Nestled into the bed he brands as “sex stained,” Jordan Firstman wears his button-down wide open, revealing a large-link silver choker as thick as a bike chain. The texture of his green-tinged locks coalesces perfectly with the shag of the faux fur–covered wall looming behind him. Though I’ve never been in it—we’re speaking via Zoom—I know his bedroom well. It was featured in Architectural Digest.

The bedroom also stars in many of the waggish Instagram posts that helped rocket Firstman into wide pop cultural consciousness at the outset of the pandemic. Last year was strange for all of us, but perhaps especially so for Firstman, who claims to be simply a “fat Jewish bitch from Long Island.” First he found fame by way of social-media comedy. Then he nearly lost it—and some say should have lost it—over three offensive tweets from 2012, the same year he arrived in Los Angeles with dreams of making it big.

It was early April 2020 when Firstman uploaded his first batch of impressions to Instagram, starting with the timely and spot-on “impression of a guy who is addicted to saying that quarantine isn’t that different from his normal life.” Conceited L.A. denizens, inanimate objects, pet peeves, clichés, “banana bread’s publicist” and “the truth trying to catch up with Donald Trump” all come to life in Firstman’s episodic impersonations. Usually shot selfie-style with a front-facing iPhone camera, the clips showcase his ability to capture the absurdity of the human condition during one of the most unprecedented years on record. They’re hilarious, and he knows it.

“There’s a possibility I could just keep going up and up, or I could have a catastrophic fall from grace,” he tells me on our early December call.

A-list celebrities, perhaps at a loss with the overnight erasure of the traditional entertainment industry, flocked to Firstman’s content, relating particularly to his takes on the embarrassingly obsequious publicist. Sarah Jessica Parker hit follow; Ariana Grande shared to her story; Katy Perry posted to her feed: “Follow him for whiter teeth, stronger nail beds, good grades and to end Covid.”

“Holy shit, Katy Perry just put you on her grid,” Firstman’s sister, Mandy Talan, remembers telling him.

“Got to go, bye!” he responded.

Firstman’s five-figure following grew to more than 800,000. Each batch of impressions seemed to outstrip the last. Industry soon came knocking, and the career he’d been pursuing for almost a decade finally found momentum.

“I don’t think Jordan is ‘Hollywood,’” says Talan, though she readily acknowledges her bias. She’s something of a remote assistant for Firstman, helping him with paperwork and other tasks from her home in Minnesota, where she’s a social worker. She and her twin, Ali, an HIV researcher, remain protective of their little brother. All three Firstman kids identify as queer, perhaps part of the reason Jordan is so comfortable riffing on themes of identity. They were raised in the sleepy seaside town of Northport, Long Island, the most famous export of which (so far) is Broadway star Patti Lupone. Their parents were journalists at the local newspaper and, before they split, co-authors of a true-crime book about murder.

Talan is not sure when her brother, once a nice, quiet Jewish boy, she says, shimmied from the wings to take center stage. The family always indulged Firstman’s artistic inclinations and was fully supportive when he came out as a pre-teen. At the local performing arts high school, his self-described “truth-teller” nature was at odds with authority—or at least with authority figures he didn’t like. As he recalled on a 2018 episode of the podcast Seek Treatment With Cat and Pat,” one teacher in the program was not only particularly nasty, but also made false claims about Broadway credits. Firstman took it upon himself to publicly unmask her fraudulence, causing her to break down in front of the class.

After graduation, Firstman struggled to find his place as a student at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, where he tended to interpret his assignments in an overly provocative manner. (A tutor once asked him why he always had to be “so different,” he remembers.) Instead of returning for sophomore year at a school that felt like a bad fit, he headed west to Los Angeles, arriving before his 21st birthday.

