Ask Matt Rogers to name-check his comedic idols and he might struggle to pinpoint any stand-ups, sketch stars or screen icons. But that doesn’t mean he’s at a loss for influences. The 35-year-old actor is just more of a diva devotee than a comedy acolyte.
“It’s a lot easier for me to answer that by saying Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, etc.,” Rogers says. “It was really those types of personas that I was gravitating towards — even with my comedy.”
It was Carey, the queen of Christmas herself, who inspired Rogers to join the royal family of festiveness and cheekily anoint himself the prince of Christmas. That, at least, was the gag Rogers conceived of nearly a decade ago, when he saw an interviewer brazenly ask Carey about the joyful — and reliably annual — windfall that comes with owning the holiday season.
At that point, Rogers was a fledgling performer still finding his voice in the alt-comedy scene. “Las Culturistas,” the juggernaut podcast he co-hosts with Bowen Yang, was just a year old. As Rogers sought to build a show around his talents and showcase his burgeoning singing chops, he decided to strut in Carey’s footsteps.
“That’s when I came up with the concept of, ‘I’m going to release a Christmas album because I’m a pop star — y’all just don’t know that yet,’” Rogers says. “I started to really like this idea of this character, of myself being very, very sure of myself, as having the opportunity to be a part of the Christmas canon.”
Rogers crooned his first Christmas concert at the Duplex, an intimate Manhattan cabaret club, in 2017. He revived the concept a year later, and again the year after that. Eventually, Rogers’s holiday tradition birthed “Have You Heard of Christmas?,” a comedic concert special that hit Showtime in 2022. Capitol Records released the corresponding album a year later. This holiday season, Rogers is donning the prince of Christmas crown again for a tour that arrives Friday at 9:30 Club.
Billed this year as “Christmas in December,” his act wields campy shtick, deadpan sincerity and onstage gravitas to satirize — and embrace — Christmastime capitalism. One tune, “Also It’s Christmas,” channels the uncomfortable allure of holiday hookups. “Hottest Female Up in Whoville,” Rogers’s wholehearted ode to Carey, imagines “The Grinch’s” Martha May Whovier as a promiscuous paramour. “RockaFellaCenta” captures the uniquely New Yorkian tradition of stalking 30 Rock in search of a celebrity sighting.
Nowadays, Rogers steps onstage not as an up-and-coming comic but as a cult-favorite performer whose screen credits include the films “Fire Island” and “Good Fortune,” plus the series “I Love That For You” and “Palm Royale.” Speaking during a mid-November video chat from his New York apartment, Rogers discussed his festive roots growing up on Long Island, his deep-seated musical passions and his resolution to do a bit less in 2026.
(This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)
What appealed to you about crafting this prince of Christmas persona?
I really wanted to lean into this musical element of my comedy that I had sort of been developing in our community in a big way. Henry Koperski, my boyfriend at the time, was a huge part of that, because everyone was using him as their accompanist and everyone was using him as their musical director because he’s such a genius and he’s so amazing to work with. I just happened to live with him and be in a relationship with him, so he was kind of, not a prisoner, but certainly some sort of Igor to my Frankenstein in terms of creating this project.
Are you surprised the whole thing has gone this far?
I mean, the initial joke was the album doesn’t exist. The project initially lived and died on the idea that this was not a thing, so now that it literally is a tangible thing, it’s like a long con of a bit that I got away with — which feels like a lot of other things in my career, to be honest with you.
Were you a big Christmas person growing up?
You’re forced to be on Long Island, I think. I grew up Roman Catholic — not that religion was a big part of my life, but that also wasn’t the point. It didn’t need to be for Christmas to be such a huge thing because Long Island is a lot of big personalities and a lot of maximalism. So when something like Christmas comes around, that is also maximalized. It’s a time when bigger feelings get bigger and bigger emotions get bigger, and Long Island people do that really well. They have big hearts, they think they know everything, and when that collides with Christmas and the holidays, there’s a lot there.
You’re known as a comic. Where does your passion for music come from?
I always wanted to sing. Being a closeted kid growing up on Long Island, where all I wanted to do was be in the plays and be in the musicals and sing in the swing choir, I was so paralyzed with fear about being unveiled as gay or looking stupid or just looking too vulnerable and flopping. So it wasn’t until I was in college and had come out of the closet and started doing sketch comedy and trying to be the person that I wanted to be that I was like, “I’m going to start incorporating music and singing into my comedy.”
Have you found parallels between music and comedy?
I’ve always thought that sketch comedy and pop songwriting go so hand in hand because, really, the formula of how you do both is very similar. Setup, punch line — that’s like verse, chorus. If you study both, they really speak to each other. I had known that because I had been experimenting with it. So then I did this show and I just thought, “This is something I’m going to do every year.”
What can audiences expect in D.C.?
It’s going to be full of spirit — let’s just say that. It has to match these theaters where we’re doing it. I mean, 9:30 Club? You don’t get more iconic than that. I feel so lucky to perform there every single time. And we love playing in rock clubs because we think it sounds better. I know that people don’t love to stand. I know that as I get older, my fans get older as well. But let’s pretend to be young for one night. I’m going to do it. So can you, Katie.
Let’s skip ahead to the new year. How are you feeling about 2026?
I am really feeling good. I’m figuring out how to balance my life, in a way. Something I’ve been doing for a very long time is keeping a really full schedule and going really hard, because I think it speaks to who I was growing up as a kid. I was really involved in sports. I always worked. I’m still that waiter I was in my 20s, where I’m nervous about getting the Diet Coke to Table 22 or else I’m not going to get the tip. But that also comes at the expense of my energy sometimes. The truth is, the opportunities for next year and the ways in which my career can develop are so exciting. But I just want to make sure that I am moisturized and beta blocked and not eating Taco Bell at 2 in the morning because I’m stoned on marijuana.
If you go
Matt Rogers: Christmas in December
9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. 930.com.
Date: Dec. 12 at 8 p.m.
Price: $56.35.
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