How Paul Scheer learned to laugh in the face of darkness

August 27, 2024

For the past 25 years, Paul Scheer has made his living by making people laugh.

An early graduate of New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade improv school, Scheer’s subsequent career has included a starring role on FX’s fantasy-football sitcom, “The League” and a successful podcast, “How Did This Get Made?,” which he co-hosts with his wife, actress June Diane Raphael, and former “League” castmate Jason Mantzoukas.

In addition to skewering the worst of what cinema has to offer, the three hosts of “How Did This Get Made?” frequently share stories from their own lives. But in Scheer’s case, such anecdotes are often met not with chuckles but with outright shock.

“Over the 14 years that I’ve been doing this show, I would tell these stories offhandedly to Jason and June about my childhood,” Scheer said in a phone call from Los Angeles. “Then I’d see the look on their faces and hear the audience react. That’s when I realized not everyone had been told the story about the butcher who kidnaps kids and turns them into chopped meat if you ever opened the door when no one was home.”

It was becoming a father that ultimately gave him the conviction necessary to put his stories to paper.

“Thematically, it’s a book that goes from being parented to becoming a parent,” he observed, highlighting his trajectory from experiencing trauma to escaping it to ultimately resetting the cycle as a father himself.

In conversation, he shared what he hopes his memoir will mean for his loved ones and fans alike.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

It feels appropriate to start with the title of your memoir. What are “joyful recollections” of trauma to you, and how does it play into the story you’ve told here?

The title came to me pretty early in the process, when Jason and June would look at me like, “Do you realize this is the most traumatic [thing] ever?” Whenever they did that, all I could think was: “You don’t even know half of it. This is the visible light stuff.” As a comedian, I think oftentimes there is an instinct to protect yourself, so when I finally sat down to write this, I kept going back to this note of, “Go deeper.” Go deeper, try to think about this more, don’t worry about making people laugh all the time. Just tell the story. That’s kind of how it all came together.

Your book focuses almost entirely on your life off-screen. When did you realize that was the shape you wanted your memoir to take?

I was worried that, at a certain point, my publisher was going to ask me to write a chapter about “The League,” and I was dreading that, because I didn’t see how it would fit thematically into this book. This book is about a section of my life. There’s more to come in my career, and this wasn’t that book. My first draft of the chapter on Upright Citizens Brigade was like 50 pages. It was this big deep dive into everything, including all these amazing experiences and all this fun stuff, but when June first read it, she was like: “You’re not a dramaturge. This is not you. You don’t need this in here.” She was right. It felt like I got away from the main plot.

In finally putting all these stories out into the world, do you feel there’s a possibility for emotional relief and release on your end?

In writing this book, I was able to tell my story in the way I wanted to tell it and where I could create the pace, because, often, when I am having a conversation with somebody, I’ll see a look on their face and know they’re uncomfortable and don’t know what to say, and I’m like: “It’s okay! You didn’t force me to tell you this. I’m just telling you a story.” I think the freedom of writing this book to express myself in that way was helpful as far as leading to the conversations I would like to have but don’t often get a chance to.

While your parents and stepfather star in many of your memoir’s toughest passages, you also take great care to paint them as three-dimensional people. Do you know if any of them have read the book yet?

My parents have not read it. They will read it. My dad has requested not to read it until he got back from his trip in Europe, because he didn’t want it to wreck his trip. My mom will read it. I love my parents, and I have a very good relationship with them. Part of the reason why I wrote this book in my own privacy, and without involving June or my parents, was because I wanted to feel like I could tell the stories that I wanted to tell in the way I wanted to tell them without feeling like I had somebody watching over me. I felt like the minute I added that into the process, I would start to second-guess it, so my mantra for that was: “I’m telling my story. I’m not telling their story.”

They have their own stories and their own points of view. … At the end of the day, I’ve talked to my parents about the book and what’s in it at length. It sucks that I can release a book and they can’t, but I’m confident in our relationship and in the conversations we’ve had around it. If there are things in there that they don’t love, we’ll get through it.

My wife’s reaction to it was truly the most important thing, because I think that she knows me the best out of anyone, so for it to pass her litmus test? That was all I really wanted. Once I had that, everything else was icing on the cake.

Given that your book includes numerous stories concerning your most memorable and infamous experiences with celebrities, it feels very full circle that you’re now a recognizable face yourself. Is your approach to interacting with fans guided by all the memories you’ve had as a fan yourself?

Definitely. I’ve been with friends who can be a bit … standoffish, and no offense intended — everyone’s got their own way of dealing with things — but I’m such a fanboy that I try to make it as easy as possible. As a matter of fact, I just won this iHeart podcasting award for best TV/movie podcast, and as we were walking off the stage, these two women grabbed me. I have the award in my hand, and these two women grab me and tell me they’re fried chicken caterers, and suddenly, I’m holding two pieces of fried chicken on a stick and posing with these women and a banner in front of me. I like the part of me that will pose with your fried chicken, because I’m thankful and I love meeting people.

A couple of years ago at the airport, I’m going through TSA, and this guy goes, “I know who you are: Robin Williams.” I told him I wasn’t Robin, but he just went: “Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep it cool.” Sometimes I’ll accept compliments I don’t deserve because it’s easier, but in this case, Robin Williams had also been dead for a couple of years by this point, so it was extra weird. Regardless, I said, “F--- it, I’m Robin Williams,” and thanked him for the kind words. I just took it. If you want me to be Robin Williams, I’ll do it. That’s how far I’ll go.

Zack Ruskin is a freelance arts and culture writer living in San Francisco.

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