Chris Hardwick: Stand-up 'is the reason I started doing everything else'

Think of Chris Hardwick as an alternate-universe Ryan Seacrest. Since he started his stand-up comedy career in the 1990s, he has taken on enough gigs for several people.

Along with sitcoms and a steady diet of voice-over work, Hardwick is the creator/CEO of Nerdist Industries, the website and podcast dedicated to geek cultural obsessions. He hosts Talking Dead, AMC's postmortem show for its megahit The Walking Dead. He's also the host of the social-media-savvy, faux game show @midnight on Comedy Central.

Hardwick will soon start the ball rolling on another game show, The Wall - this time for NBC and basketballer LeBron James' production company. All the while, Hardwick keeps his hand in stand-up as often as he can. On Saturday, he hits Atlantic City's Borgata.

There's increasingly less time for you to do stand-up. Does that muscle feel deprived unless you go out there and work it?

Chris Hardwick: Stand-up is just one of these things that you have to do all the time, or as often as possible. You can't take a break from it. You can't not lift weights for six months, then go back and be puzzled as to why you can't lift as you once did. You have to do it as much as possible to stay tight, stay good. You're forming a relation with your audiences with stand-up. If you don't do it as often, you're just not as sharp.

Or connected.

CH: Right. See, stand-up is my favorite thing of all the things that I do. It's the reason I started doing everything else. I figured then that if I did more television, it would get more people out to my shows. If I started a site like Nerdist, more people would know me, and they'd come out to my shows. If I did more shows, people come to my shows.

In maintaining an audience, how does stand-up compare to the constancy of podcasting on the Nerdist site?

CH: The main difference with the podcast is that they're intimate. An audience has headphones in their ears, and the narrator or host guides them through good days and bad days. Stand-up is more direct. Plus, I usually have to be less funny on my podcast to keep it on track. I feel as if I'm funnier on other people's podcasts because I don't have to worry about the show going off the rails.

Do you still think Nerdist is the best reflection of you despite having a team running the ship?

CH: In a meta way, yes, but not directly. Even when I started Nerdist, I knew or hoped that it would branch out, that I'd like [to add] a Music Nerdist, a Video Game Nerdist. I always intended it would extend beyond me. Nerdist represents my voice in terms of what I'm passionate about. I wanted others on the team to write about what they're passionate about - in a positive way. Now, Nerdist goes deeper into the trenches than I would ever have been able to go, with a wider variety of interests. The team has done a great job. I'll read something where they quote Nerdist, and I'm like, "Wow, this was just some blog that I started in 2008." That's exciting.

Who was the first stand-up who excited you?

CH: Steve Martin. When he started appearing on SNL, I fell in love with him. My parents bought me all of his albums. He was a gateway to every other comedian whose records I could get hold of. During the '80s comedy boom, I absorbed every stand-up special that I would watch, and I mean every one.

Your dad was a top-tier bowling champion (the late great Billy Hardwick). Both of your parents' parents owned bowling alleys. Do you think it affected how you approached life or comedy?

CH: I was an exceptionally good bowler, hovering in the 180s when I was 11. My parents divorced, my mom moved away and got remarried, and I wasn't bowling all the time, as I couldn't do it for free for five hours a day. Then I hit my teens and rebelled against everything. That said, stand-up was as nomadic a lifestyle as bowling. When my dad was still alive [he died in 2013], I'd talk to him about where I was, and it always wound up that where I was playing was across the street from where he bowled. I feel like I'm chasing him. I inherited, too, that thing, a passion for the nontraditional thing. Do what you're happiest doing is what I got from him and bowling.

Chris Hardwick plays at 6 p.m. Saturday at the Music Box at the Borgata, 1 Borgata Way, Atlantic City. Tickets: $45, $35. Information: 866-900-4TIX (4849) or www.theborgata.com.