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‘OhAfter a while, you see a legend who is at the top of their game,” the booming sound at the beginning of Robby Hoffman’s Netflix special, Wake Up, welcomed him on stage.
He is not the only one. Over the past year, Hoffman’s star has skyrocketed. He is currently on TV in Rooster, a college drama starring Steve Carell, and the fifth season of the popular sitcom. Hacks. This is only her second season as Randi’s talent agent, but last year the role earned her an Emmy nomination.
“Last week, I was a Hassidic Lubavitch Jew living in Crown Heights, New York,” was Hoffman’s first line as Randi. “Now I’m in LA, I’m gay and maybe an atheist.” Hoffman’s life has also taken a similar turn after being thrust into the spotlight. Randi, a role created for him by writers Lucia Aniello, Paul W Downs and Jen Statsky and based on Hoffman’s biography, has been a “life-changing role”, he says on video from the Los Angeles home he shares with his wife, TV star Gabby Windey. And meeting Carell, one of his childhood heroes, on the set of Rooster was “so cool. I mean, he’s a toy.”
Hoffman himself looks like a puppet, too, which may come as a surprise to those who have seen Hoffman’s comedy set, in which he portrays a grumpy, constantly irritated character. Wake up includes gags about “ugly” women (“always too hot and sick”) and abortion (“we raise the age of abortion to 10, we have many successful children on our hands”). Not to mention the paedophilia joke.
But even his punches make some listeners happy, “I don’t have to choose my opinion”, the joker. he says. “I’m just sharing it with you. I wish I didn’t know some of this. I wish parenting wasn’t something I was introduced to or heard about. I think it’s too democratic to joke about anything, you know?”
Even Hoffman he insists that he doesn’t want to offend (“I think a lot of my jokes are misinterpreted”), and he doesn’t think that being offended is the worst thing: “Poorness is.” He is speaking from experience: grew up in a family dependent on social assistance, the seventh child of 10 children.
In the early years of his life, he lived in Brooklyn, where his parents belonged to what he called the Hassidic Jewish community and what he described in his comedy as a religious community. He said: “But I’m not afraid of what is a religious group. I can definitely say that it was a fanatical religious group.” He hadn’t spoken to his father since he was in his twenties, and even before that, he hadn’t been a significant part of his life for very long. His mother divorced him and moved back to Montreal with the children when Hoffman was in elementary school, sometime between the ages of five and 11 (he is not interested in the exact time).
Home life in Montreal was chaotic, living in a house that was “overcrowded”, says Hoffman. He would often fight with his brothers and “cry every day … sometimes I would kick and scream on the floor”. He left as soon as he could, at the age of 17, when he started renting his own place, working part-time to support himself through her. CEGEP pricea kind of private pre-university college in Quebec. After that, “I almost stopped crying,” she says. “It takes me a lot to cry now.”
Despite the hardships, Hoffman’s childhood was “stable,” he says, thanks to his mother, who woke up at 5.30am every day to cook, clean and take care of her children. Although “not in mind”, “he was there, which is amazing”, says Hoffman. “It doesn’t matter, he was there.” Hoffman supports his own family these days by spending half of his income on supporting his siblings and mother.
The actor’s knack for referring to women, including himself and his mother, as “bitch” is part of his on-stage ferocity that carries over into our singing, where he is calm and thoughtful. Indeed, she does not follow the Hollywood script of self-deprecation, instead she is very independent and talks frequently about how to be rich. But you get to think that this is selfish, sending a meeting and not rude.
“I come in hot,” Hoffman admits — especially on stage. But he is not pretending that he is not – on the contrary, he says, “kind and good people” like Will Smith, who was. banned from the Oscars after beating the actor Chris Rock, or Ellen DeGeneres, whose show was canceled later alleging that minor workers were victimized. Without the stage, “you will see that I am happy”, he says. I can’t argue with that – although I can’t see it she, since she refused to put her camera down for us to call, her excuse was that she had just woken up after returning from her latest date.
Hoffman is very grateful for his success. “Aren’t I living the best life you’ve ever heard of?” he said at the time his latest appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “I really feel that,” he says. As he began to joke, it was like “such an accident” to look for a job without the promise of financial stability: “It’s very difficult to go from no money to money, so when we get one of our guys in, it always feels like a miracle.”
