Darcy and Jer are proof that there is real substance to social media. How else would a married couple from Canada who eschew the traditional influencer tropes become such a phenomenon? Darcy Michael and Jer Baer have been uploading their lives to TikTok and social media platforms for the past few years, racking up over 50 million views for short clips featuring pop quizzes for an ADHD husband or a gratingly catchy bop about a donkey with too much to do.
Maybe that kinda stuff sounds trivial, along with a lot of what you see on your feed. But Darcy and Jer's signature blend of heart and stupidity, sincerity and silliness, honesty and comedy actually matters. Think about it: these two have connected to millions of people — not just followers, people — via their phones. You know, the little screen that we all carry with us everywhere we go? It doesn't get more personal than that.
And that's what makes the Darcy & Jer combo stand-up special and behind-the-scenes documentary recently acquired by WOW Presents Plus such a rewarding binge. Even if you're completely unfamiliar with the enjoyably sitcom-esque dynamic between stand-up comic Darcy Michael and his self-described "corporate" husband Jer Baer, these two features will make you a fan.
Hot on the heels of the announcement that Darcy & Jer: No Refunds and Happily Ever Laughter: The Darcy and Jer Story will premiere globally via WOW Presents Plus on Feb. 4, Pop Heist got the chance to chat with Darcy and Jer about serving lewks on stage, the ever-changing comedy scene, and bringing those living room feels to stages across North America.
Brett White: WOW Presents Plus is getting both the stand-up special and the documentary. If someone is coming in blind to Darcy and Jer, which order do you suggest they watch them in?
Darcy Michael: Oh, we get asked this all the time. Oh, it's such a good [question].
Jer Baer: I think special. And then, if you want to know more, go to the doc.
Darcy: But then there's some inside jokes in the special that it explains in the doc, so does the chicken come before the egg?
I watched the first half of the special, and then I had to do something. I came back and I watched the doc, and then I watched the second half.
Darcy: What would you suggest?
Star Wars fans have The Machete Order, where you go back and watch the prequels as if they're a flashback. I say do that. Cut it off at the ADHD intermission.
Jer: That’s very ADHD.
What has it been like being from Canada, but also having found a worldwide audience? Was there ever a world where the special was filmed in America, or was it always going to be a Canadian audience?
Darcy: No, we toyed with it. The Canadian dollar sucks, so it was just so much more to film in the States. I always say, as someone that's toured for like 20 years, American audiences are hyped. They're the best audiences in the world. They’re almost too easy. I think it's because [they’re] all starved for joy. So I always say it's such a treat, but then the Canadian me is like, it's also really safe to talk shit about y'all when we're in Canada.
Jer: Canadian audiences are too polite.They don’t want to disturb the show.
Darcy: Yeah, they're very apologetic. Like, "Sorry. Was my laugh too loud there?" Whereas Americans are like, 'Fuck yeah, bang bang!"
Darcy, you talk in the documentary about how when you were solo, you would always have to come out to every single audience. But now it's both of you on stage, and there's no need to come out. Just seeing a gay couple kiss on stage, even in 2025, is still powerful.
Darcy: Isn't it wild that we're still having that conversation? It was important that we were just ourselves. But I was reading an article revisiting Adam Lambert's 2009 kiss on stage and the backlash that he received from it. Because truthfully, we didn't really put much thought into it. We were just like, if we piss each other off, we'll give each other a kiss and "no homo" and move on. I think it's important for audiences to see. I appreciate when queer couples relate to us, but I think it's really important that the straight couples see us and they go, "Holy fuck, this is just us with a couple more dicks involved."
Jer, what did you learn from watching Darcy do stand-up for all these years? Did you learn anything by osmosis?
Darcy: I wanted to say something — obviously no! He didn't! Did you see him? Did you see him perform? No, I'm kidding!
Jer: Anyways, I've watched him over the years have this whole shield up and protect himself. And I'm like, "We're not doing that this time." The nice thing for me is, if I stumbled on stage, I have a very, very, very experienced and perfect person beside me that is just gonna rip me to shreds. It's great.
Darcy: It's a good parachute for each other. When I get off track, we really are the yin and yang to each other. And so what I can bring to the show, Jared can't; and what I can't, he can.
Jer: But also, in my years of watching comedy, I haven't seen a lot of duo acts on stage at the same time. So it was fun to kind of explore that and how that was going to work, and telling some of the jokes Darcy writes but now being able to bring in my perspective.
Darcy: This motherfucker brings notes to me now. We're in rehearsals right now for our new tour and he showed up day one with five pages of jokes. I'm reading them, and I'm going, like, "These are actually good jokes. Where has this been?"
Jer: Literally anybody can do this.
I started in improv and sketch comedy in New York City in 2006, so when you were talking about doing stand-up in 2007 in the doc — I was like, "Oh, I remember those straight spaces." There's a story in the doc about how scary that was. I have to imagine this experience is night and day from that.
Darcy: It’s literally the wildest juxtaposition to what we cover in the doc. I quit stand-up in 2018 and then went and became famous around the world, and then went back to the stage. One of my best friends is a Scottish comedian named Daniel Sloss, and he was the one that really helped guide me for the new world. He said, "Mate, this is different. You used to have to go in and set the table and chairs up, put the table cloth on, put the cutlery down, and serve the meal to them slowly. You're walking out and everything's set. They're all caught up. They already know, so just go out and celebrate it." That conversation really changed everything for me, where I was like, "He's right. Let's just go out and fucking give them what they want, which is the two of us together being idiots."
Jer: And I'm spoiled because I never had to go through setting the table.
Darcy: He's not even picking up the bill anymore.
Who's responsible for the looks on stage?