It didn’t take him long to find his footing in L.A., debuting in 2014 The Disgustings, a short and darkly comic film he funded via Kickstarter that skewered the soft, bitchy underbelly of white gay culture. Firstman wrote and directed it, and also starred as a hideously self-centered, casually cruel man. The same basic summary applies to his next two acidly humorous shorts, Sold (2014) and Call Your Father (2016): writer, director, starring role as self-absorbed jerk. The egomaniac he plays in Call Your Father desperately asks his baffled date, a much older man who has spent the evening weighing potential sex against putting up with an unhinged narcissist, “Do you like me?” After a pause, the older man diplomatically ventures, “I’m intrigued by you.”

Suffice it to say that Hollywood was slowly becoming intrigued by Firstman. For the next four years, he channeled his creative energy into pitching and developing a TV series based on Call Your Father (though nothing ultimately came of it) and notching stints as a writer or story editor for series including Search Party, Big Mouth and The Other Two.

And then came the pandemic, and with it comedians both new and established looking for new ways to make and find funny material: Dave Chappelle in a field; Sarah Cooper with White House voiceovers; Jenny Yang in Animal Crossing. And Jordan Firstman on Instagram.

Across his grid, Firstman cavorts gleefully in various states of undress—speedo on the beach, poolside banana hammock, fully nude on the banks of a creek—affectionately referring to himself as “slut.”

If it seems as though Firstman has a lot of sex, it’s because he does. His oozing sensuality and uninhibited sexuality may well have contributed to his popularity; straight women and gay men alike wax lyrical in his comments. (“Your thighs are masterpieces,” Luca Guadagnino, the Italian auteur behind Call Me By Your Name, wrote in an email to Firstman upon seeing unpublished photos of the comedian.)
Into his inbox and beyond Firstman foremost welcomes “tatted Latin guys” and “Euro twinks,” as well as many different types of men. “I’ve been getting fucked a lot recently,” he says, describing himself as ‘vers.’ “I can give you top vibes and then go super sub bottom. I can really say, ‘Yes sir,’ and believe it.” He’s manifesting a reality wherein he finds a deep psycho-sexual connection with a man in every metropolitan center—“I just want to fuck hot boys and feed them natural wine.”

As for his female fans, they have good company in his DMs. Chrissy Teigen, Reese Witherspoon and Perry have become blue-check friends. Drew Barrymore’s account writes “I love you” on his posts. (He also appeared on her talk show.) Mia Khalifa posted a video in which she covered pictures of her lover with photos of Jordan. Firstman is both bemused by and grateful for the onslaught of female attention. He theorizes perhaps he’s the toxicity-free macho man women have been swiping for: the type who has deeply emotional epiphanies on ayahuasca but could still choke you with his chest hair.

And he recognizes the power of having women on his side; they are the industry’s gatekeepers, or at the very least, its tastemakers, he says. “They’re the ones that are going to pay my bills for the rest of my life—not those fucking faggots,” he jokes. “Those fucking backstabbing faggots.”

It’s unclear who decided to close out 2020 by sending accountability cum gossip site Diet Prada screenshots of Firstman’s 2012 tweets, which made Black women, Indian people and the homeless into the butts of bad jokes. Rumors swirled that it was the miffed ex-boyfriend of one of Firstman’s flings who had dug through the comedian’s Twitter archive until striking dirt. Regardless, on December 23, wedged between news of a second stimulus package and Alexander Wang’s alleged offenses, the site called out Firstman, asking, “Will the newly minted comedian, who made his way into so many people’s hearts, be taken to task?”

Firstman was quick to respond, deleting all tweets (save one Spotify promotion) and sharing a Notes-app statement to Instagram in which he apologized for misguidedly testing his comedic voice with offensive material.

“I have grown a million lifetimes since then and I do not stand by [the tweets] in any way,” he wrote. “I will continue to work on myself and continue to grow, as I have always sought to do.”

