Tacoma’s Nate Jackson’s star is rising with ‘The Office’ role and Netflix comedy special
It was a moment that could have ended the night for a lesser stand-up comic.
Comic and actor Nate Jackson was on the stage of his Super Funny Comedy Club in Tacoma, joking with audience members, asking them to reveal personal details about their lives.
Then, an audience member Jackson had asked to stand, fell over. Security and other staff rushed to help him.
The man wasn’t inebriated — he had a prosthetic leg and it had fallen off, sending the man to the floor. A hush fell over the crowd.
But within seconds, the man had passed the leg through the crowd to Jackson. Soon, the comic was waving the prosthetic over his head. What could have been a disaster instead became an unlikely but humorous interaction with the man as he recounted the accident that cost him his leg.
Jackson’s adeptness at crowd work, as it’s called, is one of the many skills the Lacey native has honed over 21 years on stages around the country. Soon, the rest of the country will be able to see Jackson’s latest endeavors.
Sometime in 2025, Jackson, who co-starred in five episodes of “Young Rock” on NBC, will appear in several episodes of the still unnamed follow-up to the long running “The Office” series. He also has four upcoming sold-out stand-up shows at Seattle’s Neptune Theater in January, which will be filmed for a Netflix special.
Working the crowd
Every first Wednesday, Jackson performs an all crowd-work show. The fast-paced witty banter between a comic and their audience is something that many comics do, usually after a set of jokes. At these shows, Jackson spends up to 90 minutes doing only that. It’s an ability not all stand-up comics have.
Jackson, 41, is a master at it. He calls crowd work “100 percent me.”
“It’s unfiltered, it’s raw,” he said in a green room after the Dec. 10 Tacoma show. “Tonight ended with me holding a guy’s leg in the air, a prosthetic leg. How do you get to that? That doesn’t happen in a regular stand-up set.”
The shows are filmed and then posted to YouTube, where they routinely garner half a million views.
‘Young Rock’ to ‘The Office’
“Young Rock” was based on the life of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. In that show, Jackson played Sylvester Ritter, known to 1980s wrestling fans as Junkyard Dog. Jackson appeared in five episodes of the show.
The new show is often referred to as a reboot or a sequel of “The Office.” More accurately, it’s in the same universe with the same mockumentary approach. Behind the cameras, the same creators and executive producers of “The Office” — Gregg Daniels and Michael Koman — are running the show.
Jackson has signed a non-disclosure agreement that prevents him from saying much about the new show. It’s been previously reported that his is a recurring character. Deadline reported that, “… the documentary crew that immortalized Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch is searching for a new subject when they discover a dying historic Midwestern newspaper and the publisher trying to revive it with volunteer reporters.”
Jackson just finished filming his episodes, the number of which could be counted on one hand, he said. But the highly anticipated show will undoubtedly raise his profile in Hollywood.
“This is a whole other ring of Saturn, man,” Jackson said.
Acting
Jackson has been acting for years and he’s no stranger to TV. He appeared on MTV’s “Nick Cannon presents Wild ’n Out” and HBO’s “All Def Comedy.” He had a role in the 2022 Will Ferrell/Ryan Reynolds Christmas comedy, “Spirited,” on Apple TV.
Acting, of course, follows a script. But that doesn’t mean Jackson won’t try to always put a little of himself in it.
“As an actor, I’m gonna try to ad lib at least one take,” he said. “I don’t know if it makes it past the editing floor.”
He’s paid to memorize scripts and say his lines. “And then I’m gonna say, ‘Can I have a take where I would do what I think my character may do?’,” he said.
Jackson calls the writers of “The Office” geniuses.
“These are big brain, beautiful, smart, hilarious, funny people,” he said. “Just being around (writer, producer, director) Greg Daniels was an experience of its own. … It was one of the few times I wasn’t the funniest person in the room.”
Netflix special
The Jan. 11 and 12 shows at the Neptune sold out in two days, Jackson said. It’ll be a mix of his stand-up and crowd work and is a career-to-date culmination of his decades on stage.
“This is one hour of me giving everything I’ve done,” he said. “I’m going to act a fool on this special. We’re shooting four shows. I can’t miss. So it’s going to be insane.”
Jackson said all the aspects of his career start with creativity. He even has a new clothing brand for larger men coming out, The Roses Collection by Nate Jackson.
“My sizes start at extra large and go to 4X,” he said. “So, nothing for the little guys. I’m sick of going to the mall and I can’t get anything. (It’s) all big boy stuff.”
Super Funny
In 2020, Jackson’s new comedy club took over a vacant, 8,000-square-foot showroom at the Holiday Inn at 8402 S. Hosmer St. It was, of course, just before the pandemic struck.
State-mandated closures hit him hard. In April 2020, the motel even became a temporary care site for people who tested positive or were exposed to COVID-19.
He’s bounced back, he said, but the scars remain.
“We survived that,” he said. “And even though we’re separated and we don’t share a vent or a screw with that hotel, you still had to pull in their lot. … I’m over here trying to run my dream. That’s hurdles that nobody has had to deal with.”
It’s a moment in the conversation where Jackson seems to want to burst over years of pent-up frustration. He hints at coming changes but won’t say exactly what.
But he wants Tacomans to know that, where ever his career takes him, they are not going to lose Nate Jackson to the bright lights of Hollywood.
This story was originally published December 25, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
