Marc Maron signed off of his podcast for the last time over a year ago the same way he always did.
“Boomer lives!”
It was an exclamation that paid tribute to his cat. His feline went missing after he moved to L.A. from New York. These days, Maron is still having conversations with his pets.
“Go back in the room, Buster,” Maron tells his cat. Two of his furry roommates refuse to get along, forcing the comedian to alternate which one gets to roam freely around the house.
“It’s my life,” Maron said over Zoom, “but it’s a pain in my a—.”
Since ending his show, “WTF With Marc Maron,” the comic has been rediscovering the mundane routines that make up a life.
“I do comedy every night, I exercise, I do work around the house, I’ve been reading a lot, trying to fill my head with stuff that makes me smarter somehow, or kind of makes me look at things differently,” he said. “I tend to be pretty busy somehow, but I can make a day out of one or two errands.”
After 16 years of booking guests, scheduling interviews and dissecting the existential dread of the current political climate, Maron suddenly has more free time than he’s accustomed to, and needs to figure out what to do with it, a question he’s exploring in a new special he’s filming in December.
“We’re considering calling the special ‘Free Time,’” the comedian said.
Maron wasn’t sure how ending his podcast would affect his comedic craft or his relationship with stand-up. It actually took him a few months to re-familiarize himself with being a comic.
“WTF” would start with a stream-of-consciousness monologue, and oftentimes those words translated into bits in his act. Without that thread of creativity, Maron is forced to have those conversations on stage instead of talking through them twice a week.
“I imagine that there was more stuff being generated on a week-to-week basis when I was thinking out loud, but that’s OK,” he said.
The change has also given Maron back his privacy. For 16 years, “WTF” served as a public diary. Across thousands of episodes, he processed relationships, grieved the loss of loved ones — including his creative collaborator and romantic partner Lynn Shelton, who died at 54 in May 2020 — and tried to make sense of his own anxieties.
“Now, without the constant conversations outside of just having conversations with my friends, a lot of the ideas develop on stage, and they don’t start in public,” he said. “It enables me to have some privacy over what I’m working on. And also over my life.”
Maron also worried that ending the show might affect ticket sales. Instead, the newfound privacy has sparked curiosity among his audience.
“People genuinely kind of want to see what’s going on with me because they were so used to hearing it every week,” he said. “So it’s sort of a big check-in.”
Although Maron had spent years developing material through conversations in the garage, he wasn’t sure how much that experience translated to acting.
“I do think that being in constant engagement with humans on the podcast or listening intently or empathetically is what acting is all about,” Maron said. “But I certainly paid my dues in the garage.”
Even with the extra time he finds himself with, Maron doesn’t want to fully embrace the life of an actor and chooses not to take too much time away from the stage.
Going into filming Season 2 of the Apple TV series “Stick,” which premieres Wednesday, he feared shooting would take place away from L.A.
“The greatest thing about this season was it was shot in L.A., as all things should be,” Maron said.
Although acting doesn’t offer the same creative freedom as comedy, Maron has grown more comfortable working within someone else’s words. The experience allows him to draw from his own emotions while bringing another person’s writing to life. In stand-up, his own experiences and choices drive the performance.
Maron’s real-life relationship with golf isn’t quite as involved as Mitts’, the character he plays in the series. Asked about his own game, he quickly clarified that he doesn’t play and has no plans to pick up the clubs. The sentiment can be seen through his character, an ex-caddy to a once promising star, Pryce Cahill (Owen Wilson) who is trying to coach an up-and-comer.
Still, learning to work within the emotional and physical boundaries of a script has helped him understand what fulfillment in acting can look like.
“I think that becoming more experienced with that and trying to work within those parameters to experience the fulfillment of what that particular craft offers,” he said.
Working with Owen Wilson, Timothy Olyphant and Rhea Seehorn in Season 2 of “Stick” has also helped Maron appreciate the many approaches actors take to their performances. With more experience, he feels increasingly confident in his ability to access the emotional depth needed to embody somebody else’s writing.
“I think that by working with other actors all the time, I’m kind of learning whatever my process is going to become,” he said.
The extra time has also pushed Maron to challenge himself in new ways.
“We’re kind of in the process of putting together a film that I plan to direct, maybe in the spring, hopefully, based on my good friend Sam Lipsyte’s novel,” Maron said.
But for now, he’s going to continue living his real life and trying to figure out how to deal with living.
“Theoretically, we should be on the streets protesting every day, all day long, everybody,” Maron said. “But, you know, I got things to do. I gotta buy potting soil, and, you know, plant a plant.”
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