Daniel Sloss

By the time he was 21 years old, Daniel had recorded his first DVD (2Entertain) and made television appearances including UK’s Sunday Night at the Palladium, BBC’s Stand Up For Sport Relief (with Tyson Fury) Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, Set List, Paul O’Grady Show (Daniel’s TV debut, aged 18), Russell Howard’s Good News as well as had his own BBC show, The Adventures Of Daniel. He also wrote, produced and starred in a six-part internet sitcom M.U.F.F and, in 2012, gave a prestigious TEDx talk on censorship. He has featured on USA UTV’s The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and appeared a record-breaking ten times on Conan.

In August 2008, aged 17, Daniel became one of the youngest-ever finalists in the UK’s premiere comedy competition So You Think You’re Funny?. In 2009, his first solo show, Teenage Kicks, premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe, sold out the entire run, and transferred to London, where he made his debut at the prestigious Soho Theatre, becoming the youngest stand-up to perform solo both at the theatre and in the West End. That September, still just 18, he also made his national television debut as the first stand-up to perform on Channel 4’s Paul O’Grady Show.

In 2010, his new solo Fringe show My Generation was a smash-hit, selling out every performance. His 2011 follow-on, The Joker, sold an astonishing 10,000 tickets, subsequently touring for 50 dates across the UK in a tour produced by Live Nation, after they took him on as their youngest solo comedy client. In 2011, he was also hailed as the Best New Comedian at the Scottish Variety Awards.

In March 2012, he recorded his debut live stand-up DVD, Daniel Sloss—Live!, (at Glasgow’s Kings Theatre) which was released on BBC Worldwide’s 2Entertain in the autumn. His 2012 Fringe show, The Show, was a sold-out smash-hit at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC), again playing to over 10,000 people.

Similarly, 2013’s Stand-Up repeated the Edinburgh success at EICC, and both the 2012 and 2013 shows went on to tour across the UK, with over 50 performance dates each.

In December 2013, after being spotted at the Edinburgh Fringe, Daniel made the first of many appearances on US late-night TV show Conan, as well as guesting on cult TV favourite The Pete Holmes Show.

His 2014 show Really…?! had its world premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe, with another extended run at the EICC due to demand. Daniel subsequently embarked on a major European autumn tour, performing 20 shows across 15 countries, as well as UK theatre dates including two shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Elgar Room. He ended the year filming the Internet sitcom M.U.F.F which he co-created, co-produced and also starred in.

2014 also saw Daniel offered a talent deal with Conan O’Brien’s production company, Conaco and Warner Brothers Studios. Returning to LA in September, Daniel appeared on Comedy Central’s @Midnight, CBS network’s The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and back in the UK on ITV’s Sunday Night at the Palladium.

In August 2015, his eighth solo Fringe hour DARK was hailed by audiences and press alike for its masterful handling of challenging subject matter and again sold over 10,000 tickets. He then embarked on his biggest tour to date, performing DARK for over 80 dates across the UK and throughout 16 countries in Europe.

In January 2016, Daniel extended DARK to a 90-minute version for its season in London at the Soho Theatre before taking it to the USA. He appeared on Conan for a fifth time, performed a run of DARK in LA at the Westside Comedy Theater, and made his solo debut in New York with an off-Broadway season of DARK in the Soho Playhouse, to great acclaim, being featured on the front page of the New York Times Arts section.

DARK transferred to Australia and New Zealand for sold-out seasons (winning the 2016 Sydney Comedy Festival Best of the Fest Award [International]), Perth, Auckland, and, for Daniel’s long-awaited debut at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with extra performances added to the fully sold-out four-week season. He featured on Australian TV galas, including the MICF Oxfam Gala, NZ Comedy Fest’s Best Bits gala and on Sydney Comedy Festival’s Cracker Night.

After a brief trip to the US for seasons in San Francisco and Madison, and making a record-breaking sixth appearance on Conan, Daniel returned to the UK in order to appear at the Glastonbury and Latitude Festivals, before returning to Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival for TV galas and to perform a season of DARK prior to the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe, where he unveiled his next new show Daniel Sloss—So?.

The August 2016 world premiere of Daniel Sloss—So? at the Edinburgh Fringe was another massive hit and received universal press acclaim. Daniel toured So? extensively (over 120 dates) throughout the UK and Europe in the autumn of 2016, finishing up with a week-long pre-Christmas season at London’s Soho Theatre.

January 2017 saw Daniel make his seventh appearance on Conan, followed by a second off-Broadway season at the Soho Playhouse with Daniel Sloss—So?, with additiobnal late-night sets at the Comedy Cellar and Gotham comedy clubs. This was followed by a three-month tour of Australia and New Zealand, where his universally sold-out festival seasons and TV appearances received rave reviews and culminated in Daniel Sloss—So? being filmed for release before a packed house at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre.

