Episode 1125 - Kenya Barris
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck, Nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:Today on the show, I talk to Kenya Barris.
Marc:He's the creator of Black-ish and the writer of Girls Trip as well.
Marc:And he's also got this new comedy series on Netflix called Black AF.
Marc:As fuck, right?
Marc:Right?
Marc:See, I know how to... I'm not great with those.
Marc:I am not good.
Marc:I always have to look up the... What do you call those when it's just letters?
Marc:Someone gave me a O-D-A-T.
Marc:I didn't know what that was.
Marc:One day at a time.
Marc:Had to look it up.
Marc:Didn't know if it was something dirty or not.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So I'll talk to Kenya Barris in a minute or two.
Marc:It's going to be tricky.
Marc:It's going to be tricky, folks.
Marc:My brother left yesterday, and I'm going solo, and I guess this is the time I go solo.
Marc:This is what happens.
Marc:I guess it'll be two weeks tomorrow, and now I'm by myself, and I'm in lockdown.
Marc:I'm quarantined.
Marc:You know, it's weird because I don't...
Marc:I'm mad, I guess I'm mad, sure.
Marc:I'm mad because someone I love died, but I've been around long enough to know that I've seen many people I know die for one reason or another, sometimes for no reason at all.
Marc:It's always fucking horrible.
Marc:And I just don't know what's gonna happen.
Marc:I really don't know what's gonna happen in my mind.
Marc:I mean, I'm getting out.
Marc:I'm getting onto the mountain.
Marc:I'm getting out into the air.
Marc:I'm getting hiking.
Marc:I'm talking to people all the time.
Marc:I got a headache right now.
Marc:I'm having a hard time breathing because I'm holding in my fucking feelings most of the time or stuffing.
Marc:I don't even know if I'm stuffing them.
Marc:It's just like, the fuck am I supposed to do?
Marc:I guess I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
Marc:But I'm afraid, you know, it's this one day at a time shit, this one minute at a time shit.
Marc:But I tell you, man, I am amazed...
Marc:At people just being human.
Marc:Just old school shit.
Marc:People are sending cards.
Marc:Like old school cards.
Marc:In the mail, condolence cards.
Marc:My neighbors, who I don't really know that well, have come over.
Marc:Guy across the street came over a few days ago.
Marc:He'd cook some chicken.
Marc:He offered me some chicken and...
Marc:Flowers are coming.
Marc:Foods is coming still.
Marc:Ice cream came.
Marc:Emails, texts.
Marc:But just people showing up.
Marc:I just, I'm scared of my mind.
Marc:I got to figure out a way.
Marc:I will figure out a way.
Marc:I don't want to be a downer, man.
Marc:I don't want to bring everyone down.
Marc:I'm still way in the fucking woods.
Marc:And why wouldn't I be?
Marc:I'm just trying to frame the thoughts into good things.
Marc:I'm trying to feel the feelings.
Marc:But holy fuck, you guys.
Marc:Jesus Christ.
Marc:Now I just got to look at fucking monkey.
Marc:I was prepared for monkey to die.
Marc:I was not prepared for my girlfriend to die.
Marc:I've been preparing for monkey to fucking die for months.
Marc:But now, like, if he dies, I mean, Jesus Christ, that'll just be like, all right, well, there you go.
Marc:Thank God the grief portal is open.
Marc:I'll just toss him through it, too.
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:But I'll be honest with you, the concern I share with the people I talk to on the phone is just that, like, I'm worried about, you know, where my brain goes.
Marc:And, you know, the advice I've gotten is, you know, stay in touch with people.
Marc:Do what you got to do to take care of yourself.
Marc:Because it doesn't take much for me to get bleak and wonder what it's all worth.
Marc:I will try to embrace whatever the hell Lynn saw in me and what you people seem to see in me.
Marc:God damn it, I hope I get funny again.
Marc:I've been kind of funny, I guess, on the phone, just trying to stay sane.
Marc:I watched the in-laws the other night, again, with my brother.
Marc:Been cooking.
Marc:You know, I'm...
Marc:It's going to be a long haul and I'm going to have to hang on.
Marc:And I hope I'm not draining you guys.
Marc:And I hope everybody who's going through grief is well supported as I am.
Marc:I guess we're all kind of traumatized.
Marc:But yeah, I'm in touch with people.
Marc:And it's weird.
Marc:I don't think about drinking.
Marc:I don't think about using drugs.
Marc:I don't think I think a little bit about nicotine, you know, food.
Marc:Yeah, you know, you know.
Marc:The onanism.
Marc:When does that start?
Marc:When do I start jerking off like a monkey to feel better?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:When does that happen?
Marc:It's happening right now.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:But you guys, you should know what I'm doing, right?
Marc:God damn, you guys.
Marc:My heart is busted wide open.
Marc:Motherfucker.
Marc:Kenya Barris is on the show today.
Marc:He's got a new comedy series, Black AF, Black As Fuck, is now streaming on Netflix.
Marc:We did it over the video before...
Marc:Before the sadness.
Marc:And it was pretty good.
Marc:I never know when people know anything about me.
Marc:Or give a shit.
Marc:But I'm learning man.
Marc:So this is me.
Marc:And Kenya Barris.
Marc:Coming right up.
Marc:Just give me a sec.
Marc:Give me a sec.
Guest:So, dude, nice to meet you.
Guest:You too, man.
Guest:Such a, such a, such a, such a huge fan.
Guest:Oh, that's nice of you.
Guest:Your Patrice O'Neal is like a class could be taught on it.
Guest:I'm writing a movie and it reminds me that Patrice was going to be
Guest:I think that next level of comic.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I think that he was already there.
Guest:He was a comics comic.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:He was already there.
Guest:But he was going to be like, you know, honestly, I've been looking at the Jordan doc, which I'm in love with.
Guest:They could just pump it into my arm.
Guest:Michael Jordan, you could look at his rookie year, his game, his rookie year, the way he played.
Guest:and put that game into the NBA right now, it'd be the best game in the NBA.
Guest:The game has not progressed past where he was at.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Still derivative.
Guest:Even though LeBron's amazing and Kobe's amazing, the way Michael Jordan played the game has not been played better than that.
Guest:Richard Pryor, to me, the way Richard Pryor, what he did,
Guest:we've it's been derivative comedy's been derivative in some aspects since then you know i'm saying i think that's true yeah and i kind of feel like the first that new voice
Guest:that was starting to feel different for me, honestly.
Guest:Patrice, as his powers were going to grow, I think that his voice was going to be, I mean, I'm sorry, bigger than Chappelle.
Guest:I mean, and Chappelle's my god, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:He's my friend, but he's also like a god.
Guest:You know, bigger than Chappelle, bigger than Seinfeld, bigger than, you know, I think that Patrice was on those voices was that.
Guest:And you're Maren.
Guest:He said something that I have quoted and put in so many different ways.
Guest:Little things he said the way he thought.
Guest:He was an autodidact.
Guest:He wasn't somebody who was super formally educated, but he was brilliant.
Guest:He talked about
Guest:and it sticks out to me.
Guest:He talked about the notion that as horrible as the Holocaust was, right?
Guest:And it was a horrible thing.
Guest:But there was a face.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:He was like, you know, if you're a Nazi, we're coming, you know, knocking your door and pull you out your house at 100 years old.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:There's a face that you can put to that evil.
Guest:And he was like, you know, our face,
Guest:is just white.
Guest:That conceit has informed so many conversations and so much of what I did, like the notion that there's never been a prosecutable case of slavery.
Guest:The greatest human atrocity, you cannot argue it, I mean, unless you go back to biblical times, which we don't really know, but the greatest human of our recorded times, you know what I'm saying, one of the greatest human atrocities ever,
Guest:And there's never been a prosecutable case.
Guest:It's not illegal.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And there's never been a true apology.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Clinton is like a bullshit version of it.
Guest:There's never been a true apology.
Guest:So the notion that you take these people for 400 years and then say, you know, after a certain time, all right, it's over.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Go be free.
Guest:And now expect them to just live in that same society and not be fucked up.
Guest:You know, I'm saying is really, really interesting and like and not really give a face other than, you know, I'm saying our it's.
Marc:And then this is the country that it happened in their relatives live around you.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:The generations of from the people that did that are down the street down the street.
Marc:Like the Nazis, they all crawled away.
Marc:They were busted.
Marc:They were war crimes.
Marc:It was fucking horrible, but they were Germans.
Marc:But but this is sort of like, yeah, that was the old way of commerce.
Marc:And now we don't need you, but enjoy.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:So it's just that's crazy.
Guest:I think it's interesting.
Guest:And, you know, you guys, you touch on stuff like that.
Guest:But I feel like it's just it's an interesting sort of like that.
Guest:informs and not to sort of harp you know I'm saying like I've in the show the show I did for Netflix every episode was kind of because of slavery then like a type of something after it because I do really in my heart you know saying it goes back to that thing that you guys are talking you and Patrice were talking about if they say it takes two to three generations for something to normalize right so like for I think a generation is 12 years right over 15 years so the notion that
Guest:For us to see two guys kissing took about two generations to, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:Us to not be like, whoa, you know, call the police.
Guest:Like for us to sort of be like, you know, it's a little bit more normalized than it was 30 years ago.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Oh, sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You got, you know, it's, it's like, uh, it's, you sort of adapt to, to it's, it's about tolerance.
Guest:So 400 years, if 30 years takes, what does it take for a, for a community to forget 400 years or something?
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:That was 40 generations or 35 generations.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:So the idea of that is, it's just amazing.
Guest:And it informs a lot of, I think, when I see people in my community doing certain things that I'm like, oh, please don't do that.
Guest:I'm like, I then...
Guest:Think back.
Guest:Well, they're doing pretty good.
Marc:It's considering like what what's an example.
