Miguel Rivas and the evolution of Tony Ho

In the third season of their CBC podcast, Toronto sketch group Tony Ho offer horrifying roommate walk-ins, malfunctioning artificial intelligence call-in sex lines, and an exuberant ode to Grandad’s wounds, among other things. In other words, the trio continues to skillfully walk a fine line of dark, unpredictable comedy, delivering sketches that skewer and horrify as much as they delight. 

They’ve also expanded their audio output to include a secondary podcast-within-a-podcast: Help Tony Ho features guests like Great Canadian Baking Show hosts Ann Pornel and Alan Shane Lewis, or rapper/former Q host Shad, who join the trio for a more conversational sort of riff session. 

With the podcast’s third season now fully released, Parton & Pearl chatted with Tony Ho’s Miguel Rivas about the beginnings of Help Tony Ho, darkness in comedy, and more.

Where did the idea for having a separate conversation podcast come from?

During the promotion of the second season, we did some looser interview things just to get the word out about the pod. And we do them a little tongue in cheek, where they're half-real half-not real. And the response to those was really strong. So we were like, what if we did 10 episodes that were vaguely like that? And CBC got excited by the idea.

What's it been like to explore that conversational style of podcast and bring guests into the fold, rather than just do the written sketches?

It’s been pretty thrilling. Something about doing a podcast as a trio is that maybe people don't really know us that well. They know us in character, playing horrible or twisted people in sketches. And this was an opportunity to be heightened versions of ourselves—the three of us had been doing comedy for, oh god, maybe 11 years now. We've developed a riffing style when just hang out. So it's nice to showcase that a little bit. And also, having all the guests on is amazing because we love them all. 

Do you have any bucket list guests you'd love to get in the future?

One of my ideal guests would be Tom Scharpling, host of The Best Show. He’s been relatively busy—we tried to book him—but it's almost within our sights. Other than that, if they weren't so protective of their brand, I would love to have an NBA player on there. Obviously from the Raptors.

I'm amazed that you can get sketches like “Suicide Sex” or “Dogs” under the CBC branding. What's your relationship with CBC like?

They've been wildly supportive of the content we've been putting forward for the sketches. They have notes and give ideas, but if we say, ‘No, we really want to do this.’ They say, ‘Okay.’ It’s been pretty carte blanche, really. I can’t fathom how they’re letting us do some of it, but they are, and make us feel really supported.

As a comedian and as a sketch troupe, how do you find that balance of pushing comedy into dark places and still bringing an audience along?

It was sort of an MO from the start with us. When we started, we told ourselves we were going to do horror comedy. And then that kind of faded away as you find your voice, and we just realized that our point of view that we all shared was not scared of diving into more of our deeper feelings. It just felt like it had purpose—I think a lot of comedy can be very, very silly, which is great. I think comedy can do a lot of different things as well. And so we just [wanted] to make sure we had a point of view that wasn't too comparable to anyone else so that we would stand out, and it’s worked out for us. We say now that we do sketch comedy about human carelessness.

That’s a good way of phrasing it. It seems like in all the episodes, people may be overstepping a bit.

Exactly. Taking for granted certain relationships, and feelings that other people might have— reflecting on our own selfishness, I guess.

Season 3 of the Tony Ho podcast “Old Young People" launched Wednesday, Oct. 6 with 10 episodes.
Listen to it here.