2025 Was the Year of Robby Hoffman, But Don’t Call It an Overnight Success

Robby Hoffman was born in an audience. Growing up as one of ten children in a Hasidic Jewish family in Brooklyn, the comedian says she was always more comfortable in crowds.

“I’ve always lived in apartments or very dense neighborhoods,” she says. “It’s very natural. I like being with so many people, the more the merrier.”

But 2025 is the year that Hoffman’s audience reached new heights. She appeared on Season 4 of HBO’s “Hacks” as Randi, the quirky assistant at Paul W. Downs and Meg Stalter’s new management company — a role that earned Hoffman an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy. She also married her longtime girlfriend, former intensive care nurse and “Bachelorette” star Gabby Windey. And to cap off the year, Hoffman’s first Netflix stand-up special, “Wake Up” — directed by John Mulaney — premiered on the platform on Sunday.

“I never experienced overnight success,” Hoffman says of his career. “I never had connections or a fast track in any way. So I just got used to winning the race slow and steady.”

Hoffman attributes the origins of his career to his upbringing. She learned culturally about the world of comedy by watching comedy films during library visits organized by her mother every weekend. But most importantly, Hoffman knew that being funny ran in his family.

“We were all funny,” says Hoffman. “Not everything was a funny situation. We weren’t a sitcom, a lot of it was terrible.”

The actress remembers a specific instance, when she was a child, when she noticed that a glass jar labeled Hoffman Emergency Fund contained only a few coins. Realizing it was all her single mother of 10 had saved for the entire family, Hoffman says she and her mother burst out laughing. “It was heartbreaking and also extremely funny.”

The family moved from Brooklyn to Montreal, where Hoffman attended college at McGill University. She considered studying accounting, after an academic advisor said it would be the best way to maximize the highest-paying career for minimal education. But it was at this time that she discovered the Just for Laughs comedy festival and her love of stand-up. On his first day of graduate school for his CPA certificate, having already accepted a job at an accounting firm, Hoffman dropped out of school to pursue acting.

Looking at the careers of Ellen DeGeneres and Jerry Seinfeld, Hoffman decided that the best route to a career in comedy would be to write a television show. Using the free computer her accounting job afforded her, Hoffman wrote a script in Microsoft Word – manually formatting the pages to mimic the look of a screenplay since she couldn’t afford scriptwriting software like Final Draft.

Hoffman took the script to the offices of HBO Canada and other networks. She posed as a courier, telling receptionists that the script had been requested by an executive. “That was the advantage of not knowing much about stand-up. If I had known, I would have been ashamed,” Hoffman says.

But Hoffman later learned the script had been read and got a $1,000 option. Although the project never came to fruition, the experience led to her being hired as a writing assistant on the PBS children’s television show “Odd Squad.” Hoffman won an Emmy in 2019 for his work writing the series and gained his first experience on set.

As Hoffman took on more writing work for various television series, she moved to Los Angeles, fulfilling her life’s dream.

“I had a letter that I had to open when I was 18 that I had written myself when I was 12… It said that I hoped to live in Los Angeles,” Hoffman recalled. “My father lived in Los Angeles and I always wanted to have a relationship with him, but for some reason he wasn’t able to be in our lives the way we wanted…I always felt a pull to California and I always felt connected to Los Angeles. I was able to visit my father once. [in L.A.] when I was 15 and it was incredible.

Hoffman describes “Wake Up” as the culmination of his California dreams. Filmed at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the new special is the big statement she wanted her first Netflix special to be.

John Mulaney, who has become one of the most successful comedians of the last decade, contacted Hoffman and asked him to direct the special when he learned it was in development. He brought Hoffman on tour with him as an opening act and celebrated his talents as an artist. “Wake Up” even begins with a brief introduction from Mulaney where he describes Hoffman as “a legend at the top of his game.”

“He’s literally the definition of a man,” Hoffman says of Mulaney.

Hoffman’s comedic styles have often been compared to those of Larry David. With his thick Brooklyn accent and observational material, Hoffman performs like a millennial with the soul of an old man. “I’m funny, but not amusing,” she says in “Wake Up.” She is a master of the art of exclamation and can focus her complaints on a topic as broad as all men or as narrow as the decline in the use of defibrillators in the media.

The title of the special refers to a phrase often repeated in Hoffman’s material and that it is addressed directly to the audience. But the comedian also sees the similarity between the title and a common criticism from some high-profile comedians, such as Joe Rogan and Ricky Gervais, in recent years: that people are no longer allowed to say whatever they want in comedy because of new “woke” norms in favor of political correctness. “Wake Up” offers a strong counterpoint. Topics covered in this special include pedophiles, sexuality, gender roles and contemporary pronoun use. Hoffman navigates these topics with ease; she says she doesn’t approach her material as controversial, but only in relation to what she currently has in mind.

Speaking on the current comedy climate, Hoffman says: “You can say whatever you want, but be prepared to stand by what you said. Maybe someone doesn’t like what you said – hell, I’ve been through that. You can say whatever you want, but so can other people.”

Instead, Hoffman hopes her audience will come to her. She says she has not found certain audiences more or less receptive to her work in different geographic regions or that her material has been too provocative. “I think I get away with saying, ‘Well, what are you going to do? It’s Robby Hoffman.'”

Hoffman hit major milestones in 2025: an Emmy nomination for “Hacks,” his marriage to Gabby Windey and his first Netflix stand-up special, “Wake Up.”

(Aaron Wynia)

But despite his comparisons to pessimistic comedians like Larry David, Hoffman remains optimistic. Discussing the rise of artificial intelligence, which in recent years has been called a major threat to the entertainment industry, Hoffman believes this moment has the ability to boost human artistic talent.

“Maybe it’s just because I’ve always done better in storms,” Hoffman says. “But the positive side, I think, will be this real surge of incredible creative work. Kind of like the Renaissance period or some other period where humanity is facing some degree of existential threat. It just brings out the best in terms of creativity in our humanity, as if to say, ‘We were there’.”

2025 can be called a memorable year for Hoffman. But she considers the years of dedication she put into her career to have reached their culmination. For her, this is serendipitous timing, so many milestones have happened in the last 12 months. It’s all a result of the work Hoffman has done since she left that CPA program more than 10 years ago.

“Almost every year is memorable,” Hoffman says of his career path. “This feels as big as when I got $1,000 for a script option.”

And Hoffman always sees the magic in everything. While describing the feeling of filming the final season of “Hacks” in Los Angeles, she is still in awe of where she is. “Things don’t get old for me, which is why I can still eat saltines every day,” says Hoffman. “I love working in Los Angeles, it’s incredible: I drive in the parking lot… [I see] the palm trees, the doors, the big water tower… Long live the water tower.

Hoffman’s future looks busier than ever. She’s finishing filming Season 5 of “Hacks,” developing a TV show and appearing in a new comedy series from Steve Carell and “Ted Lasso” creator Bill Lawrence — both for HBO — and embarking on a stand-up tour in 2026. But for the comedian, this year doesn’t represent a sudden burst of success. Instead, this was the year the true size of her audience finally found her.

“I was saying all along, there’s something here. I was the first one to say that. I was saying, ‘I think there’s something with Robby Hoffman.’ But now everyone joins me.