A year ago, Brent Morin was reliving the horrors of high school as part of his New Faces set at the Just for Laughs festival. Things are definitely looking up for the comic, who serves up episodes of personal embarrassment for strangers’ amusement.
In recent months, the “Chelsea Lately” panel regular made his late-night debut on “Conan” (“where I was a P.A. for three years”) and landed a role opposite old pal Chris D’Elia in the upcoming NBC series “Undateable,” produced by Bill Lawrence.
“I play a loser bar owner,” he says, “and Bill lets us play and improvise, which I love.”
Not bad for someone who claims he “never set out to do standup.” The Connecticut native was in film school when he started hitting the comedy-club circuit, “mainly to get feedback about my writing — but then I got hooked. I’d bomb and keep going back till I slowly improved. Standup’s addicting.”
Morin, who also scored a development deal with Fox TV to write and star in a sitcom, cites Louis C.K. (“for his risk-taking”), Bill Burr (“venting his frustrations”) and Kevin Hart (“great storyteller”) as his top three influences.
“I like standup that comes from a real place, and I find I’m more confident if I’m talking about my own insecurities,” he says. “For example, I talk about how I wish I was cool sometimes — but I’m not cool, because I try to be cool, and that’s when I always mess things up, especially with girls.”
