Episode 1308 - W. Kamau Bell
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:I'm getting old.
Marc:We're all getting old.
Marc:Every day goes by.
Marc:We're a little older.
Marc:Not bad.
Marc:It's not bad, but you know, closer to the end.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:I'm sorry, man.
Marc:It's just it seems like there's been a lot of past guests passing away lately.
Marc:It's bound to happen.
Marc:I mean, people get older and we've been doing this a while.
Marc:I mean, we've been doing this over a decade.
Marc:Some of the people we talked to were old when we talked to them, but some of the people who are passing away now are not that old, and it's scary, and it's sad, and it's the way life is sometimes, depending on how hard you live or the choices you make or just genetics.
Marc:Sometimes it's shorter than you want.
Marc:Other times it seems to go on too long.
Marc:But that's an outsider's point of view.
Marc:Today on the show, listen up, it's W. Kamau Bell.
Marc:He's been here five times.
Marc:I think he's got the record because we don't do repeats that often.
Marc:This is the fifth time he's been on the show.
Marc:It's actually for good reason, people.
Marc:He directed the new documentary miniseries, We Need to Talk About Cosby, which I watched and I thought it was great.
Marc:And I wanted to talk to him about the sort of
Marc:process of of his thinking around it because he's pretty well inserted in the thing he's part of it it's it's his own questioning in a lot of ways that drives it and there's some people that have been on the show uh in the documentary talking about cosby historian cliff nestoroff chris spencer godfrey
Marc:But it's just a it's a provocative and it's a very thorough in a certain way, thorough in the way of the history of Cosby, but also thorough in its enabling the survivors to tell their stories and for you to hear them in a way where they're.
Marc:Relatively comfortable and and not like on a witness stand or or in a uncomfortable situation.
Marc:And it speaks a lot to give the survivors that much of of an outlet to really relax into.
Marc:the trauma and the story.
Marc:But all in all, it's very provocative and it really is challenging to people that loved Cosby, which is a lot of people.
Marc:And it really is about trying to figure out what you do
Marc:with the monster up against the guy you loved when you were younger or grew to look up to.
Marc:It's a very good documentary.
Marc:I talked to Kamau about it.
Marc:We were up in a hotel room in San Francisco.
Marc:He lives in the Bay Area.
Marc:It was one of those situations where I don't do a lot of those kind of interviews on the road.
Marc:I've done a couple lately.
Marc:You know, I did Roy Wood Jr.
Marc:and I did Kamau and Brendan was with me with Roy Wood.
Marc:But it was one of these things where, you know, we got to talking and I realized about five, six minutes in that we weren't recording it.
Marc:And it's what it was one of those moments where I'm like, fuck, God damn it.
Marc:I'm like, OK, OK.
Marc:He's like, I get it.
Marc:You know, we've all done this before.
Marc:Yes, we have.
Marc:Let's start again.
Marc:The frustrations of being out in the field.
Marc:doing the interviews, but we got it and we had a great talk.
Marc:I didn't know how long it would go on for, but it was good.
Marc:It was good to touch base with an old friend and good to hear about this work.
Marc:I mean, the process of making a Bill Cosby documentary, the people that wouldn't talk to him, how many people he had planned to talk to.
Marc:Also, surprisingly, Bill Cosby gets released from prison before they finish recording.
Marc:Challenges, but it's all in there.
Marc:And we kind of give the background in this conversation.
Marc:So I was talking about death and dying and aging.
Marc:Whoo.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:My dad is.
Marc:I'm going to go see my dad this weekend out in New Mexico.
Marc:Check in with him while he still is aware of who I am.
Marc:But I got a lot of friends who have aging parents.
Marc:I guess I'm fortunate.
Marc:I guess.
Marc:Listen to me.
Marc:What what an asshole.
Marc:I'm fortunate that my folks are still alive.
Marc:I can still talk to them.
Marc:But you see it coming, man.
Marc:You see it coming.
Marc:I guess we all we all know it's coming, but when you see it coming and people are passing away here and there, and I find it's kind of tweaking my brain in the way where I'm like, I got to I got to make sure I'm doing everything I want to do that I can do right now.
Marc:All I know is I'm exercising too much, and now I've gone on a bender of Girl Scout cookies that I didn't even ask for.
Marc:They were sent by Kit's sister.
Marc:I'm not complaining, but I am kind of, because I'm going to have to throw them out.
Marc:I have nothing against the Girl Scouts.
Marc:It seems to be a tradition, a noble undertaking, but fuck their cookies.
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:Because you're going to get a few boxes if you buy them, because it's really more about helping the Girl Scouts out.
Marc:Give me a crate.
Marc:You know, I'm just trying to help you guys out.
Marc:But secretly, you're just feeding the monster.
Marc:I got all the kinds.
Marc:I got all the kinds.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So look, Kamau Bell is the host of the United Shades of America on CNN.
Marc:The documentary series we need to talk about Cosby is now available on Showtime.
Marc:He directed that.
Marc:And I thought it was necessary to talk to him about it.
Marc:I talked to Chris Spencer a bit about it.
Marc:And then Kamau, you know, thanked me for talking to Chris Spencer.
Marc:And I'm like, why don't I talk to you, man?
Marc:So this is me talking to Kamau about his documentary.
Marc:We need to talk about Cosby.
Marc:All right, so I watched the documentary, and I realized that on some point, at some level, this was a personal record.
Marc:So, like, what drove you?
Marc:What drove you to do it?
Marc:Like, were you sitting around for like two years, you know, thinking like, you know, someone's got to deal with this.
Marc:I'm not sure that the comedic community, the black community, the community at large is really processed properly.
Marc:The conundrum of how we feel about Cosby.
Marc:Is there a way to still like the specials?
Marc:Is there a way to still like the records?
Marc:I mean, was that what it was?
Marc:Were you festering alone for a year and a half, two years?
Guest:I mean, I think I've been festering since I first started, quote unquote, making it in show business.
Guest:And every reporter would be like, so who are the comedians you liked growing up?
Guest:And we're talking about when I sort of broke through, it was like 2012, 2013, at a time where it was like, you couldn't just say Bill Cosby and keep it moving.
Guest:And so for me, it was like, as a kid who grew up in Bill Cosby's America and was the perfect age for the Cosby show, and Bill Cosby himself was the greatest stand-up special for me.
Guest:I never was a prior guy.
Guest:I was always like, no, that feels closer to me.
Marc:Yeah, I guess that makes you like Cosby, kind of.
Guest:That's the only way I will take that.
Guest:But yeah, so it was definitely a thing where I...
Guest:I was wrestling with it because I'd have to do these interviews with people and they'd be like, and you'd have to go, how do I say Bill Cosby without sounding like I'm like denying all these accusations.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So then you, you, you decide that you're going to do it and you pitch it.
Guest:I mean, it just, like I said, it's so, it's not like a thing that I was like, I went to pitch 9,000 people.
Guest:It just happened to be the weird thing about if you're in this business long enough, you know, sometimes you end up in the right room at the right time.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And so I was talking to the producers from Boardwalk.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We were having a wide open conversation about comedy docs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the idea came up.
Guest:Well, how would you do a comedy doc about a comedian who fell?
Guest:Cosby's what the top of that list.
Guest:And I always thought in my own when I saw Ezra's made in America, OJ Simpson, that's how you'd have to do Cosby.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I talked to that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think that, you know, that that thing was was something.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think personally, I've rewatched it several times.
Guest:Was it four parts, right?
Guest:Five parts, seven and a half hours.
Guest:And what was it about that thing that you thought was so amazing?
Guest:First of all, because all of us went in going, why would I want to see a seven and a half hour OJ doc?
Guest:He was not compelling enough as an individual.
Guest:But when you look out at America and go, here's what America was doing at the time, I'm always interested in that.
Guest:Like how did America, how did America sort of create this circumstance, accelerate this circumstance?
Guest:And then it also had like a lot of deep dive stuff about L.A.
Guest:that I had no knowledge about, like Johnny Cochran's young career.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Watts, like stuff that that you'd be like, why is he telling me about Watts?
Guest:Oh, he's not from Watts.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And you would go, oh, but this is interesting.
Marc:But how much of it was about this idea that he is presented?
Marc:Because it seems to me that with OJ, that the difference between the black and white reaction to the verdict, what was different?
Marc:And there was a certain amount of like, who cares what the truth is?
Marc:He's ours, and you can all fuck off.
Guest:Or not even he's ours.
Guest:Who cares what the truth is?
Guest:He's black.
Guest:You can all fuck off.
Guest:I think some of it was ours, but some of it was like, just the fact that he's a, that this is, you couldn't get this black guy.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You've gotten a lot of, you've gotten a lot of us.
Marc:You can't get this one.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So that, you know, and, and, and, and I think in that sense, when you're dealing with Cosby and I think it was very, you know, careful and, and not careful, but, but correct of you to say like, he wasn't just a black guy.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Cosby was everybody's guy.
Marc:And that was part of the strange thing about his personality and how he designed it.
Marc:Right?
Marc:And also, there comes to a point where it's like, does he even want to be a black guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Does he want to be every black guy's black guy?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But so what was the original concept for structure?
