3 members of the Tall Boyz (Franco Nguyen, Tim Blair and Guled Abdi), a Canadian sketch comedy group, with their own show on CBC Gem, have been working in comedy for a while. The group’s name is pretty straightforward, as all of them are pretty tall. “We told one of our friends that we were forming a sketch comedy group and she said instantly TallBoyz” Tim said.
In terms of how individual members of the group got started in comedy, Tim says that both he and Vance started out by attending Humber college’s comedy writing program. Guled says he started comedy on a bit more of a whim. “A friend asked me what would I do if money weren’t an obstacle and I said comedy and then I started going to open mics,” Guled said.
Franco said that he also started out more “naturally” and eventually joined an Asian sketch group in 2009 and then started doing stand-up in 2012 and that’s where they met.
One thing that the TallBoyz do really well is tackling more heavy topics like race and racism in a funny and more easily digestible way. When asked if they get backlash for some of their sketches, Franco says that they don’t but that he does look back at some sketches and thinks that it could’ve been done in a more nuanced way.
When ask what their favourite part of doing the show is, they say that it’s being able to hang out with the other members all the time and getting to see their work come to life.
