Ricky Velez Reveals Why The NYC Board Of Education Wouldn’t Let Him Film His HBO Special At The High School He Attended

You may recognize Ricky Velez from his tenure as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, or perhaps as Pete Davidson’s best friend in last year’s semi-autobiographical film The King of Staten Island.

In real life, Velez and Davidson not only were friends but also roommates in Brooklyn before they each became famous. Davidson and Judd Apatow executive produce Velez’s first hour-long comedy special for HBO, Ricky Velez: Here’s Everything, which recently premiered on HBO and is now streaming on HBO Max. Velez hopped on a Zoom with Decider to talk about how he originally wanted to film the special at his high school alma mater in Queens before changing locations to Brooklyn Steel, as well as what he has learned from his past gigs and from writing alongside Davidson and Apatow.

DECIDER: How does it feel to be so big that your agency representation makes it into the trades?

RICKY VELEZ: Life has been crazy. but I’m really trying to take it all in and enjoy it. All this is a bit surreal to me. I grew up here in New York and it’s been really cool, and I come from a blue-collar family, and me and my brothers are really enjoying and loving all of this.

Is fame and success is that something they teach you or they prepared you for at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School in Astoria, Queens?

I’m glad you brought them up, because they will not recognize me. I’ll tell you that much. You know, we almost did the special there.

They have a great auditorium.

Gorgeous auditorium. A beautiful auditorium, so we went to go do it there and the school said yes. The Board of Education shut me down. And it’s like … I went to the performing arts school. I come back with Judd Apatow and (director) Michael Bonfiglio. But I understand that they said no because supposedly I can be saying things that can be triggering for children and that’s how they took it. But, I mean, it’s funny you say, ‘Do they teach you that?’ Because you almost become jaded to celebrities at a very young age because they’re just walking around the hallways of your school. Tony Bennett was around, I used to see Tony Bennett a lot. Billy Joel, him and Tony Bennett put out an album together while I was there and they were around, Lady Gaga is often at the school. It’s a really crazy and incredible experience.

Did that experience help solidify your aspirations for comedy instead of pursuing a blue-collar job?

No, I think I left that school almost with a bad taste in my mouth about theater. I think I was too young and immature to really take in what they were teaching, and I left and just went to school. I went to college for less than a year, then came home and tried to join the military. And I got denied to the military and I started laying carpet. My buddy has a carpet company. And the carpet company, they do events. So I would basically be like laying carpet for like Fashion Week, and red carpets for like movies and all this other stuff. Now sometimes when I show up to things I’m like, ‘Yo did the Hall’s do this carpet?’ Yeah, and then I was 19 at that time and I was pretty miserable and there was a lot of depression and whatnot and I knew there was something that needed to go down. My mom wanted me to get back into acting, but I needed the instant gratification that stand-up gives, and it’s given me that for a long time now and I love it.

I know that you were roommates with Pete Davidson a long time before you co-starred with him on The King of Staten Island. But tell me what that’s like, you’re 21, and he’s a lanky teen and you’re like, yeah, I want to live with that guy.

When we were living in Brooklyn Heights, he was 18 at this point. It was funny because, I think he had just like gotten Wild ‘n Out. And like we were doing enough shows. But, I mean, it was just a fun time in our lives, that was definitely, like, not healthy, I’ll tell you that much. Like, there was always smoke in the air. But it was definitely what made us. I mean that’s my brother. I’ve been, we’ve been through it, thick and thin. But at the end of the day, we’re just best friends and it was a great experience. I loved living with Pete, but I’d never do it again nor tell anybody else to do it. (laughs)

Do you stand outside waiting for TMZ to roll up on the latest relationship and say you warned them about living with Pete?

No. I have nothing to say to those people. I’ve got no time for any of that. It’s just weird because we’ll just be like walking down the street and those people show up. It’s uncomfortable.

What was it like in 2014, when both of you broke through? That’s the year Pete got SNL, while you won the New York’s Funniest competition, which springboarded you to The Nightly Show?

Yeah, that was cool. That was awesome. We both were just loving it, life was really great at that time. I got Variety Top 10 the next year, and then it was just a great time. It really was and it was interesting because in 2016, I lost my mom while I was on The Nightly Show. And then within three months I lost The Nightly Show. And then, like, it was just a really tough time. So like, it was a great experience. I love The Nightly Show for what it was, but I learned very quickly I don’t like making daily television. I remember I messed up one night, and one of the writers, he goes ‘Well, you have tomorrow,’ and I just didn’t like that response. I like to have control, make something, be able to run through the edits of it and do whatever but, like, that’s not what that world is.

