In 2023, Josh Johnson found himself running toward a ledge, hoping that when he leaped he’d reach the other side safely instead of crashing down.
No, the stand-up comic was not actually in any danger, nor had he traded in his “Daily Show” gig for an action-hero role. This ledge and leap were strictly metaphorical, a move he was making in his mind.
That’s a place where Johnson spends much of his day musing. In fact, his ledge-jump moment came last year shortly after the premiere of his Peacock special, “Up Here Killing Myself,” in which he riffed on topics he had discussed in therapy (the lasting effects of poverty, his father’s death, encounters with the police) and which he sprinkled with interstitials of him talking to an unseen therapist.
“After that I just bottomed out and felt a little lost,” Johnson recalls over pizza in Brooklyn, where he lives.
When he hit that …