Before Marcello Hernández became a household name on Saturday Night Live, he was performing stand-up in places that barely qualified as venues. One of the strangest? A drag club in Ohio called Bounce.
Esquire’s How I Got Here series, where Marcello shares the outrageous, humbling, and downright ridiculous jobs that paved his way to SNL stardom.
We LOVE Marcello. Nothing like an eccentrically cute face and a natural personality to remind us why charisma still matters. He’s not just funny—he’s real, and that’s rare.
“We would do comedy after the drag show,” Marcello recalls. “There’d be a drag show full of people—and then they all leave. And then I go up and do stand-up.” That’s right. The crowd came for the queens, not the jokes. But Marcello still showed up, mic in hand, ready to perform for whoever stuck around. Sometimes that meant no one.
It wasn’t just Bounce. He did sets in coffee shops while people typed away on laptops, and in fast-casual restaurants where customers ordered chicken mid-punchline. “I’m over here doing stand-up while people are like, ‘extra guac,’” he jokes.
This is the grind. The kind that builds resilience, timing, and a thick (booty) skin. And Marcello’s got all three.
If Marcello really does step away from SNL, what do you want to see him do next? More stand-up? A sitcom? Real estate in Miami? Drop your dream Marcello projects in the comments—because if he’s moving on, we’re already front row for whatever comes next.
