In May 2021, after 19 years in Los Angeles, comedians and married couple Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitzky (aka Christina P), moved to Austin with their two young sons. Segura says he felt like L.A., in mid-pandemic, was falling apart. “I was like, ‘This city is turning into a shit show!’” he tells Variety.
About one month after they moved, Pazsitzky suffered an injurious fall in their new home. And, as you might expect, Segura ended up turning the (non-life-threatening) accident into a bit, which is featured in “Tom Segura: Sledgehammer,” his upcoming stand-up special premiering July 4 globally on Netflix.
In “Sledgehammer,” Segura recounts his uneasy 911 call that night requesting help. “I realized that, while what I’m about to say it true, it sounds… suspicious! But I gotta say it. So I’m like, ‘My wife fell down the stairs.’” Pazsitzky, who had misjudged a step when she got up in the middle of the night to check on one of the kids in their new home, broke her ankle and part of her tibia as a result of the fall. (She’s since made a full recovery.) Segura remembers being unsettled by her telling the paramedics to not assume he had hurt her. “It was a whole ordeal,” he recalls.
Asked what the special’s title, “Sledgehammer,” means, Segura says, “Oh, you don’t want to print this in the article.” Then without missing a beat, he proceeds to explain: “It’s a nod to one of the jokes about my penis.”
It’s Segura’s fifth Netflix comedy special, following 2014’s “Completely Normal,” 2016’s “Mostly Stories, 2018’s “Disgraceful” and 2020’s “Ball Hog.” Last year, Segura confirmed a two-special deal with Netflix, of which “Sledgehammer” is the first.
About the special, Segura says, “It’s fun, it’s outrageous and I’m sure it’s going to offend people — but if you’re not doing that, you’re not doing your job.” He has no patience for comedians who pull punches out of fear of being attacked online. “The backlash stuff is not real! It’s not true. The time you get into deeper shit is when you — the comedian — decide to engage in the backlash,” he says. “Guess what? It always goes away.”
“Sledgehammer” was recorded in November 2022, in the middle of Segura’s 21-month tour that had kicked off in August 2021. “You can rush to get out a special,” he says. “But when you sit on it, and marinate it, you come up with better material.”
In the special, Segura displays his own brand of family man. In addition to the account of Christina falling down the stairs, Segura serves up stories about “my father on his deathbed”; parenting the couple’s two young boys (“It’s like raising wild donkeys”); “getting my mom high for the first time in her life” on gummies; and his ”admiration” for Brad Pitt. “It’s a real tasting menu,” says Segura.
“Tom Segura: Sledgehammer” was shot at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix and directed by Ryan Polito. The team shot four different performances in Phoenix, expecting to splice together the best bits from each night, but they ended up using only footage from the first performance. “It was such a crazy, energetic, fun environment,” he says.
Segura’s next special for Netflix will come out of his next tour, slated to begin in February or March 2024; he expects the shoot to happen in late 2025 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, Segura has bunch of irons in the fire at YMH Studios, his podcast and entertainment production company. For starters, Segura and Pazsitzky co-host the popular “Your Mom’s House” weekly comedy podcast, which they’ve produced since 2010 and now totals more than 700 episodes.
YMH Studios’ podcast lineup comprises eight shows, and its ninth — “Not Today Pal,” hosted by “The Sopranos” stars Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Rob Iler — is set to premiere in July. YMH has an exclusive podcast ad-sales deal with SiriusXM and its podcasts count more than 23 million subscribers across YouTube and social media. The company, which has 12 full-time employees, operates a 7,000-square-foot recording studio in Austin. YMH has more than 1,300 hours of library video content.
In addition, YMH Studios is building out a slate of low-budget comedy movies, an effort led by Segura and president Ryan P. Hall (formerly head of studio at Rooster Teeth). That includes “Fat Astronauts,” a comedy in development at Legendary. Scripted by Segura and Bert Kreischer (who with Segura co-hosts the “2 Bears 1 Cave” podcast), “Fat Astronauts” centers on two bros who live a debauched lifestyle on a moon colony and decide they never want to come back to Earth. YMH also has several TV projects in the works; closing those deals has been delayed because of the WGA strike, according to Segura. (YMH Studios’ podcast employees are not unionized.)
“You’re trying to do as much as you can without going into a coma,” Segura says. “As a company, it’s fun to try new things.” YMH Studios is financing the slate of movies and TV shows itself and can monetize that content by selling them through the YMH website or via other distributors, he says.
Segura acknowledges that podcast advertising has slowed down, but he’s confident it will rebound. “What has happened over the last year is not that unusual in business,” he says. “You have an economy that has been slowing down continuously for a while, and that always affects marketing and ad dollars. It’s cyclical — this kind of thing doesn’t stay this way forever. I feel like the recovery has begun.”
He concedes that when he or Pazsitzky (who has three stand-up specials on Netflix) are on the road, producing “Your Mom’s House” is daunting. “What we end up doing is going into hyper mode for several weeks” to record and produce a big batch of episodes, Segura says. “I don’t want to compare it to real working people but it ends up sucking the life out of you. If you do eight [episodes] in one week, it’s a lot. It’s not our preference.”
Watch the trailer for “Tom Segura: Sledgehammer” on Netflix:
