Actor/comedian Tim Murray is ready to bewitch you as he brings his spooky comedy hour Witches to a city near you starting this month. The show is a mix of stand up and original comedy songs about his favorite pop culture witches.
In Witches, Tim uses songs and stand-up mixed with hilarious personal stories about growing up a closeted, yet feminine boy, who tried hard to pass as straight to avoid being burned at the stake. He will have you howling at the moon, cackling at his jokes, and crying (but hopefully not melting). Throughout the show, he celebrates famous sorceresses throughout herstory including The Sanderson Sisters from Hocus Pocus, the teen coven of The Craft, Angelica Houston’s Grand High Witch from The Witches and, of course, Elphaba from Wicked and uses their stories as a parallel to the queer witch hunt.
Witches received raves from critics, including 5-star reviews from Entertainment Now, North West End, Broadway Baby, and Broadway World at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023. Murray took the show on a sold-out tour to 18 cities in the United States and Canada. Witches was nominated for an Off-West End Award for Best Fringe show, Murray was shortlisted for the Comedian's Choice Award and WON Best Musical Theatre Show of the Fringe from Entertainment Now. In addition, Playbill also named the show a Pick of the Fringe. Recently, Tim won The New York Queer Comedy Festival, which is a year-long competition against hundreds of other New York comedians.
Tim is a viral sensation with his TikTok sketch comedy videos, including his popular series “Every Conversation In LA”. He has performed stand-up all over the U.S., including SF Sketchfest, The Brooklyn Comedy Festival, and DragCon, and has been a regular on the Bowen Yang & Matt Rogers’ Las Culturistas LIVE podcast episodes and his own podcast Slumber Party on iHeart radio.
We chatted with Tim about his bewitching show, his comedy influences, and what’s next for him in our exclusive interview. And while we didn’t burn him at the stake, we did put him in the hot seat for the Socialite Seven. Get to know this talented and wickedly funny performer.
I did a little deep dive, and I found out you hosted my absolute favorite thing that happened during COVID, which was the Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods reunion.
Oh my God, thank you so much. That was like the most random, amazing thing I could have ever done.
I'm a big fan of Lena Hall, so I was just excited to see her.
She's everything, and fun fact, she's the reason that it happened. I asked them all to do it, and then in the group chat she really rallied them and was like, you guys, come on, we have to do this.
How did Witches come about?
I have always been obsessed with witches in pop culture. As a little gay boy, I think most little queer kids watching Wizard of Oz are like, okay, well, what's going on with that green evil witch? She's the most fun one. Her and Glinda, you're like, well, I need to know them and when Wicked came out, I was 16. And I just remember being my gayest, most me self as an older kid and being like, okay, this is my personality. It’s developing right now, listening to Wicked.
I started in musical theater and transitioned into stand up and then this show really was my kind of amalgamation of everything that I do and I was like, okay, if I want to do a musical stand-up show, what is my way in here? And I just got the idea to make a Halloween type of comedy show. And, literally, every time I sat down on my computer, I just started to write about witches, so it all just kind of came together like very quickly and fluently.
I wanted to ask you about your experience in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival. What was it like to take your show there?
So scary. Especially for an American, I would describe it to people as like, if you were going to do a Fringe Festival in Philadelphia, you'd probably have some friends or family or people who know people in Philly or New York City or D.C. or Pittsburgh, who could train in and see you. But in the UK, we don't know anybody. So, you're truly showing up, hoping that people will come. And for a lot of Americans, people don't come. Some of my friends would play to like four or five people a night, sometimes less than that.
You really have to just get on the street and beg people to come and hope that reviewers come to your show and hope that they like it. And that word-of-mouth spreads. I took such a huge financial leap going there and doing that – and the fact that people got it and it really paid off and people came to see it was an amazing, terrifying, incredible experience.
I want to get a little bit into your background. Who were your comedic influences?
People ask this a lot, and it's interesting because there has never been a gay male stand-up comedian as a household name. So, for me, it was like Carol Burnett in Annie. I mean, I'm kind of a hodgepodge, I'd say. I love Norm Macdonald, I love Wanda Sykes I, I loved Janeane Garofalo as a young boy, but also like Caroline Rhea and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, I just remember her comedic timing being so fun and funny to me. And my ultimate is Lisa Kudrow in Friends, for me it was all about timing. It was like, okay, that is my my aim in comedy is just figuring out the rhythm of things.
When putting together a show like Witches, what was your creative process like?
I had been doing a lot of stand-up and I just tried to write as many hard jokes, I call them, as I could. I would just write about the gay experience and about witches. Amy Schumer always says what I think is very true for me too, which is like, she'll write a full page of an idea and then of that whole page, one joke will come out of it. So that was kind of how Witches worked too.
I would try to think of pop culture ideas that I love, like the movie The Craft or Sabrina or Bewitched. And then, I thought about what the game is for each of these pop culture things. Like for the Sabrina one, it was like, okay, caregiver witches, but their game is that Aunt Hilda and Aunt Zelda really want to let their hair down and have sex and do drugs.
And then, I wrote just my more generalized songs that aren't about any one specific pop culture thing. I would still think of the game, like, okay, if I'm a witch, what do I have in common with a witch? For example, I hate being around children and when they're on an airplane it's like absolute hell for me and everyone around me and I have that in common with a witch so there's a song called “I Hate Kids.”