Guest:I mean, I didn't think I would be narrating it.
Guest:I didn't think it would start on Hi, My Name Is, the way it starts on.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:I thought it would be sort of like O.J.
Guest:Simpson.
Guest:I was really looking forward to the opportunity to step behind and not be in something.
Guest:And so it was really like, oh, I'll get to actually just be a director because that's what I want to do.
Marc:Okay, so you were going to just line up a bunch of guests.
Guest:Which is what, yeah, go get all the people who would do it.
Guest:And also, let's remember, Cosby was in prison when I started this.
Guest:So it was like, I thought, oh, we can have the discussion now.
Guest:Because he's going to either spend the rest of his life in prison or he can get out as a very old man.
Guest:And so I felt like maybe the time is right for the discussion.
Guest:Yeah, we can get away with it behind his back.
Guest:I thought he knew about it, but I didn't think.
Guest:Well, let me be clear about this, because some people have asked about this.
Guest:It's not a conversation with Bill Cosby.
Guest:It's a conversation about Bill Cosby.
Marc:No, I get it.
Marc:But you thought, so how did the booking go, the guest booking?
Marc:Well, I mean.
Marc:I know you got a lot of Godfrey.
Marc:I was like, there's Godfrey in Godfrey.
Marc:He's the best thing that's ever happened to God.
Marc:God for God free.
Guest:Thank God for Chris Spencer.
Marc:But I didn't know God free had worked.
Guest:He was part of the CBS Cosby show that was after the warm up.
Guest:He was the warm up guy.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:So when I found that out, I was like, oh, he's connected.
Guest:Also, God free is an outspoken comedian.
Guest:So I know he'll have stuff to say.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's not afraid.
Guest:He can do impressions.
Guest:and he can do a good Cosme impression which we didn't know we would be so excited to have but then I was like let's sprinkle that throughout it's great to hear here's my problem knowing because I'm a comic you're a comic and I'm watching this there were moments where I'm like good for Godfrey
Guest:Well, I was like, I hope good for God because he's also experiencing the backlash or blacklash.
Guest:Is there?
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Really?
Guest:There are a percentage of black people, percentage of people, first of all, but certainly a percentage of black people who either they don't believe the survivors, which is its own problem in my mind, or they believe them, but they sort of do this math of like,
Guest:it is better to have the good that he did than the bad that he did, so I got to ride with it.
Marc:Well, I think that was a driving force, it seems, from watching it, was that, you know, to give the survivors real time.
Marc:And also for them to have the opportunity to talk about the one thing they all talked about was like, when I heard her, I was like, oh, it wasn't just me.
Marc:When I heard her, because that's pretty damning when you got five or six of those.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I don't think that anybody in one sort of lump or one sort of context has heard any of those survivors go at length unless you were in the courtroom or wherever those things were.
Marc:Or you were their lawyer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A deposition of some kind.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So and I thought, too, that the natural thing, the natural humanization that happens is
Marc:You can sit there and watch somebody talk or tell a story and the nuances of those things.
Marc:I found that to be... I don't even want to use the word damning because this isn't a trial, but it was sort of like there's no reason any of these women would make any of this shit up.
Guest:And especially a lot of this happened to them 30, 40 years ago.
Guest:Why would you still be riding on a lie like this?
Guest:Yeah, and a lot of them didn't even want to talk about it.
Guest:Didn't want to talk.
Guest:And to be fair, a lot of them were like...
Guest:the only reason they thought they would talk about it now is because they were like, they believed in, they'd seen my work before and they're like, well, if anybody can pull this thing off, it's you is what I was being like.
Guest:So like they were like, I'm going to trust you, which is why even though I often wanted to quit, I was like, I can't do it because these women have trusted me.
Marc:But what were they trusting you with?
Marc:What did they what needed to happen that wasn't happening?
Marc:I know you're saying there's blacklash and there's I think that the worst thing that happened was, you know, once he got put in jail, you know, there was like, OK, that's done with.
Marc:And then and also there was an apathy in general after a certain point.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think the thing that they that we were trying to pull off.
Guest:And that they had to agree to because they had to understand is like, we're not just going to talk about the assaults and the rapes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're going to talk.
Guest:You're going to be in a thing that also talks about the good he did.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Which is a very different thing.
Guest:You had to present that to them.
Guest:This is not surviving R. Kelly, which is a doc that I was also inspired by for this.
Guest:It had to be like, look, you have to understand that there are going to be portions of this that are about the good he did or his career in a pot that will be come off in a positive way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But also, if you want to, you can weigh in on that stuff, which some of them did.
Guest:So I was pretty blown away that we have Lisa Lott Lublin or Lily Bernard, who are both black women, and even Eden Turrell, all black women, who are all able to talk about the good stuff.
Guest:And so the first time you see them on screen, they're just sort of like, yeah, the Cosby show was great or whatever.
Guest:And you don't know that they're also survivors because we don't ID them as survivors at that point.
Guest:So it was like...
Guest:You have to, and some of them were like, I'll be in this, but I don't want to talk about any of the good stuff.
Guest:Fine, fair.
Guest:But with many of them, we were able to like, so the audience doesn't even know who they're, who they're hearing from until the stories happen.
Marc:Now, who were the people?
Marc:So how many people do you, you reach out to that were like, no, like you, I mean, we talked before a little bit before I realized I wasn't recording that, uh,
Marc:There were a lot of comedians like the idea was like, you know, I can I can cover his his influence on comics by talking to comics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I had this idea that like because it really like I really a big part of this for me was to really talk about Bill Cosby himself as an important comedy statement.
Guest:That was for me, which is why I had a hard time throwing it all away because like I'm still inspired by that.
Guest:Well, yeah, I mean, I didn't come to that till later in life.
Guest:I remember that, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah, we talk about that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've heard you talk about it.
Marc:Yeah, like, you know, I just, I never really dealt with Cosby that much.
Marc:And, you know, I had the records and stuff, but it wasn't, and I never watched the Cosby show much.
Marc:I knew him.
Guest:You were a little bit outside of that for a couple reasons, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I just,
Marc:I don't remember watching much TV maybe it was not my age group like I'm still I've seen maybe four episodes of Seinfeld and I'm not being you know like an asshole you were out in the clubs at that point you weren't you weren't trying to you weren't home on Thursday you weren't Thursday nights featuring and headlining you weren't doing something I just didn't watch regular television since I was a little kid but
Marc:But when I finally sat down and watched Bill Cosby himself, I was like, what I got out of it was, oh, you decide.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's like, there's no rules to funny.
Marc:It's like, you want to sit down and tell your story?
Marc:You decide what's funny and make it funny.
Guest:You want to take your time?
Guest:yeah exactly yeah you want to you want to just sort of you just want to like get there when you get there and now and think about the audience secondarily to the thing yeah yeah but you know there it takes a lot of confidence and and sort of focus to do that and deliberate but but i get that okay so so i thought i would have a bunch of different comedians and there's been articles written by of comedians talking about how great it is so i thought oh we'll get the comedians from that article to talk about it and it was just those they didn't know
Guest:but these are people you know relatively well some of them i mean some of them either i know them relatively well or i know they know who i am because we've interacted on occasions or people who i've reached out to you know some people you're just cold calling reaching out to but yeah it was and then people who all levels like this would be clear like it's not just it was like yeah but it was just people that thought oh they'll do it what was the wait so what did they say
Guest:I mean, I think there's a variety of reasons to get here, but basically what it boiled down to is like, this is too thorny.
Guest:There's not like, I don't know how to get in here and get out safely.
Marc:Was that surprising to you that it was thorny?
Guest:It was surprising to me at first, and then after more people said it, then I was like, oh, I'm the one who didn't get it.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:I was naive.
Guest:I came to this too naive to go, oh, now that Cosby's in prison, we can talk about this.
Guest:And then I realized, oh, I'm one of the select few people who thinks this way.
Marc:So there's still like, and I guess I'm going to keep hammering this, but there's still part of primarily the black community that's protective of his legacy.
Guest:I would say the comedian community, like the black community specifically, but I'm talking about comedians of all, like of lots of different racial groups.
Marc:OK, but fine.
Marc:But I don't quite understand what they think is going to happen to them.
Marc:It doesn't seem like Bill's got a lot of friends that are going to cause any damage.
Marc:That was the weirdest thing about all of it.
Marc:It's like no one's standing up for this guy.
Guest:Well, I mean, show business.
Guest:Well, but they're also I think they're also not coming after him.
Guest:They're not also not.
Guest:They're not like standing on top of him.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because he made a lot of people a lot of money.
Guest:He did, and also it's just easier to go like, oh, that thing happened, and it doesn't come up in your regular conversations because nobody wants to talk about it.
Marc:Yeah, but the one thing that you weren't really able to get at was that, as we have learned over time, is that none of this kind of shit happens in a vacuum.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:But no one was willing to say like, oh, yeah.
Marc:Everyone knew.
Marc:I don't remember in the documentary, people talked about that assistant who was a facilitator, but that's it, man.
Marc:And you've got to assume that more than him knew what was going on.
