows. So obviously, when something like this happens, you say ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Now we’re breaking records, and I’m grateful to travel around the world, make people laugh and sell tickets around the world, (which) is insane to me. But it’s also exhausting. We do 10 shows a week, five nights a week, two shows a night and then two days off. Or you are traveling across the country for meetings or whatever it may be. I don’t have any downtime, but it’s a life-changing opportunity.”
Shot to stardom
The viral boost came courtesy of a clip of Rife posted on TikTok of himself doing crowd work that was dubbed “The Lazy Hero” during a show in July 2022. One click to upload and his career took off. He gained millions of followers, his club shows started selling out and earlier this year, all 260 dates of his ProbleMATTic World Tour in North America, Europe and Australia sold out just 48 hours after it went on sale. The demand was so high that it crashed the Ticketmaster website.
Rife’s massive outing includes two Southern California stops at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Friday, Nov. 24 and Saturday, Nov. 25. The shows follow the debut of his Netflix special, “Matt Rife: Natural Selection,” which hit the streaming platform on Wednesday, Nov. 15. Despite the numerous videos of his popular crowd work being shared on social…
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