The HardestWorking Man in Comedy

Ten years ago, Chris Estrada was putting in long hours in warehouses, then driving to clubs all over L. A. nearly every night, honing his stand-up. Now he's got a show on Hulu that just started its second season. How did he know when to quit his day job? Well, it's a funny story.

- DAN SINKER

THE DAY CHRIS ESTRADA'S LIFE CHANGED started like so many before it: up early, in the car, off to work in a warehouse. Day shifts loading trucks. Day shifts unloading boxes. Years of this. For a while, it was nights, too. Two or three jobs, for nearly two decades. It felt as if this was how the rest of his life would go. It wasn't.

On the day Estrada's life changed, in 2019, he'd been unpacking boxes of clothes all morning. At 12:30, on lunch break, he was in his car when a call came from comedian and producer Fred Armisen. He wanted to work with Estrada on a project that would become This Fool, the Hulu show based loosely on Estrada's life and tightly on his love of Los Angeles.

The call was an "immediate 'Okay, let's start," Armisen says, "as opposed to 'Hey, I need to get to know you?" He didn't need to. "I liked his haircut," Armisen recalls with a laugh. "He greased it back in a way that I think only people who grew up with the Clash would know."

That was it. A haircut, a feeling, a yes.

When the call was over, Estrada bought a sandwich from a truck and got back to unpacking boxes. He didn't tell anyone. "Nobody had time to hear your fucking dream-we had work to do," he tells me on the phone from his car. It's the same car he drove then-a beater 2011 Scion xD-though his destination is different now.