“How did I get here?” asks comedian Rick Mercer

Welcome to The Get, by Neo—a new personal finance magazine for Canadians. No acronyms, just good info.

For this week’s MVP, we’re chatting with Rick Mercer.

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Sometimes career paths are planned out. Other times, they happen with passion, a bit of luck, and some make-believe.

By Rosemary Counter

Welcome to the inaugural edition of “MVP,” The Get’s weekly chat with people we admire, about how they made it and whether success is as sweet as it seems. It definitely is for Canadian comedy icon Rick Mercer. After more than 30 years in comedy, with TV hits like This Hour Has 22 Minutes and The Rick Mercer Report, Mercer is now happily semi-retired. He still works—because he loves his job—but he has enough free time to grow vegetables at his cabin. We ask the 56-year-old funnyman whether this was his plan all along. 

Is this what you thought you’d be doing when you grew up?

I’m doing what I hoped I would be doing, but I never expected it. When I was a kid, I had a notion that working in television, in comedy, or in theatre would be an amazing thing to do. Those certainly were far more interesting to me than hockey and dinosaurs. But, of course, I had no idea what a career in show business would entail and I had no concept of it being work. It seemed as far-fetched as being an astronaut. 

Then in high school, I was in the drama club. We had an incredible teacher by the name of Lois Brown, who told me I was a writer long before I put a pen to paper. She told me I was a performer. With Lois’s guidance, the club created a one-act play that we wrote and performed ourselves. We actually won the local drama festival and went on to the provincial drama festival. It was the most exciting experience of my life.

Did your career follow a conventional route? 

I didn’t attend theatre school, film school, or a broadcasting program, so my route was far from conventional. I’d say it was ill-conceived but littered with some early luck and healthy breaks. I dove in with no safety net or backup plan. 

That’s not something I would advise anyone to do now, but I was very lucky to have had early success in the theatre with what became a hit one-person show. I toured the entire country and, by theatre standards, created a large splash. The show was very topical and political, and people were quite taken with the lippy, angry young man on stage yelling about [then prime minister] Brian Mulroney and the Meech Lake Accord [constitutional agreement]. The success of that show led directly to my being in the room when This Hour Has 22 Minutes was created. I was still a kid, in my early 20s, but that became a monster hit TV show—and the rest is history.

Can you describe a moment when you felt you “made it?”  

I’ve worked non-stop in show business for 30-plus years, which is practically unheard of in this country, and I achieved my number-one goal of my own network TV show, The Mercer Report. We ran for 15 seasons, and I never had a moment where I felt “A-ha! I made it!” Anyone who is a student of show business knows that people can be at the top of the world one minute and then out of work and prospects the next. Anyone sitting around thinking they’ve made it is in for a world of hurt. 

That said, I’ve had many moments, when I looked around the room and thought, “How the hell did I get in here?” It’s been an incredible ride, and I guess it feels like I imagined it would. If I had to describe my state of being it would be “No complaints.” 

Photo by Jon Sturge.