You do a lot of crowd work and I always admire comedians that can do crowd work and pull it off. How are you able to do such good crowd work?
Oh, thanks. That, I think, is my one natural gift that I just have been given in life. And I guess the training I had for it, my 10,000 hours, was just growing up with a very social mom, a very extroverted mom, and like learning from her how to just talk to anybody. And to me, crowd work should feel like how I am off stage.
So, like the same way I would banter with a barista when I'm getting a coffee or chatting with a friend is how I want to be up there. I want to make you feel like you're at lunch with me or you're in my living room and we're kiki-ing and partying. And the other side of that answer is my improv training.
I went to UCB and they really just teach you and give you a really great structure for how to really listen to people and remember what they've said and then turn that into something. And so, there's that element of it and I think I have a unique spin on crowd work, which is that I don't really like to roast people. It's not really my vibe. I like to uplift people and sometimes hit on them. I want the audience to feel really good. Well, knowing that I'm in control.
You've written all these songs for the show, and I always ask musicians and artists do you have a favorite out of the songs that you've written for Witches?
Yes, my favorite is “Dr. Dillerman's Lament”, which is the goat character from Wicked. It's as if he got a big solo in the show, and the song's all about if he was coming out of the closet as his big storyline in Wicked.
When I was in grad school, I wrote a paper about horror movies and how the villains in horror movies were bonded to the LGBTQ community in the fact that both were considered “others”. Did that idea play into the creation of Witches at all?
Absolutely. To me, that definitely is a huge theme with villains, and then witches even more specifically. It's like witches have this thing about them that they're supposed to hide from everyone, no one's supposed to know that they're a witch most of the time. And then, as their story goes on, they usually discover that this thing that they hate about themselves, that they have to keep a secret, is actually what makes them powerful and special. And that's, I mean, the gay experience, for sure.
Besides Elphaba, I'm sure that's the favorite, but do you have another favorite witch out of all the witches in pop culture?
It changes a lot, because I really just love so many of them. I love Bette Midler and Hocus Pocus. Yes. I love Sabrina, but right now my favorite is probably Nancy from the movie The Craft. “We are the weirdos, mister.” Yeah, that movie is just so feminine and so 90s. It's so fun.
You have done so many things – you do comedy, you perform music, you act. Is there something that you like doing the most?
My favorite thing is to musically improvise a song in the show. I usually take an audience member's story about a witch, and that is when I feel the most fulfilled. I'll never forget the first time I ever did musical improv, I was like, oh, this is what I was born to do. It just feels like so right for me. It's my favorite thing to do. Audiences usually lose their minds for it because they're like, whoa, he's making this up on the spot. That's my favorite thing.
Now, you had done, and I'm sure it was a COVID project, but you did a podcast called Slumber Party. Do you have any plans to bring it back?
Not as of now. I loved doing it, but it's so much work. And, full transparency, I think people were starting to see me as the Broadway guy. And I really want people to know that yes, that is a big part of me and I love it, but I'm a stand-up comedian first and foremost. I think if I were to do another podcast, I would want a co-host that I could really banter with because I'm sure you know what this is like, but it's hard to just talk to strangers all the time. You know, it was hard to feel totally dropped in and totally myself and I just started to feel like okay, this is getting really exhausting. I really want to make sure that I’m loving whatever it is I’m doing.
I don't know how much you can talk about it but I do know you've got something coming up that Trixie Mattel is involved with. Can you tell me a little bit about that and when we can expect it?
I can't say too much about it. You can expect it soon-ish. And yes, Trixie Mattel and D’Marie Productions are co-producing a TV show from Michael Henry and myself about us going to different cities and figuring out what is gay to do there while we're doing our stand-up. And I guess all I can say is look out for a press release in the future.
Tim Murray Answers the Socialite Seven
What is your biggest pet peeve?
People talking and not listening, like people who talk a lot and don't listen when you talk.
Who would your fans be surprised to learn that you are a fan of?
Oh, that's such a good question. Probably Jim Gaffigan. I think there are some straight male comedians that are truly funny. I saw him on New Year's Eve a few years ago and he was so amazing. Yeah, someone like that who’s so not in my pop diva, witchy, gay culture world, but like is just a genius. Or like Mike Birbiglia.
If they made a movie of your life, who would you want to play you?
Oh Joe Biden. I don't know. Someone really hot.
If you could wake up in the morning with a superpower or talent you don't already possess, what would you want it to be?
I would want to be able to fly just so I could not be in traffic.
What are three things you can't live without?
Idina Menzel, coffee and Wi-Fi.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Laying down on my couch watching Traitors with my husband and not having to stress about ticket sales.
What is the best piece of advice you've been given?
My husband always tells me when he watches me do stand up, don't lean back on your heels. He's like, I can always tell when you feel confident up there, and you're physically leaning forward, and you have them in the palm of your hand. And so now, literally, if I start to feel like I am not feeling confident up there, I literally, physically shift my body weight, and it really does make a confident difference in my attitude and I could feel my show getting better.
It's one of those things where it's so hard not to take their immediate validation to heart but it's like, okay, the joke doesn't land. You just can't let it push you back on your heels and then start to back away from them. You just have to double down and go further and if the next one doesn't land you just have to keep going until you get them back on your side.
To get more information and tickets for Tim Murray’s Witches tour, click HERE. Keep up with Tim on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.
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