Watching Theo Von Process a Very Long Week—and Year

“I think it’s been a lot of nerves this year, week.”

After a couple of false starts at Manhattan’s Beacon Theater during a taping for an upcoming Netflix special, his first of two recordings on Saturday night, the comedian Theo Von was starting to find his rhythm. As a podcaster, Von has become in the last year a sought-out interviewer for A-list actors and musicians, and so recognizable as a political entity that the Department of Homeland Security momentarily made him the face of its immigration crackdown this week.

“Heard you got deported dude, bye,” Von says in a clip included in a sizzle reel that the agency posted on X.

“Yooo DHS i didnt approve to be used in this. I know you know my address so send a check,” Von wrote in response. “And please take this down and please keep me out of your ‘banger’ deportation videos. When it comes to immigration my thoughts and heart are alot more nuanced than this video allows. Bye!” (DHS soon removed the post.)

Such are the complications of Von’s unusual and somewhat headspinning role in a new media mainstream. As the host of This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, he had already established himself as a leading voice in the space when Donald Trump appeared on his show during his campaign last year. Soon, Von was attending the inauguration, having dinner with Jared Kushner and Ivanka in Miami and accompanying the president to Qatar to perform for U.S. servicemembers. (“I’m on TMZ right now having a bar fight in Nashville,” Von told the audience. “So I think you guys caught me on a tough week for peace, man.”)

The searching, mystic quality of Von’s interview style brought something new out of Trump—a startled and seemingly genuine inquiry into the potency of cocaine. In his standup, though, Von is tasked with filling space rather than creating it. On stage, he was comparatively punchy, and aware that the crowd likely knew him first from his hours-long conversations on YouTube.

“Most of y’all never seen me walk before,” Von said.

He seemed jittery in a mullet, baggy camouflage pants, and Yeezy sneakers. After briefly taking the stage once, he abandoned the set and started over—only to pick a member of the audience to be kicked out and start over again. (It wasn’t clear from my seat nor from the heated discussion that played out afterwards in the r/TheoVon Reddit forum why this had happened. A representative for Von didn’t return a request for comment.) The crowd, populated by recurring pockets of backwards hats and golf polos and a sprinkling of tattooed interlopers, was predominantly but not exclusively male and not particularly raucous.

“A lot of white people in here,” Von observed.

As he settled in, he worked in his go-to veins: race, his childhood. Von grew up outside New Orleans and has said he was legally emancipated at 14 years old. “We didn’t have any Jews growing up,” he said on Saturday. “Couldn’t afford a Jew.” His comedy typically punches sideways, less moralistic or aggressive than personal. A Cold Stone Creamery where he worked as a teenager amid a band of misfits, he said, was the “Underground Railroad for autism.”

Still, for all the hours of podcasting and stand-up, Von has maintained an elusiveness. It was difficult to imagine him processing on stage the influence and soft power he has acquired. Instead, as he approached the end of his set, he returned to a now-familiar mode of troubled vulnerability. Lacking love in both his childhood and adult life, Von said, “sometimes the only way I can feel is in front of other people.”