Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn
Appearances
Fresh Air
For Sebastian Stan, 'The Apprentice' Playing In Theaters Was The Win
Trump Tower. Trump Tower. Oh, that's interesting.
Fresh Air
For Sebastian Stan, 'The Apprentice' Playing In Theaters Was The Win
Well, as I frequently say about his buildings, the merits are fine. The thing is, we're just not going to give you the tax breaks. Why would we? I mean, I can't let you get rich on the backs of the people of New York and their treasury. Well, Mr. Mayor, I mean, first of all... Look, Mr. Mayor, my client is... Well, you're not.
Fresh Air
For Sebastian Stan, 'The Apprentice' Playing In Theaters Was The Win
And we have heard stories about the construction workers working on your projects. They don't get paid. They have liens against you, Donald. I'm trying to employ people in New York and turn us back around towards the future.
Fresh Air
For Sebastian Stan, 'The Apprentice' Playing In Theaters Was The Win
Where's my dad? Dad died, Justin.
Fresh Air
For Sebastian Stan, 'The Apprentice' Playing In Theaters Was The Win
I don't know these people.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong Sees Acting As An Escape From Self
What is your business, Donald? Real estate. I'm vice president of a Trump organization. Oh, you're Fred Trump's kid? That's right. He's Fred Trump's kid. It sounds like your father's a little tangled up. It looks like he could use a good motor.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong Sees Acting As An Escape From Self
You tell the feds to f*** themselves. File a lawsuit. Always file a lawsuit. Fight them in court. Make them prove you're discriminating. Wow.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong Sees Acting As An Escape From Self
Of course, it helps if Nixon and the attorney general are your pals.
Fresh Air
'Parks And Rec'& 'Good Place' Creator Michael Schur On His New Show
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're just goosing our water supply with fluoride? I mean, come on, are we really going to force every Pawnee resident to ingest a chemical we know nothing about? Fluoride is used by the communists to control our mines.
Fresh Air
'Parks And Rec'& 'Good Place' Creator Michael Schur On His New Show
Fluoride can control mines? Like, you can use it to make ladies do stuff?
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'Parks And Rec'& 'Good Place' Creator Michael Schur On His New Show
All right, you got me. I don't want fluoride in the water because I'm a dentist and I like cavities.
Fresh Air
'Parks And Rec'& 'Good Place' Creator Michael Schur On His New Show
Pawnee's cavity problem is why a small-town dentist like me can afford such a boss ride.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
You had to know the militias was coming. You knew it was coming. It's America. What we do in America? You have progress, then you have backlash. That's the cycle of this country. Progress, then backlash. You knew the militias was coming. Just look at the last four, five years.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
You can't have the first black woman vice president, the first black woman Supreme Court justice, and the first black woman mermaid. It was too much.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
And they couldn't handle it. That mermaid, that's the one that broke him, that damn mermaid. When they get that little mermaid remake, they was like, oh no, brothers. Meet me at the bakery tomorrow, brothers. We're losing the White House. We're losing the courthouse. There's a fish in the water, brothers.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Thank you for having me back. It is a pleasure.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
He's on the patch. He's on the N-word patch.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
I try to use it in scenarios where I feel like if I'm impersonating a person who would have said it or if it is a feeling of exasperation. It's like if there is an emotion, then there is a word for it. And not everybody agrees with particular words, but I feel like once you've had the conscious thought then as they say, God knows your heart, well, then you said it.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
So I'm not going to say freaking or gosh darn. That just for me does not work. I have resigned myself to the truth, though, that Certain words are going to nail to chalkboard certain people because they just don't like those words. And if that's the case, then I'm not sure if everything that I do is going to be for you. And that's fine. And when done properly, a comedy booker told me.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Ages ago, this was late 90s, she said profanity should be the seasoning, never the main ingredient. And so I curse way more when I am first starting a joke. And a lot of that is just nervousness and curse words become um words. Like if you saw me in a comedy club working new material versus when it's polished, it's night and day.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
And so you have all of these curse words and there is scaffolding and then you slowly start taking the support beams away to see whether or not the joke is really funny.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Can I laugh at this? Yeah. And that's the thing that... For me, I'm just going to be my natural self. I'm not doing it deliberately to make you uncomfortable. But if you choose not to laugh, that's fine. I'm not the type of person that would trip at you laughing at it. But you don't know that about me. You don't know what type of Black person I am.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
So I'm still being myself for the people who rock with what I do. And if they get it, they get it. And if you choose not to laugh at that line, but you laugh at the next joke, cool. We're perfectly fine, but I've lost the desire to change how I am in the presence of everyone to make them feel comfortable because then when am I ever myself?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
We need that cashier back. The grocery store cashier was the connection for crazy people to feel seen. It's a lot of people that's alone in a basement, just loading a rifle, and once a week, they need a snack. And that cashier was the connection. That's the job of the cashier, to make lonely people feel like they have a connection. The grocery store cashier didn't care who you were.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
The whole while your coming down the belt. I like this flavor too. That brother go home and feel good about himself. She asking him about his dog and his . How's Mr. Gibbles?
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
If you live alone and the cashier ask you about your dog, well, you'll ride that high for two months. You go home and look at that rifle. Man, I'm tripping. Let me put this rifle down. I got a friend at the grocery store. I can't be out here murdering.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
When a stranger would just say, oh, I like your sweater. Yes. That's gone.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
I take that as a high compliment. Wow. Considering I grew up studying both of them along with Carlin and Sinbad, yeah. I don't know how to agree with that. I feel like Chappelle takes on far bigger dragons than I do, and I feel like Chris Rock's observations are far more astute and sharp and simple.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
I use way more words than Chris Rock ever would to make the same points or to say the same things, and I think that's the brilliance of Chris Rock is the brevity. Love him or hate him, you don't have to agree with everything, but... There are no wasted words. I go back and watch my old specials. I'd be like, man, that whole joke could have gone. Should put that joke on YouTube.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Yeah, you have to know what regular people are going through. And you can't do that by just living in uber blacks your entire life. I consider comedy to be a form of journalism, living anthropology in its highest form. You know, you're doing anthropology on things that are still alive, things that are still evolving. So you have to be immersed in that.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
You have to bathe yourself in that a little bit. So yeah, take the train, talk to regular people. But it's the thing I miss the most about morning radio more than anything is just talking to strangers. And then that becomes the things that I can take and put on stage because now you're helping to embody. You have an opportunity in a way to be a voice of connection.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
You know, like some comedians have the ideology, I don't want to know what any comedian is saying because I don't want it to pollute my thinking where I'm the opposite. I want to know every single piece of known data that has been performed.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
It tells me where not to go. So when I did BET's Comic View in 2004, I'd gotten turned down three years in a row. And I'd gotten so angry with them. The year before I got Comic View, I watched every episode and I cataloged every topic that was breached by a comedian for the entire season. Here's how many jokes about...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
You know, ugly, here's sex jokes, here's race jokes, here's president, famous people, Michael Jackson, like Kobe Bryant, like cataloged it all. And then just told myself that entire year, I won't make a joke about any of these things. So now, now, at minimum, I'm original.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
when I started researching all the stuff I wanted to talk about, and it was just like researching a dang story from college, documentary research. And then once I approached it as that, then it became, oh, you can find interesting, like if you can sneak in something that people didn't know or didn't consider into your bits, oh, cool. You know, The Daily Show changed a lot for me creatively.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Daily Show taught me over analysis and how to find the angle on a topic that no one has touched yet. You know, we know what they're saying. What are they not saying? And how can we say that? And then Trevor Noah taught me through observation as a black man, when to use your anger and when to keep it in your back pocket performatively.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
But performing in a state of aggression, as I was for the most part coming into The Daily Show, doesn't help your point to land with everyone.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Maybe elementary school. Fourth grade, fifth grade, humor was a weapon. We moved to Birmingham when I was in the fourth grade. It was a weapon? Yeah, it was a weapon. It was a deflector, a smoke screen.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Just trying to keep from getting bullied and get your sneakers stolen. It's the 80s, crack era. So, you know, some cats is dangerous. And if they're not dangerous, they got an older brother who is. He always wanted to be cool. I kept my head low. I was a little class clowny in middle school, but like the idea of explicit thinking and premeditation of humor.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
I remember in JROTC, we would have drill every morning in high school. And so there was three tennis courts in a row, side by side by side. And we ran the perimeter of that like a makeshift track. And so you would have to run, I don't know, three or four laps around the tennis courts. And I would deliberately just jog and be well behind everybody, like two, three turns behind.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
And then on the last lap, I would call my comeback like a Kentucky Derby announcer. Yeah. And everybody else, we're all exhausted, and I'm trying to talk and run.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Sergeant Posey was not feeling this behavior at all. But what can you say? I'm running. You said run, so I'm running. And we would collapse across the finish line and just be howling with laughter. And it worked every time. And it just made me laugh. And there was no purpose to it, but it was just funny.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Yeah. But I mean, that whole thing, though, is part of what got me into stand up. Because when I was 19, yeah, we stole some credit card. Well, I stole the credit card. They was with me when we bought the stuff. And so like we were.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so a co-defendant, as they're called in a court of law. So in 98, I get arrested for stealing some credit cards and buying stuff and selling clothing on campus or whatever. And so in that time, I get suspended from school. So this is Thanksgiving of 98. And I get suspended at the top of the year in January of
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
for essentially that whole year, except I think I got back in school in like September, October or something. So during that time, I start doing stand-up because I think I'm going to go to prison. I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to go to prison. Let me try everything. What was that thing Sinbad used to do? Oh, yeah, stand-up. Okay, well, where does stand-up happen? Oh, okay, open mics.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Oh, okay, well, I'll go to Birmingham. I took a Greyhound up to Birmingham and performed and went back to the bus station, slept there. Because I didn't want my mom to know I was in town. I didn't want her to know. Because, you know, it's a black mom.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
No, she knew about the arrest. That's why she didn't want me doing comedy. You need to be somewhere with a job looking gainfully employed so they don't send you to prison. To which I said, thanks, Joyce. I think I'm going to sleep in bus stations.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Yeah. This activity makes me happy. And I just want to be happy right now. And I ended up getting probation.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
No, it wasn't. I mean, money is part of it. But at its core, what that started as, and it took going to therapy to really connect these dots, I didn't want my mother to worry about me. You know, I had a good father. He was a bad husband. And so, you know, money was tight a lot of the time because Pops was tripping. And we moved to Birmingham because my parents reconciled in the third grade.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
I was in the third grade, maybe fourth. So I remember nights laying in my bed, first grade, second grade, and I could hear my mother asking friends for money. Like the late night calls asking, you know, the borrow the money calls, right? And then I remember... I remember when my dad died when I was 16. And, you know, my dad was one of them hyper black, you know, I'm not paying no taxes.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
The black man ain't got no rights. The right to vote expires, voting right, whatever. So my father never paid federal taxes. So when he died, they came for everything. They came for everything. And I remember that very well. I remember working 30 hours a week in high school to help with the bills. Because I didn't want my mom picking up another job. And I'm still trying to just be a child.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
I'm still trying to just play baseball. But I'm also working closing shifts. I violated every labor law you can name.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Yeah, just for my mom to be able to keep the house through my senior year of high school. And so when I got to college... I just want to be no damn burden, man. I'm tired of asking you for stuff and hearing this deep sigh. And I know what you got to go through to try and make this pair of sneakers happen for me. So I'm just, I don't want to bother you. I just didn't want to be a burden to my mom.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
And I think that it wasn't about thrill seeking. It wasn't about stacking a bunch of cash and saving up to get a car and a gold chain. Everything started from a place of, I just want some clothes for myself so I don't have to call my mom and ask for clothes. And then, hey, man, I bought a couple extra pairs of jeans. Would you like some jeans?
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
And then that guy going, hey, man, I told my friend about those extra jeans you got me. Can you get him some jeans? And then the next thing you know, you're kind of running an operation. And then the police come and go, hey, this is illegal. So we're going to put you on probation for a little while. Go find a career during that time. And then when probation concludes, you can continue that career.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
And that's what happened. I was blessed to have a probation officer that gave a damn and allowed me to travel while I was on probation. That is not the norm.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
You know, and I'm very, very lucky. And that life that I was given back, you know, that's the life I've tried my best to not fumble since then.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Yeah. I mean, I was there. I mean, he was a great father. Hey, come with me to the radio station. I would sit at his feet while he read AP Wire stories in the 80s. And, you know, I spent every summer with my father before my parents got back together.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
So I was around, you know, this man holding court in barbershops, you know, talking to people about issues, talking to the mayor, you know, talking to everyone about stuff. And... I really feel like that was the early days of, how can I put it, the foundation of my ideologies. You know, my father knew all the black leaders.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
You know, my father was, you know, I don't want to say the man around town, but he kind of was.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Yeah, but they're all reel-to-reels. I haven't straightened that out yet. You know, that's something I definitely need to get to because, you know, so much of what my father talked about in his commentary work was about a lot of issues with the black race that are still happening today.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
You know, as much as I spent, you know, like any child, you go through a rebellion period against your parents while you want to be nothing like them. And then I look up and I look at the type of comedy that I talk about and I am him. I'm just a little funnier.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
No. Now, you want to talk about somebody who'd use nothing but anger to drive what they was talking about. It was clear he was mad. Now, he could be smooth with how he delivered the knife into your rib cage, but you was going to get the knife messing around with my dad.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Yeah. So my dad was the first black announcer at pretty much most stations he worked at in the 1950s and 60s. doing news for the most part. And so he got with some people up in Chicago and decided to create the National Black Network. And the National Black Network was a series of syndicated news stories and articles and programs that would be sent out to black radio stations across the country.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
And it was simply black. It was the first of its kind, news for black people on black stations. So my father was the co-founder of this joint up in Chicago at WVON. And they're looking for reporters. And my dad gets pulled over by a cop. And the cop has a really deep voice. And the cop goes, hey, man. And my dad goes to the cop. He's getting a ticket. He's in the middle of getting a ticket.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
And my dad goes, yeah, man, you have a nice voice. You should quit the police force and come work for me. And the cop was like, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah, you have a nice voice. You have a voice for radio. You should be on the radio. You shouldn't be out here doing this. And my dad gave the cop his card, and the cop he gave the card to was Don Cornelius.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Officer Don Cornelius of the Chicago Police Department. He'd only been on the force a year. He quit, started working at WVON as a reporter, got an itch for media, eventually came up with a brainchild for a show like Dick Clark's American Bandstand. And he goes to my father and goes, hey, man, I'm taking up money, you know, if you want to be an investor in this show.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
And my pops gave Don Cornelius some of the money to shoot the pilot for Soul Train. Now, where the story takes a turn is that it took Don Cornelius too long to sell the show. And we're talking about, like, my dad gave me, like, let's just say $1,000, which is a gajillion billion dollars in 1960. In today's dollars.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Yes. And my dad goes, hey, Don, I need that money, man. And Don goes, instead of giving me your money back, why don't I just keep you on as a producer? You can be an executive producer the rest of your life. Which my dad said, nobody wants to watch black people dance. Give me my money. Don paid him back. My father took the money, signed away his rights to any claims of the Soul Train Empire.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
I was not around him. Better watch Solid Gold. MTV's The Grind. But you not watching Soul Train in this house. That's a story that was told to me by my older brothers. My dad never spoke of it. Never brought it up. And I met Don Cornelius years later. And just, I couldn't bring it in me to bring it up. I wanted to so bad, but it just, it didn't feel like the right time and place.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
But I'm very thankful to Don Cornelius' children for including that part of my father's contribution within the BET show that they had about Don's life.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
So, yeah, my dad was, you know, there was an actor that cast him. That whole get pulled over scene is in the show. That's your dad.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
It's more of it in reverse. How could you miss all of this? I know this is the wrong can of beans to open up this late in our conversation, but I think the moments I have with my son, a lot of them are moments that my father missed with me. So it's like, damn, man, how did you miss this? You missed this? You didn't show up to the Boy Scout joint? You didn't show up to the chess tournament, David?
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Where was you at? What were you doing? Like, that would be the bigger question is, hey, man, I need you to account for your absences. So it would probably be like a terrible accountability evaluation conversation. Like if my dad was alive today, it'd be me yelling at an 80-year-old man. Probably not fair.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
Thank you for this in-depth conversation. Thank you for caring. researching and stuff. I can tell you went deep. You didn't just go through the first two pages of Google results on me. You went deep. About 70 pages in, some of these questions.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
We don't even like talking on the phone. We get mad if the phone rings. The phone that was invented for talking. You get mad. Oh, hell no.
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Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.
You got to text me first. Don't just be calling me.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Well, he didn't call me in word. But he used it, right. He used the word. And so for me, the comedian in me and the black man in me, we've got to talk about that. And so it's Klepper and I doing a two-man, two-on-one interview. And he's like reciting fictional rap lyrics just for context.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
You know, he said, if you're a black person, like basically to keep from getting harassed by the police, as a black person, be respectful and don't have your music blasting when we come up to the car. When you come up, when I come up to the car after I pulled you over, I don't want to hear yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. And he says it, right?
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I'm trying to get him to stay in that pocket and repeat himself. And Klepper is trying to keep him on the topic of police reform and anti-bias strength. So we're both fighting each other, essentially. And so neither one of us is getting what we want from the person that we're interviewing. And the producer wisely called. He could tell because I was getting mad.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I was trying to make a joke, but I was mad. And it was not—the conversation wasn't going anywhere. And the producer called for a battery change, which is like our move to, like, call a timeout. He'll just lie and say that the camera batteries are low, so we need to swap batteries. Yes, they do do that. And so we went out in the hall and reset for a minute.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And, you know, we have limited time with these people. We don't have all day. And, you know— The idea of me getting mad at him was not going to end in anything funny. And at the end of the day, this is about the jokes and honoring the segment and the story we're trying to tell about trying to fix the police to save the lives of innocent people.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So I can't go on my N-word side quest because I could, but I'm wasting tape and it's not going to make the edit.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So you just have to go, wow, that was racist, and going back to your business. So I say all of that to say going into my first special, learning where to put that anger and when to play it here and there, and then allowing my curiosities to go the same way that it would when I was pitching stories. Because The Daily Show, as a correspondent...
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
People talk about Saturday Night Live, man, and pitching to Lorne Michaels and you pitching a big room on a Tuesday morning and your idea either lives or dies right then. Daily Show, a lot of stuff is pitched over email, but then you have a field meeting and you could suggest a topic and then four people in the meeting will ask you three or four things about the issue. And if you don't know it,
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yes. So you're literally, you live in fear of having your idea ripped to shreds. Where SNL, well, it's not funny because of this or this idea is funnier. Whereas The Daily Show, it's you have not made an accurate argument to show me why there's a good level of confliction within the story because that is where the comedy will come from. Go back and you go away. Go figure that out.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Sometimes they let you leave the room and the meeting lasts like an hour, 90 minutes. So you could leave the room for 20 minutes and come back and have it together. But that still never felt good. So. That research discipline from The Daily Show bled over into my stand-up, and I'm so happy that none of my hour specials came out before I got that show.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
It's a fake quiz show about current events that happened in the last seven days. So if you have not consumed an ounce of media all week, we are the perfect show to get a recap of the news that was. And we just do that in the form of a question. You know, what senator's husband refused to shake Kamala's hand at the swearing in? And then I'd tell you to answer.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And then we would then have a cross conversation about whether or not spouses should be present at your job. I'm working. I'm getting my ID badge. Why is your husband even here? Right, right.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So we can have these side conversations where we give opinions and a little bit of analysis and detail and have a little bit of roundtable talk about it and then come right back into it with a new follow up question, either about that issue or something greater. But we also get to be very silly with the show.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And I've said this about this show versus The Daily Show is that with Have I Got News, our job is to simply tell you what happened. That's it. There was a snowstorm. There was a sex scandal. And also this dog saved a donkey from a flood or whatever fun animal video. The biggest difference between us and The Daily Show is that...