Guest:Well, I think that's the thing we got to over on the Cosby Show, that it was like, I think a lot of this was...
Guest:was sort of two things.
Guest:One is framed as infidelity, which I think you, you know.
Guest:He's a fuck around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And who are you going to be mad at?
Guest:If you're mad at that guy for fucking around, like you just look around.
Guest:So I think a lot of it, and I think that helps cover up a lot, I think.
Guest:Framing it as like, just like covering it up as the casting couch with Weinstein covers up a lot.
Guest:Like, oh, this is the thing we do here.
Guest:Everybody's in on it.
Guest:You don't understand that like, no, many people don't want to be in that room.
Guest:So I think a lot of it is that.
Marc:It must have been creepy, dude.
Guest:That's for a certain point.
Guest:I mean, when Joseph C. Phillips, who was in the Cosby show, and Lily Bernard, who was one of the survivors, talks about the parade of women after the rehearsal.
Guest:A parade of women would just parade to the green room and just sort of line up outside of his dressing room and one at a time go in.
Guest:And just sort of like they would close the door.
Guest:And I think one of the Stephen Watkins, one of the stage managers, says his door was always open except for then.
Guest:And then you hear Lily Bernard's story about being sort of escorted into his dressing room, and he sort of grabs her, and she sort of just doesn't know what to make of it.
Guest:You imagine how many times that happened, and how many times did that person not get out the way that she did.
Marc:All right, so you finally start seeing who's going to show up for you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's Godfrey.
Marc:It's Godfrey.
Marc:Chris Spencer.
Marc:Wayne Fetterman as a historian.
Guest:Wayne Fetterman.
Guest:Believe me, Wayne Fetterman.
Marc:as a historian.
Marc:Thanks, Wayne.
Marc:And then Cliff, who I talk to a lot.
Marc:Yep, who I learned about through you.
Marc:Cliff Nesterov.
Marc:Now, okay, so these are some of your guys.
Marc:These are the comedy people.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So once you start in on this thing, how do you outline it?
Marc:Where do you start?
Guest:I mean, very clearly from the first meeting that we had about it, it was like we knew we sort of, even though you don't want to do things chronologically, it just sort of felt like his career is so massive.
Guest:You got to lay it out.
Guest:You got to lay it out.
Guest:And then you can jump around within the chronology, which we do a little bit.
Marc:Well, that was kind of genius where you had either actual photographs of the women or the suggestive sort of avatars.
Marc:Silhouettes.
Marc:Silhouettes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, that you fit into a timeline.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you can kind of see when it accelerated, when it was at his most predatory, and how many women were involved.
Marc:Because those numbers are there.
Marc:They're available.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And he's a pretty prolific rapist.
Right.
Guest:Well, and I think that's the thing for even those of us who believe the survivors, you don't ever see it laid out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you sort of go, it's been more than 60.
Guest:And that just sort of number just sort of sits out there.
Guest:But to look at it in a graphic in which we decided at the end, I was like, we have to see something that really puts it all together.
Marc:And also like the weird thing is, is like, you know, when you see numbers on their own and you just think Cosby, 60, 70, it's like, how is that even possible?
Marc:It's like, it's possible.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How long does that shit take?
Marc:You're talking one night, one hour in a life.
Marc:yeah and you're also talking about the fact i don't think we all realize it went back so far in his career right but like it's like you know like if you're doing that and you're out and you're in environments where that can happen and there's 365 days in a year 60 is even like it's it's a it's not that big a number well as renee graham says if it's 60 who've come forward it's it's probably more yeah right yeah
Marc:So, okay, so you start chronologically.
Marc:And what are the first sort of as the guy who you present yourself at the beginning of this thing is like, look, man, I loved Cosby.
Marc:We all loved Cosby.
Marc:America loved Cosby.
Marc:Look at his amazing career.
Marc:He's the first black guy to be this black guy.
Marc:He's the first black guy to be that black guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So we all loved him and the white people were starting to love him.
Marc:This guy was amazing.
Marc:At what point during the process of unfolding this stuff or unpacking it and then presenting yourself as the guy who's like, I'm wrestling with how to contextualize or recontextualize Cosby in my heart and in my mind.
Marc:So what were the first obstacles?
Marc:Like, where were you?
Marc:You were like, oh, fuck.
Guest:What am I doing?
Guest:Oh, well, okay.
Guest:So the first obstacles was realizing, like, okay, I'm not going to have A-list comedians or lots of comedians in this.
Guest:I'm not going to have a lot of people who worked with him.
Guest:And I had conversations with people who...
Guest:with comedians who worked with him, great conversations that ultimately ended up with no.
Guest:I'm not gonna have, so the thing that I think Showtime wants, and I want, but really, is you're not gonna have a poster with a bunch of famous people's names on it to sort of go look at all these people who showed up for this.
Guest:And then a pandemic hit in the middle of all this.
Guest:So the challenge of how do we still make this
Guest:The idea is we're going to fly around the country to a bunch of survivors.
Guest:We're going to spend a lot of time in Philly.
Guest:How do we do that now that we now the whole that the whole world is shut down?
Guest:And so I think those two challenges in particular were the ones of like and then like.
Guest:Will we get enough survivors to show up?
Guest:The survivors ended up, and that was through my producer Geraldine and Katie King and Kelly Rafferty, that they like really, the survivors were actually ended up being the easiest people to recruit.
Guest:We didn't get all 60, we didn't expect to, but we got enough from different eras that it felt like we could build to fill out the picture.
Guest:Are there out names, are all those 60 names out?
Guest:Some of them are Jane Doe's, but I would say most of them, as I understand it, are out there.
Guest:And I think we were also trying to be careful.
Guest:But some of these people came forward and then said their piece and haven't gone out and done a lot.
Guest:So we didn't want to be like, go look these people up.
Guest:So you can go find them, but we don't want them to feel like we're...
Guest:Because they all talk about the negative attention they get from it.
Guest:And so some of them have really said, I don't give a shit.
Guest:I'm going to be out here and do activism based on this.
Guest:But a lot of them, I think, were like, I said what I said, and I'm not saying it.
Guest:I'm not going to take the heat anymore.
Marc:Yeah, that's not going to be my life.
Marc:I'm not going to be defined by that.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So so the obstacles were the pandemic, you know, the the not getting support or contribution from from major names in show business.
Marc:And then but but what so what makes you go on?
Marc:Because like when you talk about the O.J.
Marc:doc.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They got almost everybody.
Marc:Yeah, but you're also talking about a kind of a reframing of the story in a way where you're forced to, as an individual of any color, to reckon with what is really the evidence, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So on some level, I took it when you said we need to talk about Cosby, that in some ways it was a direct appeal to the black community to sort of like, what are we doing?
Guest:Well, I mean, I think it's a direct appeal to people who, specifically the black community, because it's very clear that there's pieces of this doc that are about black folks, and I'm talking to black people directly.
Guest:But it's also like, again, he was America's dad.
Guest:So all of us who grew up in that era
Guest:and sort of took him in as our dad, or people older than me who just sort of like, that's my guy.
Guest:That we need to all talk about Cosby.
Marc:Okay, I guess, you know, as I'm saying it over and over again, I'm realizing, well, maybe I'm being, like, because I don't, like, we are all looking to, like, not just a comic movie, but, like, white people are looking to, like, what are you black people going to do about this?
Marc:How are we...
Guest:And it's not just our problem.
Marc:No, I know that.
Marc:But it's a natural thing.
Marc:What is the reaction?
Marc:But it seems that media will always go that way because how do you generalize the white reaction to Cosby?
Guest:I mean, I think that the the levels of reaction are just different.
Guest:So I think like this is what I'm saying.
Guest:You could find me a very famous white comedian who of the right age.
Guest:So we're not talking about somebody young, but we're talking about somebody who is who is a famous white comedian who exists in the world and go, do you want to talk about Bill Cosby?
Guest:And that guy's going to say no, because he's also under the umbrella of Bill Cosby.
Guest:So for me, when you say that we need to talk about Cosby, I
Guest:For me, it was this thing where I feel like these conversations are happening either not at all or they're happening in segments.
Guest:And I feel like there's value in having the whole conversation.
Guest:Now, for some people, they don't want to have the whole conversation.
Guest:Well, luckily, there's other programming for you.
Guest:But I really felt like there is a percentage of people, a large percentage of people who are like, I haven't been able to have this conversation and figure out how to have this conversation.
Guest:And embedded in this to me is like,
Guest:empathy for survivors and help?
Guest:How do we change the structures so that this doesn't happen again?
Guest:Because it's not like the industry, despite what we think would happen during Me Too, things haven't flipped in a whole new way.
Guest:The industry hasn't been rebuilt.
Marc:So in terms of
Marc:Is there a way for the two realities or experiences of Cosby, pre-revelation and post-acceptance of said revelation to still have a place for this guy that can exist in those two worlds?
Marc:I mean, that's the question.
Guest:Well, for me, it's not even a question because I can't remove Cosby from my cultural black man DNA.
Guest:I can't remove the good stuff.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So I think for me, it's like, how do I then live with it?
Guest:Because I can't act like, well, I'm just going to pretend like I wasn't inspired by Bill Cosby himself.
Guest:I'm just going to, I'm not going to, I'm not going to think about all the good things I got from watching the Cosby show.
Guest:I can't do that.
Guest:So, but I think there would be this idea that like, well, now that he's done this, you have to do that.
Guest:And it's like, it's not possible.
Guest:So how do you then live with it is the question.
Marc:And was that – was this – did you realize that was a question that you were seeking to answer before you made the doc?
Marc:Or did that sort of evolve?
Guest:I mean, it started on the whole – I mean, I think it started on the art versus artist thing.
Guest:And then once we got into it, it was like that sort of felt like sort of like low-hanging fruit.
Guest:And really it became about like –
Guest:How do we create how do we stop this from happening?
Guest:How do we create more safety here?
Guest:How do we believe survivors?
Marc:So so that so that that whole argument sort of exists in the world.
Marc:It's not even an argument.
Marc:It's like, you know, either you're going to be able to still appreciate the person that turns out to be horrible because they did some amazing stuff and you're going to be able to separate it.
Marc:You know, whether the, you know, in terms of retrospect, the stuff, amazing stuff they did still has any credit to it.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you're dealing with that.
Marc:I mean, even on some level, you know, there have been people trying to kind of like, you know, Martin Luther King to some people gets a little murky.
Guest:well yeah i mean there's there's i mean he was you know he was a he was a human being sure exactly okay not let me be clear not as murky as cosby no it's not murky it's a human being's one thing you know it's sort of like you know the road's the road yeah but a rapist is a rape yeah no this and i want to be clear i don't want anybody to listen to think i'm i'm but martin luther king was a it was a he's a man he's a man and he was a popular man who was apparently on the road as popular men are right yeah
Marc:So that's different.
Marc:For sure.
Guest:We've tried to be clear that we're not making this doc if it's about infidelity.
Marc:Right, no, this is about a sociopath and a predator and a rapist, right?
Guest:It's about not respecting consent and infidelity.
Marc:That's diplomatic.
Marc:but I'm saying infidelity if there's infidelity implies consent this is right right yeah it's yeah it's a it's hard to ask for consent when someone's unconscious so but okay so so when you're laying out the history of Cosby because this is stuff that pre-existed your life and my life you know we were young you know and whenever he makes his first break that was like 60 what two 60 yeah 60 62 63 is when he starts again on late night TV so yeah that's when I'm born and you're not even an idea yet nope nope parents haven't met yet
Marc:So this is something you've got to look at in that editing room.
Marc:You know, as you're building this thing, it's sort of like, holy fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and then sort of make the connection.
Guest:Not even the editing room.
Guest:All my computer in my house with files being mailed to me because there's no, because of the pandemic.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But so, but like, there's just sort of like,
Marc:the history of black America alongside of what he's doing because there's a way to approach that critically as well in that some people spoke to it I don't remember the woman's name about that he wasn't addressing it but ultimately his existence
Guest:is addressing it yes yes and then after that his actions are very progressive in the name of the community well and also that's the thing I mean the first story that made me sort of feel like somebody's got to tell this story and this is where before I thought I would ever get the opportunity was in the wave of all the accusers coming forward the survivors coming forward I read an article about this woman named Noni Robinson who's a film director who's directing a film about the history of black stunt performers and how that was an interesting sideline huh
Guest:Yeah, to me, that's where this starts.
Guest:Because a lot of this could be boiled down to, I don't want it to be about, do you think Cosby's funny?
Guest:It's not about that.
Guest:It's about, what do you think about his career?
Guest:And he specifically, when he got I Spy, he saw that they were using a white stunt performer to do his stunts,
Guest:In blackface.
Guest:In legitimate blackface, painting his arms black and everything.
Guest:And he said, I refuse to be on this show unless you get me a black stunt performer.
Guest:And the people in the stunt industry, the black stunt performers say, that's the moment things changed.
Guest:It wasn't about like, oh, that was a piece of the thing.
Guest:That's the moment things changed.
Guest:And so for me, it was like,
Guest:Okay, that's bigger than whether or not people think he's funny.
Guest:That's actually a part of our history.
Guest:And she had a documentary that eventually is gonna come out now, I guess, but like that she couldn't figure out what to do with because she'd interviewed Bill Cosby for two hours and felt like she couldn't use that interview now because of all the stories of the accusers.
Guest:And so it was like- Where's she at with that?
Guest:I think because of our film, now she feels like she can figure it out.
Guest:So it will come out because I think it's an important story.
Marc:But that's the point where it's like Bill Cosby gets black people jobs.
Guest:And didn't go take credit for it, didn't get a headline for it.
Guest:I've talked to many people.
Guest:That's what white people do.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But also you would think in the mid-60s you might be a black guy who wants to get some good press.
Guest:A champion of the cause.
Guest:And he didn't do it.
Guest:So I think that was... And to me I'm like...
Guest:people who don't know this story and this is an important story about black history.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, and, and also he did these other things, but how do you, we can't let that story go.
Marc:But that was sort of an interesting kind of like coincidental sidebar, you know, like you were like, wow, that were, how'd we get here?
Marc:And you find that woman who's got this other issue with Cosby.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So you're moving through this stuff.
Guest:and that's what i learned from ezra's piece like how to take try to how to can you take sidebars and get back to the main road sure and and can you put somebody into a historical perspective and it doesn't overwhelm you know the fact that we're talking about the balance you're trying to maintain yeah i was always thinking about like we always i would say to the editors and the producers we always have to remind people that another shoe is eventually going to drop we can't make people think that like we get they would trick them into watching a different documentary
Marc:But you like present, you know, the stunt thing, you know, his, you know, his becoming a leading man, his becoming, you know, definitely the black white line was, you know, it went away for him to a degree.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And all the stuff with Paul D.A.
Marc:And then like, then at some point,
Marc:You start to drop the timeline in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When did this other thing start happening?
Marc:Or also you said, oh, I remember I was going to say is that you really started to build his family life.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That he built this family life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And publicly built this thing.
Guest:So, yeah.
Marc:Well, that was the other thing is that there was that subtextual argument of the portrait of a sociopath.
Marc:Which is like, what was compartmentalizing and just him?
Marc:Was this all a front to facilitate his base intentions?
Marc:That's a hard argument to make, but you definitely posit that as a psychological assessment.
Guest:Well, I think Jelani Cobb puts it the best.
Guest:He's like, people want to make this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but there's an argument that it's all Mr. Hyde.
Guest:And I don't think we can, I really was like, I'm not going to try to answer that question because that's not, I'm not in the position to do that.
Guest:This isn't that level of, this isn't true crime.
Guest:It's more like, how do we deal with all these pieces?
Guest:And I just want to have the audience go, let's just sort of sift through this stuff and let's see where we come out on the other side and we don't have to come out in the same place as long as we agree that these things happened.
Guest:I don't think anybody is necessarily capable.
Guest:I'm not capable of diagnosing him.
Marc:Well, no, I, I, right, right, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's people that are capable.
Guest:There are.
Guest:No, I'm not.
Guest:But I say, I just feel like as a, as a person who's making this, there's lots of arguments that are presented in here.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But see, but, but I guess, you know, in that sense, you know, like with psychological assessment or framing it,
Marc:you know as all a sham you know what what precedent is set for assessing you know people in general and artists in general and people you know what i mean it's like is it better just to say like well you know he had this mentally ill problem but it but do you need to say that you know dr huxtable was was just all you know that was just so he could rape people well i mean this is where we start to dig through what we call the breadcrumbs of like isn't this strange
Guest:that he could have any job on the Cosby show that he wanted to have.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Okay, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like, just where you go.
Guest:Gynecologist.
Guest:OBGYN.
Guest:Where is his, and to me, I'm not, and where is his office?
Guest:It's TV.
Guest:It could be anywhere.
Guest:It's in the basement of his house.
Guest:It's just to me, or it's like, okay, one Spanish fly joke in the 1960s,
Guest:Hey, swinging 60s.
Guest:What's family friendly is different.
Guest:But on Larry King, we've all seen that clip.
Guest:He makes the joke about Spanish fly.
Guest:He's an older man at this point.
Guest:It's weird he's still telling this joke.
Guest:You'd think he would have aged out of this joke.
Guest:And then what we found out during the series is that he was there promoting a book called Childhood that has several mentions of Spanish fly in the book.
Guest:You're like, this is just a lot, man.
Guest:To me, that's what I think when you start to dig through and find these breadcrumbs.
Guest:You start to go like...
Guest:This does it.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:Is it like that you, that because you're doing these bad things that you just, they just sort of leak out of you because you can't stop them.
Guest:Or is it because Cliff at one point says he's a narcissist and I don't go, that's right.
Guest:He's a narcissist.
Guest:But I feel like Cliff is like saying, this is what I see from this perspective.
Guest:Cause if I do it, it's not bad.
Guest:And you go, well, that's one side of it.
Guest:And then Jelani Cobb says, maybe it's all Mr. Hyde.
Guest:Maybe it's all an E maybe, you know, you're evil and you're sort of doing all of this manipulatively.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:I don't know what the answer is there, but I do know that all of this exists.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:And maybe I'm being a little too critical of that assessment because entertainers, they're not really known for moral integrity in general.
Marc:And you...
Guest:but they're not also but but and but mark i would say you don't claim to be a moral authority and we have a man here who claims that well that's the next twist right yeah is that this evolves into this other thing like we all sort of accept and i'm not i'm not in any way indicting i'm not saying anything about but we all accept that richard prior was probably not the greatest dude
Guest:Of course, but he'd be the first to tell you.
Guest:But that's the difference right there is that Richard Pryor sort of owns his like, I'm not the greatest dude.
Guest:And I've told you about I'm not the greatest dude.
Guest:How many times do I got to tell you?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And so we sort of have room for him in ways we might not if he was also saying I'm the greatest dude.
Guest:Whereas with this Cosby story, that's why I think it gets into this sort of like, well, what's really going on here?
Guest:Because it's a dude who told us he was the greatest dude.
Guest:And told us he wanted us to be the greatest people.
Guest:And then made you realize that there's no way you can be great like him.
Guest:And then when you say there's women who claim that he assaulted them on the set of his children's TV show picture pages.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:that's exactly it right there oh my god like it's just like how do i how does all this live in my head and to me i always thought of this doc as like once we got into it once showtime was like it's i was there was just sort of the idea of like okay there's not all these famous comedians in it all these people directly all these people couldn't directly connect to him yeah then it was like then come out you have to be in this right and so i was like do i and i talked to him with melissa and she's like yeah you do because otherwise it's not going to hang together so i sort of
Guest:And the most nervous I think I've recorded for VO in my life was when I sat in my wife's closet, because this was the VO booth going, my name's W Kamau Bell and I'm a child of Bill Cosby.
Guest:Because I was like, I'm gonna be at the top of this thing.
Guest:Like, I didn't think I was gonna be at the top of this thing.
Guest:I was like, I'm aiming it all at me now.
Guest:But ultimately, the thing that I sort of really want the doc to be is like, this is a bunch of smart people who have thought this through, who are sensitive and empathetic, because I don't want people who are not.
Guest:And if you have a Bill Cosby conversation, these are all different versions of the Bill Cosby conversation.
Marc:Yeah, I think like a lot of people, you could actually see some, I don't remember exactly who they were, but there was a sense of inner struggle.
Guest:Yeah, because a lot of them are black people around my age.
Guest:So that they have gone through it in the same way that I've gone through it.
Marc:But they did come out on the side of like, damn.
Guest:damn what which to me is like again that's if you don't come out on the side of damn i don't know how to i don't know i don't i don't want i don't know how to bring you to this conversation now how was it in in terms of how many survivors are in it that you spoke to for like what seemed to be i mean it's i mean so there's in in the first episode victoria valentino gets the law gets is like the main survivor then in the second episode there's uh
Guest:Patricia Steyer, Janice, Linda.
Guest:In the third episode, it's Lily and Eden Turrell, and also Lisa, Lisa Lott Lublin.
Guest:And yeah, and then there's other survivors we talked to in the timeline, so there's probably, but those are the major ones.
Marc:And how'd you handle those interviews?
Marc:I mean, what was the, were you nervous?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The very first interview you did was with Victoria Valentino's in the first episode.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we were all like, and that was actually in person.
Guest:A lot of these interviews were not because of, I was in my house, but, uh, so we were all, the whole crew was like really like up on our toes, just sort of like, she's going to be here in a minute.
Guest:Everybody ready?
Guest:Like,
Guest:sort of like dudes act right you know what I mean like sort of like and they were all cool but it was just like okay when she comes in we don't know how she's gonna be give her a space we set up a green room for her we bought her flowers we did like it was very much like let her tell us what to do let's take the cues and Victoria walked in like hey everybody like it was just like she gave she's giving hugs to everybody she gave me a copy of her Playboy magazine like you know like you know she asked me questions about United Shades she was like all of us relaxed oh good
Guest:And then we sat her down and then when we sat down on the couch, I was always very clear that before we get into anything with Bill Cosby, where are you from?
Guest:What do you do?
Guest:What's your life like?
Guest:What was it like growing up?
Guest:And then the more you, and this is what I've learned from United Shades, the more you do that, then by the time you get to the thing, people are actually more open to the conversation.
Marc:Yeah, because it's just another thing in the conversation.
Guest:They know you're building to it instead of being nervous at the beginning of the conversation.
Guest:And then what happened is inside of that, we got stories that we didn't know we were going to get because we just took more time.
Guest:And so that conversation was over two hours, the first one.
Guest:And we didn't know, my producer who talked to her, Geraldine, didn't know that her son had died so close before she met Bill Cosby.
Guest:That came up in the conversation.
Guest:Horrible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we also, all that stuff, I wanted to get all this stuff about Playboy from her because she'd been a Playmate and a part of the Playboy clubs.
Guest:And I was like, oh, we can actually use this stuff in the stuff we talk about, the Playboy.
Guest:But you just sort of like get all this extra stuff that I was really clear on.
Guest:I want these women as much as possible to appear for the first time
Guest:not connected to Bill Cosby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you just go, this is just a voice, a voice.
Guest:Oh, she's, of course, she's an expert.
Guest:She talks, she worked at Playboy, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So other story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So for, but, and then, so by the time we got that Victoria one and then the rest, most of them were done.
Guest:Lisa's was not, but most of them were done over zoom and it was just,
Guest:you sort of like, am I going to be able to get that level of intimacy over zoom?
Guest:And it's weird, but you did, we did.
Guest:I mean, you've done it here with the podcast.
Guest:So you do, you just sort of like, everybody's aware it's zoom and you sort of make jokes about zoom and you say, oops, I'm muted.
Guest:And you sort of like, just sort of like, you know, go into it, stay focused.
Marc:And if there's not other people in the room and stuff, you can kind of hold it.
Guest:And everybody knows what they're there for.
Guest:And we were very clear by the end, because we had to hire a lot of day players to do the, just because it was COVID, we couldn't get the same people.
Guest:And you just make sure everybody who comes through the door knows what they're there for and knows how to be as invisible as possible.
Guest:But I interviewed Gloria Hendry, who was the first black Bond girl,
Guest:And she was just having a great time.
Guest:Yeah, she was great.
Guest:And she stood up and did the thing where she, like nobody asked her to.
Guest:She just stood up and did the thing where she bent over at the table.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, with the Playboy thing.
Guest:And there was like a boom opera in the back, and they're like, oh, we should have her do it again.
Guest:I was like, I don't care at all.
Guest:Just let these people be.
Guest:My whole style of interviewing for me now is just let these people be.
Guest:Don't try to manage them into an answer.
Guest:And so, yeah, so all the survivors, like,
Guest:By the time they decided to show up, it was just clear that they had already done the work to be there.
Marc:Sure, and they had grounded themselves and done whatever mental preparation.
Guest:And they've done enough of these things where they sort of like...
Guest:the more comfortable, the more you make it clear that you're not here just for the sad part, the more they relax.
Marc:So, like, when Cosby takes that turn, like, and I don't know the timeline of Cosby, but, you know, when he made that speech.
Marc:Pound cake speech.
Marc:The pound cake speech.
Marc:2004.
Marc:Yeah, that, you know, changed everybody's mind about him.
Marc:lots of peoples yeah yeah like like what so by the time you know hannibal you know somehow dumps us into the world in a way that resonates 2014 yeah what is the feeling about cosby in general i think i mean this is funny because uh in 20 when so when cosby does the pancake speech me like a lot of black people my age was that 2004
Guest:which is the same year that Andrew constant came forward and said that he had raped her.
Guest:So it's like, all of this is happening simultaneously.
Guest:But generally most of us are looking at the pound cake speech and not really paying attention to this.
Guest:Andrew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when he does the pound cake speech, I, and a lot of, you know, Kevin Avery, we were both like, Oh, this is such a bummer.
Guest:Like it just felt like, like, Oh man.
Guest:Like he's any, you know, we know a lot of older black people who get conservative, but you're like, not Cosby.
Guest:And it felt so mean.
Guest:Like it didn't feel like,
Guest:didn't feel like tough love.
Guest:It felt like mockery.
Marc:Yeah, because this is a guy that you established throughout the documentary as being a guy that is concerned with educating and is an educator.
Guest:And believes in all of us, not just the ones of us who are doing well.
Guest:Right, and then all of a sudden he turns into this
Guest:He turns into like, you know, if he went from being America's dad to black America's angry grandfather.
Guest:And like making fun of the ways in which black people name their kids.
Guest:And one of the names he uses to make fun of them is Muhammad.
Guest:You're like, that name?
Guest:Like of all the names to like choose to like say.
Guest:And, you know, and so it just felt it felt out of touch.
Guest:It felt like a dude who was super rich and was almost bitter about the fact that didn't I tell you all how to get super rich?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're not all super rich.
Marc:There's a bit of that going around these days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it's more of that than we realized.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I told you how to get super rich and how to, I told you how to rise out of your poverty and you didn't do it.
