LOS ANGELES — Comedian and actor Kevin Nealon is known for his roles in “Happy Gilmore,” “Weeds,” and of course, “Saturday Night Live.” Now, Nealon is working on a digital series, taking his famous friends hiking on LA trails. Kevin Nealon joined Lisa McRee on “LA Times Today” to talk about “Hiking with Kevin.”
The series began organically, when Nealon was on a hike with his friend, Matthew Modine, and shared a video of their conversation on Twitter. Since then, he’s hiked with several celebrity friends.
“I remember hiking with Caitlyn Jenner once. And my favorite question was, ‘Caitlyn, if you could change one thing about yourself, what would you change?’ I think with Julian Lennon about a month ago and I asked him who his favorite Beatle was. I’ve done over 100 hikes and I’m exhausted. But I love doing it. I have Paul Rudd for our season opener on Oct. 27 this coming week,” Nealon said.
In addition to “Hiking with Kevin,” Nealon has a book coming out that showcases the paintings he’s done in the last few years.
“It was a great escape for me because I developed claustrophobia when I was on SNL. And living in New York is not the best place for claustrophobia; you’re going through tunnels to get out. I found that once I take out a sketch pad and I start sketching, the rest of the world disappears from me. It is the best escape. I mean, I’ll miss meals, I’ll miss phone calls, appointments,” he shared.
Nealon still tours with his stand-up comedy act. He talked about why it is important for him to tour and how drawing helped him through the pandemic when he couldn’t be on stage.
“Standup is a commitment I made a long time ago. It was my passion, and it’s still my passion. Even during SNL or ‘Weeds,’ during the hiatus or during off weeks, I would go out to the clubs and do it. Sometimes after rehearsals, I’d run down to the Comedy Cellar, the Comic Strip... When we had the pandemic, that was torture because that was the longest I’d ever gone without doing standup. So, these caricatures really helped me because they were like nonverbal comedy,” Nealon said.
New episodes of “Hiking with Kevin” drop Thursdays on YouTube.
Click the arrow above to watch the full interview.
Watch “LA Times Today” at 7 and 10 p.m. Monday through Friday on Spectrum News 1 and the Spectrum News app.