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
we don't necessarily have to dig to the bottom of whose fault is this or how do we fix this. That's not the MO of the show. And so, you know, The Daily Show, you know, it's not just that this is happening, but we need to delve into the causation or the solutions.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And if you look at John Oliver, John Oliver takes it even more focused than The Daily Show, where The Daily Show is going to cover multiple stories in an episode. Oliver is like, hey, we're only going to talk about this one thing and how we got here. We're going to talk about causation and solution. So, you know, we just get to be a little lighter.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So with that in mind, going into season two in February, yes, we do not know what is going to be happening under President Trump. But we do know that it is going to be a lot to follow. So we just kind of want the show to be a catch all for all things relevant and news for the week.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
It's the same. I don't think I would have achieved what I've achieved up until this point if I was still there. You know, because also, let's be real, I'm a father and there still remains a pressure to provide. And so with that pressure, you leave the show and I go, OK, I don't know what's next, but I don't think it's here. So let me go and figure it out. OK, well, then I sold three TV scripts.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Thank you for having me back. It is a pleasure.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I sold a book and our special. And then somewhere in the middle of all of that, CNN happened. You know, it's possible that the CNN thing does not happen. It probably does not because the show launched during a presidential election. I would have been under contract. Like, I wouldn't abandon the show in the middle of an election. So then you miss your window.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah. And that could have been the case, too. What if I stayed and then gotten fired and then missed the CNN window? Then what? There's not a lot of new shows that are being made right now. Now, I did not anticipate that when I left. Let me just add that. I thought that the market for new television would be much more lucrative now. They've cut Jimmy Fallon to four nights a week.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
They took the band away from Seth Meyers. They replaced James Corden with After Midnight, which is a great show. But fiscally, it is exponentially cheaper to make. So, you know, there's been a lot of corner cutting in this time, you know. And so it goes back to the Doug Herzog quote that I posted yesterday. the day I left where I said, you know, you don't own these jobs, you rent them.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And sooner or later, you know, your number's up. So it doesn't matter if I stayed at The Daily Show. Sooner or later, an exit is inevitable. Which uncertainty will you choose? Stay at this job, not sure who's going to get hired, or the uncertainty of not having a job and trying to create another job. And maybe it'll be an even better job. Choose.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Maybe elementary school, fourth grade, fifth grade. Humor was a weapon. We moved to Birmingham when I was in the fourth grade.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah, it was a weapon. It was a deflector, a smoke screen.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Just trying to keep from getting bullied and get your sneakers stolen. It's the 80s, crack era. So, you know, some cats is dangerous. And if they're not dangerous, they got an older brother who is. He always wanted to be cool. I kept my head low. I was a little class clowny in middle school. But, like, the idea of explicit thinking and premeditation of humor. I remember in JROTC...
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
We would have drill every morning in high school. And so there was three tennis courts in a row, side by side by side. And we ran the perimeter of that like a makeshift track. And so you would have to run, I don't know, three or four laps around the tennis courts. And I would deliberately just jog and be well behind everybody, like two, three turns behind everybody.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And then on the last lap, I would call my comeback like a Kentucky Derby announcer. And everybody else, we're all exhausted and I'm trying to talk and run and
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I try to use it in scenarios where I feel like if I'm impersonating a person who would have said it or if it is a feeling of exasperation. It's like if there is an emotion, then there is a word for it. And not everybody agrees with particular words, but I feel like once you've had the conscious thought then as they say, God knows your heart, well, then you said it.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Sergeant Posey was not feeling this behavior at all. But what can you say? I'm running. You said run, so I'm running. And we would collapse across the finish line. And just be howling with laughter. And it worked every time. And it just made me laugh. And there was no purpose to it, but it was just funny.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah, but I mean, that whole thing, though, is part of what got me into stand-up. Because when I was 19... Yeah, we stole some credit cards. Well, I stole the credit card. They was with me when we bought the stuff. And so, like, we were... Baby and your friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so a co-defendant, as they're called in a court of law.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So in 98, I get arrested for stealing some credit cards and buying stuff and selling clothing on campus or whatever. And so in that time, I get suspended from school. So this is Thanksgiving of 98. And I get suspended at the top of the year in January of for essentially that whole year, except I think I got back in school in like September, October or something.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So during that time, I start doing stand-up because I think I'm going to go to prison. I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to go to prison. Let me try everything. What was that thing Sinbad used to do? Oh, yeah, stand-up. Okay, well, where does stand-up happen? Oh, okay, open mic's. Oh, okay, well, I'll go to Birmingham.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And I took a Greyhound up to Birmingham and performed and went back to the bus station, slept there. Because I didn't want my mom to know I was in town. I didn't want her to know. Because, you know, it's a black mom.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
No, she knew about the arrest. That's why she didn't want me doing comedy. You need to be somewhere with a job looking gainfully employed so they don't send you to prison. To which I said, thanks, Joyce. I think I'm going to sleep in bus stations.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah. This activity makes me happy. And I just want to be happy right now. And I ended up getting probation.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
