“I’m trying to grow my fan base beyond women who brought a knife to prom.”

Chris Fleming

With fans from Conan O’Brien and Alec Baldwin to Nikki Glaser and Robby Hoffman, comedy’s favorite comedian is breaking into the mainstream with a debut HBO special

By Carolina de Armas

“I’m trying to grow my fan base beyond women who brought a knife to prom,” the comedian Chris Fleming, 39, says at the start of Live at the Palace, his first HBO special, which premiered yesterday. If you’ve never heard of Fleming, chances are your favorite comic has. His fans—and Instagram followers—include Nikki Glaser, Seth Meyers (frequently the butt of his jokes), Jim Gaffigan, Kareem Rahma of Subway Takes, Robby Hoffman, Megan Stalter, Alec Baldwin, and S.N.L.’s Chloe Fineman. Because he’s yet to become a household name, we’ll call him the comedian’s comedian. Lucky for those in the know and those still in the dark, he’s only just getting started.

Well over six feet tall, with wavy ginger hair in a wolf cut, Fleming—who says all pronouns (he, she, and they) work for him—was raised in an Irish Catholic household in Stow, Massachusetts, and is now based in Los Angeles. Performing has been the through line of his life.