‘Kenny vs. Spenny’: Iconic Canadian frenemies prove some things never change | Globalnews.ca
While their show has been off the air for more than a decade, Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice are, for the most part, up to their same old antics.
The stars of the provocative and, at times, wildly offensive Canadian television hit Kenny vs. Spenny admit that while the show hasn’t aged particularly well, they’re still playing the same old schtick — Hotz continues to mercilessly mock and humiliate Rice for laughs, while Rice endures the dressing down for a paycheque.
For those who need a refresher, Kenny vs. Spenny centred around the pair, who were living as roommates in Toronto at the time. They would challenge each other to absurd and ridiculous competitions of the will. Whoever lost was subjected to mean-spirited humiliation as punishment.
Since the series wrapped in 2010, the comedic duo has been travelling off-and-on, bringing their live stage shows to audiences across North America. Now, they’re hitting the road on the East Coast of Canada with a live stand-up comedy special to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show.
Global News sat down with the pair to discuss what fans can expect at a live show, how their comedy has changed over the years, the legacy of Kenny vs. Spenny and why they consider themselves to be “uncancellable.”
(You can watch a video of the interview, above, but here is a snippet of the conversation.)
Global News: What does a live show look like? How does it differ from what you guys did on the show?
Rice: Everyone wants us to compete but that would not work without the bells and whistles of a television production team. But it’s a very personal show, as we’ve known each other forever — our fathers were friends — and (Hotz) knows everything about me, unfortunately, and I know everything about him. And it’s really, fundamentally, just me trying to survive in a very hostile environment.
I don’t like the fans, they don’t like me, they love Kenny — so that’s what I deal with.
Hotz: I kind of disagree with the competitive aspect. I think we’re both instinctually competing to be more loved. Maybe not Spencer, so much, because I totally overpower him and push his buttons, but the show is about you spending a night with us as though we were spending a night together in your basement.
We basically try to do everything in our power to make the audience laugh. I throw Spencer under the bus, I make him angry, the audience laughs and the more the audience laughs, the angrier he gets with them. My job is to make the audience hate Spencer as much as he hates them and once that happens, it escalates into something extremely unique for a live comedy show.
We have a very unique demographic and cult-ish group of fans who grew up with us. When we started comedy in Canada, the comedy was mostly politics based and there wasn’t a lot of comedy outside that.
Rice: We don’t do (former Ontario premier) Dalton McGuinty jokes, is what Kenny’s trying to say.
A lot of people watched the show when I was in a phase of my life where I was trying to do good — trying to save the world, trying to be a good person and use our platform properly.
But when the live show came around, Kenny, quite amazingly with his memory, remembers before the television show, when I wasn’t such a good guy — I was actually a terrible person. So, he uses those stories to rile me up, so the audience gets to see a side of me that never made the show.
Hotz: I try to expose and eviscerate him on stage as being a monster, try to get him cancelled, try to use the #MeToo movement to help destroy him. But for this show, the 20th-anniversary show, I’ve systematically gone into drives and old footage and pulled out the stuff I, frankly, can’t even believe they’re letting us show. It’s very, very abrasive content that didn’t even clear the broadcasters at the time of the television show. It’s insanely graphic and controversial.
Rice: Without my consultation, he’s picked clips that make me look particularly bad, but the funny thing is that he’s chosen clips of himself that make him look bad. It’s a mish-mash of self-deprecation and male ego on full display.
GN: You can look back on the television footage and see why broadcasters and streaming services would now be hesitant to syndicate the old episodes. It’s so wildly inappropriate for today’s standards, but it wasn’t really like that at the time it aired.
Rice: The content that’s not appreciated anymore but it was at the time — it’s frustrating for me, because Kenny’s sense of humour is a shock sense of humour which means he has to say things and wants to say things that are politically incorrect. But I’ve known Kenny my whole life and he’s not homophobic, he’s not racist, he’s none of those things that people think he is from seeing his character on the show.
Hotz: Of course I’m not! My best friend is!
Rice: Yeah, yeah. Shut up, Kenny. But, yeah, I’ve always asked myself, “What should we do?” Do we clean up the act? But, no. We don’t. We do what we’ve always done, knowing in our hearts that we’re good people.
Hotz: We continue to do the live show, we continue coming back, because we have a rabid group of international fans that won’t let the show die. We’ve tried to let it die.
People have to realize the show started at a time that the internet was just being born, it was the inception of social media. I mean, I started Kenny vs. Spenny on MySpace. Our studio claims that our show was one of the forefounders of YouTube-style comedy where you prank your friends and screw with your folks.
We were some of the first to expose the fragility of the male ego, to expose just how stupid men are.
Rice: And we’re hot.
Hotz: Yes, we were very hot. I looked like George Clooney, now I look like George Clooney waiting for a kidney. Spencer looks like Slash married Salad Fingers.
Rice: The dynamic you see between us in the show and, now, in the live show, is very much how we are in real life.
Hotz: In reality, the competitions didn’t matter as much as who we were as individuals and our dynamic. The show really juxtaposed happy vs. unhappy, or “I care” vs. “I don’t care” — Spenny cared, I didn’t — and it’s a show that glorified a cheater in a country where we’re all so kind and moral. Everyone’s lived vicariously through us because we’re just so sick of being polite.
GN: What are you looking forward to on the East Coast?
Hotz: Getting away from our families.
Rice: *making a claw gesture with both hands* Lobster.
Seriously, though, I’m not going to kiss a fish, no matter what anybody says.
Hotz: Your wife’s not coming?
Rice: Shut up, Kenny.
Hotz: I drove out there once to score some hash and now I’ve been going there for many, many years. I love it out there.
Fans can catch Rice and Hotz’s show, now on tour, in the following locations:
April 27: Summerside, P.E.I., at the Harbourfront Theatre
April 28: Fredericton, N.B. at the Fredericton Playhouse
April 29: Moncton, N.B. at the Tide & Boar
April 30: Saint John, N.B. at the Imperial Theatre
May 10: Halifax, N.S., at the Spatz Theatre
May 11: Truro, N.S., at the MacDonald Room
May 12: St. John’s, N.L., at the Holy Heart Theatre
May 13: Corner Brook, N.L., at Marble Mountain Resort
Full episodes of Kenny vs. Spenny are available on YouTube.
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