Guest:And now I'm mad at you.
Guest:And that was also, it sort of sucked because there was a significant portion of the black community.
Guest:When you listen to those clips from the pound cake speech, there's black people in the audience cheering and clapping.
Guest:So it's like,
Guest:It's not just that Cosby made all black people mad.
Guest:He sort of created a rift in the black community for the first time in his career.
Marc:Right, but also that was the same sort of rift that Chris Rock artfully...
Guest:very much and it's funny because i did a documentary about chris rock and we talk about black people versus uh that bit yeah and uh man i don't even want to say it because now rogan's ruined the n-word uh but uh the idea being that like oh no just you mean we got you guys gotta take the n-word back we gotta take it back again he's ruined it for me i'm not saying he's ruined for all of us but uh but the idea being that like chris and he says in the doc that i did with him i'm of that community
Guest:So when I'm criticizing it, they know I'm a hip hop guy.
Guest:I'm not a guy who's like, he's not coming at it.
Guest:He's not coming at it from an outside.
Guest:Like Cosby does not live in the community anymore.
Guest:Man.
Guest:No.
Guest:And Chris would even admit like he wouldn't do that bit now because he's not, it's, he's a different guy.
Guest:But when he did it, he was a dude who was in Brooklyn a lot, you know, and, and, and people saw him around, you know, so he wasn't a dude who was, and he was also very much tied into hip hop,
Guest:artists that are doing the same thing.
Guest:Whereas Cosby, it came out of nowhere.
Guest:Every time we'd seen him at that point, he was telling us how to do better and that we could do better.
Guest:And it felt like he was reaching his hand out to us.
Guest:And also, this is the thing I think is so critical.
Guest:He wasn't turning on all parents in America who were doing poorly.
Guest:He was turning on black moms.
Guest:So it wasn't like he was like, a lot of you parents out here are mecking up.
Guest:He was at the NAACP turning on generally black moms who were struggling and their kids.
Marc:And that was sort of like that was like the big what would you call disappointment?
Guest:Yeah, it was like a seismic shift.
Guest:But in sort of like how we saw Cosby, but I saw Cosby do stand up twice after that, because when you saw him do stand up, he wasn't doing that.
Guest:Like me and Avery went and saw him.
Marc:So again, you have to accommodate these different sides of Cosby.
Guest:We were at our, and this is what I think Hannibal did so well is that we were allowed to, because of the media landscape and we're not on Twitter and social media is not telling us what the, like what you're allowed to sort of go, okay, I'm going to see this Cosby.
Guest:I'm not going to see, I'm not thinking about the Cosby who has these rape allegations.
Guest:I'm not thinking about the Cosby who's doing pound cake speech.
Guest:I'm just going to spend two hours with this guy talking about his grandkids and his wife and the remote control, which is what I did at the Paramount Theater in Oakland.
Guest:How was that?
Guest:It was great.
Guest:He closed on the dentist and everybody laughed like we'd never heard it before.
Guest:Like he literally at the end of like, at the end of his bit, he just went the dentist and we all went, yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He knew, he knew his stick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, and then Hannibal goes, no, you're not allowed to do that anymore.
Guest:You're not allowed to think about these things separately.
Marc:Not that he, that didn't like, like when I heard that stuff or when it finally got to me, I was surprised.
Marc:I didn't know anything.
Marc:And first, why do you think at that moment it,
Guest:picked up I mean I had heard these because by then by 2004 Andrew Constance case had been around there had been other women who had come forward so like I definitely was one of the people who was like yeah I don't know why I haven't been able to put these I don't know why I'm sorry I haven't been able to put these things in one place in my head yeah
Guest:I think it was like, it's just the perfect storm.
Guest:Hannibal, he's a black comedian.
Guest:He's in Philadelphia.
Guest:YouTube is a thing now.
Guest:Cell phones can now get video footage.
Guest:The person who got the video footage was also a journalist.
Guest:It was just like the perfect storm of like, it couldn't have happened any other way.
Guest:If there's no cell phone footage of it, maybe the story gets out, but it doesn't play the same.
Marc:Did Cosby ever comment on Hannibal?
Guest:He is generally commented through publicists, but I don't think he ever, I don't think he, I don't remember.
Marc:Well, there's that one weird bit when the art collection was being shown.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Wasn't he asked about Hannibal?
Guest:He was asked about, yes, he was at the, so him and Camille, so it's like there's this period of time when Hannibal does his bit.
Guest:And then but it's before the accusations start coming forward in mass.
Guest:There's like a few weeks in there.
Guest:And so Cosby and Camille were doing or hanging their art up at a museum, I think in Philly, but they were maybe in D.C.
Guest:They're giving their art collection to the Smithsonian, I think, or lending it to them.
Guest:And.
Guest:it was just like Camille and Bill and everybody's excited to talk to them.
Guest:And it's Bill Cosby.
Guest:And again, nobody's thinking pound cake.
Guest:It's just America's dad is here and we're all with his art, with his art, with his beautiful art.
Guest:And they're talking about it and they're smiling and there's all this footage of them smiling together and journalists smiling with them.
Guest:And I remember hearing on NPR, uh, Scott Simon, uh,
Guest:He's talking about the art, and he goes, Mr. Cosby, before I let you go, I have to ask you something.
Guest:And we have footage in the thing of, not of Scott Simon, but an AP reporter doing the same thing.
Guest:Like, before I let you go, I have to ask you something.
Guest:And it's about, there's a comedian, and I don't think the guy that we have in the piece doesn't even get Hannibal's name out on the thing.
Guest:He's like, there's a comedian, and Cosby's just like, no, no, no, no, no, we don't talk about that.
Guest:Which is one thing to say,
Guest:But then he then tells the guy to scuttle it.
Guest:The word he uses is scuttle it.
Guest:Don't use this bit.
Guest:Where's your man?
Guest:Where's the producer?
Guest:Where's your person?
Guest:Yeah, and then he does the thing at one point where he goes, huh?
Guest:To somebody who has clearly said nothing.
Guest:They're like, what?
Guest:No.
Guest:we need to talk to his person immediately.
Marc:And you can feel the fear.
Marc:He barely changed his tone, but his intensity.
Marc:And just Camille sitting there, I'm like, wow.
Marc:What kind of gaslighting insanity?
Marc:What does she know when she does that?
Marc:Judd Apatow did the most amazing joke about that.
Marc:Did you hear him do it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Camille, do you like your life?
Ah, ah, ah.
Marc:It was like, I'll forever, you know, whatever judgments you have of Judd as a comic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That joke is like, he's good with me.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:That's one of those jokes that like probably need to be done by a white guy.
Guest:Like, I don't know that a black guy can get away with that joke.
Marc:It's like, how does she not know?
Marc:Is he hiding newspaper?
Guest:You know, like, I mean, we have a little section in the doc where I asked everybody who was like, did you know his family?
Guest:Did you see his family?
Guest:And there's just a very consistent between the people I talked to, like she was never around.
Guest:so whatever their deal is i think she knew when to not be around and then he would use her to survivors like you have to go camille's on her way like there's a sense of like they understood the camille meant i have to leave yeah but but that probably wasn't even true i'm sure i mean yeah i don't think i don't think that's a real sense of like i think he's just you know he's doing whatever it takes to get this person out of his out of his house
Guest:right so but yeah but yeah so that this we taught we this is the thing i did not know until we started doing the doc that cosby had a history of bullying reporters and and calling reporters and demanding retractions and and threatening people's jobs even though he didn't have to tie he didn't have the ability to threaten their job and mark lamont hill tells a story he's a professor at temple about how cosby that guy was good yeah mark's great mark's great he's yeah he's an underrated resource it's always that uh that woman that the other kieran amayo
Guest:wow yeah no that's what i at some point i was like i don't know if showtime is going to be famous people but we have good conversations in here oh yeah and we have people who speak well and thinkers and big thinkers and people who are clearly wrestling with it while i talk to them and once showtime was down once they said well if you're once they were never they were always supportive but once they were down once they saw it and they let us do the the survivors sort of without extra music without archival without recreation
Marc:they just let the women talk it was like well we i know we have something here all right so so you do all this and you get these amazing like this sort of respect and time uh given to the survivors and to the and to all types of of people trying and wrestling and assessing it both from you know a female point of view a male point of view you know all of that yeah uh all fluid point of view yeah
Marc:But when you're doing this, he's in jail.
Marc:So on some level, these people are speaking from a place where a certain amount of justice has been doled out, handed.
Marc:Justice has been served.
Marc:And then before you finish it, he gets out on a technicality, right?
Guest:I just want to be clear.
Guest:Lawyers say it's not a technicality, but it is the way that we, the most of us who are not lawyers understand it as a technicality.
Guest:right lawyers say it's like the truth is is that he struck a deal with one with the with one da yes da that deal the next da came in and basically was like i'm going to put bill cosby in prison so he opens so he violates the deal and then a new person comes in who goes no now i'm going to go back to the original deal so he's got to get out of prison so it was like the the part that is ridiculous power afforded him that yeah i think the the power 100 like because the
Guest:First of all, the deal was involving the Andrea Constand case.
