For years, Matteo Lane opened his stand-up sets with a deadpan, “Obviously, I’m gay.” It was both a statement and a shield—cutting straight through awkwardness, audience assumptions, and that obligatory coming-out moment most queer comics still feel pushed to perform. But these days, Lane is skipping the formality. The Italian-Mexican former opera singer and illustrator opens his new Hulu special The Al Dente Special not with self-explanation but with a devastatingly accurate impression of white women—and it’s exactly that bait-and-switch brilliance that has made Lane one of the sharpest, sassiest, and smartest voices in comedy today.
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And yes, that moment with Gayle King happened.
Lane recently joined The Last Laugh podcast to talk about his special, the f-slur, and why being labeled “too gay” for network television was one of the best things to ever happen to him.
Let’s start with the Gayle of it all. While promoting The Al Dente Special, Lane sat down with the CBS Mornings team, where King introduced one of his jokes by quoting the f-slur back to him—uncensored—on live national television. “I hope I don’t get in trouble,” she said before launching into: “What in the f—-try are you talking about?”
Lane’s on-air response—through genuine laughter—was iconic: “I love you, Gayle King! It means exactly what you think it means.”
Twitter had a collective gay gasp, but Lane? He gave her a pass without blinking.
“I thought, first of all, if anyone can say the word f—-t, it’s Gayle, let’s be honest here,” he told the podcast. “There are certain women in this world that can say f—-t. Jennifer Coolidge can say f—-t. Gayle King can say f—-t.”
It’s a polarizing take, and Lane knows it.
“Plenty of people were offended by it,” he admits. “Being gay doesn’t mean that how I feel is how everybody else feels. There are plenty of people who have a different relationship with that word. They came up at a different time. They grew up in different environments. So I can’t expect that everyone is going to laugh at it the way that I have. I just happen to look at life and laugh at it.”
Asked whether he ever followed up with King after the incident, Lane deadpans: “No, they rocketed her off the planet! CBS is like, we gotta get her out of here. Her controversy went from calling me a f—-t—joking, obviously—to being in space with the world’s most insufferable human being Katy Perry.”
(Perry, for the record, makes an unexpected cameo in The Al Dente Special. Yes, it’s as weird and delightful as it sounds.)
But even now, with a Hulu special, TV credits galore, and Comedy Cellar cred, Lane’s relationship with Hollywood hasn’t always been fab and festive.
Before his 2016 stand-up debut on Late Night with Seth Meyers, he’d already taped another late-night set—a set that never aired.
“The host said to the producers that I was doing too many gay jokes, and they’d like me to come back and redo it and make it less gay,” Lane recalls. “Let’s just say that I said no.”
The show remains unnamed, but the sting was real. “It really put a lot into perspective of the world I was actually living in.”
He channeled that disappointment into a grinding tour of what he lovingly calls “the worst comedy clubs in America,” honing his voice, sharpening his set, and learning how to be a comic without compromise.
“I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for the Comedy Cellar, I really really mean that,” Lane says now. “How else would I have paid rent? How would I have eaten? I wouldn’t have had any way to work out my material. I wouldn’t have an hour. I wouldn’t have social media clips. I would have nothing.”
It’s not just about visibility—it’s about viability. And Lane’s journey from gay punchlines being “too much” for late-night to openly mocking Gayle King on morning television shows just how much has changed—and how much hasn’t
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While Seth Meyers’ show welcomed him with “no restrictions whatsoever,” Lane has still never performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon or The Late Late Show with James Corden—two shows that, ironically, have had no problem booking straight comics who make lazy jokes about gay people.
There’s also the pressure gay comics face to monetize their pain.
Lane is blunt: “I’m so sick of people expecting gay comedians to relive their trauma.”
He doesn’t want to be the face of gay suffering. He wants to be the face of a gay guy killing it on stage—talking about pasta, pop stars, and problematic aunties, not just the heartbreak of coming out or the violence of being “othered.”
Lane isn’t here to be a queer TED Talk. He’s here to make you laugh—on his own terms.
And if some shows still think his act is “too gay”? Well, to quote the queen of morning TV: What in the f—-try are you talking about?
The Al Dente Special is now streaming on Hulu.
And yes—Matteo Lane is still obviously gay. Just in case anyone was wondering.
Source: TheDailyBeast