Comedic Advice : Alfred Robles Shares Heartfelt Stories of Comedy, Family, and Finding Joy in Tough Times

Comedy Saved Me

Comedian Alfred Robles joins host Lynn Hoffman to discuss his journey from growing up in East L.A. to becoming a viral sensation through cro

Key takeaways

• Alfred Robles credits Gabriel Iglesias for teaching him to move beyond local references to reach a global audience.
• The comedian expressed his gratitude to Iglesias by gifting him a Volkswagen after years of professional support.
• Robles uses unscripted crowd work to help audience members process heavy topics like divorce and personal struggles.
• His debut half-hour special, 'For the Culture,' is set to premiere on Hulu on September 18th.
• He shares how humor served as a de-escalation tool during a tense encounter with law enforcement.

Main topics

• Comedy career evolution
• Mentorship and professional growth
• The mechanics of viral crowd work

Notable quotes

I think the thing you should do is don't react readily.

Conclusion

A profound look at how humor can act as a tool for both professional b

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:02) Comedy saved me. I Speaker 3 (0:03) am a crazy cat lady. Speaker 5 (0:05) I am also Lynn Hoffman. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Welcome back to Comedy Saved Me, the show where we dig into how humor gets people through the hard stuff. Today's guest has built a career. You can hear him. He's with me. Out of turning everyday chaos into comedy gold, Alfred Robles grew up in East L.A. He got scooped up by Gabriel Iglesias for a tour that took him across the country. overseas. He's since become known for viral crowd interactions that have racked up millions of views. Just a little thing like that. He's appeared on all three seasons of Stand-Up Revolution on Comedy Central, Mr. Iglesias on Netflix, and Entre Nos on HBO. He's currently packing venues on his Vatos with Gatos tour. And on September 18th, his debut half-hour special produced by the one and only Kevin Hart's heartbeat for the LOL Live series. And it drops on Hulu. And I'm so excited because I was just saying how I got to see it before anyone gets to see it. He's covering everything from Mexican family life to road rage to petty breakups, cats. Please welcome next. Coming up right here on Comedy Save Me, the one and only certified crowd work chaos agent, Alfred Robles. Coming up next on Comedy Save Me. Don't go anywhere. Speaker 1 (1:29) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Speaker 8 (1:35) Hey, everybody, it's me, W. Kamau Bell. This season on my podcast, Who's With Me, I speak with Bruce Lee's daughter, Brandon Lee's sister, and my friend, Shannon Lee. Speaker 7 (1:44) Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that. You're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Speaker 8 (1:56) Listen to Who's With Me with W. Kamau Bell on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (2:03) Did you think you were the only one? Like no matter what you did, it was never good enough for your mother. I'm Jennifer Arnese, and this is the Black Mother Wound Podcast, where we unpack and heal from the very first relationship that shaped us. We rush to accommodate other people when we have been hurt and our hurt has not been healed. Listen to the Black Mother Wound podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. Every case has a story. Every victim Speaker 7 (2:37) has a voice. But will it be heard? I'm Nancy Grace. On Crime Stories, we go beyond headlines to examine evidence, challenge the story we're fed, and pursue justice for victims and their families. Please join us. at Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your podcasts. Hope you join us. I'll see you there, friend. Speaker 4 (3:05) Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Poynter, Chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Adria Health Institute in New York City. I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife women's health directly to you. Speaker 7 (3:20) A hundred percent of women go through menopause. Even if it's Speaker 4 (3:24) natural, why Speaker 7 (3:25) should we suffer through it? Speaker 4 (3:26) Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Poynter on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (3:35) On Big Lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard. And we pull apart the story behind the image, discovering forgotten interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (4:09) Comedy saved me. I can feel your energy right through the screen. Alfred Robles, welcome to Comedy Saved Me. I'm so happy to have you here. Speaker 2 (4:16) Thank you for having me. I'm excited. I just love doing these. Why? I don't know. I just love doing podcasts and just like radio interviews. I just love it. Really? Speaker 3 (4:28) That's cool. Speaker 2 (4:29) Because most Speaker 3 (4:29) people get really nervous, you know. Speaker 2 (4:32) Oh, I don't know. Maybe I do get nervous, but I just love doing them. Speaker 3 (4:37) Well, all right. Well, let's see if you still love it at the end. Okay. Speaker 2 (4:40) Because you never know. Speaker 3 (4:42) I mean, I could be horrible. No, but I do want Speaker 5 (4:44) to take you back to the beginning. What was comedy's role, Alfred, in your house growing up in East L.A.? Was humor how your family sort of got through tough times, or did you have to sort of find that out on your own? Speaker 2 (4:56) No, I think I found that on my own. My dad left at a real, that was like maybe like 10 years old, and I just had to grow up fast. Speaker 1 (5:05) Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:06) And how I got into comedy was my older brother, he used to always listen to Andrew Dice Clay and Martin Lawrence. And I used to, like, sneak into his room. I used to listen to his CDs. And I would have never thought I was going to be, yes, yes. And the crazy part, I'm like, now I'm like nothing compared to these guys. But I just, when I was younger, that was, to me, that was, it was funny, you know? And I would have never thought I was going to be a comedian in my life. Really? Yes. But I did like writing a lot of jokes when I was younger. And maybe that was a calling. I just didn't see it. Now, who did you write jokes for yourself? For myself? I just used to write jokes and poems when I was a kid. Wait Speaker 5 (5:51) a minute. I suspect this has something to do with