Below Deck chef Rachel Hargrove is testing the waters for a potential new career as a stand-up comedian!
The 41-year-old yachtie made her official stand-up debut at the Improv Comedy Club in West Palm Beach, Florida on Tuesday night. She was part of a graduating group of aspiring comedians taking classes with “The Comic Whisperer,” Ramon Garcia.
Rachel followed the West Palm performance with another stand-up appearance as part of the Dania Beach Improv’s “New Faces of Comedy” show earlier tonight!
Rachel’s potential new career trajectory is no surprise to her social media followers as she’s been posting about the experience for weeks. On May 11, she appeared on A Cat Named Mo Show on Florida talk radio station 102.5 The Bone. She opened up about how she got started with stand up, and where she sees it going.
Show host Maurice Jovan outed himself as a huge Below Deck fan, and a huge chef Rachel fan. He laughed as he recalled for Rachel that he was watching her on Below Deck and he told his wife at the time: “This girl is going after her own show.”
Later, the interview shifted to Rachel, the comedienne. “You’re moving into stand-up now, correct?”
“Yeah!” Rachel responded. “It was an accident, believe it or not.”
The host asked Rachel to explain how testing the waters as a stand-up comedy was an accident.
Rachel said she and her “dysfunctional family” of crew mates had come into port and were looking for something to do. One of the proposed ideas was a night at the West Palm Improv. Rachel had been surfing The Improv’s website looking for potential shows, but had left to cook.
It was the boat’s engineer that later screamed at her to come look at something. That something was The Improv website and the fact that the club was offering comedy classes every Monday night.
“So I was, like, ‘Oooo! Something for me to do, like every Monday night. And then, before I knew it, I was, like, ‘I love this! This is so much fun!'” (Anybody else getting Barry vibes? Sans the murder-for-hire aspect.)
Rachel praised the group she was taking the classes with. (That’s the class in the photo above — you can see Rachel in the back on the right.) She also praised her teacher/mentor, who was impressed with the amount of raw material Rachel had.
“I started running with it, and worked on my timing and delivery,” Rachel revealed, “and everyone’s, like, ‘Hey, you need to keep this up.'”
Rachel announced that she was going to be doing her first real stand-up comedy set on May 16, and the A Cat Named Mo Show hosts were a bit blown away.
“Have you done open mics and workshopped this?” Maurice asked. “Or have you only workshopped it in class?”
“I’ve done workshops in class,” Rachel said, “but then I’ve also done open mic nights.” She then clarified that she is not headlining, or anything close to that at this point. However, the large amount of raw material she previously mentioned was helping her to expand her set quickly!
“We were looking at five minutes initially, then seven minutes — it just kept running over,” she said about the length of her sets. “It was awesome.”
Does Rachel Hargrove Plan To Be a Comedian Full Time?
Maurice asked Rachel if she thought stand up comedy was something that she intended to pursue seriously, with the hopes of someday going on the road. “Or is it something that you enjoy doing and it gives you some respite from cooking?”
“You know, I absolutely love it!” Rachel replied. “It’s been such a blast the whole time. There’s a whole, like, culture with comedians…It’s amazing! I have this total fascination about it. So now I’m intrigued. I want to see where it goes. But…I just look at it as I love something to do, and it’s just an outlet for me to explore and take joy from. Whatever happens happens.”
So, I guess we will all have to stay tuned and… Watch what happens!
Video of Rachel Hargrove Doing Stand-Up Comedy
For those of you upset that you don’t live in Florida and won’t be able to see chef Rachel Hargrove doing stand-up comedy, don’t worry! Rachel posted a video of her performance Wednesday night to TikTok!
Rachel’s set is roughly nine minutes long, and it is ALL about Below Deck and yachting! She also mentions that she is working on a book, which I assume is true.
Here’s the video:
@chefrachelhargrove
Congratulations Rachel! It’s too bad that she and Bravo have parted ways because it would have been great seeing charter guest preference sheets requesting a chef comedy set.
Asa Hawks is a writer and editor for Starcasm. You can contact Asa via Twitter, Facebook, or email at starcasmtips(at)yahoo.com
