In 2022, the running joke became real when he released the Showtime special. Now the show he wrote in which he joked about a tradition has become a tradition in itself. “It was kind of a joke,” he said, “I do a little bit where I’m the Christmas prince, like Mariah (Carey) is the queen of Christmas. And then suddenly people enjoyed it so much that I got the opportunity to do it as a Showtime special. And then the album actually came out in 2023. So I ended up playing a joke on myself.
The title track “Have you heard of Christmas?” goes back to the original stage show, and finds a wannabe pop idol only dimly aware of actual holiday traditions singing an R&B torch song about how Jesus and Santa went to college together in Bethlehem. “Have you heard of Christmas?” he sings, “It was when Moses made the lake/Have you heard of Christmas?/It was the night they made St. Nick a saint.” “Also It’s Christmas” is a club thumper that just happens to take place on Christmas. And “Every Christmas Eve” imagines Mrs. Claus finally becoming suspicious of where Santa really goes one night a year.
Rogers and his then-partner Henry Koperski wrote the title song and “Also It’s Christmas” in their East Harlem apartment on the first day of preparing for the show. “Which puts me in the company of Dolly Parton when she wrote ‘Jolene’ and ‘I Will Always Love You’ on the same day,” he said. “I mean, I hate to compare myself to yet another icon, but the hits keep coming.”
The show is as much a satire of pop musicians trying to use Christmas to boost their profiles as it is a parody of the song styles. “I was exploring this pop star character,” Rogers said, “this version of myself that was enough of a narcissist, an egomaniac, to assume he could fit into the canon of Christmas without really knowing what the hell any of this was or why we have it.”
There are new songs in the mix on the current tour, and Rogers wants to keep building and changing the show. But he’s also aware of having a special one and one album has meant his audience now has favourites, and they want to sing along. “You get to introduce your own canon of songs that are little classics, if you choose to think they’re classics,” he said. “And the people who come to my shows have chosen to believe that some of these are classics, and I love them for that.”
There’s more to Rogers than Christmas, of course. Since 2016, he has hosted the popular podcast “Las Culturistas” with his best friend, Bowen Yang of “Saturday Night Live.” Someone recently brought up how great it was to have kept a journal they could look back on. For Rogers, that’s partly what the podcast has been—a record of who he was in his mid-20s to mid-30s. “I’m so grateful for that,” he said. “I still have so much fun doing it and it’s probably been the best decision I’ve ever made in my life, deciding that me and my best friend would record our playdates once a week.”
Friends since their college days at NYU, Rogers and Yang had no idea how long “Las Culturistas” would last when it launched. “I’m thinking about us starting in an apartment on the Mercer with our producer’s mattress in the wall to keep out the noise from New York City outside, and I’m thinking about last week when we recorded in person with Ariana Grande at iHeart studios during the release of ” Wicked,’ which my co-host is in,” Rogers said.
Now Rogers and Yang are both established artists, and “Las Culturistas” regularly features celebrities, including Rachel Bloom, Charli XCXand yes, even the Queen of Christmas herself, Mariah Carey. But for Rogers, it still feels like spending time with a friend. “We started out as people trying to make careers happen, and now we have careers,” he said. “I feel really proud of how we’ve navigated everything, and that if you listen to the first episode and you listen to the last episode, it’s the same people. You know what I’m saying? It’s like we’re having fun in the same way. The Spirit is the same.”
Rogers has also landed featured acting roles. He has a role in “No good deed,” the outstanding new dark comedy mystery on Netflix premiering December 12th. He is part of an impressive cast with a top line of Ray Romano, Lisa Kudrow, Denis Leary, Luke Wilson, Abbi Jacobson and Linda Cardellini. Romano and Kudrow play a couple trying to sell a house with dark secrets, and Rogers is their realtor. Rogers said the guy is a real shark, like many real estate agents – nice with buyers but hard-nosed behind closed doors.
Rogers pointed out that he tends to play a lot of characters who have to switch codes, a dynamic he’s all too familiar with. “(It’s) a little bit like growing up and being dressed up, playing the role of a high school jock, or I was prom,” he said. “I really had to look like a way to survive. And then, on the other hand, I just wanted to sing in the swing choir. Then I became like one of the gay people in podcasting.”
Roger’s career is expanding in all directions, and he feels that the “portal is open” at the moment, and he is at a creative peak. But Prince of Christmas will always be part of his job title. And if he ends up in Vegas at 70 singing “Also It’s Christmas?”
“Oh my God, kill!” he said. “In every sense of the word. If I get a Vegas residency, babe, I’m not worried. I’m not upset. Catch me at the buffet.”
MATT ROGERS: The Prince of Christmas Tour
Dec. 15, 7 p.m., The Wilbur, $45, thewilbur.com
Nick A. Zaino III can be reached at nick@nickzaino.com.