No, it wasn't. I mean, money is part of it. But at its core, what that started as, and it took going to therapy to really connect these dots, I didn't want my mother to worry about me. You know, I had a good father. He was a bad husband. And so, you know, money was tight a lot of the time because pops was tripping. And we moved to Birmingham because my parents reconciled in the third grade.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I was in the third grade, maybe fourth. So I remember nights laying in my bed, first grade, second grade, and I could hear my mother asking friends for money. Like the late night calls asking, you know, the borrow the money calls, right? And then I remember... I remember when my dad died when I was 16. And, you know, my dad was one of them hyper black. You know, I'm not paying no taxes.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
The black man ain't got no rights. The right to vote expires. Voting right, whatever. So my father never paid federal taxes. So when he died, they came for everything. They came for everything. And I remember that very well. I remember working 30 hours a week in high school to help with the bills. Because I didn't want my mom picking up another job. And I'm still trying to just be a child.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I'm still trying to just play baseball. But I'm also working closing shifts. I violated every labor law you can name.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah, just for my mom to be able to keep the house through my senior year of high school. And so when I got to college... I just want to be no damn burden, man. I'm tired of asking you for stuff and hearing this deep sigh. And I know what you got to go through to try and make this pair of sneakers happen for me. So I'm just I don't want to bother you. I just didn't want to be a burden to my mom.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And I think that it wasn't about thrill seeking. It wasn't about stacking a bunch of cash and saving up to get a car and a gold chain or Everything started from a place of, I just want some clothes for myself so I don't have to call my mom and ask for clothes. And then, hey, man, I bought a couple extra pairs of jeans. Would you like some jeans?
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So I'm not going to say fricking or gosh darn, that just for me does not work. I have resigned myself to the truth though that Certain words are going to nail to chalkboard certain people because they just don't like those words. And if that's the case, then I'm not sure if everything that I do is going to be for you. And that's fine. And when done properly, a comedy booker told me.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And then that guy going, hey, man, I told my friend about those extra jeans you got me. Can you get him some jeans? And then the next thing you know, you're kind of running an operation. And then the police come and go, hey, this is illegal. So we're going to put you on probation for a little while. Go find a career during that time. And then when probation concludes, you can continue that career.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And that's what happened. I was blessed to have a probation officer that gave a damn and allowed me to travel while I was on probation. That is not the norm.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And I'm very, very lucky. And that life that I was given back, that's the life I've tried my best to not fumble since then.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah. I mean, I was there. I mean, he was a great father. Hey, come with me to the radio station. I would sit at his feet while he read AP Wire stories in the 80s. And, you know, I spent every summer with my father before my parents got back together.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So I was around, you know, this man holding court in barbershops, you know, talking to people about issues, talking to the mayor, you know, talking to everyone about stuff. And... I really feel like that was the early days of, how can I put it, the foundation of my ideologies. You know, my father knew all the black leaders.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
You know, my father was, you know, I don't want to say the man around town, but he kind of was.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah, but they're all reel-to-reels. I haven't straightened that out yet. You know, that's something I definitely need to get to because, you know, so much of what my father talked about in his commentary work was about a lot of issues with the black race that are still happening today.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
You know, as much as I spent, you know, like any child, you go through a rebellion period against your parents while you want to be nothing like them. And then I look up and I look at the type of comedy that I talk about and I am him. I'm just a little funnier.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
No. Now, you want to talk about somebody who'd use nothing but anger to drive what they was talking about. It was clear he was mad. Now, he could be smooth with how he delivered the knife into your rib cage, but you was going to get the knife messing around with my dad.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Ages ago, this was late 90s, she said profanity should be the seasoning, never the main ingredient. And so I curse way more when I am first starting a joke. And a lot of that is just nervousness and curse words become um words. Like if you saw me in a comedy club working new material versus when it's polished, it's night and day.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah. So my dad was the first black announcer at pretty much most stations he worked at in the 1950s and 60s. doing news for the most part. And so he got with some people up in Chicago and decided to create the National Black Network. And the National Black Network was a series of syndicated news stories and articles and programs that would be sent out to black radio stations across the country.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And it was simply black. It was the first of its kind, news for black people on black stations. So my father was the co-founder of this joint up in Chicago at WVON. And they're looking for reporters. And my dad gets pulled over by a cop. And the cop has a really deep voice. And the cop goes, hey, man. And my dad goes to the cop. He's getting a ticket. He's in the middle of getting a ticket.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And my dad goes, yeah, man, you have a nice voice. You should quit the police force and come work for me. And the cop was like, what the hell are you talking about? He was like, yeah, you have a nice voice. You have a voice for radio. You should be on the radio. You shouldn't be out here doing this. And my dad gave the cop his card, and the cop he gave the card to was Don Cornelius.