How did you cope with losing your mom and the show at the same time, both mentally and emotionally?

It actually took a few years. Even in these moments when life is so fun and fast and the rest of that like, probably like three times a day I go, ‘Damn, I wish she can see this… Damn, I wish she could have been there’ or… you know, I brought my mom to the Montreal comedy festival. Not a lot of people do that. So, losing her during this journey, like, really sucked.

I would suppose that one of the healing parts of the process would then be that you did get to work on King of Staten Island with your friend 

I think the healing process for me was found onstage a lot. There’s a lot of nights, and I love Emilio Savone for this, he owns New York Comedy Club. He would just let me sit onstage and talk, and learn how to process it, and I think a lot of the healing actually came when I had my first child.

You do mention in the special about how you just try to be a better parent than your parents were. And you have a small child who, if you stay through the credits, you actually get to see jam out on the guitar.

He’s the man. He’s so cool, dude.

A lot of comedians, they have a kid and then they’re just like “OK great, this is a new half-hour of material” and they stay out on the road. But for you, the pandemic hits, and then suddenly, you get to spend all of this quality time now.

Which was really cool because when you work on a movie with Judd Apatow, you’re working on that movie full-time. When I was a producer, I was basically working six days a week. And my only day off was Saturday, and we would write and write and write, and basically my first summer that my child was alive, I wasn’t around. Then we got a full year together. As someone that hated the pandemic as much as I did, there were things that happened within it, like, getting to work with Judd, getting to write with Judah Miller and just do the whole entire pandemic, and just learning a new muscle that I’ve never had before that I feel very grateful for, and also getting to spend the time with my kid that I got.

You mentioned being a carpet layer and then also, as you’re successful and you get to walk these red carpets, looking at the carpet and wondering if that’s the same carpet. When you go back and watch The King of Staten Island, are there parts where you can just point and go, that was me, that scene was me?

Yeah, there’s a few of them. We’re not supposed to count them but I do. Getting to write jokes for Marisa Tomei and Bill Burr… that’s one of the things that like was super cool getting to write for those guys. And it was just really incredible, and I just felt lucky to be put in that position. And Judd has just kept putting me in that position. I punch up scripts, I got to work with him on the bubble script that he did in London during pandemic. And he’s just put me in really good position to use these tools and make something great for myself.

My favorite thing that happened on that set that ended up being the commercial was the knock-knock, who’s there, not your dad joke, because that was just improv. Me and Pete have done that joke to one another before, like knock-knock, who’s there, not your mom. We just thought it was funny. That’s how dark we are. And I remember right after I did it. We ended up going with the original cut of when I said it. And I remember trying to redo it as excited as I was to do it in front of everybody. And we had Bob Elswit shooting that. He made There Will Be Blood. And he was even laughing his ass off when he heard that and then Judd said, ‘That will either be in the trailer, or we’re going to have to take it out of the movie.’ Like we don’t know if people are gonna love it or hate it and then when, when I saw it make the trailer I was like, ‘Yes, it worked!’ We got it.

On the flip side, what then did Judd and Pete bring to you in the writing of your special since you had the whole pandemic to think about how the special was going to evolve.

Iudd just brings me into experiences where it makes me expand my writing. He brought me to Bruce Springsteen on Broadway. And we sat like dead center, eye-to-eye with Bruce, and I didn’t know anything about Bruce Springsteen. Dude, I’m like, I don’t! I’m a Queens kid, bro. I like rap! 50 Cent was from my neighborhood. Like I can’t, I’m telling you, like I just didn’t. Like that wasn’t my jam, and then I went into this play and it was one of the best plays I’ve ever seen in my whole entire life, and that’s coming from somebody that in high school I went to plays all the time with my school and it was just such an amazing thing. And the way he talked about his family and how funny he was doing it, even though it was so heartbreaking, and the rest of that really made me expand the stuff on my family, where within three weeks out from taping, I’m now expanding a joke and getting the crowd uneasy and learning how Judd does things like that and also — what I love about Judd is he goes ahead and he puts you in a place to be the most creative you can be. You never feel stupid. If you’re wrong he explains it, which he doesn’t have to. Judd could just go, ‘No,’ and that could be that. I’ve worked with people like that. And it’s not like that at all and there’s no ego with it. So it’s just a great place to be. And Pete? I mean, half the jokes are just from me and him having conversations and things we find funny and he’s also been one of my biggest advocates. So yeah, all the credit is due to those guys.

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ricky Velez: Here’s Everything’ On HBO Max, A Debut Comedy Special That Still Leaves Some Things Left Unsaid

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Ricky Velez: Here's Everything on HBO Max