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The profile · researched 30 October 2026
No intro, no plan: Nicole Byer and Sasheer Zamata take Best Friends into theatres
Best Friends is the weekly conversation Nicole Byer and Sasheer Zamata have been having since 2019, and since the pair met as improv students around 2008 before that. This autumn they are carrying it into four theatres between Chicago and New York, with the Washington date already sold out.
Two improv students, 2008 or 2009
The origin story is the one thing the pair cannot agree on. Speaking to the Boston Globe on 29 October 2026, Byer and Zamata placed their first meeting in either 2008 or 2009, as improv students cast together in an all-woman show. Byer, by her own account, pursued the friendship deliberately rather than letting it happen.
The dates on either side of that uncertainty are firmer. Byer began studying improv and sketch at the Upright Citizens Brigade in June 2008, the month her father died. Zamata started performing at UCB in New York in 2009, and from there into sketch and character work on programmes including Inside Amy Schumer and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. They came up in the same room, in other words, and spent roughly a decade as friends before either of them thought to point a microphone at it.
That ordering matters to the product. The podcast was not two comics assigned to each other by a network and told to build a rapport; the rapport existed first, and the show was dropped on top of it in 2019. Everything the live version does well descends from that sequence.
A show with no front door
Best Friends launched in 2019 on Earwolf, the Upright Citizens Brigade-descended network now owned by SiriusXM, and ran weekly. Its format is a refusal of format. There is no cold open, no scripted introduction and no topic list; episodes begin mid-flow, as though the recording caught a conversation already underway.
Zamata explained the logic to the Globe: when two people are genuinely close, neither of them opens with "So, how was your day?" Byer put the case against preparation more bluntly, saying that planning a conversation with her best friend simply seemed strange. Neither saves material through the week for the recording. They switch on the microphones and cameras and use whatever comes out.
What stops that becoming shapeless is the listener correspondence. The show takes questions about friendship specifically rather than romance, and Zamata has said she is still surprised by what arrives: how to hold a friendship together across distance, or how to handle the gap that opens when one friend has children and the other does not. Byer's position, stated in the same interview, is that friendships are relationships too, and in her view the more important ones. That is the thesis the show has been testing weekly for seven years.
Byer: Nailed It!, four Emmy nominations and three podcasts
Byer reached a wide audience through MTV's Girl Code from 2013, then created and starred in Loosely Exactly Nicole, which premiered on the channel in September 2016 and was picked up by Facebook Watch for a second run. It drew on her own position as a Black actress trying to get work in Hollywood.
Since March 2018 she has hosted Netflix's Nailed It!, the competition in which amateur bakers attempt professional showpieces and fail entertainingly. The role brought four consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Competition Program, in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, making her the first Black woman nominated in the category. She has co-hosted the revived Wipeout with John Cena since 2021, and her Netflix stand-up hour, Big Beautiful Weirdo, arrived in December 2021.
Best Friends is not even her only podcast. She has hosted Why Won't You Date Me? since 2017 and co-hosts Newcomers with Lauren Lapkus, in which the pair watch celebrated film franchises for the first time, from 2020. The volume is relevant to the live show: Byer talks for a living across three feeds a week, and it shows in how little a stage seems to cost her.
Zamata: SNL, two specials and a Marvel witch
Zamata's hiring at Saturday Night Live in January 2014 was news beyond the comedy pages. She joined mid-season 39 and debuted on 18 January 2014 in the Drake-hosted episode with an impression of Rihanna, becoming the first Black woman in the cast since Maya Rudolph left in 2007 — an absence the programme had been publicly criticised for. She was promoted to repertory player in season 41 and appeared in 74 episodes before leaving in 2017.
Her stand-up has been the steadier through-line: the hour Pizza Mind in 2017, then Sasheer Zamata: The First Woman in 2023. On television she has had substantial runs in Woke, from 2020 to 2022, and Home Economics, from 2021 to 2023. In 2024 she played Jennifer Kale in Disney+'s Agatha All Along, contributing to the soundtrack as well.
In February 2025 she was announced among the additions to Amazon MGM's Masters of the Universe, playing a character named Suzie opposite Nicholas Galitzine's He-Man and Jared Leto's Skeletor, with the studio dating the film for cinemas on 5 June 2026.
Where the podcast stands in October 2026
Best Friends is no longer an Earwolf title. It is now published by Headgum, and the move came with full video episodes alongside the audio feed. The back catalogue listed on Apple Podcasts stands at 354 episodes.
The run rate is weekly and the episodes are conversational hours rather than tight edits. The three most recent at the time of writing are "Nicole and Sasheer's New York Minute" on 14 October 2026, running 55 minutes; "Sasheer's Not A Wrapologist" on 21 October, at an hour and nine; and "Sasheer the Builder", posted on 29 October, at an hour and six. Guests appear, but the default is the two of them.
The live show is not a new experiment either. They had taken it out before the current theatre run, including a date at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles on 8 June 2024, a 300-seat room where tickets went for $35 and the billing promised other comics pulled up on stage.
The autumn 2026 run
Four dates are on the books for November 2026, all booked through Live Nation. The run reaches Thalia Hall in Chicago on Tuesday 3 November, the Wilbur in Boston on Wednesday 4 November at 7.30pm with tickets at $46 to $56, the Howard Theatre in Washington on Saturday 7 November with doors at 5pm for a 6pm start, and the Gramercy Theatre in New York on Sunday 8 November at 7pm.
The Washington show, an all-ages booking at the 620 T Street NW venue, is marked sold out on the promoter's own listing. The New York date is still selling through Ticketmaster, where the venue is offering coat check and a bottomless soda and popcorn add-on — an indication of the register, which is closer to a night at the pictures with friends than a formal theatre booking.
No support act is named on any of the venue or promoter listings for the November shows, and no published review of the current run has appeared yet. What the listings and the Globe interview agree on is the content: personal stories, arguments about small absurdities, television and film, and audience questions about friendship.
The show, now
The live Best Friends is the podcast with an audience in the room and no additional scaffolding. There is no scripted opening — on the feed and on stage the conversation starts already moving, on the principle Zamata gave the Boston Globe that close friends do not greet each other with "So, how was your day?" Nothing is pre-planned; Byer has said that outlining a chat with her best friend would feel strange, and the pair do not bank stories through the week for the recording. The spine of the evening is personal material, arguments about films and television and small daily absurdities, and then audience questions, which are about friendship rather than romance: keeping one going at distance, or surviving the point where one friend has children and the other does not. Staging is minimal, in the manner of a recorded show, and no support act is listed on any of the November promoter pages. Running times are venue-set rather than fixed: Boston's Wilbur starts at 7.30pm on 4 November with tickets at $46–$56, the Howard Theatre in Washington opens doors at 5pm for a 6pm all-ages start on 7 November and is sold out, and the Gramercy Theatre in New York begins at 7pm on 8 November with coat check and a bottomless popcorn upgrade on sale. The earlier Los Angeles outing at Largo in June 2024 was billed as including other comics brought up on stage, though no guests are advertised for the current dates. No review of the autumn run has been published yet.
Researched from bostonglobe.com · podcasts.apple.com · livenation.com · livenation.com · livenation.com · unionstagepresents.com · washington.org · laist.com
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