Moses Storm tells a fib in the first few minutes of “Trash White,” his 2022 HBO comedy special, currently streaming on Max. In it, the standup comic claims that his show has “nothing of educational value to add to your night.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. Naturally, Storm wants to reassure the audience that his hourlong act — which explores his childhood in a poor and ultrareligious family that lived in a converted Greyhound bus — won’t be some depressing TED Talk about homelessness, poverty and food insecurity.
But as one of five children whose parents once formed a “failed cult,” Storm provides an insightful and often hilarious glimpse into a life that’s probably unfamiliar to much of the audience. His stories examine the pitfalls of dumpster diving, his mother’s repeated efforts to win the grand prize on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and his own long-undiagnosed dyslexia.
“If you’re not familiar with dyslexia [and] haven’t read up on it, don’t worry. Neither have we,” Storm says in “Trash White.” “All it means is that zero percent of the time, the book is better than the movie for me.”
Today, the 33-year-old Kalamazoo, Mich., native is largely free of the financial stressors that once plagued his life. In recent years, Storm has enjoyed success as an actor and comedian, starring in NBC’s “Sunnyside” and “This Is Us,” Showtime’s “I’m Dying Up Here,” and Netflix’s “Arrested Development.” Storm has been featured in films and appeared several times on TBS’ “Conan” as a guest and performer; he also hosted Conan O’Brien’s live variety show “Team Coco’s Up & Up” in Los Angeles. On Friday and Saturday, March 15 and 16, Storm performs four shows at Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, rare opportunities to catch this rising star in an intimate setting.
Storm spoke to Seven Days by video call from his apartment in New York City.
Is Moses Storm your given name? It’s very dramatic, like the name of a klezmer death-metal band.
I know! I wonder if I even chose standup. What else could I do, the weather? Or make adult movies? If I go into a Rite Aid or CVS, most of the time people just presume I’m a magician. But yes, that’s my real legal name.
When you were a kid, was comedy how you dealt with the chaos in your life, or was it something you discovered later?
It was a way to cope with the trauma and stress, but I wasn’t aware of what I was doing. It wasn’t like, “Everyone is tense right now, so I’m going to make a joke to relieve the tension.” But I now know that that’s what I was doing. It was just something fun for me. And we weren’t allowed to watch TV when I was growing up, so I didn’t know standup was an art form.
How does your family feel about your comedy?
There are some negative feelings about sharing our story, and everyone has their own point of view. My mom still thinks the traveling and street preaching and yelling at people was fun for us kids. And my dad views not paying child support as, “Well, she took the kids away from me and moved across the country in the middle of the night. So where was I supposed to mail the checks?” My mom has really come around, and I’ve had to do a lot of forgiving. But I can’t say I would have done a better job [than she did] given those same circumstances.
In “Trash White,” you challenge the traditional notion of the American dream and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Instead, you credit your success to luck. How’d that happen for you?
If you want to do this 1 percent job, luck is only available when you’re working hard. I’m still baffled, as we speak today, [by] how much work it takes to just maintain, let alone get to the next level. But to say it was just me and pure grit doesn’t take into account all the kindness, including Conan [O’Brien] hiring me to do his preshow and then taking me under his wing and putting me on his show. I was an interviewed guest on his show when I was no one. I felt bad for the studio audience. You think you’re going to see [actor] Pedro Pascal, and it’s … who?
Do you ever still feel poor, despite your success?
All the time! I have enough money to join Equinox [Fitness Club], but I don’t have enough money to not steal the soap in the shower. I always have that scarcity mindset and still find myself looking for a deal. The one time I was in a car accident, I was in Los Angeles and saw a trash pile. Someone was moving out and, like an ’80s movie, I tipped down my sunglasses and thought, I wonder what’s in there of value that I can sell? Then I rear-ended a car.
Do you often get approached by people who also grew up in poverty?
Oh, yeah. Also, people with extreme religious backgrounds and people who were spanked as kids. I’m better at dealing with it now, but sometimes it’s a lot to handle. You want to take the flattery and go, “Look! I’m helping to heal people’s pain.” They watch your show, and once you’re open and honest about your own stuff, you build this parasocial relationship with them, and they will trauma-dump on you. I try to hold as much space as I can and just listen. It’s something I’m trying to get better at and not let it bum me out or, conversely, bloat my ego.
You end the “Trash White” special by saying the reason your family was so poor was that your parents were in a “failed cult.” What makes a cult a failure?
Not getting your own Netflix special. We had all the strife and negative parts of the documentary that you’d see in Episode 3 without any of the payoff: where it’s building and building, and our numbers are growing, and we’re all doing nude yoga in the sun, and celebrities are joining. Never had that. It was just a 15-year slog through failure after failure — to prepare me for a life in standup.
Are you working on a sequel to “Trash White”?
The new show I’m working on is part two, which is all about the failed cult. It’s very interactive. In the show, I start a cult with the audience, called Perfect Cult. In Vermont, because it’s a comedy club, I can’t do the same things as I can do in New York, where I have ownership of the space. There, I have 600 white lab coats for the audience and masks for everyone and a bunch of props. So, what I’ll be doing in Vermont is the content that will be part of the next special, without all the interactive parts.
Do you ever get pushback for joking about your poverty?
Not that often. The one thing I push back on is the “unhoused” term. It’s not even that the word “unhoused” isn’t respectful. The problem is, a lot of times on the left, they don’t do anything to actually help homeless people. They just stop and fight on X/Twitter about this word. They get to posture and feel like they did something. Really, when my family was in that situation, the last thing we needed was a new, jazzy name. We didn’t need a rebrand.
What’s your favorite part of being a comedian?
Just the act of performing. Being up there, your mind turns off everything you’re worried about, and you create this chemistry with the audience that didn’t exist before. There’s nothing like it. If I had to work eight Taco Bell jobs at once and do this at night, I would do it just for that feeling.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Moses Storm, Friday and Saturday, March 15 and 16, 7 and 9 p.m., at Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington. $25. vermontcomedyclub.com
The original print version of this article was headlined “Poverty Lines | For comedian Moses Storm, growing up poor is rich fodder for his standup act”
This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2024.
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