Starting Oct. 28, Pete Holmes will bring his brand of enthusiastic, nice-guy comedy to TBS with the premiere of “The Pete Holmes Show” which will follow “Conan” at midnight Monday through Thursday for an initial seven-week run.
Though Conan O’Brien is a producer of the late-night series, and it will be taped before a live studio audience in LA, Holmes — best known for hosting the “You Made It Weird” podcast on Nerdist since 2011 — is looking to put his own stamp on the late-night tradition.
Besides a shorter half-hour format, Holmes’ show will feature sketch comedy, digital-short style videos, and a monologue that’s more personal than topical.
Though Holmes will tape remote interviews with bigger names, studio guests will be comedian friends in the vein of his podcast.
“So far the people we’ve booked, nobody’s promoting anything, so I think that’s a pretty big difference,” says Holmes, 34, who will appear in a panel at New York Comic Con on Saturday.
Though Holmes isn’t a known presence on TV — he had a “Comedy Central Presents” special in 2010, was a regular on VH1’s “Best Week Ever” and appeared on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and “Conan” — he has been building an eclectic resume cutting his teeth on the Chicago open-mic circuit.
In addition to the podcast, Holmes stars in CollegeHumor’s popular Batman parodies (a recent installment featured the caped crusader in the Ben Affleck role in “Good Will Hunting”), voices the talking baby on the e-trade commercials and is a published cartoonist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker.
“We’re working hard to make sure this show is a representation of me,” Holmes says.
After performing twice on “Conan,” Holmes got a meeting with O’Brien, whom he calls his hero, which eventually led to the show.
Besides a Massachusetts upbringing and 6 ft.-6-in. frame, Holmes says the two share the same silly, playful brand of comedy, and will seek to infuse the show with the same authentic weirdness of his podcasts.
As for dream guests, Holmes mentions his man-crush Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Jon Hamm and fellow late night hosts Seth Meyers and Fallon.
Holmes is entering a crowded late-night field.
In addition to the broadcast competition of Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel, fellow podcaster-turned-TV-host Chris Hardwick will debut a new midnight comedy series Oct. 21 on Comedy Central.
And that’s just at midnight — Comedy Central has its twin kingpins of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, FXX has “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell” and E! has its female-skewing “Chelsea Lately.”
Though it’s a competitive climate, Holmes hopes authenticity will win out:
“People are going to connect with you or you might leave them cold. There is a lot of competition but the name of the game is to be as me as I can be because none of the other hosts can be as me as me.”