When a clip of nonbinary comedian Vic Michaelis hosting the improvised talk show Very Important People came across my Instagram feed, I was instantly smitten.

It was one particular reel of Vic, in a brown suit with a garish gold broach, fighting to keep a straight face in an episode with Internet royalty Ally Beardsley. The trans comedian was dressed as a fairytale pig and told the story of their mom getting stepped on by the Big Bad Wolf.

It was so charming, and as I inhaled all of the other available episodes, I learned it was also rare. On VIP, Vic as host rarely breaks. They maintain a strained desperation, an unhinged folie à deux with their guest.

The conceit behind Very Important People, which airs on Dropout TV, is that someone is put into hair and makeup without knowing what they’ll end up looking like. After the reveal, they’re required to create a character based on the look who is then interviewed by a host named Vic Michaelis played by Vic Michaelis. The show is an absolute delight and Vic’s a genius. I’m in love.

I talked to Vic about their time at Dropout TV vs. my time at Buzzfeed, their queerness and gender identity, and how exactly the show is made. The interview took place on Zoom while they sat in a basement in Hungary, because they’re there for work and that’s the only place they get wifi at night. Please enjoy.

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[Vic gestures to the pipes behind them like Vanna White would gesture to the board.]

Gabe: Gorgeous! Have you named it?

Vic: The water heater? Oh, I want you to do the honors.

Gabe: Why did I think ‘Betsy?’

Vic: Oh yeah, I love that. Kind of mechanical, but also a good woman, you know?

Gabe: And part of me was like, she’s a woman in a male dominated field. Okay. Hello, Vic.

Vic: Gabe. Thank you so much for chatting with me. What a blast! The fastest “yes” I’ve ever said to anything.

Gabe: Really?

Vic: Yeah, of course. Are you kidding?

Gabe: Oh my God. Well, you started coming across my feed in the clips from Very Important People. So forgive me, I’m not a long time fan. I just arrived.

Vic: An ideal way to meet me. Tiny little doses that can be muted on a dime, I would say.

Gabe: I tried to look you up for this interview, and you’re very curated. Not a whole lot about you. Google anything and it’s mostly just Reddit trying to figure out the same shit I was trying to figure out.

Vic: How old I am.

Gabe: How old you are. Anything about you. So is that a purposeful thing?

Vic: I’m so curious your thoughts on this. I went from literally having no platform – I’m a live performer mostly and that was my bread and butter just doing improv for like 11 people at The Clubhouse, a Los Angeles staple that’s really wonderful and still exists. And just sort of overnight now people are curious about not just the characters that I was doing, or whatever I was working on, or how I was performing, but then, all of a sudden, being online, people asking, but who are you? What are you up to? And I very quickly was like, I don’t think that that is something that I have a capacity for. I’ve got my tight circle of people that I really love chatting with and trust. I’m great one on one. But online, I find it a little tricky giving of myself, and then, I guess, for lack of a better word, not having any grounding in the people that are consuming that.

Gabe: What do you mean?

Vic: Just putting myself out there and then not really knowing who or where that information is going. That to me, I think, I have a hard time wrapping my head around.

Gabe: Yeah, I mean, I started on blogs. I got popular on Tumblr in 2011 so you know, put me in a time capsule and bury me. Put me in a Viking boat and light me on fire.

Vic: No, come on, we’ll put you in a boat, but a nice cruise. We’ll get you on a lido deck somewhere.

Gabe: You’re very kind. By the time I got to Buzzfeed I was 25/26, and that catapulted me very similarly overnight. I look back, and I say this to Allison [Raskin], who I do a lot of my stuff with.

Vic: Oh, I know.

Gabe: I say that we were child stars, and she’s like, “We were fully 25.” What I mean is that I was not prepared for people to want to know everything about me, for the Googling, for the discussion.

I love Dropout TV but when I watch it, I worry for you guys because it is having a similar trajectory to what early Buzzfeed did where you guys are all getting shot to fame so quickly. And I’m like, “Is everyone okay?”

