Comedian Lucas Zelnick Is Huge on TikTok—But Don’t Hold That Against Him

TikTok has a mixed record when it comes to comedy. The app helped launch the beloved Brian Jordan Alveraz—but also the controversial Matt Rife. Meanwhile, it has given rise to the 20-something crowd-work comedian, much to the chagrin of the old guard who spent their 20s working empty clubs.

Lucas Zelnick looks a lot like a viral TikTok crowd-work comic. In one of his clips, which has been viewed 6.7 million times, he earnestly—at times compassionately—parries a growing number of hecklers at one of his shows. In another, he banters with a person integrating back into society after a stay at a psychiatric facility. In yet another video, he stumbles into a conversation with a drug dealer who winds up delivering a sales pitch.

But Zelnick isn’t merely an online phenomenon. The 29-year-old has been doing standup for five years, and he has the confidence, and tact, of a comedian who’s endured many more years on the road.

“I grew up in Manhattan—rich kid, Jew,” he says moments into our conversation (his father is Strauss Zelnick, the former chairman of CBS). “Everyone was going into business and being a CEO and consulting in fancy schools.” Zelnick chose comedy instead, founding Sesh Comedy, a Lower East Side club that he eventually sold to tour across the country. He just embarked on his third run—a 30-plus-date tour that kicked off in London and goes until the end of December. “Year one was about figuring out what even the show I’m giving is; year two was about making that show better,” he says. “And now year three, I’m looking at it as coming into my own of who I want to be as a comedian.”

Zelnick doesn’t identify as a crowd-work comedian, though he’s not offended if other people use that term. It’s just that social media requires comedians to regularly put out content, and Zelnick doesn’t want to give all his jokes away at once. “I probably won’t put out any more material until I’m ready to release an hourlong special,” he says. “Stand-up has changed so much, but by most definitions I’m very new.”

Zelnick and I talk about using sensitive topics as material, punching across instead of down, and—someday—abandoning the crowd-work label.

GQ: You’re known on TikTok for your crowd work. Is that what your live sets mostly consist of?

Lucas Zelnick: I would say very little crowd work. A lot of people who come to the shows can even be surprised by how little crowd work. The length of my set on tour sort of accordions because I’ll try and build a new chunk of material, which will make it longer, but then if I don’t like it, it’ll get pulled out. Or once I do like it, I’ll pull out something old that I don’t like. Longer and then shorter, and then longer and shorter, as it hopefully improves. So towards the end of the tour last year as I was writing new material for this upcoming tour, sometimes the set was like an hour and 10 minutes or an hour and 15 minutes. And of that, probably 15 minutes would be crowd work and an hour would be jokes.

I feel like I don’t see much of your traditional stand-up on TikTok. Do crowd work clips just perform better?

I think the biggest thing is to stay in front of people’s faces. You just have to put out so much content. Jokes take so long to write. I will put out chunks of material but very selectively, and, frankly, I probably won’t put out any more material until I’m ready to release an hourlong special, which I think I want to give that a few more years. Stand-up has changed so much, but by most definitions I’m very new. I’m about to hit my five-year anniversary, and I would say for most people to be getting the opportunity to perform for my own audiences, that’s very rare. I think in the past it used to be maybe twice this amount of time to get to this point. I’m less experienced than a lot of people who’ve gotten seen in the past, and so I wanna give it more years before I put out a special. But I put out 10 minutes of material with Don’t Tell Comedy, and then I put out 10 minutes of material with Comedy Central. So I’ve put out 20 minutes, and then the rest has pretty much been crowd work.

TikTok crowd-work comics are kind of a genre now. Are you resentful of that label at all? I’m thinking of someone like Matt Rife who took that and ran with it. I’m curious if you want that trajectory.

What I feel is overwhelmingly grateful for the fact that I can perform for crowds of people who come to see me, and the notion of sitting in my house resenting who my fan base is or how I’m referred to is pretty insane to me given that it’s enabled me to do my passion, get overpaid for it, and be here at 12:13 p.m. on a Thursday talking to you. So I hope when people watch my comedy, whether it’s crowd work or material, I’m able to convey what I’m trying to convey, which is who I am. And I hope that comes off as someone who’s intelligent, thoughtful, not too frequently leaning into hacky things or trite ways of making people laugh, subverting the expectations of where people typically make jokes, whether that’s in their written material or in crowd work.