Meet Mark Edwards | Comedian & Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mark Edwards and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mark, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
When I’m having fun, the audience is having fun. I spent a lot of time thinking about what other people would like, rather than thinking about I enjoy making. As soon as I got over that, things started to click. As soon as I tried to make myself laugh first, my audience started to grow. Comedy is just too subjective of a thing to try and appeal to everyone. Unfortunately, it took me far too long to realize that it was much more effective to try and find all the people in the world with the same sense of humour as me.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am a comedian first. All I’ve ever wanted is the laugh.

In my last year of high school, I had to write a speech for English class. It was all about how smoking cigarettes makes you cool. (They don’t). This was probably my first work of legitimate satire.

I got selected to “compete” at the speech contest in front of the school. After the prepared speeches, we were given a few minutes to prepare for an improvised speech based off a limited selection of topics on a cue card. The winner of the event would receive $100, which in those days could buy quite a few Weird Al CDs. But I didn’t care about the money; I had 950 captive listeners. I wanted the laugh.

I chose a Mother Theresa quote and used it to explain how I would handle an alien invasion.

One of the judges (who was the former head of the English department) called my first speech one of the best he’d ever heard. He called my second speech “thoroughly baffling”. Who cares? I got a laugh.

I am a comedian first.

I resisted the urge to get on social media for a long time, mostly because I never saw anything on there that I thought was funny. So, if there aren’t any funny people, why would I need to be there? Then a very inconvenient little pandemic came along and I could no longer make anyone laugh. No stand up. No voice acting. No auditions. Nothing.

So I, like many others, begrudgingly pulled out my Samsung A5 (the phone we ALL have) and tried to find an audience.

I didn’t enjoy it at first. I was trying to post things that I thought would “work” on social media. The moment I threw that out the window, it worked. I had five minutes before I had to go pick my kids up from school, so I threw up a 30 second video. It was a bit I had been doing on stage – an impression of Robin Williams as The Joker in The Dark Knight. By the time I got home from getting the kids (about 16 minutes later), that video had around 25,000 views, which was more than all my previous posts combined. People started commenting other characters for me to do as Robin, or other impressions altogether. By the end of the week, I had about 50,000 followers.

My goal has always been to make people laugh, and I count it a blessing that I can do that from the comfort of my living room. But I would never describe myself as a “content creator” — posting online is just a part of the job. I’ve always seen it as a digital business card. If you Google me, I want you to be able to find me.

The best way I can describe what I do is: stupid stuff for smart people. Or, at least I hope that’s what it is. There are definitely a lot of people that just think I’M stupid, but to me, that’s part of the joke.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’ve entered my Old Person Era. A perfect night for me (barring doing stand up or spending time with my family) is playing cards and having a cup of tea. Lately, my oldest friend and I have been hitting up ‘For the Win’, Toronto’s best (by FAR) board game café, and playing Cribbage. There’s nothing like pegging holes and having a good chat.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
If there has been a single through-line in my comedy journey, it is Sean Cullen. He is something of a comedy legend in Canada. I accidentally discovered Sean while pirating music in the seventh grade, where some of his work with Corky and the Juice Pigs was falsely attributed to my other comedy hero, Weird Al Yankovic. Around that same time, I started seeing him on Just For Laughs (Google ‘Food of Choice, Sean Cullen’) and could tell right away that he was a completely unique breed of comedian.

A handful of years later, I saw Mr. Cullen live at a JFL event in Toronto. A year after that I was picked up by my first agent, who sent me to my very first animation audition. I ended up booking the role, and spent three years in a sound booth with Sean.

Invited me to perform on his podcast live at the Rivoli (home of the Kids in the Hall), as well as on Sirius XM, the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, and Just For Laughs. Over the years, we’ve played monkey siblings, father and son, anthropomorphic butts, and many other animated characters.

I’ve always said that I don’t ever want to meet my heroes, I only want to work with them. 10/10, highly recommend.

Website: https://www.someguymark.com

Instagram: @someguymark

Twitter: @someguymark

Facebook: @someguymark

Youtube: @someguymark

Other: TikTok: @someguymark

Image Credits
The images belong to me.