Vic: I wonder if you had this with Buzzfeed at all, but what I feel very grateful about is, there is a cohort of us that is dealing with this at a very similar time. So there’s my existing friend group that is all sort of in this same boat. And so we can all kind of turn to each other and be like, “this is kind of weird right?” Or “this is happening to me. Is this happening to you?” And the nice part of it being kind of niche, too, is then you come to Hungary, and people are just kind of mad that you’re talking on the subway. And so it’s immediately grounding.

Gabe: I was gonna say it’s probably a better version of Buzzfeed, because you guys are a little bit older as a general rule.

Vic: Oh, for sure. I’ve got a whole life, and it is really nice that I knew enough to know that I wanted my private life to be private. That’s really important to me. And I don’t know if I was 25, if I would have done that, that it would have even been something that I was thinking about. I don’t know what your experience was but for us there was no world where I was going to be an improviser making money doing improv. It was going to be hopefully getting a show off of somebody coming to a Harold [improv] night.

Gabe: And auditioning.

Vic: Yeah, exactly. My SNL audition getting linked to Youtube, and it going viral in a very negative way. And that sort of was how I was going to make it. That was my plan.

Gabe: It is beautiful to watch a group of artists that would normally be creating stuff that goes into the ether, be able to make something permanent. When you’re done with improv, it’s finished. You do the improv set. It’s gone. Now you do the improv set, it’s edited, and put together on the Internet. But for this group of artists to then be able to create and showcase themselves, especially in a way that allows you guys to get paid, it’s nice. Buzzfeed wasn’t behind a paywall and so I wonder if that sort of filters out people watching Dropout or consuming your content that might be a bit too much for you?

Vic: Yeah, definitely, we’re very protected by an edit. And it’s not endless hours of content either. And there’s not a quota we have to hit. I feel very fortunate that the powers that be, everyone in charge that we’ve run into, not just Sam [Reich, CEO of Dropout], but everyone feels it’s good for everybody to be putting a best foot forward in an instance like this. So I think we’re very lucky to have people sort of looking out and making sure the best stuff is coming to air.

Gabe: That’s the difference right there. So how did you come to Very Important People?

Vic: Sam created Very Important People way back when for Josh Ruben and Pat Cassels. Pat was sort of in my role of being the interviewer, and Josh would be the one in the hair and makeup. It was called Hello, My Name Is. And they were 5 to 7 minute videos. So from there, I got a cold email from Sam being like, “Hey, I want to reboot this series. We don’t totally know exactly what it’s going to be. We’re thinking it’s going to be a little bit more like those big armchair sit downs as opposed to a black background. We’ll probably have a set, but it’ll be like 5 to 7 minute interviews, and it’ll just be you doing an improvised interview with a rotating cast of people in hair and makeup.” And so I am crazy. I went “Okay, my part is replaceable. So I’m going to make sure that I am so tied to this show that there’s no way for them to fire me.” I shouldn’t even say that, because, you know, who knows? And maybe they could fire me. I hope they don’t, because I love working there.

Gabe: There would be a riot if it was ever hosted by someone else.

Vic: Well, thanks. So I got a call after we finished filming the first season, and they ended up retroactively giving me a raise because they were like, “We have 20 minute episodes. This is much more than we anticipated.” Which is very sweet and I just feel really grateful that they sort of were like, this is our idea and then really let me and the director kind of run with it, and put our stamp on it, which is really lovely. The idea was always that I would be “Vic” in the same way that “Pat” was Pat Cassels. And again, through the process of filming it, my character became a lot more of a person that was very separate from who I am. And honestly, it started to take a toll on me a little bit. Because I think people really started, especially people that were interacting with it in clips, really started pulling things from that character’s life and thinking they were real things in my life, and that started becoming a little bit funky for me. Because for Dropout shows, a really lovely thing that they do is [on screen] they put your name, your pronouns, your [social media] handle. So they were doing that for me, for my host card as well. But again, I’m not me. So for this season we took away all of that. So it’s just Vic, in the same way with the [interviewee] character, it’s just the character’s name sort of to indicate that I am also a character, if that makes any sense.

Gabe: Yes, it does. Even when you popped up on Zoom tonight, you’re a completely different person. The way you hold yourself, the way you’re talking, it’s completely different from the host Vic.

Vic: Thank you. Are you a comment reader at all?