He wishes it would not be a miracle – Hoffman is Bernie Sanders support and believes that “everyone has the right to be respected”. He aspires to be an example of someone who “made it” – rose from poverty through talent and determination. “You don’t have to be this special, you don’t have to be this talented,” he says. (I told you, he pays it back.) Throughout his youth, he was “so sick of being poor”, that he only thought about working hard at the private Jewish school his grandfather helped him get through, and then going on to get an accounting degree. He worked briefly at KPMG consultancy after completing his degree at McGill University in Montreal, before switching to accounting for a career in comedy and television writing.
“Comedies stuck with me, like Moses or something,” he says. (He talks a lot about religion and God in our conversation, although these days his only belief is that “there is something bigger than us”.) Soon he was rewarded for following his calling, winning a daytime Emmy in 2019 as a writer for the children’s TV series Odd Squad and filming his first comedy special, I’m Nervous, the same year.
When he joined the Hacks team, he developed a devoted following, not just for his stand-up, but for the podcast he co-produced with comedian Rachel Kaly, Too Far, and his high-profile relationship with Windey. The couple have become darlings of the LGBTQ+ community, with photos of their 20-minute wedding ceremony shared online after tying the knot in Las Vegas last year. The whole thing had an air of irreverence, including Windey’s Instagram announcement the post read: “Man and woman!!”
Ddespite identifying as a woman, Hoffman has undergone radical mastectomy, a procedure often associated with transgender men and non-binary people. Using their hometowns “it would be a good way for someone like me”, he tells the audience in a set he wrote for Netflix’s Verified Stand-Up series, before laughing at length about non-binary people.
He is calm on the topic when we talk, although he stands by his gags (“If I can’t talk about it, who will? It’s crazy. You just let Joe Rogan talk about this shit?”). They say they respect their non-binary friends and use their preferred pronouns (“of course”); when it comes to her identity, she is “definitely in a gender space”. She is very happy to be a woman, although “something is off”, she says, since “most girls don’t want to cut off their breasts”. For him, the decision to undergo surgery came from wanting to “look like a boy.”
When he deems it necessary, Mr. Hoffman does not hesitate to stick his neck out, as he did in 2023 when the Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced a strike calling for higher wages for writers, better job security and stronger control over intellectual property. In information at that timeThe WGA said the practices of the major studios had “brought in enormous wealth” which risked turning the documentary into an “independent project”. Hoffman questioned the decision, after looking at the union’s financial plan with the eye of his accountant.
“I said: Hey, Hey, Hey, why are you suing? Why aren’t we?”
After several months on strike, WGA members were impressed with his ideas. “I had a lot of people, hundreds of people in my DMs, saying: Hey, what are you talking about? Or where can I see this?” But his questions didn’t go down well in the first WGA meeting – he was booed – and he says now “maybe my time as autistic is over”.
Hoffman has previously described himself as autistic, but has no official diagnosis. “But I will say that my wife, we watch Love on the Spectrumand he feels that he understands me well in every matter.”
At the end of our call, I hear Windey’s familiar voice on the line; she has come to tell Hoffman that there is an avocado toast and orange juice ready for breakfast. “That’s very good, dear.” Thank you,” Hoffman says, his voice becoming more clear.
The comedian was single for a while before meeting Windey three years ago outside a bar in LA. “It was a small bar, but we had a dyke night and I missed a lot because I was going to stand,” Hoffman says. “But in the end I went to meet one of my friends and they were like writing to each other.” So he and his friend went outside, where Windey was waiting for an Uber: “I met my match.”
After we chatted a bit, “I said: listen, I’m not going to beat around the bush – pun intended for a dyke bar – but I have to get your number”, Hoffman recalls. It must have been a surprise to see the former star of The Bachelorette, who became known straight before meeting Hoffman, on a lesbian night, I say. “They said they were investigating,” Hoffman says with a laugh. “I’ve heard it before.”
He continues: “I feel that way, I have the opportunity to meet him, we like to be together, we like to be together, we don’t have children – he is my family. This does not mean that it is always sunshine and flowers.” He said: “We won’t be in a relationship when we don’t hurt each other. “And that’s okay. Let’s deal with it.”
Hoffman’s refreshing honesty is a big part of why audiences can’t seem to get enough of him. He has added 10 days to his tour and has his own TV show in the works. We will all “live a life of joy and pain and sorrow and joy and all,” he says. “I don’t think it’s my job to leave anything to anyone.” So what does he think his job is? “My job is just to be myself.”
The hacks are available in the UK at Atlantic Ocean and Now
