Nate Bargatze
Grammy-winning stand-up comedian from Nashville, Tennessee, promoting his first feature film, The Bread Winner.
Appeared on: This Past Weekend · New Heights
Circuit updated May 27, 2026
Nate Bargatze's throughline across both appearances is stewardship, the idea that his audience gave him something he never earned by birthright and that protecting it is a near-sacred obligation. He keeps circling the same confession: nothing in his background pointed toward this, not the money, not the fame, not the theme park, and that gap between where he started and where he landed feels less like pride to him than it does a debt he's still paying. The self-contradictory beat is subtle but real: on This Past Weekend he frames stand-up as the last honest space in entertainment, a pure-voice sanctuary free from institutional noise, then on New Heights he's yukking it up with the Kelce brothers about his big can and Nashville hot chicken, which is fine and funny but is also, definitionally, content for a corporate sports-entertainment machine. He can't be the last outpost of the unfiltered real person and also be a recurring guest on the NFL's favorite podcast, and he doesn't seem to notice the tension. What makes it matter is that Bargatze's whole brand rests on the authenticity promise, and as the theme park, the movie, and the guest spots stack up, the question of whether 'clean and real' is a genuine artistic position or just a very effective market niche gets harder to wave away.
- Nate Bargatze Is Building a Theme Park With His Own Money and He Knows It's Crazy
“I don't come from any world where I should be building a theme park. There's nowhere in my growth of a child to high school, any of this that you would ever be at a point there's nowhere that I should even had the success that I should have had.” 1:51:27
- Tina Fey on Athletes, Almonds, and Why She Can't Get Her Kids to Watch 30 Rock
“I've already got you know I got a suite in it already. Like I'm already locked.” 1:22:54
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“There's not a place where you go to get a pure voice anymore. That's why I mean I hope young entertainers, I hope stand-up comics that are getting into it get into it and they get in there and create an act because you're going to be the only place you could maybe be actually hearing a real person.”
Nate Bargatze · This Past Weekend -
“I don't come from any world where I should be building a theme park. There's nowhere in my growth of a child to high school, any of this that you would ever be at a point there's nowhere that I should even had the success that I should have had.”
Nate Bargatze · This Past Weekend -
“I need to sell the tickets. I need to keep the trust that I have with this audience. That's on me. That's not anybody else's problem. I'll do it. That's what I feel has been bestowed upon me.”
Nate Bargatze · This Past Weekend -
“I've already got you know I got a suite in it already. Like I'm already locked.”
Nate Bargatze · New Heights
Nate Bargatze Is Building a Theme Park With His Own Money and He Knows It's Crazy
The cleanest comedian in the game comes on This Past Weekend to talk about his new movie, his Nashville theme park, and why he thinks stand-up is the last place you can hear a real person.
Tina Fey on Athletes, Almonds, and Why She Can't Get Her Kids to Watch 30 Rock
The Kelce brothers haul in Tina Fey and Nate Bargatze for an episode that somehow covers manspreading at MSG, a Cleveland Guardians ownership stake, and the origin of Nashville hot chicken.