Gabe: Yeah, sometimes. Do you read any of that stuff? Because it’s your Instagram account. But then it’s also Dropout. But then it’s also Very Important People, which I don’t imagine you run.

Vic: No, I don’t. But it’s really funny, because part of building the world is that host Vic is definitely the one running all the socials.

Gabe: When you’re filming, do you ever pause in between the improv?

Vic: No, we go pretty much straight through. And usually the first time I’m seeing it come all together is in the edits, which is kind of cool as well, especially because we film them all in like a week. So oftentimes I completely forget what has happened as we are filming them.

Gabe: I almost feel like if there is a pause in shooting the interview, you can’t look at each other or you’ll ruin it or break.

Vic: I try really hard to make sure when somebody has said something funny that I do laugh because, – I would imagine I haven’t done it, and people keep asking me if I would ever get in the hair and makeup, and absolutely not – that it is so hard. I don’t do characters, and I don’t do voices, and I genuinely as an improviser, feel like I try really hard to be a little bit of the audience so if somebody says something funny to just sort of be like, “That’s funny. This is funny. You’re doing a great job.”

Gabe: That is my favorite thing about you, Vic. It is the active listening and the way in which you seamlessly take us on the journey. This is my impression of you: it’s that someone will say something absolutely bonkers, and you are clocking it. And you’ll be like, “I’m sorry. Okay, so you’re a midnight louse, and you’ve never been outside in the daytime?” Like you’ll repeat what the person is saying in order to 1) let them know they’re on the right track and to keep going. And 2) that you heard them. And that “I’m with you. We’re doing this.”

Vic: Gabe, that’s so kind. I watched a shit ton of interviews. I did a bunch of Diane Sawyer. I did a bunch of Oprah, and then a bunch of comedy ones like I watched Philomena Cunk and I did a bunch of the Galfianakis stuff. I did Colbert. Anything that was a sit down interview format, and it’s a big thing that they do often, too. And it’s a little bit of an improv trick. Especially knowing that it was partially gonna play in clips, I’m big on teaching an audience how to watch a show. So thinking about the fact that some people will be sitting and watching it in the long form, but also, the majority of people are going to be watching it in tiny little clips. And if you’re only going to be scrolling on your phone really quickly, if you don’t hear the person say it, or you didn’t totally understand them when they said it the first time, me repeating it’ll definitely lock somebody into what’s being said.

Gabe: And it gives the other person confidence to just keep going with the character. When you repeat something, it lets the other person say, “Okay, this is where I’m going to go then.” I was just watching the Steffi Pops episode before this. And she says, “Hi Vic, it’s me” and you don’t even hesitate. You immediately know what she’s talking about, and that’s so smart. A lesser improviser might be like, “Oh, do I know you?”

Vic: Yeah. That’s a big thing in improv in general. It’s just so much easier for everybody. Because then you can help build something together, as opposed to only constantly having to ask somebody questions.

Gabe: Are you finding the Vic character as you’re going?

Vic: Going into it, my only idea was just that I really wanted something bigger, like I shot for the moon, which was wanting to be on a network show, and I couldn’t get that. And so this was the opportunity that I had. And even though it’s my show with my name on it, it’s not what I wanted. Everything else sort of built from there, and a lot of it was being gifted by the other improvisers because we release them non-sequentially from when we filmed them. So I’m sure at some point during that, somebody had talked about family or asked me about family, and that was when I was like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got family,” and that’s how that stuff comes up. And then, the director and I talked a little bit about details, and then we sort of filled in a rough direction that we wanted to go for this upcoming season that sort of plays out. But again, a lot of it is like, if it happens great, but the improv and the characters come first. A lot of it is gifts from those improvisers that inform my character stuff which has been a really fun way to build a character.

Gabe: This is how you’ll know I come from fandom, but there’s so many shows that, like when you love a show, you’ve seen every single episode and there’s a full room of people paid to write this show and they’ll get to an episode, and someone will say “Oh, I’ve never actually met this character,” and in your mind you’re like “Really? Four seasons ago you were step siblings.” And then you’re just furious. But this show, even though it’s not sequential, I saw people when you were saying how many people live at your house, and they were like, “Oh, Denzel [the alien] still lives in the guest house” because the count from previous episodes was correct.