Guest:I don't know like when I see You know rims a rimmed-out car bumping, you know I'm saying in a long-income neighborhood in the middle of the day, you know I'm like because I'm like in my mind I'm like with this the the perception we're putting out there, but then I really quickly want to explain to people That's okay
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like the idea of like the societal norms that that might sort of be brushing up against.
Guest:There are things and reasons why that's happening that from a social level, if we actually did some digging in, there are reasons that that is actually a really big step forward for us.
Guest:And I'm not looking for excuses or things like that, but I feel like you take a group and you fucking do the most heinous of things to them for 400 years and then put them
Guest:let them loose into that same group with the same people who did it.
Guest:And in less than a hundred, you know, in a hundred years, they are the president of that country.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I'll take that.
Guest:I'll take those, those batting averages and say that the, you know, there's some, some things that societally we might want to catch up on, or people might want to catch up with us.
Guest:We're not going to completely ride the
Marc:normality wave yeah i i just watched a movie i got to interview jeffrey wright this week and i watched a new movie that's on netflix uh a day and uh it's called a day and oh yeah the story about oakland yeah and uh that you know one of the through lines of that was that as slaves we were taught to survive but not to thrive kind of to thrive yeah and
Marc:And like I never I you know, I don't I don't know what that life is like, but I don't know that I ever heard it sort of framed like that.
Marc:And it's a pretty powerful, disturbing movie.
Marc:When I when I see that stuff, I feel bad just because, you know, my life is small.
Marc:I live in a house with a couple of cats.
Marc:I go do stand up and I talk to people.
Marc:You know, I don't you know, black or white, it's still small.
Marc:And and I don't whenever I see stuff like that, that depicts that kind of life.
Marc:I'm like, you know what?
Marc:What the fucking world am I living in?
Marc:Right.
Marc:So when I see your show, the black as fuck show, and I see that, you know, your character struggling with, you know, with racial identity at the level that you operate at.
Marc:That's a whole other thing that, you know, that's a little more, that's a little closer to me.
Marc:Like I can relate to the criticisms you have of white people in that and your relationship with the Jewish kid.
Marc:Yeah, more than I can understand what the fuck is going on.
Guest:Well, I think that's interesting because I, you know, my friend, she has this saying that she says, she's like, God, like we walk away.
Guest:She's like, black people only get to tell four stories.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And she was like, why do people get so many stories?
Guest:Like we walked out of like unorthodox.
Guest:We were like, what a beautiful movie.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:What a beautiful niche specialized movie.
Guest:You know, and like, I feel like as much as I have heard great things about, and I love those kinds of movies and I'm sure I'm going to love Jeffrey's movie.
Guest:I do feel like we get, you know, that and Boys in the Hood and Men's Society.
Guest:Then we get, you know, a slave biopic.
Guest:You know, I'm saying, you know, I'm black and single and I can't find a man.
Guest:And then we might get some sort of, you know, historical document, you know, some sort of historical movie.
Guest:But I feel like I want to get a 1917.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I want to get an unorthodox, a punch-drunk love.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I feel like we have some other things to talk about.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also, oddly, culturally, the whole culture was driven by stories.
Marc:And you only get these four in the world of commerce.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:The world of commerce.
Guest:So that was when we did Black AF.
Guest:I really wanted to...
Guest:One, I just really wanted to do something personal.
Guest:And you're so funny, man.
Marc:You never did any comedy?
Guest:No, man.
Guest:I mean, I did a rote comedy.
Guest:I'm not an actor at all.
Guest:And I would never act in anything else other than that particular role.
Marc:But you never did stand-up?
Guest:I tried stand-up when I was in college.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:A handful of times.
Guest:Yeah, I did a handful of times.
Guest:And I was actually decent.
Guest:That's how I got into writing.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:But I knew that I did not have the gift of...
Guest:of presentation you know what i'm saying yeah yeah jokes but i could not chris tucker came in i was in atlanta going to school and chris tucker came in and he bumped all the like open micers right of course because he's working out and for an hour and a half he got up and talked talked about nothing
Guest:And I was like, I will never be able to do that.
Marc:Was it like at the punchline?
Guest:It was like Earthquakes Comedy, Uptown Comedy Corner, I think it was called.
Marc:Oh, yeah, Earthquake.
Marc:I want to interview Earthquake.
Marc:But getting back to what you were saying, I forgot to bring it up about Patrice.
Marc:Like that interview to me,
Marc:Like the people that lock into that thing, it's like it's almost like some sort of, you know, like a Bible.
Marc:It's like it's like there are certain people that register exactly because I you know, I knew him from around and, you know, he always busted my balls, but that meant he loved you.
Marc:And, you know, I always respected him.
Marc:But, you know, we kind of tucked away up there.
Marc:It's serious.
Marc:You know, in a side studio, we were both on other shows.
Marc:We were guesting and he just happened to be up there and we just locked in.
Marc:And I think what you're talking about is he had a fully formed philosophy of life that that he pulled out of the sky.
Marc:that it's based on whatever wisdom he got from whoever he got it.
Marc:But it was definitely this fully formed kind of point of view and philosophy that involved animals.
Marc:It involved men and women.
Guest:The thing that he did that I really respected, that I really feel like
Guest:I think that Dave is the greatest thing living.
Guest:And I think that they would be Michael Jordan and LeBron James in terms of who they are or whatever.
Guest:But I think the thing that I got from Patrice is he was able to form those things that you're talking about and do something that I think is the hardest to do, give context to his thoughts.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, he took the time to do it.
Marc:And also, I think intellectually they were harder to sell than what Dave does usually.
Marc:And also, I think that Patrice honestly gave zero fucks and that and that, you know, his deep contempt for I don't think it's specifically just white people, but just the way the system worked, you know, he really wanted to tear shit down.
Marc:Whereas I think Dave is a little more diplomatic.
Guest:And Dave in a different way.
Guest:Dave, I don't think has about three fucks left to give.
Guest:Whereas Patrice had zero.
Guest:I think Dave is also an academic.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And Dave, you know, understands and looks behind things and gets, you know, I think that
Guest:And Patrice was a little bit more, excuse my thing, he was a little bit more of like a, you know, in my community, I'd be like, Patrice was a little bit more of a nigga, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like, definitely a nigga, but not like, Patrice was like, you know, I think he was different, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:Patrice was two houses away from pimping.
Guest:If it all went to shit, he had another plan.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:We got a comic.
Marc:Do you know Keith Robinson?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was actually a failed pimp.
Marc:Those are the best stories.
Guest:I love the day when you have to give up on pimping.
Guest:And you're just like, it's just not for me.
Guest:I'm not good.
Guest:He just didn't have the, he was too sensitive.
Guest:That is a fucking fantastic, my last day of pimping.
Guest:Like the day you give up pimping.
Marc:There's a funny story.
Guest:Talk to Keith.
Marc:And why you gave it up.
Guest:What was that last reason?
Guest:What was the thing that he was just like, you know what?
Marc:I've had it.
Marc:I've had it with you.
Marc:You're all on your own for me.
Marc:So you went to... You didn't grow up in Atlanta, though.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I grew up between Inglewood and Pacoima.
Guest:Pacoima's a little hood in the valley, and Inglewood's a little suburban hood in South Los Angeles.
Marc:Yeah, and your family's there?
Marc:They came from there?
Guest:No, my dad came from Omaha, Nebraska, and moved out here.
Guest:And my mom...
Guest:New York via parents in West Indies, New York.
Guest:And then grew up, she grew up in Santa Barbara.
Guest:Huh.
Marc:That's how they meet.
Guest:My mom was like one of the only black girls in Santa Barbara.
Guest:Her other black girlfriend wanted to meet real black guys.
Guest:So they would freak out the house and drive to LA.
Guest:My dad was like a hood dude.
Guest:Um,
Guest:from East L.A.
Guest:And he was like, you know, a year or two older than my mom.
Guest:He was like in the streets.
Guest:My mom loved it.
Guest:And she'd go out and get, you know, in trouble with my dad and then drive back to Santa Barbara.
Guest:And then she got pregnant at 16 for my dad.
Guest:And my mom, my grandmother put her, you know, told her she had to go live her life.
Guest:And she had my sister at 17.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:And your dad was, like, he was, like, from Nebraska?
Guest:He was from, you know, but he grew up, like, in the same neighborhood as Malcolm X. You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like, you know, he's, like, that's Malcolm X from Omaha, Nebraska, too.
Guest:He grew up in the same neighborhood as Malcolm X. Malcolm X was older than him, but he would see, he called him Big Red, he would see him in the, you know,
Guest:He was older than him when he was young.
Guest:It's a lot of transplants actually from there.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:That place is very sort of, has an interesting history in itself.
Marc:The Nebraska history, black history of Nebraska?
Guest:Yeah, it's really interesting.
Guest:I have, you know, my dad used to, my dad just passed a couple months ago, but he used to try to have a family reunion and you would hear, you know, knowing Malcolm X comes from there, like a really, it has a lot of like layered things to it.
Guest:And, you know, those two people coming together, my dad was a part of the Nation of Islam.
Guest:He's a Muslim.
Guest:My mom grew up Jehovah Witness.
Guest:So like,
Guest:Those two people grazing me like I had no holidays, nothing but fucking church clothes.
Marc:Well, there's there's definitely a certain amount of discipline on both sides of that.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:My mom, my dad was so like my dad was like a bad Muslim because he's supposed to hold these papers all the time.
Guest:And instead he would just buy him and put him in the garage.
Guest:And he sold him because he didn't want to go and do it.
Guest:But he wouldn't eat pork.
Guest:And he would tell my mom, like, if she's going to cook pork, she had to have a whole separate set of pots.
Marc:for my dad's food so it was it was a very interesting sort of you know that's like being a jew being an orthodox jew yes with the kosher yeah you know and so you grew up like just living in in los angeles at that time yeah and what was it you know you have one sister i have one sister and three brothers yeah
Marc:Three brothers older.