Darcy: I wanted to go for gay farmer. I'm obsessed with the people that make my — we call them overalls in North America. And so I reached out to them, and I was like, "Can you get me some black, pinstripe overalls as if it was a suit?" And then obviously we were deeply influenced by Ross Mathews on Drag Race. So we reached out to the designer of his stuff, and we were like, "Hey, would you be interested ... ?" And they were so great. They did these bomber jackets for Jer. There's a couple on the tour that Ross was wearing. Like, we'd be in the hotel watching Drag Race and be like, "Oh, fuck — Ross is wearing the same jacket as you this week!" I love picking out of the outfits. It was one of the most fun parts for me.
Jer, is there anything you miss about your day job?
Jer: Oh no, I don't miss that at all. It was eye opening to see how little in a day Darcy had to do when I first left work. But now Darcy's working the full-time job and I get to play video games.
Darcy: Yeah, we definitely switched roles there. But I do miss the 60 to 70 hours a week I had alone with the dog while he was working. I don't miss seeing you put on a suit every day. It was so heartbreaking. Every morning watching him put a tie on, like the little rope around your neck. Off you go.
The special really does show the evolution of what a stand-up show is. So much of it is that dialogue with the audience, which comes from y'alls social media background. Jer started in this TikTok era, and Darcy, you have 20 years of traditional stand-up experience. How did you balance the personal, honest stuff with the structured joke kind of comedy?
Darcy: We're doing it all again right now with the new show.
Jer: Not that we play a character, but we do.
Darcy: It's an elevated version of us.
Jer: Yeah, so it's like getting back into that "I'm the corporate stooge".
Darcy: You still very much are the corporate stooge, though, when it comes to the rules and regulations of me living. You've still got your opinions. One of the things we always say to everybody when we're planning things is, "How are we serving the fan base?" So when it came down to designing merch, I just went online and I went, "Hey, a lot of us are neurodivergent. I have things that I don't like when it comes to clothing. What don't you like?" And we made a list of fabrics —
Jer: And there's no tags.
Darcy: — and making sure that there weren't loud patterns or patterns that would visually hurt people. We made sure that none of the venues had strobe lights. We made sure that it was low lighting in the lobby and there was not a lot of overhead lighting in the theaters, because we wanted to make sure that we were respecting the fans. But then when it came to the show, I don't necessarily want to sing "Busy Donkey" anymore, but they want to hear it and they're the reason we're fucking living in the house we're living in, and they're the reason we're traveling the way we are.
Jer: So a musician, they're not going to go to play a concert and not do their hits.
Yeah, "Busy Donkey" is your "You Oughta Know," right?
Darcy: Oh, things that I never thought I would hear somebody say!
The first time you turned on the lights and asked everyone who had ADHD or was neurodivergent to stand up — what was that moment like?
Darcy: That was overwhelming. I joked that the tears hit my glasses, they flew out of my eyes so hard. It was in our Vancouver show and I'm sure there's footage of it somewhere. Eighty percent of the audience stood up — and I was expecting twenty percent. I was expecting to pick on a few people, and then they just all fucking stood up. And I realized the ones that are standing represent me, and the ones that are sitting represent Jer. And holy fuck, it's family. These are our people. I did a video a couple months ago. I never felt like I belonged anywhere; I'm a fat, hairy, gay man, so I never belonged in the gay community. I'm ADHD, so I never belonged in the education community. I'm a gay comedian. I never belonged in comedy. And then all of a sudden, we're in these theaters with 1,000 people every night, and I go, "Oh, we we found it. We found our people." You can be weird and still find your folks.
Jer: Because we have a large neurodiverse audience, if someone has to stand up or move around, we don't call them out on the show. Old Darcy, oh god, would have ripped them to shreds over going to the washroom.
Darcy: Yeah, I really would have. So we're very protective of our fans, even in public. Like, if someone gets really excited to see us and they're causing a bit of a scene and stuff, I make sure our friends and our family never talk badly to our fans — because they're the reason we're buying you dinner tonight, Mother.
When I've talked to Nina West in the past, she's always talked about how there's needs to be more queer entertainment that is family friendly. Now, your show is not family friendly — y'all curse, there are dick jokes, etc. But y'all are a queer family. You talked about how there is an underserved market for gay dads, gay moms, queer families. They aren't going to sit down and watch Interview with the Vampire together.
Darcy: Here's the thing too: I always kind of get irked at the term "family friendly," because there are religious undertones that have created that. I grew up with a really open family where our version of "family friendly" is, like, you watch Die Hard and then Home Alone and let's watch Letterman, or let's watch George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV." One of the things we really struggled with is, do we make this show clean? And I was like, "Absolutely not." There are families that will watch this together, and those are our people. And I think Nina obviously is in a different boat because of her work with Disney and her musical theater stuff. She's got a different brand than us, whereas we're kind of skirting the line. This new show — it's raunch.
Jer: It's like, we set them up and we're doing a little bait and switch.
Darcy: Yeah, but I think it's important for people to know how queer people have existed with chosen families for a long time, that our definition of family friendly is just being open.
Jer: We get comments all the time, "Is it safe to bring my teenage kid?" Or sometimes even kids under 10. And we're like, 'That's on you. I don't know what your dynamic is and what conversations you've already had with your children. So that's a choice for you." Our show is all ages.
Darcy: Yeah, we had a couple of 13-year-old trans kids that came through the meet and greet, and kids that were newly queer and out and stuff. And we say to everybody, welcome home. Like, once those theater doors close, you're in our living room.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Darcy & Jer: No Refunds and Happily Ever Laughter: The Darcy and Jer Story will premiere globally via WOW Presents Plus on Feb. 4.
