“K Trev,” as he’s known to friends and fans, is not only a Roast Battle Canada judge, he has also been fire-tested as a former comptetior.
The Toronto native, showcased for years at Montreal’s annual Just for Laughs comedy festival, competed three times on the original US version of the series. The show sees stand-up comedians go head-to-head in a withering series of insult battles. Wilson was a semi-finalist twice and has the scars to prove it.
Not that he minded the ribbing. It’s all part of the game as the Letterkenny regular told me on the latest episode of brioux.tv the podcast. (Click on the arrow above to listen in.)
“What makes Roast Battle work in this environment is that everyone here is an adult and a willing participant in this,” he tells me. “No one is a victim of bullying.”
“All these people are here because they want to be,” he continues. “You don’t need to be offended on their behalf… so just enjoy the jokes.”
The series, which is hosted by Ennis Esmer, resumes tonight at 10:30 p.m. ET on the CTV Comedy Channel. It features Russell Peters and Sabrina Jalees as K Trev’s fellow judges.
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“In the past, there’d only be one or two people representing certain groups, and then a hundred guys who look like me,” Wilson says of the changing — and much more diverse — stand-up comedy scene. “And now so many more people are doing it…we’re getting a lot of different voices and a lot of different experiences.”
Listen in as well on the podcast as he talks up the upcoming season of Letterkenny, seen on Crave in Canada and on Hulu in the United States. Wilson stands out on the shot-in-Sudbury series as Squirrely Dan.
He also says he’s looking forward to resuming the upcoming Letterkenny Live comedy tour, cut short in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit. The tour resumes Feb. 3 in Kitchener, Ont., before embarking on a monster swing throughout the US and Canada. That includes stops in New York, Boston, Chicago, Buffalo, Nashville, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver, Austin, San Francisco and Los Angeles before winding up April 2 in Vegas. For the complete schedule and ticket information, follow this link.
I caught one of their last performances on stage in Mississauga before live performances were shut down. I laughed so hard I almost spilled my Puppers — the Letterkenny-branded ale now sold in stores. Wilson and Mark Forward shine as the seasoned, stand-up pro of the live shows with sketches, commentary and clips from series stars Jared Keeso, Nathan Dales and others.
The new shows will include the full contingent of “hicks,” “skids” and hockey players from the series, now in its 10th and 11 seasons. How the hicks and hockey players would do on Roast Battle Canada is anybody’s guess.
