Chris Gethard is a testament to the potential of new media. At 2:30 in the morning on Christmas Eve of 2009, the actor and comedian made an amateur YouTube video, pleading with rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs to make an appearance at “The Chris Gethard Show,” a live variety night at the 170-seat UCB Theatre in New York.
“I wanna live in a world where something like that is possible,” he said on the video. And last month, Diddy did the show.
“We spent 13 months trying to get Diddy to do the show,” said Gethard, just a few days after Combs’ appearance. “He said he would do it after only the first month of tweeting, and then it took well over a year after that for him to actually appear. … So it had become this sort of monumental thing in my life, so when it was actually happening it was this insane adrenaline rush.”
Gethard has had ups and downs in his profession, including a stint on Comedy Central. At one point during Diddy’s guest spot, Gethard asked him about how to make it in show business.
“He was so charismatic and so cool,” said Gethard, “and it just made you realize, ‘Oh, this is why this guy has had so much success. … He knows how to just step up to the plate and deliver.’”
Diddy’s advice seems to have given him a renewed belief that you can make anything happen if you believe in yourself and use the technical tools we have at our fingertips.
“That’s one of the things that the Internet has come to represent more and more for me,”?said Gethard. “I think it expands what the world is and what the world can be.”
