#2557 - Yakov Smirnoff

Don’t be nervous. This is just people talking, like the green room with listeners. I’m lucky to sit with cool people, and your story is wild: Soviet comic, huge in America, then the Soviet Union falls and your career falls with it.

Letterman put me on a list after the collapse: Yakov would be unemployed. I laughed. I lived in Pacific Palisades and thought the American Dream would keep going. Six months later, Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno, Tahoe—nothing renewed. Clubs would not book me, tickets were not selling, and I had two little children.

You were still funny. Before social media, a narrative could settle over you: no scandal, no bad set, just, “the Soviet guy is over.”

I was canceled before that word was fashionable, and I had done nothing wrong. Branson became a blessing. In 1993, scared and broke, I saw two thousand people at a matinee for a Japanese fiddle player and thought, maybe I can do this. My first four shows drew seventeen people. So I served my mother’s breakfast in the theater—“Yakov in a Box”—and did morning and evening shows. Buses found me. Soon I averaged four hundred people, bought a two-thousand-seat theater, and eventually entertained more than six million.

No audience? Feed them breakfast. But with young kids, after believing you’d made it, that nightmare had to be terrifying.

It forced evolution. My old material was one tune: the Soviet Union was a pain in the butt. When the fear disappeared, people did not need that medicine. My marriage was ending too, so I asked why laughter is everywhere at the beginning of love, but at divorce the attorneys enjoy themselves. Branson became my laboratory.

I wanted to understand attraction and repulsion, so I earned a master’s in psychology at Penn and a doctorate at Pepperdine while performing. Comedy has a setup and punchline; if people do not care about the setup, the punchline has nowhere to land. Relationships are similar. If I do not understand what matters to my wife, we begin to fight.

In comedy, fascination is the setup. I may not care about somebody’s hobby, but if they love it, I’m in.

Exactly. My focus changed from the Cold War between nations to the cold war inside couples. My goal now is to learn what my wife needs before she asks. I turn it into jokes, but I’m trying to get people to notice what they stopped doing after the honeymoon.

You got hit from both sides—divorce, career collapse, kids—and went back to school instead of just saying life is unfair. Now you’re seventy-five with a one-year-old. We need to keep you alive.

I spent years becoming someone a woman could trust with a family. In Ukraine, I went on fifty-one serious dates. Then I announced a relationship-and-laughter seminar in Kyiv. Olivia was recommended to promote it, and I met my future wife. We learned each other slowly. Later I proposed in a hot-air balloon with a giant English banner she could not read yet. Very strategic.

You solve problems with weird little solutions. And you started comedy in the Soviet Union at fifteen, where only a couple comedians were approved.

Every apartment had a speaker, always on, and Arkady Raikin was the approved comic. I memorized his monologues and performed them at school. Later I worked military holidays and Black Sea cruise ships. Foreign tourists showed me that, in capitalism, being better at something could actually change your life.

My father secretly listened to Voice of America and told me about America. My mother feared even a drawing could bring trouble. We left under a grain-for-exit arrangement during Carter’s presidency. In Italy, we sold Soviet condoms at the market. My mother pointed at me and joked, basically, “If you don’t want one like this, buy these.” People laughed and bought more.

People get used to freedom and forget it is not everywhere. We need capitalism with ethics and generosity, not the fantasy that enormous government power will distribute everything beautifully.

I’m a poster child for the American Dream. In Rome, I watched English movies all day, practiced with strangers, and decided I would reach Las Vegas in five years. Five years later, I was at the Tropicana. In New York, I worked as a monk-waiter and a bar boy, listening to people and testing translated jokes on customers.

Mitzi Shore saw me at the Comedy Store, offered my father work, and rented me a room. The next night I watched Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, and Richard Pryor. Robin got me into Moscow on the Hudson. Then Johnny Carson saw a Miller Lite ad, gave me the couch after my set, and I did seven Carson shows.

Carson had unbelievable power. One good set could make you a headliner everywhere. Your old break led you back here through Tony.

Comedy brought Reagan too. His team asked for Moscow material and cultural advice. I suggested they not talk down to Soviet leaders, and they let me adjust some tone. I did not write the wall line, but it was amazing to be near history. Then the wall came down and I had to adjust again.

That adjustment is the through line. You’re back in clubs with an hour about relationships and raising a baby. Funny is funny; there isn’t one correct kind of comedy.

A young comic said, “You are not stand-up anymore, you are a one-man show.” Then ChatGPT said it too, so apparently it was official. I rebuilt the material into straight comedy. At clubs, I watch disconnected people reach for each other while laughing. That is what I want: to unite people.

Mitzi made the Comedy Store a home for broken, brilliant weirdos. That spirit is why the bar is called Mitzi’s and why we want the Mothership to feel like home too. Welcome, weirdos.

Mitzi gave me a life I could not have imagined. I helped build booths in the Belly Room; Kill Tony began there; then Tony brought me on, and suddenly I’m touring again. Respect lasts maybe thirty seconds after an introduction. Then you have to prove you can still do it. I want families to laugh, learn a little, and leave closer.

That’s wholesome, Yakov, sincerely. Comedy matters. Great comics make me feel better. With relationships and friends, laughter makes the engine run smoother. Go do a set tonight.

Oh my goodness. What a gift. I love some fun. I’m touring, still writing, and grateful people will laugh with me after sixty years in comedy. Thank you, I love you.