Guest:Well, one of them passes my little brother and two older.
Marc:What was how did you end up being compelled to to sort of pursue a life in comedy or show business?
Marc:Or like, did you did like back then?
Marc:I'm trying to figure out.
Marc:I don't know what was going on when you were growing up.
Marc:Did you go to comedy shows?
Guest:Did you engage in shit like that?
Guest:I was comedy like Saturday Night Live was my babysitter.
Guest:Um, I got ahold of my dad used to call them party records.
Guest:I got ahold of like the red Fox Fox records.
Guest:I got ahold of like those early Richard Pryor records.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Um, craps, the craps record, uh, the blacksmith record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When he was talking about, you know, um, he told his woman he was, was, you know, fucking her friend and she got mad because she was fucking her too.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Just like things like, and I started like realizing like irony and, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:I, and I would sort of like,
Guest:Those records kind of were like, you know, my family, my dad was abusive.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Was he?
Guest:Yeah, he was abusive.
Guest:And my mom was a really strong lady, but had a lot of kids, kind of put up with it.
Guest:He beat you up?
Guest:All the kids?
Guest:No, he was... I was so young.
Guest:My older brother...
Guest:Brothers and sisters kind of got like, you know, some shoving things here.
Guest:It was really taken out on my mom.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:My dad was a was a good a good guy, but he had some some dark days.
Guest:And I think he later on in his life, you know, in a lot of ways.
Guest:But, you know, they my mom.
Guest:And he had interesting, like, he loved my mom, but like in that scary kind of love way.
Guest:It's like, you know, like, and he convinced my mom.
Guest:He had broke up one time or separated one time.
Guest:And he convinced my mom, like, could you just have a talk with me?
Guest:And he's like, I've really gotten into church.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:He's like, and he was like saying, went away from, you know, Islam.
Guest:And he's like, really got into church.
Guest:My mom was like, hmm.
Guest:And he showed her a Bible.
Guest:And she got in the car with him.
Guest:And he was like, you drive.
Guest:And she was like, what?
Guest:And he had cut out the pages of the Bible and had a gun in it.
Guest:And, like, literally drove, made her drive around.
Guest:And, like, he convinced her, you know what I'm saying, to take him back.
Guest:But, like, little stories like that that I would hear.
Marc:Romantic stories.
Guest:Romantic, sweet things.
Guest:But, like, we were – my brother, who, you know, is –
Guest:to this day one of my heroes funniest dude ever like when you come out of stuff like that you look for things to sort of like take you out of it and comedy was a big big big version of that those albums i remember the button down mine for me that um you know by my heart you know i'm saying was just like i started liking things that were smart you know i'm saying i really felt like i like things that were smart that felt like
Guest:there was a voice to them.
Guest:You know, like you could tell a Newhart joke.
Guest:You could tell a prior joke.
Guest:You could tell... Right.
Guest:And I started liking that really early on.
Guest:And so I knew I wanted to...
Guest:do something with a voice.
Guest:I didn't think I knew it was a voice, but I knew I wanted people to be able to hear what I had to say.
Marc:Well, I think you had the same reaction I did to stand up being, you know, I didn't grow up in an abusive environment, but I was definitely, it was an emotionally kind of draining environment.
Marc:But I always felt that
Marc:you know you watch a comic or you listen to a comic you there's party that thinks that like they've got it they understand you know they you know what i mean they've got they've got it wrapped up you know they it because they could they could say things in a certain way and just blow your mind and make you look at things entirely differently and feel better yeah and i feel like that's you know it's even in your i look and listen to yourself like the idea of being
Guest:Comedy is under attack right now, and it really scares me.
Guest:Does it?
Guest:Because comics are not just my heroes.
Guest:They're important for the matriculation and the maturation of society.
Marc:Yeah, of democracy.
Marc:They're a good lubricant.
Guest:Yes, and what they do is they are the people who take society in.
Guest:And they take it through their filter and metabolize it.
Guest:And what they put back out, they put something back out in a palatable enough way that makes us think and provokes thought that subsequently can change society.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What's your fear like right now around?
Guest:That the voices, it's so hard to have, like you have, you know, you need the 10,000 hours.
Guest:you know what I'm saying, to put in before you can really actually, like you look at Pryor and he was, you know, trying to find himself for a long time.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:You look at most comics and you're like, look at their early stuff.
Guest:You know, they're trying to find stuff.
Guest:Dave actually seemed like he found himself really early.
Marc:But I remember him when he was a kid.
Marc:I was in New York when he came, when he showed up and when he was a teenager.
Marc:And it was fouled, right?
Marc:Well, he has he definitely loved being on stage.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:And he loved the you know, like that's the other thing between him and Patrice is like, I think, Dave, you know, he really is charming and he really loves to be loved up there.
Guest:You know, he loves what he does.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And but like I could see in the last special because I was watching him, you know, watching how he was working stuff is that he did this thing where he'd say something that he knew would be provocative and he would kind of like laugh at himself and then run into the background.
Marc:He did it several times like he it was almost sort of like, you know, I'm going to do this, but, you know, I know it's going to be weird and then I'm going to like, you know, I'm going to like I'm going to buffer it.
Marc:Whereas, you know, Patrice really wanted to blow brains out, you know, but but the point was that Dave early on.
Marc:Yeah, he was fully, you know, he did this thing with the hat.
Marc:He did that like he did this character thing.
Marc:The difference between the ghetto dude and the guy.
Marc:It was just a matter of him putting the bill of the hat.
Marc:He did two characters by moving the bill of the hat.
Marc:And it was great, man.
Marc:I remember when I sat him down, it was funny because I haven't been able to talk to him on this show.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:He won't do it.
Marc:I think he's pretty private around some things.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But I remember he was smoking a lot of weed and he was getting fucked up.
Marc:And I saw it.
Marc:And I was fucked up, but I was trying to get sober and shit.
Marc:I remember I sat him down and I just gave him this big lecture about not getting fucked up and throwing away his life on drugs and being one of those cocks.
Oh, my God.
Marc:And I, and I brought it up to him years later.
Marc:I said, do you remember when I did that?
Marc:I taught, cause I was fucked up when I was talking.
Marc:And I said, I said to him, do you remember when I did that?
Marc:He goes, yeah, man, I went home and read the Bible.
Guest:You know, it's interesting because I, in the last five or six years of my life, you know, seven years, maybe my life has just totally changed.
Guest:I was a working writer, you know what I'm saying, who sold pilots, you know, and made a good career, made a good living.
Guest:Black-ish happened and all of a sudden it just went, you know, it kind of took off in terms of things like that.
Guest:And so...
Guest:I started like meeting my heroes.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And then beyond meeting my heroes, actually knowing my heroes, you know, getting to know my heroes.
Guest:And it was, you know, we're like Dave was one of my heroes, you know, and Dave was, you know, I would sort of like, okay, be cool.
Guest:You're in the same place with him.
Guest:Just be cool, man.
Guest:Just act like a normal person.
Guest:Hey, what's up, Dave?
Guest:What's going on, bro?
Guest:It's hard, but
Guest:He, over the years, has become so sort of like, it's hard to not be normal around him because he's just so cool.
Guest:And I had like the biggest sort of like mind-blowing moment.
Guest:I went to Toronto for the Laugh Festival a couple years ago.
Guest:They were giving me some award or whatever.
Guest:Dave did a concert.
Guest:I mean, him in a stool.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was him and John Mayer was like backing up and he let me come on stage with him and Wanda.
Guest:And I sat at a table and it was twenty seven, twenty seven or thirty thousand people in a round and just Dave.
Guest:And I was Wanda and I were back on a stool on the stage.
Guest:I got to see him like a guy who knew how to fucking work a yo-yo.
Guest:and work the audience with nothing but a stool.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And it was so interesting because the night before, I'm a Kevin Hart fan, I saw Kevin, who's a comedy rock star, do a totally different show.
Guest:It had pyrotechnics and this one.
Guest:And it just was like seeing two different people at the top of their career do something.
Guest:But Dave...
Guest:The way that he, you know, the things, you know, the hitting the sub with the mic is just like the things that he sort of has become proprietary signature things of him.
Guest:I felt like...
Guest:I'm in the middle of something special.
Guest:And I don't know that concert.
Guest:I mean, where he's at in his career right now.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so how do you think that affects like the idea of like, you think that comedy, we were talking about the 10,000 hours and about the comedic voices.
Marc:Is this about the self-censorship element of comedy right now?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And we don't have...
Guest:We don't have the science that we used to have, you know, I'm saying art has always happened in salons You know I'm saying there were writers salons and you know artist salons and I'm saying and those guys would say you know what we're gonna be cubists and That became the period or these guys would say we're gonna write like this and that became the period and and they had wealthy Contributors that would sort of protect them so that they could still like, you know, do their art now
Guest:the wealthy contributors are brands.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Who have people and stockholders and things that they have to answer to.
Guest:So you don't, if you're trying to come up and you have a voice, you know, and you still want to take care of yourself, you have to like,
Guest:watch what you're saying because your career could be over you know i'm saying in an incident you're trying to formulate your thought and your voice it could be over and i feel like that's that hurts society well it's tricky you know also that you know that everything is so fragmented so you know
Marc:a big voice to, uh, how many people are they going to, is anyone going to know him?
Marc:Like I find that all the time.
Marc:There's so much shit out there.
Marc:I mean, you know, Chappelle has risen to this mythic level for a lot of different reasons.
Marc:And Louis was sort of the king of comedy for a while, but then it sort of breaks apart.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Like I've known Kevin for years, but you know, I don't, you know, millions of people go to see him, but he doesn't seem to hold the same place as like a Chappelle.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He holds his other place.
Marc:Like you said, he's a rock star.
Marc:It's almost like bordering on motivational speaking.
Guest:No, seriously, it is.
