Have Yourself a Very Matt Rogers Comedy Special

Matt Rogers’s voice is slightly hoarse when he signs on to Zoom, but there’s a good reason. Rogers and his castmates from this summer’s hit gay romantic comedy Fire Island received the ensemble tribute at the Gotham Awards the previous night, and celebrated the only way they knew how—by going to a gay bar. “It was one last messy night for the Fire Island girls,” he tells me. “There was an after-party that was happening at the Bowery that the Gothams were throwing, and we were like, ‘Fuck that. We’re going to Barracuda.’” 

While the summer of Fire Island has come to an end, the winter of Matt Rogers is just beginning. The comedian, podcaster, and actor has his sights set on taking over a new season—the Christmas season, to be specific—with his debut musical comedy special, Have You Heard of Christmas?, which premiered on Showtime streaming last week. Taped at the historic Joe’s Pub in New York City, Have You Heard of Christmas? utilizes all of Rogers’s myriad talents as a comedian, sketch writer, actor, and, perhaps most importantly, a songstress, to bring the audience on a festive romp through a brand-new musical Christmas catalog complete with unforgettable and hilarious original tracks like “The Hottest Female Up in Whoville.” And despite only premiering last week, Have You Heard of Christmas? has already made a splash and is being called one of the best comedy specials of the entire year. 

Rogers’s Have You Heard of Christmas? traces its origins back to 2017 at the comedy club The Duplex, where he first performed the show he’d written with his then boyfriend, Henry Koperski, the talented composer and pianist also behind Catherine Cohen’s celebrated musical comedy Netflix special, The Twist…She’s Gorgeous. “It all boils down to my collaboration with Henry,” Rogers says of his former lover turned collaborator. “I really do think of it as our show together.” (A few days after Roger and I spoke, Koperski alleged in a Vulture interview that he was not invited to the Have You Heard of Christmas? premiere party. The outlet later updated the story to report that Koperski subsequently found the invitation in his spam folder.)

And the show they created together was a labor of love. “This is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to make, really, because it’s everything,” Rogers says. “It’s the sketch part of my personality. It’s the stand-up part of my personality. It’s the music part of my personality. It’s literally me up there.”

The seamlessness with which he melds these disparate parts comes from a deep understanding and appreciation for the less savory aspects of the holiday, particularly its capitalist underbelly. Have You Heard of Christmas? “is celebrating Christmas, but also dragging Christmas,” Rogers says. “This is for everyone who grew up with [Christmas] in their life, but sort of only kind of understands why it’s a holiday. We understand it’s a part of the culture. We get that it’s this larger-than-life monoculture, [but] as the monoculture disappears more and more and more and more, Christmas seems to become bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger as a thing.”

Of course, no one has capitalized on this phenomenon more so than Miss Mariah Carey, the iconic “All I Want for Christmas Is You” beltress who (unsuccessfully) tried to trademark  the title Queen of Christmas earlier this year and, as Rogers shrewdly points out, literally got more airtime than Santa at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year. “Santa found dead,” he quips. Naturally, Carey’s presence looms large in the special, both literally and metaphorically. 

“This idea that I had in the very beginning was to make fun of Mariah Carey and poke fun at all these pop singers that I loved who are capitalizing on the capitalism of Christmas,” he says. “Now it’s interesting because I’m here, certainly benefiting from the fact that there are Christmas specials. I’m literally riffing on it, but I’m also doing it.”