Firstman’s defense wasn’t enough to stave off a barrage of criticism. Playwright Jeremy O. Harris responded in a series of wry subtweets, pointing out Firstman’s factual error—in his Notes apology he claimed he was 19 when he wrote the tweets, but the last tweet was made just weeks before he turned 21—and mocking his apology. Harris’s conclusion: “Nobody gets canceled for racism. This is America.” Others were quick to mimic Firstman’s comedic stylings, using his trademark “impression” gimmick to poke fun at what was perceived as a weak apology.

Before being “#problematic” was something he had to address, Firstman had told me he was considering taking a break from social media, feeling that a temporary leave of absence from the cultural consciousness might do him some good. Days later, after Diet Prada did its thing, Firstman’s social departure felt less than voluntary. He stepped back from Instagram for a spell, emerging in the new year and posting at a slower pace. In a recent post to his Instagram story, Firstman assumed a pensive pose. Over the image he wrote, “I’m back (with boundaries) and feel good…let’s make this feel good for both of us.”

Initially Firstman didn’t want to comment further about his run-in with cancel culture, but changed his mind in late February, claiming he’s “still processing” everything that happened.

“I am still dealing with it in a major way on an internal level,” he says. “It’s kind of pushed me into this growth period which was completely vital. It’s reminded me of my humanity, of my mistakes. I’m not sure where the growth is leading towards yet, but I take growth very seriously, and I’m taking this experience very seriously.”

In early December, when her brother’s 2012 tweets were still little time bombs tucked deep in his Twitter feed, Talan had told me, “He doesn’t want to offend anybody. He cares what people think.”

That last part feels true. In conversation, Jordan is almost alarmingly disarming, and entertainingly open. On our December call, he scrolls through his photos until he finds an old image of himself, taken in the Search Party writers’ room. In the photo, he’s wide-eyed and wears an even wider smile—but looks can be deceiving.

“He was scared; he’s so scared,” Firstman says of his pre-fame self.
His confidence and self-assurance have grown notably over the past year, as he graduated from being the subject of niche content-creator roll calls to digital covers. He acknowledges his strengths and plays to them well.

“I do think I’m a genius,” he admits. “It’s just a fact that I’m doing something that no one else is doing. In comedy, it’s seen as such a faux pas to be positive about yourself at all.”

These types of interviews can be a risk, he says. “My arrogance comes off a little more palatable in person. Then when you put it in print, it’s not [palatable].”

That’s true, too, to some extent. Firstman’s self-aggrandizing can come off as funny because it’s just so much less socially acceptable than self-deprecation. He tells me he should’ve been on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list (“Like, bitch, who’s doing better?”). He says he serves a purpose in society (“to show people that life is beautiful and fun”). He says he’s surprised Hollywood has yet to fall completely at his feet (“I was industry before ‘internet’”).

“I know that I’ve had privileges in my life, but I’ve also had my heart ripped out and my creativity stolen because I am gay, end of story,” Firstman says. “It’s not this cut and dry, ‘You’re gay and white, nothing bad has happened to you.’”

Although, plenty of good happened to him in 2020. Partnerships rolled in—Spotify, Target, Signal. Multiple networks wooed him to work on a series, and it became clear everyone wanted a piece. He modeled for Thom Browne and was named a breakout star of 2020 by The Hollywood Reporter. He also wrote, directed and starred in a major fashion campaign. That one was for Versace.

In a world where current events are so effectively caricatured in 15-second clips, it’s difficult to extend one’s 15 minutes. Yet Firstman has managed it—even though being his fan won’t “end Covid,” as Katy Perry joked. As much of his work demonstrates, vanity and self-absorption can make for wildly engrossing comedic characters. Whether that applies to creators as well as their material is irrelevant. One doesn’t need to like Firstman to click “like,” and follow, and share, as well as be welcomed into his shaggy-walled virtual bedroom. Firstman is undaunted by the attention.

“People have always said I was going to be famous and ‘a fucking monster.’ But I’m super aware of myself,” he says. “And I care about the world. I’m just not a bad guy.”