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Nathanael Bargatze ( ; born March 25, 1979) Review: Nate Bargatze, ‘The Greatest Average American,’ on Netflix Sean L. McCarthy, March 25, 2021 is an American stand-up comedian. He has been called a clean comedian, and has been noted for his deadpan, monotone delivery. Bargatze was the highest-grossing stand-up comic in 2024, with over a million tickets sold across his shows.
Raised in a devoutly religious Christian household, Bargatze is one of three children. His father practiced magic tricks with him while growing up, and Bargatze stated he performed in skits with his church group, beginning when he "was around 11". He attended DuPont Elementary in Old Hickory, Tennessee until fourth grade, when he transferred to Donelson Christian Academy (DCA) in Nashville, where his father had a day job as a history teacher. He competed in track and field at DCA and tried out for the basketball and golf teams, but was cut from both. He graduated in 1997.
Bargatze then attended Volunteer State Community College in nearby Gallatin for a year. During this time, he had various jobs, such as working in construction, manning a cellphone kiosk at Walmart, and delivering furniture. He enrolled in Western Kentucky University, but flunked each of his courses and dropped out. He also had a stint working at Applebee's and later landed a job as a meter-reader for a water company in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. He was a fan of The Bob & Tom Show, a radio program which often hosted comedians, and it inspired him to become a comedian himself. One of his fellow meter-readers, Michael Clay, also had an ambition to become a comedian, and together they decided to quit their jobs and both pursue a career in comedy. Bargatze's parents were supportive of his decision and attended his first open mic event.
In 2004, Bargatze moved to New York City, where he became a barker for the renowned Boston Comedy Club, handing out flyers in Greenwich Village in exchange for stage time at night in the club. Bargatze also worked as a dogwalker and a FedEx delivery driver during the day to support his comedy career. He has called the Jerry Seinfeld documentary Comedian (2002) "life-changing" and a "big reason" why he moved to New York. While at the Boston Comedy Club, he saw comedians such as Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Patrice O'Neal, and Bill Burr perform live. Bargatze stated that it took "about a year" before he received a paying gig in New York. He spent most of his early years performing for single-digit crowds.
Bargatze had a turning-point year in 2008, featuring on Comedy Centrals stand-up show Live at Gotham, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. He toured extensively with the USO, performing for American troops stationed in countries such as the Bahamas, Greenland, Honduras, Iraq, and Kuwait. He co-hosted a podcast, It Could Be Better, with Chris Laker and Yannis Pappas from 2009 to 2013. He won both New York’s Comedy Festival and the Boston Comedy Festival in 2010, and released his first 30-minute comedy special in 2011, as part of an episode of Comedy Central Presents.
Bargatze decided to move to Los Angeles in 2012, taking inspiration from Jerry Weintraub’s quote "as soon as you feel comfortable that's when it's time to start over". He released his first comedy album, Yelled At By A Clown, in 2012 on Aspecialthing Records. It was on the Billboard Top Ten Comedy Charts for two weeks, peaking at No. 2. Bargatze received effusive praise from Marc Maron, and appeared on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast in 2012. He was booked on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in 2013. He also was part of Jimmy Fallon's Clean Cut Comedy Tour that year. Speaking of his participation in the tour and his choice to be a clean comedian, Bargatze said: "I grew up watching clean comedy. Starting out, I wanted my parents to come watch me. I still think that way, even though I’m a parent now. I’m a clean comic, but I don’t really want people to notice it. ... A good compliment for me would be, 'I didn’t even notice that you were clean.' That’s my goal."
In 2014, Bargatze developed a deal with NBC Universal to create a sitcom based on his life, with Fallon serving as producer. NBC ultimately scrapped the project. Also in 2014, he auditioned for The Daily Show and made it to a final shortlist of two. Jordan Klepper was hired instead of Bargatze. After two years in Los Angeles, Bargatze returned home to Nashville, deeming it more suitable for his wife and daughter. He initially kept the move to Nashville quiet as he did not want people in the industry to think he had quit comedy. His first hour-long special, Full Time Magic, was released in 2015 by Comedy Central. The album version of Full Time Magic reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top Ten Comedy Charts. The special premiered on the same night as Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao. Bargatze said: "Nobody watched my special that night. I didn't even watch it, since I wanted to see that fight so bad."