Guest:It's like going to a TED Talk with needle drops.
Marc:In some aspects.
Marc:So that's so weird to me that you were kind of like a...
Marc:Because like I saw Dave on the one day I see him, I was hanging out with him a few years ago at the Oddball Festival.
Marc:And yeah, he is sort of laid back and he's always sort of thoughtful.
Marc:And, you know, he he's not he is not that intimidating, I guess, once you get to know him.
Marc:But you were kind of a nerdy writer guy, you would say.
Marc:One hundred.
Guest:I mean, I was I was literally I.
Guest:who I am, you know what I'm saying, like take away the, you know, like I want to, you know, dress in sweatsuits, I've changed stuff, like I'm a kid who had asthma, who read, you know, a ton of comic books, who read, you know, Sedaris.
Marc:What comics?
Guest:All Marvel, I was a huge, all the whole X-Men thing, you know, there was a comic that I tried to get called Power Pack, it was about these kids that were, like this family of kids who like an alien came down, he was dying, he gave them each one of his abilities and
Guest:and they kind of melded into the mutant world of X-Men.
Guest:When the X-Men were, all the Outbranchers were the best, the movies that you wish Fox could have done, right?
Guest:Because they were by far the better, way better than the Avengers.
Marc:So this is when you were a kid, you were sort of like a quiet kid or you were like just hold up with comic books and Bob Newhart records?
Guest:I was a kid who was very close to his mom, who, you know, my brothers were in the streets and my mom was determined to not let that happen with me.
Guest:I, you know, my mom, like, you know, was working two jobs.
Guest:And I remember she saved up and got me world book encyclopedias and was like, read that.
Guest:And I'm like, what?
Guest:She was like that, the whole thing.
Guest:And like, so I started like reading the encyclopedia.
Guest:And, you know, like I saw, you know, reading was like, you know, for me, a really, really big thing.
Guest:I grew up in a neighborhood you couldn't just go outside necessarily.
Guest:Was that bad?
Guest:It wasn't that it was that bad.
Guest:It was fine.
Guest:But you could also, the more time you spent outside, the more time you were going to become a part of the outside.
Marc:Become a part of the outside.
Guest:My brothers had done that in their own way.
Guest:So my mom was determined, and my sister too, was determined to sort of get me into other things.
Guest:And it worked?
Guest:It did work.
Guest:It did work.
Guest:I didn't think it would, but it did.
Marc:And were your brothers protective of it as well?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, they were doing their thing.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like they were dudes and, you know, then they got caught up with girls and drugs and jail and stuff like that.
Guest:Not that they didn't love me, but they were in their life.
Guest:My sister was really like my mom and my mom was very, very supportive.
Guest:So, you know, my grandmother, I was raised by like three generations of women.
Marc:And your father like split or was there?
Guest:He was there.
Guest:He was, he was definitely divorced, but like I knew my dad, I would spend summers there, you know, things like that.
Guest:But my dad also was on his own thing.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:He was trying to find himself and, you know, just a guy and him, you know, trying to really, you know, he wasn't,
Guest:empty or absent from my life, but he was not, you know, he and my mom had such a tumultuous sort of, yeah, my mom shot my dad in front of me.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like, yeah, it had such a tumultuous sort of, um,
Guest:relationship that I made a choice when I was a kid, and the choice was undoubtedly my mom's side.
Guest:And so whenever I'd have to be around my dad, I'm like, I'm not going to forget.
Guest:My dad broke my mom's jaw while my mom was pregnant with me.
Guest:My mom had to drink, and it was the 70s, so she had to drink 70s protein shakes through a straw with her mouth wired.
Guest:They didn't know if I was going to make it or not.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:So you would hear these stories as you were coming up, like my mom has a little thing here, and you'd hear how it happened, and
Guest:So I made a choice and that choice was my mom and my mom was very, very, very much so intent on all her kids going to college.
Guest:Even my brothers who got in trouble went to USC and my sister was like, she was like, this was the whole point of the civil rights movement was that they fought so that we were not going to college was not a choice for us.
Guest:And I think we were the first generation that that was an obligation.
Right.
Marc:How old were you when he was out of the house?
Guest:Young.
Guest:He got out of the house when I was five or six.
Guest:They were going through a divorce when my mom shot him.
Guest:I think I was seven or eight when that happened.
Marc:Where'd she shoot him?
Guest:She shot him in the stomach.
Guest:She would kill me for saying this.
Guest:Black moms and Jewish moms are the same thing.
Guest:I would say they both believe in disciplining through guilt.
Guest:So my mom, I did an article at the New Yorker a few years ago, and I told the story.
Guest:When my mom, my dad broke into our house, right?
Guest:And my mom saw him, like, you know, and she saw, heard the noise or whatever.
Guest:And my mom had a gun.
Guest:And she was, you know, saying, go home, Pat, go home.
Guest:And my dad was like, what are you going to do, shoot me?
Guest:And I saw my mom kind of close her eyes and turn her head.
Guest:And I tell the story that my mom...
Guest:Pulled the trigger until I heard click.
Guest:So she let off a lot of shots.
Guest:She's like, I didn't shoot him six times.
Guest:I only shot him four.
Guest:I only shot four times.
Guest:I'm like, Mom, okay.
Guest:I'm like, this is my story.
Guest:I mean, you can't tell me the fucking bullet count for my drama.
Guest:But yeah, it was...
Guest:It was something.
Guest:And he survived.
Guest:He survived.
Guest:Yeah, he survived.
Guest:He big time survived.
Guest:My dad was, I to this day believed that we were getting an autopsy and luckily we ordered one so we could not go back.
Guest:I think my dad died from Corona.
Guest:He died of acute respiratory failure a couple months ago and it like came out of nowhere.
Guest:But Corona was not announced yet.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:But after it got announced, I'm like, oh my God, this was all the signs.
Guest:Like clotting, you know, got on a ventilator, couldn't talk, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:It hit him quickly and he was just gone.
Marc:He was in LA?
Guest:Yeah, basically.
Guest:He lived in Apple Valley.
Marc:Well, they say it was here a lot earlier than we think.
Guest:I think I really, I'm waiting for the autopsy results now to get redone.
Guest:I really would not be surprised at all if it was.
Marc:Just for your own peace of mind?
Guest:Yeah, for your own peace of mind, because I didn't get a chance to say goodbye.
Guest:We had renewed our relationship and actually found a really good place.
Guest:And I got a chance to see him before he passed, but I didn't think he was going to pass because he went to the hospital and nothing was theoretically wrong with him.
Guest:And then he died.
Marc:So where'd you go to college?
Marc:You went to college in Atlanta.
Guest:Went to college at Clark Atlanta University.
Marc:And you were studying what?
Guest:Radio television film.
Guest:I knew I wanted to do something.
Guest:A lot of that came from knowing that
Guest:I wanted to be a doctor at first, and then I took one semester of chemistry, and I never felt stupider.
Guest:I think I got like a 3% on a test, and I never came close to that.
Marc:So hard.
Guest:So hard.
Guest:So I was like, I just don't grasp this.
Marc:I couldn't either.
Marc:I couldn't fucking grasp algebra.
Marc:But chemistry was like, what the fuck?
Guest:Might as well have been talking another language.
Guest:So I realized that it was...
Guest:probably not the path for me.
Guest:And my best friend was Tyra, Tyra Banks, and she had blown up already when we were in high school.
Guest:And I- Oh, you knew her from that when you were a kid?
Guest:We knew for each other since we were babies.
Guest:And so I felt like, because she was such a big model at that time, when I was entering college, in a lot of ways, I felt like I wanted to go work with her or work for her.
Guest:So that was part of my sort of like, I felt like she was so close to me, that would be a part of my world.
Marc:And it was.
Guest:Yeah, we did a model together.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you so you went for the full four years.
Marc:You got a degree in show business.
Guest:State of Atlanta for a quick second.
Guest:I wanted to get home.
Guest:I had to get back to L.A.
Marc:What were you doing in Atlanta?
Marc:You stayed there for like a year after college or something?
Guest:Like maybe six months.
Guest:I worked in music publishing and I worked, you know, tried to work at CNN and like they're like sports, you know, the sports division, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like producing sports.
Guest:And I just was like, I'm from LA, I'm from Hollywood.
Guest:Why would I not go back home?
Guest:So I got back home as quickly as I could and
Guest:Got a job working for this councilman named Nate Holden as his press deputy.
Guest:And he was like always in trouble.
Guest:But I thank him for the job.
Guest:But I was always talking to old ladies about their trash not getting picked up and, you know, wearing like Jose Bank suits to work and just like hating my life.
Guest:And Tyra helped me get an internship or a public job at Roger D. Cowan was the name of the publicity firm at the time.
Guest:And I was like my entree into show business.
Guest:And I left there and
Guest:Um, got on as a PA and this lady named Felicia Henderson, I got on as a PA then I went to Keenan Ivey Wayne's show as like a, one of my friends was like in a writing program there and we kind of were writing stuff for Keenan and then got on as- Which show?
Guest:Uh, the Keenan Ivey Wayne late night comedy show.
Guest:My friend- Oh yeah.
Guest:Was a, got on as a writer then I was helping him with stuff and then we left, I left there and I got on as a writer's assistant
Guest:This lady, Felicia Henderson, who's a big writer now, gave me my real break.
Guest:And she helped me get in the Paramount Writers Trainee Program through this guy, Steve Stark.
Guest:And just, you know, things things started happening from, you know, here and there.
Guest:And I went the P.A.
Guest:route up, you know, and that's how.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's so funny.
Marc:The Keenan like it's so weird when I was I was a doorman at the comedy store in like the late 80s.
Marc:And no one remembers Keenan.
Marc:He was a pretty good stand-up.
Marc:Was he?
Marc:I don't remember.
Marc:I remember Damon as a stand-up.
Marc:Well, Damon was amazing.
