Five Questions with Allen McRae

Michael Melamedoff sits down with Cowboy Bear Ninja collaborator and talent manager Allen McRae to discuss childhood comedy influences, how to “make it” in the industry, and his winding path to becoming a talent manager.

This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

MICHAEL MELAMEDOFF: So I’ve known you for a few years now, and I still remember when you first reached out to me – I believe pre-pandemic…

ALLEN MCRAE: Yeah would’ve been right before the pandemic.

MELAMEDOFF: I remember getting drinks at Donnybrook with you, which you very kindly bought, and you pitched yourself to me as a manager to do business with. I liked the cut of your jib so here we are all these years later.

MCRAE: Jib even sharper than it was before.

MELAMEDOFF: That’s right! Unlike a lot of agents and managers you didn’t get your start in someone’s mailroom. How did you come to comedy management?

MCRAE: So it's a very winding path. I definitely don’t have the traditional sort of mailroom trajectory as you said. I was a comedian for a long time, and I kind of backed into running sketch programming in a theater in Boston called Improv Boston. From there I ended up helping them run some festivals, and started teaching and running their sketch teaching program. I then got hired into The People’s Improv Theater [The PIT] in New York where I very quickly went from just running their scripted programming to kind of being A.D. there.

After three or so years of working there, I was kind of tired of working in live comedy and was looking for what’s next. At that time I met my current boss, Rick Dorfman, and he took me out for drinks, told me what a manager did, and said that I had a weird skillset that lent itself to doing that kind of work. He basically convinced me to become a manager. I said great, let's do it.

I ended up leaving The PIT about three or four weeks before the pandemic started, and had a couple of coordinator jobs offered to me. Unfortunately, the pandemic wiped all of that out, so I hung up my own shingle and got to work. I spent the first year of the pandemic signing really young clients, and asking people like yourself to jump on phone calls with me – and thankfully nobody had anything to do because it was a pandemic – so I got to sit down with a lot of really cool people and ask them how the industry worked. It was kind of a fortuitous thing for me – having that time to kind of figure out things without a lot of pressure.

Next year, I started selling some stuff, and built myself up to being able to thankfully come on to Authentic [Talent & Literary Management] where Rick was mentoring me from afar. Just been living the dream since then I guess! [laughs]

MELAMEDOFF: Do you think that your background changes the way you think about working with clients?

MCRAE: I think that having been a creative for as long as I was – I wrote 3,000 sketches or something dumb like that – I understand a little bit more how the creative mind works than a lot of managers out there. I mean, being down in the trenches and working at Starbucks for 10 years and being broke and having all those sorts of experiences that I think a lot of comedians have, makes me a little bit more empathetic to what they’re going through.

I [look at them as] people who just need help and chances and somebody in their corner… to help them grow into working professionals. Also, I mean, having watched as much bad comedy as I have in my time, being able to go out there and see people who are doing something new and something cool and something that really excites me… I think I just have a different perspective on that than a lot of people.

MELAMEDOFF: Your client list is a lot of really young, diverse, emerging comics. And some really exceptional standouts: Dylan Adler who was a viral star on the last season of Corden, Chloe Troast who is quickly making a name for herself on Saturday Night Live, Nico Carney who is an exceptional recent JFL New Face, Kyle Gordon who is a Billboard-charting comedian now with both an album and a hit single… What’s your North Star for finding and working with talent?

MCRAE: Partially the reason that I work with young comedians is because I had to catch up pretty quickly. There was definitely a learning curve, so the way that I combated that was by saying: All right, I'm gonna take a shot on the 21-year-old who, if I waited around for two more years, would already be snatched up. So these clients had to grow with me. I think that’s a reason why I really – right now – specialize in working with younger clients. I think the other part of it is that I come from directing and headwriting and teaching, and I have a certain experience mentoring people and pushing them towards the direction that they should be going.

But in terms of how I work with young people or what I look out for… I think the number one thing is intelligence. I really like a smart client – somebody that I can talk to and can have nuanced conversations about what comedy is, what a career is and how they want to build it, and how they’re going to create stuff that I’ve never seen before. Which is kind of the other part of this – as somebody who has seen so much comedy – if I see something new or special in somebody it really makes me excited. My job is to be a partner to them to help them to take what is true and intrinsic and special and creative and amazing inside of them and bring it to the forefront.

With folks like Chloe and Dylan and Kyle and Nico it’s easy. It’s easy to see them shining from the inside. And then it just takes years. I was lucky to be able to really spend time with them and get them to this point.

MELAMEDOFF: I really respond to what you’re saying about being excited by being surprised. That’s something I always look for – to see somebody who’s doing something that I’ve never seen before, whether it’s as a performer or whether it’s a television show or movie… Being shocked is something that I sort of welcome.

So what’s the one piece of advice you’d give to an emerging comic looking for representation and work?

MCRAE: That’s a tough one because I don’t think there’s any one way to make it. I think the number one thing is to be as true to yourself as possible. I think a lot of people in this industry think that there’s some sort of ladder or process that they can buy into. Whether that means emotionally or creatively or financially, that there’s some sort of way to skip around the creative maturation process. I only sign people who are true individuals – people who can only do what they do. So if the idea is that you are so desperate to try to “make it” – whatever that means – that you are not trying to find what’s really true about yourself as a creator or the things that you really want to say, then you are gonna come off as somebody who could be anybody. You should only ever be yourself.

MELAMEDOFF: Speaking of young talent. I know that there’s young talent in your life in the form of a young son–

MCRAE: [laughs] I do, yes.

MELAMEDOFF: It makes me wonder: What made you laugh hardest as a kid? What are the comedies you’re going to demand your son watches first?

MCRAE: I’m a big believer that our senses of humor are dictated by what we care about when we were twelve. So my writing was always a mixture of Kids In The Hall and 90s SNL because that was on when I got home as a latchkey kid. I’d watch two straight hours of it on Comedy Central every single day. And then I got very much into the 90s comedies. Jim Carrey, and obviously as a rotund boy Chris Farley was my God – Tommy Boy remains my favorite comedy of all time. I think the first thing that I loved was British comedy. My mom was a big Anglophile so I would watch Monty Python, Are You Being Served… I’m a big sketch guy as you can probably tell. Someday I’m gonna sell a sketch show, that is my number one dream.

I think there’s such a versatility with what you can do with sketch comedy. From Mr. Show to The Chappelle Show – no matter what kind of person he is now, the second season of The Chappelle Show is the most important season of sketch comedy ever made. And you know then Conan came around when I was old enough to stay up until 12:30AM so I would just watch Conan. Especially the first couple years with the best writing staff perhaps ever put together for a late night show. And then of course I think that anybody who’s an elder-millennial like myself, if you don’t say that you were influenced by The Simpsons you’re lying. They created a comedy vernacular in season three through season nine that we’re still using today.

MELADEMOFF: Those are all very right and very true. All shows that I love deeply and dearly. It's been such a pleasure chatting.

MCRAE: Thank you!

MELAMEDOFF: Allen, thank you for doing this today. Great seeing you buddy.

MCRAE: Thanks Michael!

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