After decades of making audiences laugh, comedy legend Jeff Foxworthy said Monday that his new Fox Nation special may serve as a full-circle moment for his stand-up career.
Foxworthy told “Fox & Friends” that he’s not finished with stand-up altogether, but creating a special takes considerable effort, especially the unconventional way he crafted “The Joke’s On Me,” now streaming on Fox Nation.
“I’m not saying I would quit doing stand-up. It’s just a lot of work to do a special. And I’d rather hang out with my grandkids,” Foxworthy said with a grin.
“The Joke’s On Me” isn’t just an hour of laughs. Foxworthy set out to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at the repetitive, creative process of putting a special together — something audiences have seen in documentaries of musicians, but never in the realm of stand-up comedy, he said.
“When you commit to doing a special, it’s a year. It takes a year of going in comedy clubs every — Wednesday nights, Tuesday nights, you know, trying new things. Is this funny? Is it not funny? And nobody’s ever showed that.”
The comedian has also written dozens of books stemming from his famous “You might be a redneck if…” one-liners. When the idea first struck him, he wrote 10, he told Fox News, and today he estimates he’s written over 9,000.
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“I didn’t think about it being a hook or books. I was just trying to make people laugh. I wrote 10 ways how to tell how you might be a redneck. And the next night, people weren’t only laughing, they were pointing at each other.”
Foxworthy ended his first stand-up special in 1990 with the famous joke, but he’s been using different material for the last 20 years of his career, he said.
Given that “The Joke’s On Me” could be his last special, he saw fit to brush the dust off the old favorite.
“I thought, ‘Well, this might be the last special I do, because it’s a lot of work.’ And I’m like, ‘If I closed the first one that way, why not tie a bow around it and close the last one that way?'”
“The Joke’s On Me” is available now on Fox Nation.