4 Things to Know about Nate Bargatze’s Life, Faith and Career

In the days of black-and-white television, comedy was consistently family-friendly, with shows like I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show dominating not only the ratings but also the hearts and minds of Americans. 

But as Hollywood relaxed its content standards and the counterculture movement swept across the nation, popular comedy shifted into an R-rated mix of crude jokes, f-bombs, and shock value. These days, parents often dive for the remote when a comedian appears on the screen.

Bargatze, though, is a refreshing return to the past. His comedy routines are free of coarse language and blushing innuendo. It's a dry, self-deprecating type of humor that leans into common, everyday experiences -- air travel, awkward conversations and family quirks.

Americans are loving it, too. He was the top-grossing touring comedian in 2024 as he saw his profile rise with a second appearance on Saturday Night Live and a new special on Netflix. His mega-viral Washington's Dream SNL skit -- essentially, a G-rated spot on SNL -- has amassed 22 million YouTube views. 

"I grew up watching clean comedy. Starting out, I wanted my parents to come watch me. I still think that way, even though I'm a parent now," he told Vulture. "I'm a clean comic, but I don't really want people to notice it. ... A good compliment for me would be, 'I didn't even notice that you were clean.' That's my goal."

Clean comedy, he says, isn't easy.

"Most of the comics I was around were the complete opposite of everything I did," he told The New York Times. "I had to learn how to do what I was doing in those rooms, but I didn't want you to notice that I was clean. It's 1 in the morning, and these people are drunk. How can I do this material that's not sexual or whatever everybody else was doing? You learn how to hide it, because if you walked up and said, 'I'm clean,' it's going to be like, This guy's not cool."

Bargatze's daughter sometimes opens the show, introducing him to the audience.

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Bargatze's journey began in Old Hickory, Tenn. -- a small suburb of Nashville where faith, family, and humor shaped his childhood. The son of a father who made money as a magician and clown, he graduated high school from Donelson Christian Academy before attending Volunteer State Community College and briefly enrolling at Western Kentucky University. He worked a string of jobs, including construction, furniture delivery, meter reading, and selling phones at Walmart. He met his wife when the two worked at Applebee's. 

He launched into comedy in his mid-20s, performing in clubs across the country and giving it a go in New York City and Los Angeles. 

His career took off when he was featured on a Netflix special, The Standups, in 2017. 

Bargatze has incorporated his small-town culture into his comedy. In his 2019 Netflix special The Tennessee Kid, he humorously recounted a visit to a dog bakery in Mount Juliet, a town east of Nashville. In his 2024 special, Your Friend, Nate Bargatze, he shared an anecdote about working as a water meter reader in Mount Juliet after 9/11 when he was asked to guard the town's water towers holding just a lantern.

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In his book Big Dumb Eyes, Bargatze recounts stories from his childhood, including ones involving his family's church. In one story, he, his brother, and their dad accidentally left his sister Abigail at church, only to return and learn she had been wandering through the cemetery. 

Elsewhere in the book, Bargatze opens up about his father's own spiritual journey and how Christian faith brought his dad peace after growing up in an alcoholic, abusive home. (His father, Stephen Bargatze, shared with The Tennessean how he shared Christ with his own mother hours before she died.)  

Nate Bargatze told The New York Times he rejects the faith-based label because his comedy is for families of every culture and background. Still, he said, he doesn't hide from it. 

"I am second -- second to God, second to family," he said, adding he's also second to the audience and "everybody." 

"You kind of live to serve. So it's very much a calling in that aspect that I feel," he said. 

Bargatze wants people of every background to enjoy his shows and doesn't want to be written off as a faith-based comedian -- because, of course, he isn't one. He's just clean. 

"I just want to make something that all of them can be in the room together. And I feel it's driven on a bigger purpose for me," he said.

He embraces the family-friendly label.

"When I started in comedy, some comics would be like, 'Well, I'm not for everybody,' and I was like, 'Well, why would you not want to be for everybody?' I want to be for everybody."

Photo Credit: ©Instagram/Nate Bargatze

Bargatze's future plans involve movies, television series and -- just maybe -- a theme park.

"I don't want to overstay my welcome. I also want to get out of the way," he told The Times. "I need to let the next wave of comedians come up." 

In 2023, Bargatze launched Nateland, a family-friendly entertainment company designed to showcase stand-up specials, movies, television series and more. Its first movie, The Breadwinner, is scheduled for a 2026 release. 

"I don't plan on touring and doing stand-up forever," he told The Times. "I want to make movies. People can think, 'If you get too big, are you going to change?' The audience is very much in mind with everything that I will make. Again, I try not to do it for me. It's for you. I want them to be able to trust that."

His proposed Nateland theme park, he said, would be built in Nashville.

"I want it to be like a Universal Studios kind of thing, where we can be shooting movies on one part and then you have the theme park on the other. I want to build a world where people can be discovered. That's a big point for me. When I came up, a lot of people would not get out of the way. You're coming up, and you can't get spots at that comedy club because the guys that have been there for 15 years are not moving. So I want to have places for new artists."

Much of modern entertainment, he noted, tends to fragment families rather than bring them together. He wants his company to be part of the solution. 

"There's not a lot of stuff you can do with your family," he said. "What I like about when people come to my shows is that it's children to grandparents are at these shows. They're able to go do something as a family. I think a lot of entertainment now is not made for the whole family. Even television or movies can be separating in the fact that I'm watching Narcos and my wife watches Housewives and there's not a show that we're necessarily watching together. And so I do think there's a void in that."

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