Holmes says he doesn’t mind if that means people see him sweat a little. “We want it to be—with the risk of sounding pretentious—we want it to be a kind of authentic and artistic and real experience.”
PETE AND ALL HIS FRIENDS Part of the authenticity that Holmes is striving for also means booking guests—on his show and podcast—who aren’t typical latenight fixtures. It means choosing people who he wants to talk to and people he wants to introduce to others. Holmes admits that hosting a show that features his buddies as guests has been an aid to his social life. “I get to see my friends more on the TV show than I do in real life!” he laughs. But he clarifies that he’s not complaining about the busyness of showbiz. “It’s a delight when I come in and I look at the schedule and I remember that someone like Bo Burnham is the guest. So I get to see him beforehand and I get to see him during and we get to chat a little bit afterward.” The benefits of hosting your own talk show also include getting to hand-pick guests, even if they are just the celebrities you want to hang out with. Because of the vibe of The Pete Holmes Show, Holmes doesn’t need approval from higher-ups to bring in the artists he wants. “[Matt Berninger of The National] just did something with us. That’s just my favorite band,” Holmes says. “Nobody is looking at charts and graphs and what’s going to appeal and what’s going to play.” It was that kind of emphasis on his personal taste that led to the seemingly unlikely friendship with Bell, the former Mars Hill Bible Church pastor and somewhat controversial Christian author. Holmes says that after reading Bell’s Love Wins, he contacted some of his old Christian friends to see if someone could put him in contact with the author. Eventually, he got in touch with Bell, and after spending a few hours podcasting together, a real friendship blossomed. “When I have a guest on the show like Rob, that’s someone who is genuinely fascinating to me,” Holmes explains. “To continue that relationship in real life and also bring him on the TV show is a real thrill for me.” When Holmes landed his TV show, it was only natural for him to invite his new friend to come on to talk about faith ... and surfing.
“I’m happy to say, we surf all the time now,” Holmes says. “He taught me how to surf on the show, and we surf on the reg!”
THE CALLING OF COMEDY Though he never did become a pastor, Holmes makes the case that his comedy serves a similar purpose as the role of people like Bell who are actually in ministry. “One of the reasons Rob and I get along is because I think we are on the same side. And he sees it that way too,” Holmes says. “We’re trying to expose truth. To expose hypocrisy. Laugh at ourselves. Laugh at our faults. And at the end of the day feel like we are taking a little step toward being a better person.” Holmes says he’s now able to hang out with people who can reconcile his sense of
hold to a variety of beliefs (as he describes it “traditional Christians,” “atheists” and “scientists”) and have deep conversations about faith, but also just enjoy spending time together. “It’s this weird, kooky group, and that appeals to me so much more than a church where we all just get together and congratulate ourselves for coming to the same conclusions,” Holmes says. “It’s interesting to kind of get dirty and messy and have fun and have some laughs in a very non-formal atmosphere.” The transformation that happened—from a Christian college student who was going to go into the ministry into a late-night comic who happens to like to talk about religion and purpose—is that Holmes now sees the practice of faith as more than exercises and
“WE WANT PEOPLE TO SEE THAT I’M NOT INSTANTLY SOME SLICK TV HOST. I’M A GUY, WHO GOT A SHOW, WHO’S FIGURING IT OUT.” humor (which can be crass) with his faith leanings, though that wasn’t always the case. He says if the pastor of the church he grew up in cussed, “he’d get in a lot of trouble.” Of course, Holmes is quick to emphasize that Bell isn’t a “blue guy” (“When he hangs out, he’s not like a different person”), and being around a Christian who is authentic and non-judgmental is a shift from the Christianity of his youth. “I don’t have to censor myself in front of Rob—being a person that whenever I hung out with my youth pastor or my pastor, you kind of act like there’s a cop in the room,” he says. “When I text Rob or something, if I’m going to say something sucks, I’ll say it sucks. That’s not necessarily pastor speak. But the thing is, like, he’s a real person. He’s not a politician. He’s just someone who happens to be looking for the truth through the lens of Christianity.” Seeing truth through the lens of Christianity—not necessarily through the structure of an organized Church—is something that appeals to the guy who left and then rediscovered faith. Holmes says the most “church-y” thing he now does is regularly hang out with a group of people who
rituals. He sees it as a relationship. “[Traditions are] just a dress rehearsal for the true communion with God, which is an everyday, all the time experience,” he says. Years after his divorce, after searching for, and finding, a different kind of belief and finding success in his new calling of comedy, Holmes finally has a new perspective. And as his career has brought him from commercials and YouTube videos to the big stage on his very own show, Holmes is finally ready for something more than a practice run. Even when it comes to his Christian faith. “I think all of that is just a dress rehearsal for something more exciting and more true that actually would engage people,” he says. “When people get turned off by the Church, they’re afraid of people that are going to narc on them for having the third glass of wine or judge them or whatever it is. “I think that stuff is not compelling to anybody, and I don’t think that’s the sort of juice that made something like this survive all this time.” JESSE CARE Y is an editor for RELEVANT and a mainstay on the RELEVANT Podcast.
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