Guest:And the deal was, if you do this deposition about her case, you can say whatever you want to say, and we won't prosecute you, which is not a deal that a person without power gets.
Guest:That's not a deal.
Guest:What's the point of that?
Guest:Because they were trying to wrap up Andrea Constand's case, and that was how they figured out how to do it.
Guest:You come in here and tell us what happened.
Guest:you tell us, you answer our questions and then we will be able to wrap up Andrew Constance case.
Guest:And then you can go on and live your life.
Guest:And so that was a, you know, Andrew Constance had a civil case against him, but it was like the idea being that like, do this.
Guest:And so he did it.
Guest:And that's where he says in the deposition, I mean, there's a couple of things he says, one, he admits to giving women quaaludes for sex, but you can read that as like, they want to have sex or not.
Guest:But the thing he says that I, that the doc lands on that I had didn't know until I did the doc was about the fact that
Guest:When he was with Andrea Constand and she is drugged, he says he's he's sort of approaching her, however you want to put it.
Guest:He's and he says, I enter the enter the space between permission and rejection and I'm not stopped.
Guest:And as far as I'm concerned, I was like, that's the game.
Guest:That's not a thing.
Guest:There's no space between permission and rejection, especially if you've drugged somebody already.
Guest:So that for me, it's like that's him admitting to what he does.
Guest:And I don't think a lot of people had heard that that way before.
Guest:And so that to me was like, I know a lot of people focus on the first part, but I want to focus on the second part, but yes.
Guest:and and then he gets out so to be kieran amayo michael cord who's a philly lawyer and we did another second interview with uh with mark lamont that were that we did after he got out of prison what was your feeling then like what what happened for you when that happened because you were like nearing the end of the work right yeah we thought we were like our last day of filming and we thought like
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, we were in Philly, and none of us, there was no sense that this might happen.
Guest:We didn't go to Philly because we thought it would happen.
Guest:And I got a text message from a mutual friend of ours who's a comedian.
Guest:Oh yeah?
Guest:Yeah, who I could tell you later.
Guest:And he was like, your doc just got more interesting.
Guest:And I was like, and I run out, I was in the bathroom, I run out of the bathroom like,
Guest:everybody I have news but of course everybody was on their phone and I was like I don't know what this is anymore I is it done yeah and I because a lot there are Cosby dogs out there that have that have gotten to a place there's one I know that I heard that is finished but it just stopped but it's just sitting on a shelf somewhere huh so I just like maybe this is what happens maybe it's done also maybe it should be done because maybe it's not gonna maybe this is really not a good idea for me to do this anymore
Guest:So you thought you had nothing?
Guest:Well, I just thought that the story was too complicated and also too charged now that he was out.
Guest:Maybe legally we can't do it.
Guest:We had just heard he was out of prison, but he wasn't exonerated, which I didn't understand at that moment.
Guest:Maybe we can't say anything.
Guest:Maybe you have to put alleged before everything was out.
Guest:But he wasn't exonerated.
Guest:No, he wasn't exonerated.
Guest:It was just about the deal being violated, the deal for him to say whatever he wanted to say in the deposition.
Guest:It wasn't about his guilt or innocence.
Marc:Did you try to reach out to him?
Guest:No.
Guest:There was a lot of talk.
Guest:We talked about it.
Guest:One, it was always about the conversation around Bill Cosby, not a conversation with Bill Cosby.
Guest:There is plenty of Bill Cosby footage in there.
Guest:He's never wavered from what he says.
Guest:He's completely innocent.
Guest:I don't believe that.
Guest:I can't have a conversation about his career.
Guest:No.
Guest:It would have to be pointed.
Guest:All the women who were invited in... You're going to do that to them?
Guest:No, I'm not going to do that to them.
Marc:Let him sit there and go, I didn't do it?
Guest:Yeah, and have them go, I know I told you that he wasn't going to be in it, but now that he's out.
Marc:Yeah, and guess what?
Marc:He says he didn't do it.
Guest:Yeah, and he also said that he named you by name, and there's a lawyer there.
Guest:And to me, it was just like, that's not what this is.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So after that happens, so you're sort of left with...
Marc:you know everything you've done you've got four hours of this that you put together and you you're what you're really left with is i still have to figure out yeah what i do with this the these two sides of this guy you'll appreciate this uh uh sort of version of it i thought of it as like as i started saying this a lot this is like the tv show chopped i just these are the ingredients i have yeah i have to make them into something
Marc:Well, do you think that, you know, because like now that we're talking about it, it feels to me that culturally there is a verdict and that for the most part, you know, people believe it.
Guest:Yeah, I would say that.
Guest:I mean, you know, yes, that there's a there's a large percentage of people who believe who believe the survivors, but they haven't.
Guest:I think the doc, if they watch it, makes them.
Guest:Dig into it and believe in a different way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also, but, you know, I think that one thing that it may address that it isn't that isn't really spoken is that, you know, all the people that loved him, you know, there there there's a shame equation to it.
Marc:There's a shame equation to to continuing to love him in light of it.
Marc:Mm hmm.
Marc:that you know it it's it's a hard reckoning for an individual even if it's not that important or or up front but you know to love somebody you believe did horrible things repeatedly and still have empathy for the victims and i mean the survivors there's there's there's got to be shame in them
Guest:Well, and I think that we had a section that we had to pull out for time mostly where we asked everybody, would you watch this stuff again?
Guest:Would you show it to kids?
Guest:And so we had lots of people go through how they would reckon with it.
Guest:Like what stuff?
Guest:Like would you show episodes of the Cosby Show to kids in your life?
Guest:Would you listen to them do stand-up again?
Guest:Do you do this?
Guest:And the idea is sort of to show how people are reckoning with it.
Guest:And it's all very – everybody has their own way.
Guest:Most people said no, but then we had people say yes.
Guest:But the idea being that like –
Guest:And this is what I sort of come to now is that, first of all, we all separate art from the artists all the time, just in ways that we don't think about.
Marc:Yeah, because we don't know a lot, too.
Guest:Well, we don't know a lot.
Guest:Or we don't judge the thing.
Guest:Some things we don't judge as harsh.
Guest:Other people are judging as harsh.
Guest:I think of much, and I'm doing this on purpose, Eric Clapton right now.
Guest:There's a whole lot of like, I didn't know the racist story from the past.
Guest:He's an anti-vaxxer coronavirus conspiracy guy.
Guest:But he has 40 years of music that I've loved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, well, not me, not me.
Guest:Hendrix was always better.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I have problems with Clapton other than that, but I know what you're saying.
Guest:But the idea that we do it a lot, but the problem with the Cosby thing is, and this is a problem with generally, is that when somebody else doesn't separate it the way you do, then that's where the problem lies.
Guest:And I think what we have to understand, we have to have empathy for the fact that I'm going to separate it here, but that doesn't mean other people are going to separate it in the same place.
Guest:And right now we spend a lot of time arguing about these lines on social media in ways that aren't productive.
Guest:And what I'm saying is like, look, here's how I feel about it.
Guest:I can think positively about some of the stuff that Cosby did, but I'm not ever gonna forget about the survivors.
Guest:So there is a universe in which I show my three daughters at some point that scene from the Cosby show where they're doing the lip sync of Ray Charles.
Guest:Because that's like in me, like how some people feel at the moon landing, that's in me.
Marc:but i'm definitely going to contextualize it it's in whatever age appropriate way is necessary at that point it but you know it's like i think that's one of the things that like you know as as much as i like the documentary and i like you it's it's tricky yeah because it's like you know i get what you're saying and i get that you're saying that you know we do it all the time with art and artists but like whatever clapton's transgressions are they're not
Marc:60 rapes.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:I'm not saying that.
Marc:No, but I'm saying even without the Clapton example, like I'm trying to picture you showing your kids this and then trying to say like, there's a problem with this guy.
Guest:I mean, I feel like we've done... I've done this with my kids.
Guest:There's a problem with America.
Marc:Okay, okay.
Marc:Yeah, but America's not doing the Ray Charles whipsyncing.
Guest:Yeah, but America has... Here's the good thing about this country.
Guest:I mean, I think this is what I feel about.
Guest:There are some people who are like...
Guest:Why would a black man tear down a black man?
Guest:Why would you do, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:All these things.
Marc:I don't think you're tearing him down.
Guest:I think people who say that haven't seen it.
Marc:But I also think you're just contextualizing.
Guest:Yeah, but I feel like this, as a black person in this country, and this is even true of Jews, we have the ability to go, here's the good part about America.
Guest:Here's the bad part about America.
Guest:And you have the ability to hold that.
Guest:And the bad part is winning.
Guest:I feel fair.
Guest:I've looked into New Zealand a lot.
Guest:New Zealand, hit me up.
Guest:But I think we do that regularly where you go, this is the greatest country on earth.
Guest:I mean, that's not true.