Bargatze began hosting The Nateland Podcast in 2020 along with Brian "Breakfast" Bates and Aaron Weber; in 2022, Dusty Slay joined as a fourth host. Netflix released Bargatze's next stand-up special, The Greatest Average American, in 2021. It was filmed outdoors at Universal Studios Hollywood and was nominated for the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. Also in 2021, Bargatze was featured in an article in The Atlantic that called him "The Nicest Man in Stand-Up". In 2022, he voiced the character Grady in the Portal spinoff game Aperture Desk Job.
Bargatze's stand-up special Hello World, filmed at the Celebrity Theater in Phoenix, Arizona, was released in January 2023 on Amazon Prime Video. It set a record for Amazon’s most-streamed original comedy special, receiving 2.9 million viewers in its first 28 days. On April 15, 2023, Bargatze drew 19,365 attendees to a performance at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena, breaking the venue's all-time attendance record. Bargatze stated that after his show he took a chair from the arena to his house to prevent anyone from breaking his record.
Bargatze hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time on October 28, 2023, and for a second time on October 5, 2024. In those appearances, he attracted attention for his portrayal of George Washington in sketches that mock the American language and system of measurements. Also in 2024, he performed at the Netflix Is a Joke Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. Bargatze said hosting SNL led to a "giant, giant leap" in his career. He was the highest-grossing comic in 2024 according to Pollstar. He topped Billboards Boxscore ranking of the highest-grossing comedy tours, with $82.2 million gross income from 1.1 million tickets sold across his 148 shows, setting a new record for largest one-year gross by a comedy performer in Boxscore history. Bargatze returned to Netflix to release his next special, titled Your Friend, Nate Bargatze, which premiered on Christmas Eve 2024.
In March 2025, Bargatze stated that he would make his first feature acting role in The Breadwinner, a film he co-wrote with Dan Lagana. He announced the film's release date as March 13, 2026.
Bargatze's second cousin Ronnie Bargatze was a three-sport athlete who later became a basketball coach at Vanderbilt University in the 1970s and was inducted into the TSSAA Hall of Fame in 2018. As a result, Bargatze has been a lifelong fan of the Vanderbilt Commodores.
Bargatze drank heavily while starting out as a comedian, and said he "got very close" to sabotaging his career due to alcoholism. He stated that he stopped drinking alcohol in 2018, recalling that: "I wasn’t able to drink like a regular person. I knew, 'Alright, well, if I want to go to the level I want to go to, I have to get this out of my life or I’m not going to be able to get to that level'."
An avid golfer, Bargatze participated in the pro-am of the Simmons Bank Open in 2023, and is friends with professional golfer and fellow Nashville resident Brandt Snedeker. Bargatze also competed in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in 2023, where he was listed as a 7 handicap.
Bargatze avoids discussing politics. When asked in a 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter if he had been tempted to do so, he said: "Yeah. As you’re coming up, you’re seeing other people have ... And you’d see guys pop up and they’d go that route and they’d get pretty popular doing that, and you’re like, 'Should I be saying something? I’m not saying anything.' But I’d remind myself that that thought is about me, it’s not about the and I should stay in my lane."
In 2024, Bargatze contributed $1.15 million to the development of an indoor athletic facility at Donelson Christian Academy, his alma mater. The school subsequently named the facility in honor of him. Bargatze stated in 2025 that he wants to build a theme park in Nashville, dubbed Nateland, similar to Opryland USA, which he worked at as a teenager prior to its closure in 1997.
| 2026 | The Breadwinner | Himself | Filming; also writer and producer |
| Hurt, Melonee - Nashville's Nate Bargatze airs Christmas special. Here's our top 5 moments from the show. The Tennessean, December 20, 2024 |
| 2021 | Grammy Awards | Best Comedy Album | The Greatest Average American | ||
| 2025 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) | Your Friend, Nate Bargatze | ||
| Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special |
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