Patton Oswalt doesn’t stop. He doesn’t slow down. And frankly, why would he? With a decades-spanning career that veers between stand-up, voice acting, cult-favorite TV shows, and, yes, true crime, he’s a perpetual motion machine in the business of being funny and fascinating.
Sitting down with me ahead of his stop at the Louisville Palace, Oswalt was already on his tour grind, polishing material for a comedy special set to tape this fall. The veteran comedian waved off any high-concept framing for the show. “I tell jokes. I have an hour of new jokes. That’s it,” he says, with the sharp brevity of someone who’s both confident in his craft and tired of overthinking it.
But don’t confuse simplicity with laziness. For Oswalt, comedy isn’t just what he does—it’s how he makes sense of everything, even the bizarre twists life throws his way. Case in point: his unexpected connection to the true crime world. After his late wife, Michelle McNamara, authored the groundbreaking I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and helped unearth the Golden State Killer, Oswalt found himself with an unshakable association to the genre. He doesn’t seek it out, but it lingers. “It’s not really my thing,” he says, shaking off the weight of being tethered to such heavy material. “But hey, life’s weird.”
Weird is also how you’d describe Oswalt’s trajectory into mainstream pop culture. He’s voiced everything from Pixar’s beloved culinary rat in Ratatouille to a neurotic Jack Russell terrier in The Secret Life of Pets 2, where, yes, he “worked” with Harrison Ford—or as close as anyone gets in an animated movie. “I didn’t record with him,” he says. “But come on, it’s Harrison Ford!” The child of the ’80s in him still geeks out, fondly reminiscing about his Star Wars obsession.
For someone who grew up worshipping sci-fi and fantasy, Oswalt has a front-row seat to the genre’s rise from geek niche to global dominance. “It metastasized,” he deadpans, pointing to the billion-dollar booms of Game of Thrones and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He’s also part of the cult phenomenon Mystery Science Theater 3000, another pop culture mainstay that found new life on Netflix. Oswalt played TV’s Son of TV’s Frank, adding his own brand of absurd humor to the long-running series. “It’s nail-biting when something like that comes back,” he admits. “But the risk? Totally worth it.”
Oswalt is also painfully aware of the “peak TV” saturation, a crowded market he says demands “boundary-pushing ideas” just to get noticed. It’s a reality he knows too well. Both of his recent shows, AP Bio and Happy!, were canceled, though there are whispers that the latter could return. “Who knows,” he shrugs. “They’ll probably tell me last.”
But cancellations don’t faze him. For Oswalt, the game is all about momentum. “That’s what this career is,” he says. “You wait. You move. You keep going.”
His upcoming special promises more of the same sharp, introspective humor he’s built his name on, proof that while the world keeps throwing curveballs, Patton Oswalt always finds a way to hit them out of the park—or at least make them funny. And if his Louisville crowd is lucky, they might just get a sneak peek of a joke that will blow up next year.
With true crime, animation, stand-up, and even the faintest hopes of Happy!’s resurrection on his plate, Oswalt keeps moving forward. Because, really, what else would he do?
Listen to the interview above and then check out some Patton below.