FEBRUARY 26, 2026

By Kathryn VanArendonk

“I access this madwoman part of me that can be really helpful. We were never allowed to show anger or anything as children, and showing off was not acceptable. You can do anything onstage, and it’s not seen as vain. That’s the job.” Photo: Andrew Max Levy

Comedian Chris Fleming arrives at my hotel in an absurdly tiny seafoam-green car, an object that looks more like a gag gift than a street-legal vehicle. The car is a Nissan Figaro, an obscure 1950s-styled convertible with chrome detailing, tiny round headlights, and a right-side steering wheel. Fleming is six-foot-two, and when he sits in the driver’s seat, his knees fold up nearly to his chest. The top of his voluminous curly hair sticks over the top of the Figaro’s roof frame. He looks like he’s driven straight off the pages of Richard Scarry’s Busytown and onto the streets of Pasadena; he is Lowly Worm bopping around town in an apple.

In podcasts, internet-comment sections, the replies to his viral Instagram videos, and stories from his friends and colleagues, Fleming is described as a Muppet, a fairy, a prophet, a cartoon. I ask Conan O’Brien, who produced Fleming’s new HBO comedy special, Live at the Palace, how he’d describe Fleming to someone who’s never watched him perform before. “I would say somehow a six-foot dandelion stumbled on some cocaine and tore itself out of the earth,” he says. Minutes later, O’Brien is still attempting to describe Fleming, and he eventually lands on the image of “the goop that’s inside a lava lamp.”

“As she quoted the line to me, I thought, My goodness, that’s Jennifer Lawrence,” remembers the Pride & Prejudice star.

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