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Officer Don Cornelius of the Chicago Police Department. He'd only been on the force a year. He quit, started working at WVON as a reporter, got an itch for media, eventually came up with a brainchild for a show like Dick Clark's American Bandstand. And he goes to my father and goes, hey, man, I'm taking up money, you know, if you want to be an investor in this show.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And my pops gave Don Cornelius some of the money to shoot the pilot for Soul Train. Now, where the story takes a turn is that it took Don Cornelius too long to sell the show. And we're talking about, like, my dad gave me, like, let's just say $1,000, which is a gajillion billion dollars in 1960. In today's dollars. Yes. And my dad goes, hey, Don, I need that money, man.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And Don goes, instead of giving me your money back, why don't I just keep you on as a producer? You can be an executive producer the rest of your life. Which my dad said, nobody wants to watch black people dance. Give me my money. Don paid him back. My father took the money, signed away his rights to any claims of the Soul Train Empire.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And did you ever talk to him? I could not watch Soul Train.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I was not around him. Better watch Solid Gold. MTV's The Grind. But you not watching Soul Train in this house. That's a story that was told to me by my older brothers. My dad never spoke of it. Never brought it up. And I met Don Cornelius years later. And just, I couldn't bring it in me to bring it up. I wanted to so bad, but it just, it didn't feel like the right time and place.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
But I'm very thankful to Don Cornelius' children for including that part of my father's contribution within the BET show that they had about Don's life.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So, yeah, my dad was, you know, there was an actor that cast him. That whole get pulled over scene is in the show. That's your dad. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
It's more of an in reverse. How could you miss all of this? I know this is the wrong can of beans to open up this late in our conversation, but I think... The moments I have with my son, a lot of them are moments that my father missed with me. So it's like, damn, man, how did I miss this? You missed this? You didn't show up to the Boy Scout joint. You didn't show up to the chess tournament, baby.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And so you have all of these curse words and they're scaffolding and then you slowly start taking the support beams away to see whether or not the joke is really funny.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Where was you at? What were you doing? Like, that would be the bigger question is, hey, man, I need you to account for your absences. So it would probably be like a terrible accountability evaluation conversation. Like if my dad was alive today, it'd be me yelling at an 80-year-old man. Probably not fair.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I think that at its core, yes. The short answer to your question is yes. Therapy helped me. And you understand that if you're, you know, a computer software, if the software is corrupted, then any program that you attempt to run on that computer is not going to run properly. In this case,
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Parenting.ios or being a good communicator, being emotionally vulnerable, all of that additional software is being built on corrupted firmware. So I have to grade everything that he did on the curve because of his own childhood traumas that I started learning about a little later on. And so I think that helps to inform it, but it still doesn't.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
For me, the book that I'm writing, though, the book is about the lessons I learned as a man and who else I learned them from in lieu of not getting all of those lessons from him in lieu of his death. of his earlier death. So I think that, yeah, there is a degree of compassion when you understand, but having compassion and understanding why doesn't change the what.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And so how to survive the what and to protect my son from future what is the purpose of the book.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Thank you. Thank you for this in-depth conversation. Thank you for caring. researching and stuff. I can tell you went deep. You didn't just go through the first two pages of Google results on me. You went deep. About 70 pages in, some of these questions.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Can I laugh at this? Yeah. And that's the thing that. For me, I'm just going to be my natural self. I'm not doing it deliberately to make you uncomfortable. But if you choose not to laugh, that's fine. I'm not the type of person that would trip at you laughing at it. But you don't know that about me. You don't know what type of Black person I am.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
So I'm still being myself for the people who rock with what I do. And if they get it, they get it. And if you choose not to laugh at that line, but you laugh at the next joke, cool. We're perfectly fine, but I've lost the desire to change how I am in the presence of everyone to make them feel comfortable because then when am I ever myself?
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah, I like that. I mean, it's funnier for people who really connect with that part of my being culturally. But if you don't know that that's a Coming to America reference, me just saying whatever you like, that works fine. And the joke is fine. But it's like a joke and then there's a bonus joke, if you will.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I remember in my first special, I can't remember how the joke goes, but basically, oh, when black people die, they fall in slow motion. And how when Apollo Creed died, when I look at the American flag, it makes me think of Apollo Creed's death. And Apollo Creed got hit by that Russian and died. And that was a terrible day. And then I'd imitate the slow motion fall that gets a laugh.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And then under my breath, I just go, Michael B. Jordan lost his father. And then I continue on. Either you get that creed reference or you don't. But I'm not going to stop and explain that. And we're talking about literally a sentence. So if you don't get that sentence, OK, that's fine. There's other things for you to enjoy.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
That comes way later once you're comfortable with the bit and then you're on stage and it's jazz and you're just finding moments between the chords to kind of freestyle. But you have to be comfortable with the sheet music first before you start adding all of this other stuff in there. I don't necessarily write like a broader joke and then go, now how can I get my people to chuckle a little more?