Marc:I used to watch him all the time.
Marc:He was another one that would just go out there.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He has that famous joke about once you get famous, they come and ask you, now, Damon, now that you've made it in Hollywood, what do you think about the racism?
Guest:And he said he looked at the camera and goes,
Guest:If it is racism, I didn't see none.
Guest:It was such a joke ahead of its time.
Guest:The notion of them giving you buying your slavery back.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:He was great.
Guest:I believe that they are the most brilliant comedic family in history.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Hyperbolic statement, but that is what I believe.
Guest:I believe that Kenan is a comedic genius.
Guest:Damon is a genius.
Guest:Marlon's a genius.
Guest:Something, whatever it was in there.
Guest:They grew up Jehovah Witness, too.
Guest:And I think there's something about that that is...
Guest:very interesting i heard jay-z and prince and just some other i don't know if that's true but i think there's something about a sort of oppressive hard religious upbringing you know what i'm saying well isn't the jehovah's witnesses where you can't really dance and shit can't go can't have birthdays no christmas you can go to dances within you're not supposed to be they call it worldly you're not supposed to be worldly you're not supposed to be of the world you're supposed to keep within your
Guest:your group because worldly things will infect you.
Guest:So the idea of sort of socializing is in terms of what the world is shunned upon.
Guest:And all you want to do is do what you're not supposed to do.
Guest:So I think people who came out of that, Michael Jackson, it causes this sort of explosion once you hit society because you have so much inside of you.
Guest:So that's my own philosophy on it.
Marc:But you but you didn't grow up with that strict situation.
Guest:I did not.
Guest:My mom and because my mom and dad were both separate things, we didn't have to go to either.
Guest:The kids didn't have to choose.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:My mom went to the hall and sometime I'll go with her.
Guest:My dad would go to the mosque and sometime, you know, participate in that.
Marc:Okay, so you do the PA route, but how do you come up?
Marc:Because did you create America's Next Top Model with Tyra?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tyra and I were developing a couple movies at the time, and they were getting in development hell.
Guest:And reality was kind of at its sort of like nascent sort of birthplace.
Guest:And I was like, you know, you're a big model.
Guest:We should do something.
Guest:with which you do other than us trying to sort of like make a star.
Guest:And so we started really kind of the original thing with title for top model was going to be like brains, beauty and brawn.
Guest:Like we were going to sort of like have them models because we were kind of copying off a survivor like on an island who are pretty, but they also have to use like strength and their smarts to like get out of different situations.
Guest:And we that sort of went away and we started talking about like
Guest:Which should be that, you know, Sarah started telling me that there actually is a technique to modeling and there's secret things.
Guest:I had never heard this.
Guest:And we I was like, this is sort of like how making the band is how there's a part of something.
Guest:And so we end up getting Ken Mock, who was one of the creators of making the band was the guy who sort of like took and helped shape this shape top model into a show.
Marc:And that was it was a huge show.
Marc:Was it kind of like it set some sort of precedent?
Marc:It was a you know, because that model of show became applied to any number of shows.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And it was it was very derivative.
Guest:And everybody but me got rich off of that show.
Guest:um i got enough money to say no to some things you know i'm saying for me yeah i might as well have been rich but you know they got rich rich i don't i don't fuck with kid mock to this day because i feel like he fucked me you know i'm saying out of that show yeah how'd you get fucked um i i was very green you know i'm saying but i obviously i had you know i had taste and that's something i think that
Guest:You know, Rashida Jones says her taste is her talent.
Guest:And I kind of feel like I'm just going to steal that.
Guest:So that's sort of my talents.
Guest:I had a good taste.
Guest:I knew it was hot or not.
Guest:And so I knew when things weren't right.
Guest:And Ken, the very first episode, had turned the first episode into the network.
Guest:without showing me or Tyra and I lost my shit.
Guest:And I, you know, cause I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm at that time.
Guest:I'm fresh.
Guest:I'm, I'm young.
Guest:I'm like, not that long from being in the streets.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I came in as this little Asian dude and I was ready to beat his ass.
Guest:And I told him in his office, I was like, I'm gonna fuck you up.
Guest:Like, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like, and I handled it completely wrong, but no, I know completely wrong, but it was, I felt so, you know,
Guest:assaulted by it.
Guest:I basically quit.
Guest:I basically was like, I don't want to be a part of it.
Guest:I took a buyout and I let them sort of strong arm me into what I should have been
Guest:Um, what I, I should have been, I should have gotten a lot more from it, but I, you know, it was, it was the most amazing thing I had.
Guest:It started my career.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:It gave me the power to say no in a way that I can't, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how did you settle on, you know, creating comedy after that?
Marc:It seems like a big jump.
Guest:Um, I always wanted to do comedy You know, I got into my first real, you know job was on a drama I wrote in a drama for four seasons drama with this lady Felicia Henderson This drama soul food.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Um, so that was you we just in the room You're in the writers room is in the writers room as between there and Canada.
Guest:They taped it in Canada So I'd go up there for taping
Marc:So that was the first time in a writer's room for a job?
Guest:Well, I kind of was in the writer's room with writers a little bit, you know, around McKinnon writers, but not really.
Guest:It really was, that was my first like in a writer's room paid.
Guest:I had done a writer's room on BET, but that was the first big writer's room show that I had done.
Marc:What's the BET writer's room?
Guest:It was, I worked for a show called Live from LA.
Guest:It was this comedian, Michael Collier.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he had a show and it was a lot of funny writers on there, actually.
Marc:Michael Collier, he used to be a street performer, right?
Guest:Street performer at Venice Beach.
Marc:In Venice Beach.
Marc:I remember him.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:What happened to that guy?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I love him, though.
Guest:He came and did Black-ish and he did such a good job.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:And he was so funny.
Guest:Really good guy.
Marc:So now the writer's room experience, I mean, so you like, you really kind of pulled it together all the way from PA and then you, did you, but you weren't a writer's assistant at Kenan show.
Marc:You were just a PA.
Guest:I was PA.
Guest:And then, um, we had gotten, Lady Shauna guard was giving us a writer's job and, and the show got canceled right as before our first writer's job.
Guest:You know, we got it and David, and it went away as the show was getting who you and who my, my partner at the time was this guy, Fisett Walker.
Guest:And it was, you guys actually, Ian Edwards was one of the writers on that show.
Guest:And I think Ian is one of the funniest dudes.
Guest:And there was, Vernon Chapman was on that show.
Guest:But like, some of the funniest human beings.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Which show was this?
Guest:This was the Keenan Ivey Wayne show.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, Vernon's like a real, he's out there, dude.
Marc:He's a genius.
Guest:He had a pitch that they still talk about.
Guest:It was, he pitched a sketch called Too Many Niggas On Stage.
Guest:And it was at the Wu-Tang-esque group.
Guest:And a guy came out and he was like, yo, God.
Guest:He's like, I got a new God.
Guest:I got God.
Guest:And all of a sudden, it's 100 people on stage and the stage collapses.
Guest:And you hear it's like a mess of everything.
Guest:And you just hear it for Under the Rebel.
Guest:Man, we got too many niggas on stage.
Guest:And it was, I knew when Vernon went to go write for Chris Rock, you could hear the jokes.
Guest:You could hear his voice.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And you could hear this other guy, Michael Anthony Snowden, just a fucking brilliant guy.
Guest:He co-wrote Scary Movie and White Chicks or some of those other things, whatever.
Guest:But like brilliant, brilliant people.
Guest:And you could hear, that was my first time you started being like, I can hear a Marc Maron joke.
Marc:my partner groff jonathan groff came and did your show and john groff yeah he was my partner on blackish he's like i dude john groff and i started together in boston doing stand-up he was the i got him his first writing job oh wow he's a funny motherfucker dude he he uh like i was hosting short attention span theater on comedy central and he was a comic
Marc:He was moving into writing, but we did open mics together in Boston in the fucking 80s, dude.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:I'd known him a long time.
Marc:They didn't want to hire a writer at this dumb little clip show I did, and I made them... I pulled in John, and that was his first job writing, and then he went on to Conan, and that was history.
Guest:He's a monster, monster, monster in the writer's room.
Guest:Seriously.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He's a Jeopardy!
Guest:grand champion, and
Guest:Yeah, it's just super funny, you know, guy that like bits will come out of the you're not even thinking about stuff.
Guest:And he'll just do I forgot that he was there.
Guest:So you guys you created that together?
Guest:No, I created it.
Guest:I created it.
Guest:But how'd you meet him?
Guest:So when I was creating it, the person they brought on to help me through the pilot was Larry Wilmore, who, you know, was I was a huge fan of.
Guest:Larry and I parted before the show started, or right before the show came on, because Larry got the nightly show or whatever.
Guest:And so I knew I was going to need going into it.
Guest:I knew before the show even got picked up that Larry was going to have his show.
Guest:So I knew I was going to need an experienced person to do this with.
Guest:And we brought in Jonathan Groff.
Guest:So he was there with me from the beginning.
Guest:And although he didn't create the show with me, he is in every aspect my partner on that show.
Guest:He was amazing.
Guest:For a white guy,
Guest:from New Hampshire or Boston, wherever he's from, to come in to let a guy who had never run a show before do something different, because that show hadn't really quite been done like that before.
Guest:And I just was telling stories about my family, and he
Guest:took, let me sort of like really run a show, but at the same time told me what I didn't know and dealt with the network and deal with editing.
Guest:Anyone else, you know, the ego that would have been, you know, they would have possibly had would have not let my voice come out, but he really, really, really fostered my voice in a way.
Guest:And he did the same thing with the kid who created David Kass, who did create Happy Endings.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:He was, you know, there's a few of those guys, Ira Ungerlinger, there's a few of those guys who
Guest:In town, they do something really special and they know how to come in and work with writers and let their voice come out.
Guest:But at the same time, not let their ego get in in the way so that the show doesn't suffer.