Returning to the UK, he featured on Comedy Central’s Drunk History re-telling the story of William Wallace (hilariously portrayed by Keith Allen), and on Dave Channel’s competitive gaming show, Dara O’Briain’s Go 8 Bit. He appeared at Glastonbury and his hilariously no-holds-barred performance on Comedy Central’s Roast Battle, pitted against comedian Desiree Birch, was the most watched episode of the show’s inaugural season.

Daniel Sloss—NOW premiered at 2017’s Edinburgh Fringe (EICC), marking his tenth appearance at the world’s biggest arts festival. This was followed by his biggest tour to date, with over 150 shows spanning the UK and stretching across 25 European countries, followed by three months touring America, as well as all around Australia. He also made his solo debut at the New York Comedy Festival, a guest of Conaco, with an exclusive performance of NOW.

In February 2018, Daniel taped DARK in Los Angeles at the Belasco Theater. Part of a two-specials deal with Netflix; it was announced in May that DARK, along with sequel show So? (now retitled Jigsaw) was to stream worldwide on the platform in the summer of 2018.

2018 also saw Daniel performing his eighth set on Conan, opening for Dave Chappelle’s shows in San Francisco, as well as performing solo at the city’s Sketchfest Comedy Festival, touring NOW to Cleveland, Madison, Denver and more. He returned to New York for a second season of DARK, again at the Soho Playhouse, prior to its being filmed.

From April to June, Daniel toured NOW across Australia and, upon his return to the UK, battled comedian Phil Wang in Comedy Central’s Roast Battle Series 2, the first-ever comedians to make a return appearance.

In August 2018, Daniel premiered his tenth solo full-length show, Daniel Sloss: X. This was his 11th season at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but this time the venue expanded its capacity to 1200 and he did the sold-out run to great press and audience acclaim, whilst tackling his most challenging material to date.

On 11th September 2018, his 28th birthday, Netflix released both two-hour-long specials, Daniel Sloss: Live Shows (DARK and Jigsaw) in 190 countries and in 26 languages.

The specials each received critical acclaim and the subsequent “Jigsaw-effect” has sparked debate across the globe, becoming something of a cultural phenomenon, with a rising tally of breakups citing the show. In 2022, it stood at over half-a-million breakups and more than 1000 divorces world-wide.

The 2018 live tour of Daniel Sloss: X sold out and, with the release of the Neflix shows, extended throughout all of 2019, becoming a global juggernaut that spanned 300 performances across 40 countries, including shows at the London Palladium, Japan, Hong Kong (during the riots), Singapore, and even playing a 3,500 seat arena in Moscow (Russia’s biggest ever English-language comedy show that was also simultaneously translated over headsets). In August he brought the show back to where it all began with three encore shows to packed houses in Edinburgh’s 3,200 seat Playhouse Theatre.

2019 also saw Daniel make a guest appearance on the Ricky Gervais is Deadly Sirius Podcast, made a return appearance on Bert Kreisher’s Bertcast podcast, curated a season of films at Edinburgh’s prestigious Filmhouse, the home of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and in something that, in his wildest dreams, he never thought would happen, was turned into an official Marvel superhero by their graphic artists.

He performed two separate (and sold out) off-Broadway encore seasons of Daniel Sloss: X (February, three weeks performing two shows a day) and of Daniel Sloss: NOW (June, two weeks). These were in fact warm-ups for Daniel to get ready to tape two new comedy specials. X was filmed in Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on 27th April, premiering on HBO in the USA and Canada on 2nd November, to great acclaim and subsequently making history with its UK release, becoming the first comedy special to make its national debut on the big screen, at Vue cinemas across the country in February 2020.

The taping of NOW was co-produced by MZA and Live Nation Productions, the latter’s first non-music production since the multi award-winning A Star Is Born. Retitled SOCIO for release, the second show at the Austin taping of SOCIO at the Paramount Theatre featured an extraordinary interaction with a far-right heckler in an electrifying and hilarious live comedy experience that was all caught on camera.

In 2019, Daniel was offered a major book deal with prestigious Penguin Random House imprint Knopf. Originally due to be published in the autumn of 2020, the book’s release was delayed as a result of the global pandemic and Everyone You Hate is Going to Die was simultaneously published by Knopf in the USA and Canada, and in UK and Australasia by William Heinemann, on 12th October 2021.

2020 started with great promise with the premiere of his 12th new show (and 11th tour)—Daniel Sloss: HUBRIS, which ran for a month in Daniel’s regular New York off-Broadway theatre the Solo Playhouse, followed by a week-long season in Los Angeles. Phillip DeFranco, the YouTuber with over one billion views to his name, invited Daniel to be a guest on his A Conversation With… podcast, which was released in March.

