The Arlington native joined A-list comedians including Sarah Silverman and Conan O’Brien at the annual fund-raiser
By Nick A. Zaino III Globe correspondent,Updated November 20, 2025, 12:42 p.m.
Erin Maguire is exhausted. And happy. She is one week removed from having fulfilled her dream to play Comics Come Home at the TD Garden in front of thousands, including about fifty people from the Arlington native’s family. She’s also about to head to the Rockwell in Somerville on Nov. 21 to record two shows for a new special and album.
The timing is no accident. “I’m the ultimate manifester,” said Maguire, speaking by Zoom. She knew the week before Thanksgiving was a good time to book a taping, but she also felt there was a good chance she’d land the coveted local comedian slot in the headliner-packed Comics Come Home 29. So she bet on herself. “I’m going to put [the schedule taping] two weeks after [Comics Come Home], in the hopes that I will be in front of 15,000 people, and it’s like, if you like this ten minutes, I got thirty-five more for you.”
Her bet paid off. References to Maguire’s firefighter family were plentiful in the opening video montage at Comics Come Home, which played behind a parody of the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna” as host Denis Leary devoted different verses to different comics on the bill. That no doubt endeared her to the crowd. She came out of the gate with a high-energy set dense with punchlines and ended with a musical bit: Judy Garland singing only the vowels of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” holding the final note to cheers. Host Denis Leary commented, “She is super [expletive] funny.”
Maguire started out in improv as a teenager in Boston and kicked off her stand-up career twelve years ago in New York City, becoming a staple of the club scene. She calls getting to perform for the crowd at TD Garden and mingle backstage with Conan O’Brien, Sebastian Maniscalco, and Sarah Silverman the best day of her life so far. “I’m coming up to the final note of that song,” she said, “and I looked up to the ceiling, and I see all the pennants from the Celtics and the Bruins hanging from the ceiling. And I was like, holy [expletive], I am at the Boston Garden. And I just let it rip.”