Guest:And he's one of those guys and he's paid well for it.
Marc:But so wait, so what was the jump to?
Marc:So when you created Black-ish, what was the what was the inspiration, man?
Marc:Like you were just it's time for a black show.
Guest:I'd sold a ton of pilots.
Guest:So 19 pilots and, you know, they had gone to various levels, but never went all the way.
Guest:And I was in those pilots.
Guest:I think I was trying to, like, do the family people wanted to see.
Guest:Sometime I'd write a show and then I'd turn the characters white.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Or, you know, I I do sort of like the, you know,
Guest:The Malik and Saul, like a black guy and a Jewish guy who lived next door.
Guest:I was trying to like find some hook.
Guest:And I felt like I really started like thinking the people who I loved and the people that I sort of like really wanted to emulate the thing that they did time and time again was they told their story.
Guest:And so I was like, you know, I finally was like, fuck it.
Guest:You know, I had so many friends.
Guest:My wife's a doctor.
Guest:You know, I had these kids who, you know, you're taught to give your kids more than you have.
Guest:doing that what do they lose you know i'm saying what do you lose out on and i had these kids who were look were black kids but didn't look like the black kids that i remember in terms of the things that they wanted the things that they did their friends and i started talking to so many of my friends and that was their experience too whether they were black or white and so that was sort of the conceit of the show is that our people our age having kids we were kind of started like being the dinosaurs right and playing and i was trying to like
Guest:hold on to the Blackness in my kids, but at the same time, I wanted them to have the privileges of little white kids.
Guest:That was the conceit of what Blackness was about.
Guest:When I got a chance to do it, it was...
Guest:Lawrence Fishburne is why that show got picked up.
Guest:He was just a big star to be doing comedy and such a big jump.
Marc:He's so good in it.
Guest:He's beyond good.
Guest:Anthony Anderson and Tracy Ross are why it stayed on.
Guest:We all came together and we were in this little siloed off pod.
Guest:Will Moore, Groff, me, the guys.
Guest:We did something and you could feel...
Guest:we didn't know if it was going to work or not, but you kind of felt like whether it worked or not, you felt good about it and you felt like it was different.
Marc:In your mind, what do you think, how was it part of the evolution of that, of a black family show?
Marc:How was it different in your mind?
Guest:So I think Cosby for me,
Guest:you know um was amazing you know i'm saying i think that it was it changed society you know it was the first time my white friends wanted the same dad that i wanted you know i'm saying i was like oh yeah i want to be my dad too like you know in it but cosby was very he was very political in that he made a point the cosby show they could have been white
Guest:You couldn't take those characters and tell basically the same stories.
Guest:And he did that purposely.
Guest:He did not talk about race.
Guest:And I made a point with Black-ish that it was absolutely about a black family.
Guest:It was about their experiences.
Guest:So I think that was the evolution.
Guest:And at the same time, it was...
Guest:Whereas the Cosby's never really seemed conscious of their socioeconomic status, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:That was a multi-million dollar brownstone and they were obviously doing really well.
Guest:They never really seemed too conscious of their socioeconomic status.
Guest:That show, Blackish was very conscious of like...
Guest:they have made it you know i'm saying or you know they have you know they're at the you know and and really in the middle middle class pool in a real big way yeah you know right you know subsequently it ended up i think one of the things that kept that show on and keeps it keeps it going is for a long time it was the it was the watch the group that watched the most was the highest per income um family highest per income groups in the of any show on television watch that show i don't know why
Guest:No, blackish.
Marc:Oh, okay, good.
Guest:I think that it was the sort of aspirational wish fulfillment part of it, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:People who watched it, there were a lot of advertisers who wanted to come and sell expensive stuff.
Guest:that was a good place for them.
Guest:And so I think that it got great ratings at first, and then Empire came and took all our African-American viewers away because it was opposite us.
Guest:But it got really decent ratings and still gets decent ratings.
Guest:But I think the voice of that show ended up being what actually made it special.
Marc:Right.
Marc:For sure.
Marc:And did you find that, like, because I know that, you know, whatever your relationships were with your family, that, you know, that there's a milder version of you and your father.
Guest:Oh, 100 percent.
Guest:That was the love letter to my dad.
Guest:That was, you know, you know, my dad, you know.
Guest:was the was the was not that version of what pop is but he had some of those things yeah we saw pop say you know there was a i was just having this conversation it's so you left out the jaw breaking i left out the jaw breaking and the him get i did not leave out that she shot him though i did not leave in blackish you know the mom has shot the dad um and um but um you know there's a great
Guest:Thing I like, you know, Honeymoon is one of my favorite shows.
Guest:Ralph Graham did, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like, the notion of what the difference between black characters and white characters.
Guest:Like, here was a character that wore a wife beater that told his wife, you know, say one more fucking word.
Guest:I'm gonna punch you in your fucking mouth.
Guest:And that was like a beloved statement.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:To the moon.
Guest:To the moon, I'm going to fucking punch you in.
Marc:You knew he'd never do it.
Guest:You knew he'd never do it, but the idea of a, I think that was the notion of what Cosby understood, that he could never at that time be a black character.
Guest:He had to be perfect.
Guest:It was Barack in the Romney debates, you know what I'm saying, where you knew Barack could have sliced him to shreds during that debate, but you have to meter yourself.
Guest:And that was Cosby meeting himself.
Guest:For me, Blackwish was a little bit more,
Guest:stepping not quite pow to the moon but you had you know anthony is blustery you know i'm saying lawrence was a little bit you know not great as a as a grandfather you know i'm saying um so it was a stepping out a little bit and i kind of think what i wanted to do when i did this show at netflix was take that next step you know i'm saying and say that we could not have to worry about not just not worry about being perfect be completely fucked up
Guest:be completely fucked up and be completely flawed but that be a version of what the black experience is because we're not monolithic there's a version of it that lives in the Cabrini-Green's projects where Good Times is there's a version that lives in that brownstone with Cosby there's a version that lives in Studio City with Black-ish there's a version that lives with Bernie Mac we don't have to keep telling the same version of the story
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So that's then it's more than four stories.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:It's but it's still a family story.
Guest:But I'm trying to for me, I'm trying to not be a part of that four story.
Marc:Well, I think what's unique about you right now is in talking to you, but in watching the new show is your your your weird self-consciousness.
Marc:So because I.
Marc:That's the primary difference is there's the swagger necessary to maintain a type of lifestyle that you judge yourself against as being, you know, what what kind of like slightly irresponsible rich black person should be like your awareness of it and you're judging yourself, putting yourself in between those guys, you know, and in between this Jewish kid and also Hollywood or who was the guy that made it?
Marc:Was it who made the guess?
Marc:Who was the writer?
Marc:Was it?
Marc:Steve Levitan.
Marc:Yeah, Levitan.
Marc:That's part of you in your head, and it always has been part of you.
Guest:It's interesting because that story is a real... Conceited that story is based on a thing with Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Guest:I went to...
Guest:The stupidest thing I did when I got any money is I bought a Ferrari.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I did it.
Guest:It has like 400 miles and I never drive it.
Guest:But I did it and I was kind of embarrassed to drive it.
Guest:And one night I got tickets, floor seats to the Lakers game and I was like, I asked my daughter, I was like, hey, you want to go to the game?
Guest:And she was like, sure, I'll go to the game.
Guest:I was like, let's take the Ferrari.
Guest:I was like, you've never even been in it, right?
Guest:She was like, no.
Guest:So we had a daddy daughter night.
Guest:We went out, we're sitting on the floor and walks, who walks up to me halftime, it's like fucking Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Guest:And I look up, I'm like, hey, Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Guest:And he's like, hey, man.
Guest:He's like, I just want to tell you I'm a big fan.
Guest:I'm like, the fuck are you talking about, Jeffrey Katzenberg?
Guest:I'm looking for fucking Ashton Kutcher to come out, run out.
Guest:I'm like, what's happening right now?
Guest:And he's like, look, man, I really love your voice.
Guest:He's like, would you ever want to have breakfast?
Guest:I'm like, sure, Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Guest:I'd love to have breakfast one day.
Guest:So I give him, we exchange numbers.
Guest:We go back to the game.
Guest:It's an overtime game.
Guest:Me and my daughter have a great time.
Guest:We get home late.
Guest:1130, I'm getting out of the shower.
Guest:Jeffrey Katzenberg texts me.
Guest:He's like, hey, bud, would you want to have breakfast somewhere?
Guest:I'm like, oh, shit, he followed up.
Guest:I'm like, yeah, Jeffrey Katzenberg, I'll have breakfast.
Guest:So I'm rushing out.
Guest:He wants to go to John and Benny's in LA.
Guest:I live in the valley.
Guest:I'm like, I got to get over there.
Guest:I'm running.
Guest:It's late.
Guest:I know there's going to be traffic.
Guest:And I run out the house, and I realized where I parked the car.
Guest:Usually, I park in the garage.
Guest:It was blocking all the other cars, and I was already late.
Guest:And I was like, fuck, I'm going to have to take this car.
Guest:I was like, you know what?
Guest:I'll park it up the street.
Guest:So I go to park it up the street.
Guest:Of course, there's no parking spaces.
Guest:Of course, I'm about to run late.
Guest:So I'm like, fuck it.
Guest:I'll just park it.
Guest:I'll run in.
Guest:As I get out the car, who's in the fucking Prius ahead of me?
Guest:Fucking Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Guest:And he gets out and he looks and he's like, hey, man, nice car.
Guest:Nice car.
Guest:Hey there.
Guest:He comes up to the side and he opens up the passenger.
Guest:He's like, what year is this?
Guest:I'm like, I don't know.
Guest:All I was hearing in my head is, hey, black guy spending all this money on a car.
Guest:I could buy Ferrari.
Guest:I just was like, I wanted to burn the car.