girls and impressing them. Speaker 2 (5:56) Maybe. Or making people laugh. Just making people laugh. That was it. I was this guy. I used to lay on the floor in the hallway so people could walk over me. Speaker 5 (6:06) Wow. So you're you are serious about this. Now, did you used to crack up your parents or any chance you had to get out of being punished or? Speaker 2 (6:15) No, no. My mom is my mom is a hard, typical Mexican lady where you can make her laugh or nothing like that. She she she she tries to be funny, but she was she was never having it. Speaker 5 (6:27) So where was like the first time you had that? The moment you wrote the joke for someone and made them laugh and you got that bug. Speaker 2 (6:35) Like in high school, I just didn't know it was going to come to this, though. I just, I like people. I used to make them laugh. And I used to like seeing them laugh if it was because something I did or something I said. I just, I loved it. I went to the police academy. Wow. Speaker 5 (6:51) Now, obviously, you didn't go in that direction. You went full time into comedy. I got it out Speaker 2 (6:57) of my system. Speaker 5 (7:00) Good for you. Well, you went from completely unknown to opening for Gabriel Iglesias across the country and internationally, which is a major feat. Can you take us back to the moment that you found out you were going to go on that tour? What did that phone call feel like? Speaker 2 (7:15) It's funny because I met Gabriel at a bar show in the city of Montebello, California. And he comes up to me and he says, hey, you're real funny, but you cuss a lot. And you use a lot of local references. And you got to think bigger because what about like if I take you to like New York or Chicago or even cross country, they're not going to understand what you're saying because they're not going to know the local spots that the people here know. So he was saying, you're funny. You just don't know how to be funny to everybody yet. And my like, okay, so what do you want me to do? You go stop using local references and stop cussing and we'll see. And we'll go from there. And I did that. I did what he said. And then he saw me like two months later and he said, oh, you took my advice. Then from there, he started taking me on the road. Speaker 3 (8:07) Now, Alfred, that's a big thing. Like you get Speaker 5 (8:09) someone like that calls you up, tells you that. And it had to be a scary but exhilarating thing at the same time. But you had to basically change up everything you were doing. Was that easy? Speaker 2 (8:21) No, it wasn't easy. And back then, I mean, it was good advice. But back then, I didn't see it as good advice. I was like, man, that's all I have. Wow. But you did it. I did it. And then that's when I started remembering the jokes I wrote when I was in high school. Oh. And then I said, I want to test these jokes out that I wrote in high school, see if they work. And they worked. Even when I did my first episode, when I was on TV for the first time, it was Comedy Central. And on Comedy Central, you had to give them their jokes before they could verify them to see if they're funny or not. They'd go over your material. And I sent them the jokes that I wrote in high school and they loved them. I'm like, oh, yeah. There were cheesy little jokes, but. But Speaker 5 (9:08) they didn't change anything. So that means you knew you were onto something. No, they didn't change anything. That's huge. This is Speaker 2 (9:12) what I'm going to say right now. This is what I'm going to say. I want a girl that reminds me of my report card. She has to have double D's. Just another one of F. Speaker 2 (9:24) Little cheesy lines. That's great. Your Speaker 3 (9:28) crowd interactions have gone viral and racked up millions of views. What is it about Speaker 5 (9:35) the unscripted, sort of in the moment, ad libby stuff that connects so much more than written bits and things that you spend time really crafting? Speaker 2 (9:42) Yes, the thing I like doing is I like to give them 45 minutes of material first. So they're getting a comedy show, plus they're getting that at the end. Because at the end of the day, I'm a comedian first. And I just, I want to tell my jokes as well. So I feel during those 45 minutes, I'm talking about my problems. And I think they could relate to that. So I just make them feel comfortable where at the end I go, hey, is anybody going through anything like a breakup or divorce? Just want to tell us a story. We're here for you guys. We'll try to help you guys out. And that led to something else. And then just from there, I didn't know how popular it was going to be. Every day I got to do it now. Speaker 5 (10:22) So you basically soften them up with the like totally getting on board. I can relate to everything. And then you just go in for the kill. Speaker 2 (10:31) Yes. Yes. Obviously, Speaker 3 (10:33) the laugh is what I mean. Speaker 2 (10:34) Yes. Speaker 3 (10:34) But and Speaker 2 (10:35) it's crazy how they could just open up. I wouldn't open up to a stranger, to a room full of strangers, 300, 500 people, you know? Yeah. Speaker 5 (10:44) It's sort of like you have them in a comedic spell. Speaker 2 (10:47) Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And it's good. It's good for me. It's good for them because at the end, they feel better. And I tell them, do you feel bad sharing your story? They're like, no, I actually feel better. Wow. Because I know that could help someone else out too. I'm like, okay. Okay. You're kind of like a therapist. Kind of without knowing. Speaker 3 (11:10) You didn't have any idea and now you have to do it every show. Speaker 2 (11:13) No. And it's crazy because they know it's going to be up on social media, on YouTube or whatnot. You know, that's why they're there. Yeah. And sometimes I get the people like, can you please take it down? Or I didn't know this was going to happen. And I'm like, well, you're the one that raised your hand and you knew you were coming up. But I still, if someone tells me to take it down, I'll take it down for them. Speaker 5 (11:36) All right. So note to self, when you're going to an Alfred Robles comedy special or show. and you don't want to be on TV, don't raise your hand. Speaker 2 (11:46) No, and it's funny because people think I just choose people to pick on and I go, no, we make it seem like that on the video because we're not going to post like, hey, raise your hand, you know? Yeah, yeah. So