Vic: We are so lucky for two reasons. One, we have Tamar [Levine, the director] and she’s usually pretty good about catching and remembering a lot of that stuff and we have Johnny-Louise Nute, who is my favorite person, literally on the planet. She’s our script supervisor who came on this season. So anytime any of us improvise the name of a school, and we’re like, “Wait, hold on! Did we say a name of a school previously?” and she’ll say “no” and then we’ll be like “great,” and then we can add it in that way. And I literally don’t think we would be able to do it without her. But just watch, now that I said this, the next one, all of a sudden there’s this big thing that doesn’t make any sense.

Gabe: You’ve built such a wacky world the fans would just say it’s evidence of the multiverse.

Vic: Well, hey. I’m not saying we’re doing a multiverse thing but it’d be pretty cool, huh?

Gabe: So when you’re on the other Dropout shows, are you being more this Vic, this current Vic that I’m talking to?

Vic: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I’m pretty lucky that for the most part the stuff that I’m doing, it is a lot more me. I definitely wear a lot more makeup than I do in real life. I just came from work. So I am wearing a lot of makeup right now.

Gabe: Oh, so it’s not just for me?

Vic: It’s for you. Because from work I could have wiped it all off, and I said, “No, only half of it.” But yeah, Host Vic is a character. Other Dropout stuff is like Vic plus, you know?

Gabe: So let’s get into queerness if that’s okay.

Vic: Yes, please. Please!

Gabe: One of the first things that was so exciting was, and you mentioned this, that they put your pronouns up on the screen under your name, and – wait, was it a she/they or what was it in the first episode?

Vic: I have always used they/she but I prefer they/them. That’s really what I use in my personal life. But also I don’t want people fighting in comment sections about me, especially because I understand and I know how I present and I think it’s really reductive to just have strangers shouting at each other on my behalf for something that I’m just kind of like, “Hey? I prefer this.” It stopped fights in comment sections, but also, you know, people are very wonderful and respectful in my personal life on the whole. So that’s been really good.

Gabe: What you’re describing is the classic “femme presenting” nonbinary experience. I did the same thing. When did you start having a gender journey?

Vic: Man. It’s interesting. It’s something that I have always really felt. And then I didn’t really know that it was an option until I started really hanging out with people that were gender nonconforming and gender-bendy and nonbinary folks, and they were just sort of like, “Oh yeah, there’s not anything you have to do. If you feel that way, you just do it.” And I’m very fortunate, especially in the LA comedy community, that I talked to maybe four people about it, and then my greater circle of friends all started using correct pronouns for me. It was just a really wonderful thing. I’m really fortunate that I have Ally Beardsley, who had come before me and was in my circle – like we’d done improv for a while – and really off the bat I remember overhearing them one time when I was backstage, and they were further on stage, and somebody was like, “Oh, yeah, Vic? She’s back there” and [Ally] just did a quick pronoun correct, and that person was like, “Oh, thanks, appreciate it.” But it was just really nice to have people like that that are in the community and come before you, because I don’t know that I, even though it’s something that I would always continue to feel, I don’t know that it’s something that I would fight that hard for myself with. You know what I mean?

Gabe: Same. I would think about gender, and I’d be like, “I’m fine,” and then friends would say, “Sure, you’re fine, but you could feel joy. You could be good. It could feel nice when people refer to you.”

Vic: It feels a lot harder especially to have any kind of a presence, like to be perceived, and not be perceived. To be seen incorrectly, especially when people are referring to me as me. It just grates after a while.

Gabe: Everybody wants to feel that the people around them get them. I do think you, Vic, also have an energy that it just makes sense. When I saw you perform, even before going to your profile and seeing whatever the pronouns were, it made sense. Maybe it’s just a trans thing, but I was like, “That’s a they. That’s a they.”

Vic: Hey, thanks!

Gabe: There’s also something really kind of funny and genderless about the Vic host character. It’s not just the suit, because the suit is a female suit, and you are wearing high heels. But there is something very otherworldly or genderless about that host character.

