The 10 Comedy Voices That Mattered Most in 2023
The comedy voices who make the most impact don’t always come from where you expect them. Sure, sometimes you hear them behind a microphone in a comedy club. But other times, they’re enlisting stuffies to negotiate a union contract. Sometimes, they’re even walking the halls of Congress. This year, we had ‘em all. Here are Cracked’s choices for the 10 comedy voices that mattered in 2023…
Click right here to get the best of Cracked sent to your inbox.
Sabrina Brier
This article not your thing? Try these...
“Your annoying roommate is slaying on TikTok,” proclaimed The New York Times.
That’s Brier, whose TikTok following has nearly doubled since our national newspaper of record wrote about her in the spring. Brier’s secret is her willingness to be hatable (and yet relatable), betraying modern humanity’s worst instincts straight into her phone. “I love being funny, but I love being funny in a way where it feels like there’s something very real and dramatic behind it,” Brier told Dazed, “something that’s hard to watch underneath it.”
Hasan Minhaj
After his defiant response, but the entire exchange raised important questions about the slippery nature of truth in comedy.
Diane Morgan
On this side of the pond anyway, Cunk on Earth launched 2023 with an extremely stupid history lesson courtesy of Morgan’s clueless and hopelessly disinterested Philomena Cunk.
“When you watch those history shows where the host is really excited about it, it makes you feel bad because you don’t share it,” Morgan told Seth Meyers. He asked Morgan if she had any interest in history herself. “No, I hate it,” she replied. “Boring unless it’s something really weird. I know that everyone watching it is bored by history as well.”
Pedro Pascal
Have a year, Pedro. In addition to killing it on HBO’s The Last of Us, Pascal also became the unexpected MVP of Saturday Night Live. There are a half-dozen sketches from his hosting stint that would qualify among Season 48’s 10 best, including this bit starring Pascal as Marcello Hernández’s overprotective mother.
“To borrow a phrase from one memorable sketch,” said Vulture, “Pascal ate this whole episode up and left no crumbs.”
Fran Drescher
It’s been a minute since we thought about artificial intelligence. Somehow, she pulled this off while bringing stuffed toys to the bargaining table to strike fear into her opponents.
The famously nasal sitcom star proved such a firebrand that some talked her up as a legit candidate for office. “She has an amazing ability to have people smile while wielding power. That’s a rare talent,” a Democratic consultant told Hollywood Reporter. “She helps people stand up.”
John Mulaney
If you’re getting tired of Mulaney, it’s only because his story has been everywhere in the past year. Baby J drew deserved comparisons to Richard Pryor’s Live on the Sunset Strip for its ability to generate huge laughs while telling harrowing stories of drug addiction. For what it’s worth, Baby J is even darker.
It’s a special where Mulaney dares you not to like him, even as he’s being confronted by comedy pals. “Everyone there at the intervention is really worried about me. They’re all concerned about my physical well-being. But I stroll in there, I am cocaine-skinny with a new haircut. They’ve all been in heavy quarantine for nine months. They looked like shit. I was the best-looking person at my intervention, by a mile. Everyone there looked like Jerry Garcia.”
George Santos
Santos proved to be the comedy Trump of 2023 — whatever Late-night comedians and Saturday Night Live thanked the heavens for the gift of Santos.
And now that he’s been kicked out of Congress for his transgressions"> recording videos on Cameo. Hey, a guy has to make bail somehow.
Matt Rife
Here’s the contradiction of Rife’s Natural Selection special: It stayed in the Netflix Top Ten forever despite recommending special-needs helmets for any critics who were offended?
Greta Gerwig
Let’s shower Gerwig with her well-deserved flowers. In an era when studios refuse to greenlight a theatrical release for comedies of any kind, her Barbie obliterated box office records. If you’re like me and long for the return of comedies to the big screen, we can all thank Gerwig and the nearly one-and-a-half billion she earned for Warner Bros. this summer.
Somehow, Gerwig managed to make everyone laugh and kick the patriarchy in the pants, the very reason that some blame for the failure of superhero movies and Disney animation these days. But the movie’s message has been defended by everyone from Joe Rogan, a comedy feat of heroic proportions. Bravo!
Elon Musk
No one wanted to be funny in 2023 more than Musk. In fact, it’s what he’s always wanted.
As long as he’s not the butt of the joke, Musk is all about the laughs. Those racist, homophobic or cruel punchlines that the old Twitter regime might have vetoed? Everything was now fair game on X, the Mountain Dew-fueled reboot of the old classic. “Comedy,” said Musk, “is now legal on Twitter.” That meant he was free to take the piss out of elected officials with 2006’s funniest gags.
employees insist that he might spiral like he did after getting booed onstage at a Dave Chappelle show. A24 just announced an Elon biopic; for everyone’s sake, make it a comedy.