Nate Bargatze's worst dad fail? He forgot where his kid goes to school

Nate Bargatze has had a rocket strapped to his back, performing his stand-up comedy in front of sold-out crowds, writing a book, hosting the Emmys, “Saturday Night Live” and his own game show "The Greatest Average American," and now headlining a movie.

But put him in front of the power players on “Shark Tank” and he feels the nerves of the moment. In his new comedy “The Breadwinner” (in theaters May 29), Bargatze plays a married car salesman who hilariously tries to take over caring for the house and his three children when his wife (Mandy Moore) hits it big on “Shark Tank.”

Bargatze, 47, wove bits of his stand-up act and real life into the script: For example, he watches the TV show at home with his wife Laura and 13-year-old daughter Harper, and for the movie, the comedian wrote a scene where he and Moore had to do a real pitch in front of the Sharks.

“There's so many nights we've just been eating dinner, watching ‘Shark Tank,’ and then now you're going down this tunnel,” Bargatze recalls. “They’re all there and it feels like you're under pressure, even though you're like, ‘I wrote what you said.’ You still feel like you’ve got to hurry the lines.”

“The Breadwinner” is the latest effort from Bargatze’s entertainment company Nateland, which also includes podcasts and potentially a Nashville theme park. The Tennessee native, who’s on tour through the summer, talks with USA TODAY about the film, staying grounded and helping the next generation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Question: You’ve pretty much blitzed all corners of pop culture recently with your comedy specials and hosting duties. Did doing all that make writing, producing and starring in your own film easier? 

Nate Bargatze: It did help. You become a jack of all trades, in a way, and learn how to do a lot of things differently. You’ve just got to commit to it and go all in – that's something I learned on “SNL.” If I'm going to look silly, go big.

Doing a movie, there's a lot of stuff you do that's funny, but no one's laughing. You're like, “Dude, am I terrible at this?” So, it was nice if you could see the camera crew chuckling a little bit. They did a very great job being like, “No, dude, everybody was laughing outside.” Whether they lied to me or not, I don't know. But they at least made you feel good. 

What's one real thing you included in this movie that maybe you still can't believe actually happened to you?

We have in the trailer the one about not knowing my daughter's school. That was pretty real. It doesn't always make sense the school they're going to. She went to middle school and you're like, “Yeah, but that school's way over there. This school is right here. Why would she not go there?" And then I would kind of forget because her elementary school was very close to our house. I [also] had a joke where, literally, a teacher called me asking for my daughter's bus number, and I didn't even really know what that meant.

You've had all these cool opportunities. What keeps you grounded?

I live in Nashville, and that helps. I'm with my family a lot. I'm with a lot of my friends from high school, and we live in a cul-de-sac. Even though there is country music and all this kind of stuff around Nashville, you go back home and you're going to our daughter's softball game.

When I first started touring, we moved back to Nashville just because I wanted my daughter to be able to have a normal life. You figured it wasn't going to be that normal but how close can we get? Just going back home, that's been the biggest thing. No matter how much chaos you go do, I can come back and take my daughter and my nieces and nephews out to an escape room.

With traveling and a busy schedule, what do you do to make sure you stay the best dad and husband you can be?

It's a lot of FaceTime. Usually I'm home during the beginning of the week and then you go out on the weekends. It's hard to balance it. They come out and meet me. Like when we made this movie, we made it in summer in Atlanta and so they were able to come down there and stay. The hard part, too, is [kids] get older, they get busy. They kind of have their own stuff going on, so it's just trying to be at as much stuff as I can, and just really knowing what's going on. We talk every day, we talk every night.

You’re on tour now. If your movie career takes off, do you see yourself pulling back from comedy some?

After this tour, I'm going to take some time off and hopefully make a couple more movies. And then I'm going to have to see where I'm at right then. I don't think I'll ever quit stand-up. Touring at the level that we're touring, I don't imagine myself doing that as much. I definitely know one [more] tour for sure. And then I want to see where this movie thing goes. I’ve got a lot of stuff that I'm trying to build with Nateland, and I want to be able to find the next stars or help develop talent as they come up.

I wanted to be famous the day I started. But it did not work out that way. But I've done a lot of things, and so you definitely want to help younger people and be able to give them advice as they go on their own journey.