Comedian Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias says the long name for his current road show — "Beyond the Fluffy World Tour Go Big or Go Home" — is because the pandemic put a halt to the last one.
"We didn't finish the tour," he explains. "So it was one of those, 'Let's finish it out.'
"We still have about a hundred dates, and then it's time to change it. We kicked it off in Dallas. Once we hit Dallas again, it'll have a new name.
"In hindsight, 'Go Big or Go Home' should have been left off, because everyone wound up going home. Not to mention that I had to eat it on a bunch of T-shirts that had '2020' on them. It looked nice, but . yeah, I got stuck with them. I learned a lesson: Leave the year off."
The tour brings him back to Little Rock's Robinson Center Performance Hall on Friday night, and he says you shouldn't worry, if you saw him at his last Little Rock appearance in April 2019, that you'll be hearing any old jokes.
"It is a whole new set," he says. "I'm definitely addressing 2020, with what happened to myself, personally, and what happened once I got sick. Where I'm at in my life now, mainly relationships, friends, family. And yeah, it's a different show. Definitely nothing that's been on Netflix or YouTube."
Iglesias will have two opening acts — "my buddy Martin [Moreno], who's been there from the beginning, and Alfred Robles" — each of whom will do 15-minute sets.
The tour is taking Iglesias and his entourage to "theaters, casinos, fairs, arenas, whatever we've got going on," he says. The smallest venues seat about 2,000 — that's the normal seating capacity at Robinson. (Iglesias, according to his official biography, is one of a handful of comedians who has sold out the 15,000-seat Staples Center in Los Angeles, Madison Square Garden in New York and the Sydney Opera House.)
Meanwhile, he was the executive producer of the Netflix comedy series "Mr. Iglesias," in which he played a good-natured public high school teacher who helped gifted but misfit kids at his alma mater unlock their full potential while serving as a buffer against a bullying bureaucratic assistant principal.
"We had two wonderful seasons," Iglesias says. "It was a nice run; Netflix giveth, Netflix taketh."
He has since moved on to other projects, including voice-over work on a couple of movies (he provided the voice of Speedy Gonzales in "Space Jam: A New Legacy") and hosting "Unleashed" on Nickelodeon, with animal acts competing in front of a kid jury and celebrity judges.
"And I just released a series on my Facebook and YouTube called 'Fluffy Bits,' which is my stand-up put to animation," he says. 'They're short, just little snippets, more for the new generation that's maybe not so attentive, short and sweet. A way to introduce my old stand-up to a new generation, because it's based on all my old material."
That very likely includes his explanation for his signature nickname: "I'm not fat, I'm fluffy."
"Even though I've lost weight, I'm still considered fluffy," he adds. "'Fluffy' gets me free food."
8 p.m. Friday, Robinson Center Performance Hall, 426 W. Markham St. at Broadway, Little Rock.
Tickets: $35.50, $45.50 and $65.50 (plus a $4 facility fee)
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