Guest:but we sort of grew up in this greatest country on earth and also don't go down that street because they don't like your people down that street and so I think that like don't go down that state but I do think that like I'm not saying like today I'm going home to play this thing for my 10 year old I'm saying there is some point in her life where it might come across her face and I have to go
Guest:yeah and right or somehow it comes up in conversation like where it's like and this has happened you know we've sat and watched all sorts of things where it's like these people aren't good people and i think kids are actually more capable of understanding that or these people did bad things kids are capable of understanding that because they do bad things but they're not bad people yeah yeah i understand but i but i understand but here's the thing i'm not
Guest:Here's what I'm saying.
Guest:All this stuff dies on the vine.
Guest:All comedy dies on the vine.
Guest:Eventually, nobody's paying attention to the biggest whatever.
Guest:But right now, as a person, as people of my generation, especially if you're black, if that Cosby stuff is in you, I can recognize that it's in me.
Guest:And I can recognize that even when I watch for the purposes of this doc and I sat and would watch The Dentist, I would be like, man, look what he did there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that doesn't for a second.
Guest:That's why I always talked about the other shoe dropping mean that I'm going to one, forget about the survivors or two, I'm not going to tweet out everybody.
Guest:I know there's a lot out there about Bill Cosby, but watch this clip from himself.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:But I mean, for a second, because that's that would be naive and dumb on my part to do that.
Guest:But I don't think sitting here, sitting with myself, talking to trusted people in my life, I always talk about the way you text people in the group chat is not how you speak in the world, that there are ways to have those conversations that are ultimately, and for me, the purpose of having it is to go, what can we learn from this?
Guest:And specifically with Cosby and show business, how do we limit the damage of this?
Marc:Right, but this is also an argument to be made for
Marc:Um, that, that woman's interpretation, the psychological interpretation that like, yes, all this may be true, but clearly this guy was putting on a show to cover up the fact that he liked to do this other thing.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Renee, Renee Graham.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:that's another way to teach your kids about show business exactly you know because the lesson you're trying to to like the thing is is like there is a way to to have empathy for survivors to present this guy as a guy who was a a progressive and important voice yeah and and also you know had this horrible sickness this evil compulsion i don't even want to put it on because i feel like sickness makes it sound like that he's okay he
Marc:This evil compulsion.
Marc:He did these things, yes, yes.
Marc:This predatory nature.
Marc:But it's a delicate line because you're saying that how do we shift the environment?
Marc:How do we make the environment so this doesn't happen when so much about the ego of performing is about getting this love or doing these things or having this freedom?
Marc:to take liberties that are predatory and disgusting.
Marc:What becomes of it all if you can't just pathologize people and say, like, that guy was a fuck all the way around?
Guest:This is how I think about it, is that I think showbiz encourages everybody below the top of the call sheet to look the other way, just generally.
Marc:But what Mo Ryan was speaking to and what is correct that she said is that this is intentional corporate oversight in the name of profit.
Guest:And I was happy that she said it.
Guest:She said, toss that whole industry into the motherfucking sun, which was like my like, I want that on a T-shirt.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I really did not want this to, and it may have skewed this way because it's about Cosby, to be about one bad guy.
Guest:It's about one bad guy in an industry that allowed him to be a bad guy.
Guest:But the corporate decision making.
Marc:The corporate decision making is like, yeah, we get it.
Marc:There's a problem, but we can still make our own money.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:And I think the thing I've been saying is that when they built show business, they didn't go, before we start making dreams, where do we put the human resources department?
Guest:No.
Guest:And so for me, it's about prioritizing that version of it.
Marc:Before we start making dreams, we've got to realize there's going to be a lot of dream debris.
Guest:Exactly, yeah.
Guest:And we need to figure out, what do we do with all that dream debris?
Guest:The off-gas of dreams.
Guest:The broken hearts and busted people.
Guest:And showbiz has never done a good job of that.
Guest:And we come out of the comedy club world where it's like, you know, where there's like, you've seen the thing on the, like in the green where it says, don't have sex with the wait staff or whatever.
Guest:And that's, that's the human resources department is please don't do that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Someone's not coming back to this club again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So now what, what, what's the pushback then?
Guest:I mean, you know, I have like, you know, I've withdrawn from lots of social media just because I because there's no reason to sort of like I mean, to be fair, I don't read all the good reviews either.
Guest:But I definitely am like there is there stumbled across and I didn't watch it.
Guest:But like YouTube, because it knows I care about Bill Cosby and me, will share.
Guest:Look at this video, an hour and a half long video about how W. Kamau Bell is the guy we need to talk about, not Bill Cosby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you just go, all right, I'm gonna go ahead and just skip that one.
Guest:You know, so there are certainly there are certainly people.
Guest:And I've seen some articles because I get Showtime shares like the the breaks of all the things that are coming out and they're all good.
Guest:But there are certainly people in show business and people out of show business, people, cultural commentators and many who were black who just who I don't believe have seen it.
Guest:But even they have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's videos where I'm a sellout or I'm an industry shill or I've been hired to take down a black man.
Guest:And again, if you see it, I'm not taking down a black man.
Guest:But also there's been people who are like, even if he did those bad things, why are we talking about it now?
Guest:What's the point?
Guest:And for me, it's like America does a good job of never thinking it's time to have the big conversation.
Guest:So I just feel like we're talking about it now because we're talking about it now and it needs to be talked about.
Guest:And if you don't and if you don't want to make.
Guest:And the thing I've said that I've seen clipped in other places is like what we're doing, because there's also this idea that this is all white women.
Guest:It's not.
Guest:We address that in the piece that if you say we don't want to if you're prioritizing this, if you're prioritizing this one black man's voice, third, a third of the survivors are black women.
Guest:Why are we prioritizing his voice over their voices?
Guest:And so for me, it's like the pushback is, you know, is from a type of person who is always going to ride for black men over black women and also made more complicated back to the black guy who made it is married to a white woman.
Guest:So like I'm not from a lot of people that off top, I can't be trusted.
Marc:Huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you got it.
Guest:You're carrying a lot.
Guest:I'm carrying.
Guest:I mean, you know, this is not, I didn't release a Marvel movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and, and that wouldn't be, and I also understand that like what I'm getting is not anything close to what a lot of the survivors get, but they have actually reached out to me to sort of see they got, they got my back.
Guest:So it's great.
Guest:But yeah, it is.
Guest:There's a part of this.
Guest:It is like, it's the best reviewed thing I've ever released.
Guest:It's the most acclaiming things I've ever gotten that I've released, but I can't just sit here and celebrate it because it's about some pretty intense shit that
Guest:that for the rest of my life, I'm going to walk into rooms and have some people go, that motherfucker.
Guest:And so it's like, and I say that to my wife and my friends, like, yeah, I can't, because there is some sense of like, yay, and I'm like, I'm not, I don't know if I'll ever be there.
Guest:I'm happy that there are people receiving the work the way it was intended.
Guest:I'm happy that the survivors who were in it
Guest:all I've heard from have been like, I really appreciate it and they've been able to watch it even though it's not just about that.
Guest:So I feel like there is building that can come off this work and people feel like I accomplished a very difficult thing to do in some sense.
Guest:And I know it's not perfect, but it's also like,
Guest:As I said to my best friend Jason, I'm like, well, at least I'm not the black guy who talked to the Klan anymore.
Guest:My obit is going to have a different starting line now.
Marc:It's the cost of doing something like this.
Marc:It's the cost of putting yourself out there, taking the risk, and trying to present something in a journalistic way that's provocative.
Marc:It's always going to be this fucking guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:And I, and I, the funny thing for me is that like, I'm literally just a dude who was like, I love Bill Cosby and I love Eddie Murphy and I hope one day to be on Saturday Night Live.
Guest:Like that was, that's where this all started.
Guest:That's where this all started.
Marc:So I, your career in comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I just was like, I, so I sit here sometimes like, how did this and how did,
Guest:What?
Guest:Whose idea was all of this?
Marc:A lot of it has to do with a quest for justice in general.
Marc:And also a quest for progress.
Guest:Well, yeah, these are ideas I would be wrestling with on my own.
Guest:That's what you grew up with.
Guest:Yes, and now I'm in the position where I can wrestle with them in my work.
Guest:So it's not like somebody came to me.
Guest:Some people were like, Hollywood made him do this, or white Hollywood.
Marc:It's like, no, no, no.
Marc:Even you and Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby and SNL, by the time you started doing stand-up, that wasn't what you were doing.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:You were doing the other thing.
Guest:It was too late.
Guest:It was too late.
Guest:Yeah, I got shit to talk about.
Guest:It was like, I got to find my truth and I got to find my voice because I read prior convictions and Richard Pryor said it's all about finding your voice.
Guest:So I got to find the comedy octopus, I think he called it.
Guest:I got to figure out, find out.
Guest:Yeah, so I was always headed down the, even if I didn't know it.
Guest:The truth path.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Good talking to you, man.
Guest:Good job.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Marc:there you go that's it we need to talk about cosby is now available on showtime always good to see kamau i'm alive i hope you're well here's some guitar like usual it's probably something you've heard from me before i don't know anymore enjoy
Thank you.
Guest:guitar solo
guitar solo
Guest:Boomer lives.
Guest:Monkey in La Fonda.
Guest:Cat angels everywhere.