Jordan Myrick is a comedian, actor, writer, and content creator who is best known for their food related content. We caught up with them to talk about Gastronauts (now in it’s second season), a geeky food-inspired game show in which comedians challenge top chefs to make some very peculiar dishes. We caught up with Jordan to learn more.
How did Gastronauts come about?
I was brought on when they already had a name and they knew they wanted to do a cooking show. Sam (Reich) had brought it up, k what I thought was jokingly a couple of times; “We got to do a food show. We got to do a food show.” And I was “okay, sure, this is never gonna happen, but that sounds great.” And then one day, I finally just got an email that was like, let’s do a food show! They wanted to bring me on as the host, and then also as a creative producer.
So what does that mean as creative producer? What are the things that you’re responsible for, apart from just presenting the show?
I was in all of the meetings where we talked about creative vision, what the set might look like, what the casting might look like, kind of anything that like you see in that final product. I was in meetings for discussing what was going to happen with that.
We’re pretty familiar with the rotating cast of DropOut’s comedians. How did you select the chefs, because they’re new to the channel.
So what was really important to us is obviously having people who are incredible at cooking, but we also needed people that really enjoyed being on camera, and maybe some people that even fancied themselves as funny or personable. And so we were looking for people that kind of fit that bill, and because of that, we ended up getting a lot of people who had people who had done other television cooking shows, which was great, so they had had experience in the space.
What was the vibe you were going for?
I think two things that were really important to us were keeping the challenges extremely fun and creative, and then also making sure that everything we did was kind of fed through a positive light, a positive energy, because we wanted to watch creative people cooking and doing a good job. Does that mean everything’s perfect? No, but I think it feels good to watch people do something well, rather than watch people do something poorly. And we really wanted to lean into that.
What cooking show do you say this is the least like?
I mean, my impulse is to say Bake Off, because I find Bake Off to be very kind of slow and calm and relaxing. And I don’t know if I would describe the energy of anyone at DropOut as slow or calm or relaxing. So I’d probably have to say that one, yeah,
You’re part of the Upright Citizens Brigade. You have a strong background in improv. Cooking itself can be very precise. Sometimes it’s spur of the moment. Was there a sense that you could get improv comedy and cooking to collide?
Absolutely. I think that’s kind of the basis of the whole show, right? Because it’s these professional chefs that are truly at the top of their game that are having to come into our comedy space and really say yes and to these ridiculous challenges we’re giving them, which it means you end up drinking butter. And that’s not something I thought about going into it, but that is ultimately what happened.
How many calories are in the show?
Simply no way to know, did I feel like I was going to die by the end of it? Yes, but you know, you suffer for your art sometimes.
What was the most delicious moment
I would say one of the most delicious moments is Lily Du, who hosts Dirty Laundry, who also happens to be my best friend in real life for many, many years. She just has absolutely horrible, well, I can’t even call it culinary skill. I don’t know what it is, whatever the absence of culinary skill is, that’s what Lily has. She doesn’t have a particularly refined palette. I was dreading her disgusting challenge, and the food that came out of her challenge ended up being some of the best food that I had the entire season of the show.
Will we see a cookbook?
You know, hadn’t even crossed my mind, but now it’s all I’ll think about until Sam lets me do it. So fingers crossed.
Truth or Beauty?
God, this is so hard, because it’s hard to even know what it means. I I’m like, the truth is beautiful, but sometimes I don’t want the truth. Um, maybe. But I also don’t care about beauty that much. Neither.
You can find out more about Dropout.TV and their shows here. And there’s a link to a sample of the show below. (We’ve updated this article to let you know that you can also join Dropout as Superfan, details are here.)
