Marc Maron Turned To His Podcast In An Act Of Desperation

"Generally in my past I've felt a little out of place when I travel internationally, but I feel out of place in the United States as well, so it was just compounded, but it's very different now when people come to see me specifically." Marc Maron is recently returned from a UK tour and feels he has finally overcome his fear of international audiences. The popularity of his podcast, WTF With Marc Maron, and TV show, Maron (recently signed on for a third season) have helped put him at ease.

"I've never travelled with the notoriety, or the popularity I have now, so it's a very different experience."

"It took a long time to get here, to be a comic people wanted to see. And it's not millions of people, it's not hundreds of thousands of people, but it's a specific type of person that wants to see me and I'm very grateful that they sought me out. After wanting to be a stand-up, and being a stand-up more than half of my life now, the fact that in the last five years I'm able to sell a few tickets and people want to see me do it, and that just happened four years ago, three years ago, so I waited a long time to have this opportunity as a stand-up comic, which is what I am at my core. Before this I've never travelled with the notoriety, or the popularity I have now, so it's a very different experience," Maron admits, before warning: "I'm never that comfortable; I wouldn't over-estimate me."

He's touring a show called Maronation, 90 minutes of material a year and a half in the making that he believes to be his best yet. "Why I got into stand-up was that was my place to do whatever the hell I chose to do; there's a freedom in that. It's a rebellious freedom I think initially, but certainly a lot of stand-ups want to get into it so they can get TV series, or a job, or millions of people to love them — there's a lot of different reasons, but I think the reason I did it was primarily to find my own way and my own place.

"I'm a stand-up comic, that's all I ever wanted to be, and as opportunities alluded me or were not offered to me, you know, I turned to the podcast in an act of desperation," says Maron, candid. "But all I really wanted to be was a comic, and once the podcast became popular and afforded me these other opportunities I took them with a certain amount of spite and a certain amount of aggravated entitlement; these things that I set out to do early on that I could not make happen, given the opportunity now they were certainly less loaded.

"Everything feeds the other thing: my life experience feeds my comedy and the TV show, and my stream of conscious around the life I'm living that I'm able to explore in the monologues of the podcast will ultimately lead to stand-up; it all seems to be part of the same thing. There are different variations of how I approach things, but all I ever wanted to be was me, and I seem to be being that in a lot of different mediums now."