Inside Jay Pharoah’s antifragile mindset

• As a comedian, when you can be yourself and you can be as naked as possible, unapologetically, then you have arrived — not physically naked. I'm comedian, actor, rapper, Jay Pharoah. How you doing today? Giving you a little introspect from my introspect. Oh wow, that's a good one.

"What's comfortable to you, but also limiting?" Impressions are the easiest thing for me to do. I mean like breathing-type easy because I have been doing impressions for 29 years of my life. It's also limiting because it doesn't matter the amount of good material that I do have out there. When it comes to what's hot online, people are always amazed by that.

• Yeah, you forgot I'm born from West Philadelphia, born and raised. It's like that thing where you save the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and then everybody just looks at you as this 'savior.' You ordered the whole restaurant, so I think you should pay for the whole bill. Ah, come on, jabroni, the Rock says this...

Those videos are the videos that get rotated the most, and when they get rotated the most, people can, in their minds, lock you into that box. I've always tried to get away from that, but I've learned that it's a superpower. Since you're not gonna get away from it, use it. Use it to your advantage. Use it to bring people in, and get them in with that, and then show them something different. It's purple like Prince. Ooh, uh. Would you like some pancakes? Oh, that was Chappelle doing that.

When did I let go of a deeply held conviction? Damn, now I'm trying to think. Now I'm really trying to think of this now. Me and my father are very tight now. He's like one of my best friends. Like we could talk about anything. But growing up with my father, who was going through many transitions in life, it was a little tougher on me, you know, discipline-wise.

So, you know, I would get beat and all of that, and you know, sometimes my mom would have to jump in and stop things from going too far. I guess just forgiving my father when I was 17 for like the abuse in the house. I think that's when I let go of a deeply held conviction 'cause it took me so long to kind of, you know, get to that point where I could forgive him because I was harboring so much of it.

But man, it... all of that makes you who you are, you know. Had it been less arduous, I probably wouldn't have gone so hard to try to get out of the house in that situation, you know, and get my own, and be my own source of income and everything else—maybe I wouldn't have worked as hard, you know, so I learned to not allow that pain of getting brought up to, you know, transfer over. So yeah, what I do with it afterwards, I just... like that.

When did you feel truly celebrated? It happened in Australia of last year. It was Saturday night, and I was at the Opera House, the late show, and I was just in a different zone. I don't know if you watch Dragon Ball; if you don't, you gotta look that up 'cause this is the perfect way to explain where I was on stage.

Killed it, destroyed. Back to back to back, nonstop for like an hour—an hour and a half plus. I got off that stage, my dad came up to me, he hugged me, he said, "I have never ever seen you like that." He has never said that to me—never had said that to me until that day. He was so proud of me in that moment. That right there, it meant the world.

What is your most consistent and greatest fear? Hmm. My most consistent and greatest fear is dying without reaching my full potential. I've always thought that there was something I'm supposed to—something I'm supposed to leave for folks, and if I don't get that out, I mean, it says in the Bible, "If you don't use your talents... if you don't use your talents that God has blessed you with, then he's displeased."

So it's like, if the people don't see this, if they don't see that I could do that, then it was nothing but a wasted light. And I don't wanna waste any light on myself. I want everything... I want everything to be seen.

Have you ever gone through something upsetting or painful that you later viewed as a blessing? Yeah, definitely. I was a heavy kid. I was bullied, and as a kid, the only thing that you really want to do is you just really want to fit in. But, and it's not until you get older that you realize that standouts aren't supposed to fit in.

You're not supposed to fit in if you're a standout; you're not. You're not. Why? Because you have a certain light that other people don't have. I thought not having friends was a terrible thing. Nah, it's not bad. It ain't bad at all because I ended up making friends with my voices and became arguably the best impressionist in the world, if not one of the best impressionists in the world.

This is not me saying it; this is what other people say. So if I would've been able to, like I said, hang out, if I would've been able to party and do all of those things, I'd probably be doing something else. I look at my body now and I look at... you know, I look at the mirror and I see a beautiful person. Not because of the reflection in the mirror, but because of what that person has gone through mentally, the growth, everything.

I see every- I see all of that when I look at myself in the mirror now, and I summarize the last 35 years. If I could say anything to the teenage version of myself that didn't have friends and wasn't popular, I would just tell him to hang in there. Keep doing what you do, and it's going to work out. And you haven't got any booty yet, but it's okay because there's a lot of that in the future. There's a lot of that in the future for you.