Vic: That’s really kind. That’s always how I pictured this host character in my head. And, like I said, I just have some pals that were very down to play with that with me. You know what I mean? Especially early on, and in some of the episodes that I think are most representative of the host’s relationship to the show. Like the one with Izzy [Roland].

Gabe: My favorite episode.

Vic: It just is such a joyful episode for me, and I think was so informative on the host character, and how I, the performer, feel and see the host character, especially in that edit. I really appreciate you saying that cause I feel that way about it, too, and that makes me very happy that that’s coming across so thank you for saying that.

Gabe: I think also her giving you the nickname “Vehicular.” Like, that’s a trans name. That’s a nonbinary name. There’s some they/them out there, calling themselves Vehicular. It was as if that character [Leighanna-Jean] didn’t see your character as having a form or a gender.

Vic: Yeah, the only thing I really remember about filming that episode is Izzy was like, “Do you mind if I misgender you for this?” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, okay.” And then the version of that that she was talking about was to call me an old, British man, which was very…

Gabe: Which, like if you, you know, kind of squint?

Vic: Yeah, you’re right. And that’s not at all how I thought that was gonna happen. But, oh, man. God, I love that woman! Once again, I have to thank my friends for seeing me through that, and also helping to give me gifts that are fun for me, the performer, to play with stuff around gender and identity within characters. And so I gotta give them so much credit. I’m so grateful for those, and for getting to run with those.

Gabe: How do you identify otherwise? Nonbinary and…

Vic: I was always bi. But I think now I would probably say more like “queer,” I think. Just sort of looking at the intersection between gender and sexuality and I know it’s bigger than just the two but I came out in high school, and now knowing more, queer is more comfy.

Gabe: I only knew the word “bisexual” from La Vie Boheme in Rent.

Vic: And for me it was Tila Tequila.

Gabe: Oh, my God! I think about Dani the firefighter so often.

Vic: Every day. If the version of death is like [the movie] Coco where it’s like, as long as somebody’s thinking about you, you stay alive. That firefighter is gonna be alive forever. As long as I’m alive, they will be.

Gabe: What were your roots? Your gender root or queer root?

Vic: Root?

Gabe: Do you know what that means?

Vic: No.

Gabe: Oh, let me see if I can explain it. It’s like, the thing from childhood like “Eliza Dushku in Bring It On is what made me queer,” or stuff kind of in retrospect where you’re like, oh, that’s interesting or that’s what I want to be, like… I don’t know, bad example, but the red Power Ranger.

Vic: Hmm! That’s an amazing question. I mean, I was raised by a single dad. And any time people would refer to me as, “You’re basically his oldest son,” I just remember that being something where I was just like, “Oh, I love that.” I got to golf a lot. He just really was like, “It’s really important that you golf, because then when you go to business meetings, you know how to golf,” and just like stuff like that. Anything that would come up where it was just me and Dad. Like dads and their sons would go to do something, and it would be me and my dad getting to go do that, I’d be like, “This rocks. This is so fun. I love this part of it.” It’s not a hatred of, or a rejection of, anything feminine or femininity. It’s just a costume. When I do it, it feels like that more than anything. It’s just truly never resonated with me, and not that that’s what being a woman is. It just is an otherness. It’s like a third box. It’s like sitting on top of it a little bit and getting to look down and try things on. Does that make any sense?

Gabe: Yeah. Look at how I used to present. It was drag.

Vic: Yeah!

Gabe: I’m just getting back to a place where I’m being a little flamboyant now with men’s clothing.

Vic: It’s fun.

Gabe: Well, I’m obsessed with you.

Vic: Hey. Same. Before you even knew me. All the comments on you and Allison’s videos? That was me. You said you couldn’t find anything on me [online]. Those were all my comments.

Gabe: Oh my God, this conversation is someone’s Roman Empire.

Vic: Mine, mine, mine. What time is it in LA?

Gabe: It’s 4:48 pm. Why? What time is it for you?

Vic: 2 am. 2 am. For me. [Vic does a peace sign over their head.]

Gabe: What? Oh, my God! Goodbye!

Vic: Buh-bye.

Gabe: Jesus Christ, Vic.

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You can watch Very Important People on Dropout TV.