Guest:I wanted to take it and burn it in the middle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was so bothered that during the breakfast, I'm not even listening to anything he's saying.
Guest:I'm just Googling, does Jeffrey Katzenberg have jet?
Guest:I'm like, does he spend his money irresponsibly too?
Guest:Like, I'm not listening to shit he says.
Guest:And I'm mad at myself because I'm like, honestly, in terms of afford, I could afford this car.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:It wasn't like an expense that I was, you know,
Guest:But I felt stupid having it.
Guest:I felt even stupider that this billionaire is in a Prius.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And I felt that's the duality that starts the conceit of the show that lasts, basically, is that I'm constantly fighting this sort of like...
Guest:Damned if I do, damned if I don't feeling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But but is is that has that always been with you that, you know, do you because you do seem a little thoughtful in the sense of like, you know, you're not cocky.
Marc:I mean, you know, you've got it sounds like, you know, you have your moments where you get pissed off, but it's not like you do something where you're, you know, totally shameless without recognizing what you're doing.
Guest:Yes, I think I've forced myself to do it.
Guest:Like there's been moments when I'm sitting at like a fucking parent teacher conference and I catch a glimpse of myself in like the mirror and I'm like, this teacher is not taking me seriously.
Guest:I have sagging jeans on, a hoodie with $200,000 worth of chain sticking out of it.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And, you know, it's like I'm like, this person is not taking me serious.
Guest:And I realize that I'm supposed to be a parent.
Guest:And then I have to always like, but fuck that.
Guest:This is who I'm always living that back and forth.
Marc:But that just tells me that, you know, there's some part of you that doesn't take it serious that you're like, what am I doing?
Guest:I absolutely know.
Guest:I'm you know, I remind I'm I'm I'm desperately trying not to be the old guy who's trying to be hip.
Guest:I'm saying like it's it's right at that point, though.
Guest:I'm right there.
Marc:It's very hard to know how to dress as a as a guy.
Marc:It is because like there just seems to be like either you you try and hang on or you're just wearing clothes and no one even fucking notices.
Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And the notion of even trying sometimes, you do better to not try because if you try and fail, then you've actually really failed.
Guest:But if you don't try and you feel like, I wasn't trying, I don't care.
Guest:So trying sometimes makes it a little bit harder so you're a little bit more conscious of it.
Guest:So I'm very conscious of
Guest:of everything with myself.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I remember seventh grade, my face broke out horribly, right?
Guest:Right when you're like girls, right when you're, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:And, you know, it made me
Guest:I think that more than anything, along with stuff, made me sort of funny because I went and sat in the back of the class.
Guest:I would sit in the back of the class and I would just watch every single person that walked in.
Guest:And I'd look at them every day from head to toe, head to toe.
Guest:And I'd wait for someone to say, you know, I was a shy kid.
Guest:I'd wait for someone to say, try to bag on me.
Guest:And they'd say it back.
Guest:And I would say something back so quick.
Guest:that was so fucking sharp and so painful that like i would just crush them and they'd be like how did you think about that and i'm like oh i've been thinking of sitting on this for three and a half months i've been waiting for you i was so prepared and ready that like i was like loved by fear
Marc:But that's right.
Marc:Those are good comic chops to have.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's sort of the preemptive, you know, insult.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If I was doing comedy now, I would look in the audience before I got up and I would just fucking just look at like who was a little boisterous and I would just wait.
Guest:I would have 10 jokes ready.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You got to have that skill.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that's sort of how I looked at all audiences for probably the first decade of doing comedy like they don't like it.
Marc:Like, I would go into it assuming they didn't like me and that there was going to be a problem.
Marc:And you were ready.
Marc:I was ready.
Marc:And if there wasn't a problem, I'd make one.
Guest:It was like a fucking stand-your-ground open carry mic room.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:It was just sort of like, you know, I would focus in on the one fucker that had a sour face.
Yeah.
Marc:And I just ruined the entire show to shit on that guy.
Guest:I saw Ian Edwards destroy a woman.
Guest:I mean, literally, I'm sure she went home and rethought her life.
Guest:And she deserved every moment of it.
Guest:But it's like, I don't know if audiences understand that.
Guest:If a comic, a real comic is having a bad night, don't give him a good night.
Guest:Don't turn it into a good night.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Let him go down in flames because that is one thing that most comics can do.
Guest:You say something and you can turn their night around.
Marc:Oh, for sure.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it was like it really became this weird thing, the evolution of my interaction with crowds was –
Marc:Most of the time, you know, what other people are thinking is something you're making up.
Marc:Like, you know, when you see somebody and you make assumptions, you have no fucking idea what they're thinking.
Marc:And they're not even thinking about you most of the time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it's like, why base your entire attitude on this idea that you're projecting onto them?
Marc:Like, I talked to this British comic, Stuart Lee.
Marc:He said, like, if someone doesn't like me...
Marc:I now have to like, and this is a guy that quit the business because he couldn't stand the stupidity of the audiences.
Marc:But now, like, he comes back and he's got this new attitude where he sees somebody that clearly doesn't understand him or doesn't like him and doesn't think he's funny.
Marc:And his thought is like, yeah, this was not a bad choice for you this night.
Marc:You made a wrong decision.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:He has empathy, sort of like, yeah, this isn't going to be great for you.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:so all right well how the all these other shows are going good or like are you done or how many issues we gonna um we might do one more um there's three of them now we might do one more that um i'm excited about um um that thought that those guys are my family and it has been the gift that has not stopped giving for me um
Guest:I have a special place in my heart for network television because you get to really reach families in a different kind of way.
Guest:And the rules that are placed upon you actually make your show work.
Guest:better in some aspects.
Guest:It makes it wider.
Guest:You know, I shouldn't say better.
Guest:It makes it wider.
Guest:And you learn to write for a wide audience.
Guest:I was really, I was scared as fuck with this Netflix show.
Guest:And I'm still, you know, I took, you know, it's interesting.
Guest:I took a ton of, ton of bad press.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:It's the, you know, but it's also the most talked about thing I've ever done.
Guest:It is polarizing and it's like people I literally look at like people love it or they hate it.
Guest:You know, I woke up Sunday to like a left hook from the Atlantic, you know, like just taking a shot, a swing at the show.
Marc:And what was the what was the angle?
Guest:Basically, it was someone who felt that I.
Guest:you know, had some clandestine sort of fucking message in the show that wasn't up to what she felt black culture should be.
Guest:And I'm just like, I want to have an open, this is where I want to like be an old West gunslinger.
Guest:I'm open to debating every one of these people because I feel like the notion of people defining what
Guest:is black or what's black enough or what's not black enough or what's too black or whatever it's like who the fuck are you you know i'm saying like i'm telling my personal experience you can't tell me what you don't want to watch it don't watch it you know i'm saying and talk about discussions been going on since you know the black middle class was invented
Guest:Yeah, but I think that right now there is a self-appointed vanguard, which I like to call the woke media.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And, you know, it goes along with white critics, too.
Guest:This fucking guy... But I understand more when, you know, this fucking...
Guest:Reviewer at fucking Variety.
Guest:I don't know what this guy's name is, but I'm writing it down like I was I could have you could have sworn I like slept with his girlfriend or something like it was such and like he like they the embargo on when you could review the show came up say it stops like 12 a.m.
Guest:On Thursday.
Guest:You can start he posted his like 1203.
Guest:So it's set the series furious just personally angry at me personally angry at me furious like I mean like if you read you should read the review.
Guest:It's like man
Guest:And so he set the stage for people to start taking shots.
Guest:But at the same time, it was called the funniest show of the year by the Chicago Sun-Times.
Guest:And people at the Deadline loved it, and people just loved it, and people just hated it.
Guest:But the Atlantic...
Guest:took a took a shot you know they you know in their sort of you know academic way um and i appreciate it i although i didn't agree with it i i appreciate that everyone should have their opinion i think that's important i i wish that i could say i didn't read these and i didn't care but i do fucking care you know sometimes if somebody's smart you know you can you can it's easier to take in a sense because you're like all right well i get the argument this isn't just yes even if i don't agree i get the argument right
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so even if I feel like you totally missed it, which I think this person did, I get you at least formed an opinion that was based on you gave some context to your opinion.
Marc:Isn't there an element of it that really is addressing, you know, that that conflict of like how we're supposed to live and and and who who gets to decide that?
Guest:I absolutely.
Guest:And I think that that actually even enticed the media more to want to talk about the show because there was that sort of almost indictment, you know, I'm saying of critics.
Guest:And I think that this article actually was saying that the indictment had the presumption of that there were no black critics.
Guest:And I didn't say that, but that was what this person extracted from it.
Guest:With that being said, I close my laptop, my stomach is hurting, and I get the nicest text from Malcolm Gladwell.
Guest:um who i'm not friends with or whatever who got my number for someone and says that he who says that he enjoyed the show and it was so gratifying i hope he's okay with me saying that but it was so gratifying because i am like a disciple of malcolm gladwell i love how he takes things that seem random and nothing and from an economist point of view puts them in in a way that still you know gives some order to seeing the things that seem like they didn't have order before um
Guest:Like a comic.
Guest:Like a comic, seriously.
Guest:And finds the things that are observational and actually puts them in a way that you're like, oh, I never thought about it like that.
Guest:So it's very polarizing.
Guest:It's very divisive.
Guest:But that, if I'm going to be honest, if I had to do it all over again, I probably would do that again.
Guest:Not try to be polarizing on purpose, but I would want to say something that
Guest:Probably if you say anything that's ever worth being said, it's going to be if everybody agrees with what you said, you're probably wrong.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or else you're you're spineless.
Marc:I used to do a joke about that, that.
Marc:If you don't have at least one guy out there saying this about you, that guy's a fucking asshole.
Marc:You haven't really made an impact.
Guest:That's right, seriously, seriously.
Guest:Netflix is a really big platform, and you don't realize how big it is.
