On Rejection: Jay Light

When cheese-themed reality doesn't work out

Hi everyone,

I have a special interview to share this week—Jay and I have known each other since middle school and I’ve had the pleasure of attending several of his standup shows over the years. He’s a great comic and a genuinely nice person. If you’re in the LA area, go to the next WRONG!—it’s hilarious. And if you like this interview, check out the time I was a guest on his podcast, Blockbusting!

If you’re just discovering Collected Rejections, welcome! In this world, writing is still fun, rejection is not a bad word, and we’re all here to grow as writers. If you’re into that, subscribe to this newsletter here:

Hi Jay! Tell us about a time you experienced rejection.

This is a very tough question to boil down because of my background as a comedian and writer. The act of doing comedy means constant rejection. Sometimes it’s big, sometimes it’s small, but another rejection is always around the corner!

My most recent major rejection happened in stages. After the most recent season of MasterChef wrapped in March, I interviewed for a writing job on a cheese-themed travel show (ah, the sublime, trashy beauty of reality TV work…). The showrunner and I hit it off, and I was told I’d be brought on at the end of April.  I chat with the exec in charge about start dates and pay rates and am told I’ll hear back more details shortly. Then, radio silence.

A few weeks go by and the showrunner tells me there are financing issues, but they hope to stay on schedule. A few weeks later, as my original start date approaches, the showrunner gets in touch again and says that production is being pushed 5 weeks. Fine by me, I’ve got a two-week trip to Italy planned, now I can focus on having a great time abroad with my fiancée without keeping a running list of cheese jokes in the back of my mind. Even as strike news floods my various internet feeds, I have a sliver of job security dangling over my head. Reality shows are non-union, which means that, if the money comes in, I’ll be slinging dairy puns in Wisconsin before the summer solstice.

Then, just as the five weeks is about to elapse, the showrunner gives me one last, fateful update: the financing is still “coming through” (quotes his) but he has no official timeline. Effective immediately, he’s looking for other work. He apologizes that things fell through and wishes me well. I do the same.

How are you getting over it?

This is a tricky one. Being told “sorry, you don’t actually have this job” is a strange flavor of rejection. It’s like how a lie by omission is still technically a lie, even though you’d never have found out it was a lie after all if you didn’t learn the missing information.

Just like the last time I dealt with this kind of rejection, I am doing my best to do two things:

- not shoot the messenger

- not take it personally

It is easier to do the second thing than the first thing, especially because being told “you don’t have the job” directly affects my income. Thankfully, I’ve got something steady lined up for October, but I still have to hunker down until then and really do my best to live within my means. That’s tough to do as a comedian in LA, where I will often drive over an hour round-trip to do shows that give me $20 or a drink ticket at best, or a hot handful of nothing at worst.

Thankfully, I am no stranger to living in precarity. It means eating more oatmeal, pasta, and peanut butter sandwiches. It means going to 12-step meetings and sharing about my financial insecurity. It means praying and meditating and writing and making phone calls. It’s nothing I can’t handle.

If you could go back and tell yourself anything right before that experience, what would you say? 

If I could go back to before I even interviewed for the job I never got, I’d tell myself to remember that the job might not come through after all; prepare accordingly. 

A saying I hear a lot in 12-step meeting rooms is “act as if.” This is usually directed at antsy newcomers who wrestle with the whole God/higher power thing, but can apply to anyone in the room who’s having trouble working whatever phase of the program they happen to be stuck within. It’s a gentle form of tricking yourself into feeling better, not unlike saying positive affirmations or trying breathing techniques you learned on TikTok.

I’ve been able to scrape together shows to keep me afloat until the next big gig starts, and I’ve got auditions on deck that might pay off big-time. But if I’d acted as if I wasn’t securely employed – because, in reality, I wasn’t – then maybe I wouldn’t have had to scramble to keep my calendar (and bank account) from getting too empty.

You've done a lot of cool comedy work, like stand-up and writing for MasterChef USA. How do you approach writing for someone else versus writing for your sets? 

This is actually one of my favorite parts of my TV work. I love being able to write material for others that I know will have little to no overlap with the kind of material I write for my standup act. 

When you boil it down, I have a similar approach to both kinds of writing: do research, write, revise. The biggest difference is that I know my own voice, but I have to figure out someone else’s voice. So a lot of the research for TV work involves watching other examples of work by the people I’m writing for. For instance, when I’m working on MasterChef, I watch old episodes of the show, but I also spend a lot of time watching some of Gordon Ramsay’s other shows to keep him top of mind. It certainly helps that Kitchen Nightmares has a very active YouTube channel.

The process also differs in the revision process. Revising host copy for a show means reading it down with other producers, the showrunner, and the talent, making changes along the way. Revising my standup means listening back to old sets, taking notes, and thinking about not just what words I’m saying, but how I’m saying them. Is the premise clear enough? Is the funniest word the last part of the punchline? Is everything flowing nicely?

Also: for my standup act, the end goal is to be funny. For TV shows, the end goal is to be informative. Sure, I squeeze in jokes wherever I can, but, first and foremost, I have to serve the format. I write a ton of jokes that wind up on the cutting room floor, and I don’t know they’re gone until I watch the season months later. But at least we all laughed during the read-through!

What are you working on now?

Right now I am honing my new hour of standup, working on growing my live comedy “game show” WRONG!, and writing about comedy, recovery, and where they overlap on my Substack, Captain’s Log.

And learning some new recipes so I don’t have to keep eating oatmeal, pasta, and peanut butter sandwiches until October.

You can follow Jay on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and his website.