Then, just as the Australian tour was about to start, the global pandemic hit and shut down the world’s live entertainment industry. The UK went into a four-month total lockdown, during which Daniel took part in the first Saturday Night Live at the Stand, a live-streamed weekly comedy show based at the (empty) Edinburgh Comedy Club, which ran for most of 2020, and also the USA’s comedy marathon livestream Comedy Gives Back fundraiser (alongside Hannibal Buress, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Jimmy Fallon, Gilbert Gottfried, Ken Jeong, Bert Kreischer, Howie Mandel, Patton Oswalt, Ray Romano, Bob Saget, Adam Sandler and more…)

On the first weekend in July, at the opening weekend of the UK’s first legal outdoor venue since Covid-19 hit, Daniel became the world’s first stand-up comedian to tour again, initially performing three full-length shows at the Drive-In Club in London’s Brent Cross. 600 people a night, safely bubbled in their cars, had the show broadcast via their radios honking and flashing their appreciation of what were Daniel’s only drive in shows but which led the way for other sites to open across the country.

August 2020 saw the unimaginable happen, with none of the annual festivals in Edinburgh able to take place for the first time since the inception of the International and the Fringe in 1947.

Thanks to the resilience and imagination and of course extraordinary skills of people working in both the arts as well as the television industries, Daniel was invited to take part in some extraordinary mid-pandemic programming—the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s innovative four-episode weekly Fringe on Friday streamed shows, as well as The Edinburgh International Festival’s My Light Shines On special programme. BBC’s Edinburgh Nights filmed a special show covering all the Covid-cancelled August festivals, and Daniel was interviewed as an alumnus of the Edinburgh Fringe.

All through September, October and into November 2020, right up until the UK locked down again, Daniel Sloss: HUBRIS toured the UK nonstop, playing indoor venues, including comedy clubs, theatres and music venues (and indeed reopening many of them) with socially distanced audiences and with COVID-secure protocols in place. In some cities, he did as many as six performances, as dates sold out as fast as they could be added, and he ended the run with two performances at The London Palladium, who were able to accommodate over 1000 people with their strict COVID-19 protocols and having been the government pilot shows, which enabled them to become the first indoor venue to re-open in the country. The audiences wore masks, and safely being with so many other people all laughing together at a live show reduced many to tears at the end, as the first “normal” shared entertainment experience since March. The Palladium shows were followed by another five London shows at The Clapham Grand, with the last performance becoming the last live event anywhere in the UK before the third major lockdown came into effect on 5th November.

Early December also saw Daniel perform two shows in Inverness on the first weekend that indoor comedy shows were permitted in Scotland (however still only in the Highlands) since March. These were his last live events of the year and he subsequently increased his presence on Twitch, regularly playing online games and chatting with fans.

On 15 January 2021 Daniel made his first appearance on BBC’s The Graham Norton Show, guesting alongside Rebel Wilson, Keeley Hawes, M. Night Shyamalan, Noel Clarke and more, and, because of the COVID-19 need for a virtual audience, getting to sit in the red chair as celebrity stand-in for the members of the public that Graham chatted to. The hilarious book cover for Everyone You Hate Is Going To Die was revealed on the show, and Daniel shared stories of touring in places like Russia—and drive-in car parks. Daniel also recorded his second A Conversation With podcast with Philip DeFranco.

With no UK live shows being permitted without first quarantining, in April 2021, Daniel spent two weeks in a Sydney hotel and began his rescheduled Australian tour with an incredible 14-show run at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall. He performed across the country, safely and legally, and, for many people, this was the first time they had returned to live entertainment in over a year. As local and global lockdowns came and went, Daniel Sloss: HUBRIS was one of the only tours happening in the world due the extraordinary challenges required in order to comply with ever-changing border and COVID protocols. He safely managed to perform a season at the Edinburgh Fringe in the 1000-seat Edinburgh Corn Exchange, allowing the room to be 50% socially distanced and 50% “normal” even after the restrictions had lifted so the audience could choose how they wanted to be seated. His was the only international show to tour the USA and, in September 2021, Pollstar named him both the 5th biggest global event (after several outdoor music festivals) and biggest solo tour in the world for 2021.

HUBRIS toured globally through to summer of 2022, and was filmed for release by the Glasgow SEC in December.

In August 2022, Daniel stepped on stage with some notes and an idea and performed a four-week run of a Work-in-Progress show that eventually turned into the current tour Daniel Sloss: CAN’T. A show about parenthood and empathy, Daniel Sloss: CAN’T is currently on a three-year tour around the globe, including new territories such as India (where his shows in 2000-capacity venues sold out in minutes).

Daniel’s comedy specials can be seen on Netflix, HBO and on DanielSloss.com.

His online stand-up clips have garnered well over 100 million views.