Guest:Until you get lost?
Guest:No, seriously, and that was a really big part of, for me, coming from ABC,
Guest:where you knew you had that score in the morning after your show, you know, you had a score and you knew that they were going to promote you because you were on their airway.
Guest:So you knew you were going to get commercials.
Guest:You knew you had a market, but the idea that Netflix, I think is going to do 400 series this year, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:And so the idea of standing out in that crowd, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:I was unbelievably important to me.
Guest:You know, I wanted to make sure that it was noisy.
Guest:You know, and yeah,
Guest:you know, Andy and Jane and Ted and Cindy and Channing and the team over there and Gazal, like, you know, the comedy team over there, like really...
Guest:Gave me an opportunity because, and they, it was not without a fight.
Guest:Like they were very scared of me playing the role.
Marc:You know, I think, yeah, I think you're like the best thing about the show.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:I'm a horrible actor, but I, but it works in some aspects at certain times enough for that show.
Guest:And it makes it a little bit noisier.
Guest:I think Larry playing lay himself and curve makes it noisier.
Guest:And if he had went and had an actor, it would just been another Seinfeld.
Guest:And if I just, if I had an actor, it would have just been exactly another blackish.
Marc:Yeah, but you're just, you're funny.
Guest:Oh, thanks, man.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:I do not see myself in that aspect.
Guest:I think that I'm funny on the page.
Guest:I think I have a sense of humor.
Guest:The thing that I got, and I really give so much credit to Rashida Jones, because she's a talented, gifted comedic actress, and she gave me...
Guest:support in a way that let me sort of be myself.
Guest:And that's the, that's the hardest thing.
Guest:It was what you did in your show.
Guest:Like, you know, it was, you heard Marin, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:And I think that's what you're, whether, and I was able to say whether it worked or not,
Guest:At least I could do it the way that I felt like I was it was as close to my version of that hyper, you know, hyperbole of a character.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I think I think it's hilarious.
Marc:And what was your like was your like you say, when your old man died that you guys had had some sort of you guys were OK with each other.
Marc:So he was able to kind of see your success and be part of it as as was your mother.
Guest:Yeah, they really were.
Guest:It's very difficult at times.
Guest:I think my dad handled it better than my mom because he's a guy.
Guest:My mom is... She will say...
Guest:you know, why didn't you tell me about, you know, uh, I saw in the paper that you, you know, you did this and I'm like, mom, I, you don't care about that.
Guest:Why do you, what I'm saying?
Guest:Like, I, but I think she wants to know that she, so she can tell her friends.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I bought my mom, my mom, you know, got my mom a car, helped her get her house.
Guest:And she was, my mom does fine.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:But she wanted to say, my son did this.
Guest:It was very important for her to say that, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:And I think that, um,
Guest:you know it's hard i think it's been harder on my family because that's the thing i think just with black culture in particular i think like tyler perry is an example
Guest:I like Tyler.
Guest:I very much so like some of the things he does.
Guest:Everything he does is not my cup of tea.
Guest:But I think that my mom and aunts and some of my cousins, they love Tyler.
Guest:They go and they were watching his plays on VHS before it came out.
Guest:And they would go first day, first weekend, his movies are number one.
Guest:And they really, from their heart, not because he's black, they liked his movies.
Guest:And because the, you know, the Hollywood or whatever the masses may say, it's not elevated comedy or not elevated art.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:That means that these people who say they like it, their opinion is wrong.
Guest:And so I'm getting back to the point of what I'm getting is that I think it's unfair a little bit because for Tyler, he has to carry the weight of so much of the culture.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Because there's so few of us.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:There's so few of us.
Guest:But like, you know, Adam Sandler, who I think is amazing, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:But like Adam Sandler puts out fucking Jack and Jill.
Guest:It's not the end of white culture.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:He's going to destroy white culture because he puts out, you know, some fucking movie that people might say that's a shitty Adam Sandler movie that makes a ton of money so he can keep doing it.
Guest:But it's not the end of white culture.
Guest:But we put there's so few of us out.
Guest:that when we do something, it is put under the scrutiny of you have the whole entire culture.
Guest:And I think that happens with my family, too, because there's so few of us that get to be
Guest:Successful as a writer.
Guest:I think you know in a times of a comedy writer like black comedy writer like I'm probably one of the bigger black comedy writers.
Guest:I'm saying like yeah, so So it's a very unique thing and as my mom is not that's not something that she can say that people are used to saying yeah, so put a lot of pressure on
Marc:that first generation success first generation you know right and also then there's the element too that you depending on um like i remember when my grandmother got all her friends together to see my 1995 hbo half hour yes within within the first minute i say fuck like 90 times
Marc:And, you know, it was one of those things where, you know, I call her up.
Marc:I'm like, what do you think?
Marc:She's like, why did you have to be so filthy?
Marc:Like, but you're also up against this idea that, you know, you're doing your thing on Netflix and there's a possibility that your mother's generation is like, why can't you be more like Tyler Perry?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:My mom, when I quit BET, I was working on a show called The Game on BET and I quit BET to go do my pilot on ABC.
Guest:My mom was like, so you're leaving BET, huh?
Guest:Those people, they really supported you over there.
Guest:I was like, yeah, my mom's on ABC.
Guest:I know, but you know.
Guest:It's so interesting.
Guest:For her, she's like, that's her people.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:My mom and I, those are my people too, but I understand the idea from a career standpoint that
Guest:that was a jump and a leap that lets me now go back to BET if I choose to.
Guest:The idea of being able to say to little kids to look up and want to be a writer that there is a writer who made it in mainstream and decided to go back to BET and helps give BET help.
Guest:I can help that boat rise.
Guest:But I think that it's so scary for us sometimes because there's so few of us to make those leaps.
Marc:Oh, it's interesting, you know, because there's, you know, the different version of that is people who actually, you know, are held back or hold themselves back, you know, because the culture pressures them to do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, to get out of that mental head, you know.
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like Chris Rock joke, but can you kick my ass?
Yeah.
Guest:The notion of like, you know, it's fuck all that smarty arty shit.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:But like the idea of it, you know, it's a constant, it's the duality, the idea of we're constantly sort of speaking two languages.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:As being African-American, being black in America, you are speaking the language of your culture, which is now being fragmented into many different languages.
Guest:And you're speaking the language of the mainstream.
Guest:And so I think that it's even becoming harder
Guest:for black culture because now black culture is not it used to be sort of a singular thing and now we're seeing the black culture is has it has it's it's donald glover on atlanta you know i'm saying it's gerard conmichael
Guest:it's tyler perry you know it's cardi b and so we're we're kind of like we're at a we're at that sort of infighting stage but i think that we would come out of this better i do but i think that we are at that stage one of my favorite prior lines is when he goes back home after he first gets successful and the guy in the pool house says he's just doing the same you did around here and he goes he says give me a dollar
Guest:It is so fucking real.
Guest:That shit is so real.
Guest:But the specificity of Richard saying that, so many people, there's a version that you understand of that.
Marc:Oh yeah, of course.
Guest:Whenever you level up, there's always somebody who's like, whatever.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:The idea of that is so universal, but
Guest:speaking about it from my culture you know i'm saying we have a specific you know i put a tweet out and i erased it so quickly i was like um niggas are such haters nowadays it's not even fun being rich anymore you know like uh quietly comfortable is the new rich you know i'm saying right let me take this down because this will ruin me but the notion of i understand you know
Guest:There's so few of us making these things that we do.
Guest:As much as we may not want it, there is a responsibility that we do represent the whole culture each time we step out.
Guest:I can't get so mad that I respond back in a way that seems like I'm not being open to my community because I do understand that I do owe them.
Guest:I do know that they have put me in position in a way.
Guest:Although I don't agree with everything, I do owe them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also but you're also honoring that part of you that that respects comedy that that does that to be unleashed a little bit and then and then to see what happens to be provocative.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I you know, that's why this when I got a chance to do this, this when I got a chance to do your show, when I did.
Guest:The whatever shows on NPR where the woman's never in the room, Terry Gross.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Terry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know Terry Gross when I got a human.
Guest:There's moments that I feel like as a comedian, as a comic writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like, they matter.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And this is what I feel like, you know, I my big thing now is to really make sure that I let everyone know how much my image awards matter.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And let everyone else know how much they matter to them, too.
Guest:And like that we need to start, you know, heralding ourself more.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And for such outside, you know, such outside applause.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, thanks for talking to me, man.
Guest:Thank you, man.
Guest:This has been an honor.
Marc:Oh, I appreciate it.
Marc:And it was it was really a good talk, a good conversation, man.
Guest:I appreciate it, man.
Guest:I hope I see you in traffic soon.
Marc:Yeah, we should.
Marc:We should hang out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:At some point when we get through the plague.
Guest:Did you see the fucking Pentagon put out like confirmed UFO footage?
Marc:Oh, come on.
Guest:When was this?
Guest:It's like two days ago on CNN.
Guest:I look it up and I'm like, Pentagon, you don't think you could have waited for this?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We have enough on our plates right now.
Marc:Tell him to deliver a fucking cure to this shit.
Guest:All right, well thanks so much Mark.
Marc:That was me and Kenya Barris.
Marc:Black AF, Black as Fuck, is now streaming on Netflix.
Marc:It was good to talk to him, as I recall.
Marc:But my heart was in a different place before it was crushed.
Marc:Bleak.
Marc:Sad.
Marc:How about just sad?
Marc:I'm a grown-ass man.
Marc:All right?
Marc:I've been playing some guitar.
Marc:I've been just pounding at it.
Marc:I've got to... It's hard to connect.
Marc:It's hard to connect.
Marc:It's hard to connect.
Marc:The feelings that are happening inside of me with things that are coming out of me.
Marc:Out of my mouth, out of my hands.
Marc:But here.
Bye.
Marc:Boomer lives.