David Cross is best known as that guy on “Arrested Development” or “Mr. Show” or — depending on your progress along life’s journey — in three “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movies. But mainly what he does is stand-up comedy. This month, that entails a new special, “The End of the Beginning of the End,” and a continued residency at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where he is workshopping new material.
“I do not sit down and write jokes,” he said. “I’m just not good at that. I do all my writing onstage.”
Mr. Cross, 62, is not afraid to go off-color. The special includes jokes about slavery, an extracurricular offering at a Chinese massage place and a culinary fantasy about what God does with miscarriages.
The New York Times recently spent time with Mr. Cross on a Thursday as he got ready for a performance at Union Hall.
10:30 a.m.
Mr. Cross lives in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, in a renovated brownstone, with his wife, Amber Tamblyn, an actor and director; their 9-year-old daughter, Marlow; and their 2-year-old Bernedoodle, Rose. This morning was the start of spring break, so Marlow cooked breakfast. “Marlow, this egg is really good,” her father told her.
Marlow has not seen the Chipmunks movies, the last of which Mr. Cross told Indie Wire was “without question, the most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had in my professional life.” His daughter described him as “annoyingly funny.” Mr. Cross’s own take: He titled a 2023 tour and special “Worst Daddy in the World.”
One might imagine that jokes about slavery would be off the table in 2026. “Not at all,” Mr. Cross said. The bit, in which he imagines that he would have been a generous, benign slave owner, grew out of an exchange he had during preparation for an earlier tour. At the time he needed a setup for it, he said. “It felt like it was like, ‘Oh my, I’m trying to be shocking.’” Then he thought of tying it to a hike on the Inca Trail, built by enslaved workers. With that context, he said, it worked.
“I’ve done plenty of stuff that is, for lack of a better word, button-pushing,” he said.
Is that fun for him?
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t. It makes the set that night memorable and interesting and potentially dangerous. I mean, it’s live. That’s part of the fun of doing a live show.”
11:16 a.m.
Before workshop shows he listens to past performances to see what he can improve or throw out. He found a new way to introduce a bit about Josef Fritzl, an Austrian psychopath who imprisoned, abused and sexually assaulted his daughter in the cellar of their family home. Maybe it did not need an introduction, he decided: “I’ll try this as an experiment.”
Mr. Cross, who grew up in and outside of Atlanta, got on the comedy map as a writer for “The Ben Stiller Show,” and then as a creator, with Bob Odenkirk, of HBO’s “Mr. Show with Bob and David,” a brainy, absurdist sketch comedy series that grew out of their live comedy routines and ran from 1995 to 1998.
But his breakout came as Dr. Tobias Fünke on “Arrested Development,” a deliciously clueless wannabe who auditions to join the Blue Man Group, thinking it is a support group for depressed men. He’s won an Emmy and a couple Grammy Awards, appeared in a slew of indie and not-so-indie films and written and directed for both television and film. And as viewers of his new special will discover, he can carry a tune.
7:10 p.m.
At Black Oak, a bar on Fifth Avenue, Mr. Cross goes over his notes, making last-minute tweaks. He will use the notes onstage during his performance, letting the audience know that the routine is a work in progress. “By some miracle this will turn into a good set, a really good set,” he said. No one approached him, even though he sat on the first stool by the door.
Once the set is together, he said, he will “take it outside of a basement of cool people in Brooklyn and bring it out to maybe a less-discerning audience in Kansas or wherever.” Unfair to Kansas? “Well, I’ll stand by it,” he said. “There’s a difference between Kansas and Brooklyn, which I think we can all agree on.”
7:42 p.m.
Brooklyn weighs in: Thumbs up for an extended bit trashing Charlie Kirk, the right-wing personality who was assassinated in September; one or two groans for a Holocaust joke involving the Nazis co-opting Santa Claus. Another joke — “Boy, was I mistaken about what a rape kit is” — got a hearty delayed laugh, but one about bestiality elicited only a middling response.
Performing in a small club like Union Hall, where the audience is practically pressing onto the stage, recalls the experience of seeing bands, Mr. Cross said: “The intimacy of it, the immediacy of it, the relationship you have with the audience is completely different than it is at a theater. Theater shows are great. I love them. But they’re different.” The sweatshirt, by the way, was a gift from his daughter.
9:08 p.m.
“It was good,” Mr. Cross said of the night’s performance. The revised Fritzl bit went over well. “So that was a good reaction that I didn’t expect,” he said. “Which makes me think, all right, I’ll work on this. This will be part of something else. It’ll all connect eventually.”
John Leland is a reporter covering life in New York City for The Times.
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