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah, right. If it's there, it's there. You know, if it's not, it's not.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
We need that cashier back. The grocery store cashier was the connection for crazy people to feel seen. It's a lot of people that's alone in a basement, just loading a rifle, and once a week, they need a snack. And that cashier was the connection. That's the job of the cashier, to make lonely people feel like they have a connection. Grocery store cashier didn't care who you were.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
That brother go home and feel good about himself. She asking him about his dog and . How's Mr. Gibbles?
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
If you live alone and the cashier asks you about your dog, you'll ride that high for two months. You go home and look at that rifle. Man, I'm tripping. Let me put this rifle down. I got a friend at the grocery store. I can't be out here murdering.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
When a stranger would just say, oh, I like your sweater. Yes. That's gone.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
I take that as a high compliment. Wow. Considering I grew up studying both of them along with Carlin and Sinbad, yeah. I don't know how to agree with that. I feel like Chappelle takes on far bigger dragons than I do. And I feel like Chris Rock's observations are far more astute and sharp and simple. I use way more words than Chris Rock ever would to make the same points or to say the same things.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
You had to know the militias was coming. You knew it was coming. It's America. What we do in America? You have progress, then you have backlash. That's the cycle of this country. Progress, then backlash. You knew the militias was coming. Just look at the last four, five years.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And I think that's the brilliance of Chris Rock is the brevity. you know, love them or hate them. You don't have to agree with everything, but there were no wasted words. I go back and watch my old specials. I'd be like, man, that whole joke could have gone. Should put that joke on YouTube.
Fresh Air
Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah, you have to know what regular people are going through. And you can't do that by just... living in uber blacks your entire life. I consider comedy to be a form of journalism, living anthropology in its highest form. You know, you're doing anthropology on things that are still alive, things that are still evolving. So you have to be immersed in that.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
You have to bathe yourself in that a little bit. So yeah, take the train, talk to regular people. But it's the thing I miss the most about morning radio, more than anything, it's just talking to strangers. And then that becomes the things that I can take and put on stage because now you're helping to embody. You have an opportunity in a way to be a voice of connection.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
You know, like some comedians have the ideology, I don't want to know what any comedian is saying because I don't want it to pollute my thinking where I'm the opposite. I want to know every single piece of known data that has been performed.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
It tells me where not to go. So when I did BET's Comic View in 2004, I'd gotten turned down three years in a row. And I'd gotten so angry with them. The year before I got Comic View, I watched every episode and I cataloged every topic that was breached by a comedian for the entire season. Here's how many jokes about...
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
You can't have the first black woman vice president, the first black woman Supreme Court justice, and the first black woman mermaid. It was too much.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
you know, ugly, here's sex jokes, here's race jokes, here's president, famous people, Michael Jackson, like Kobe Bryant, like cataloged it all. And then just told myself that entire year, I won't make a joke about any of these things. So now, now, at minimum, I'm original.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
when I started researching all the stuff I wanted to talk about, and it was just like researching a dang story from college, documentary research. And then once I approached it as that, then it became, oh, you can find interesting, like if you can sneak in something that people didn't know or didn't consider into your bits, oh, cool. You know, The Daily Show changed a lot for me creatively.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Daily Show taught me over analysis and how to find the angle on a topic that no one has touched yet. You know, we know what they're saying. What are they not saying? And how can we say that? And then Trevor Noah taught me through observation as a black man. when to use your anger and when to keep it in your back pocket performatively.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And they couldn't handle it. That mermaid, that's the one that broke them, that damn mermaid. When they get that little mermaid remake, they be like, oh no, brothers. Meet me at the bakery tomorrow, brothers. We're losing the White House, we're losing the courthouse. There's a fish in the water, brothers.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
But performing in a state of aggression, as I was for the most part coming into The Daily Show, doesn't help your point to land with everyone.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
Yeah, the first piece that I did, the first segment I did, that ever aired on the show was a segment with Jordan Klepper. The first field piece, I mean. It's the first week of the show. It was a segment called Are All Cops Racist? And Klepper and I did a... a ride-along with the Appleton, Wisconsin Police Department. It wasn't Madison. It was a Wisconsin city.
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Roy Wood Jr. Thinks Of Comedy As Journalism
And we interview a former NYPD detective about over-policing and police bias and, you know, just all the things in 2015. And this man said the N-word in the interview and...
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
You can't be CEO. You can't, because you killed someone.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
It's just a thing I said. It's a thing I said. I made it up. You made it up. It was a difficult time for us, and I think I, you know, must have something from nothing because I wanted for us all to bond at a difficult moment. Wait, it was a move? No, not, there was a kid. There was that kid.
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
I had like a toke and a beer and not, I didn't even get in the car. Hold on, what? I felt bad and I false-memoried it. Like, I'm totally clean. I can do this. Wait. Did it happen or did it not happen? It did not happen. It did not happen. I wasn't even there. It did not happen. Dude. Vote for me. Just please, vote for me. Shiv, vote for me. No. Yes. Shiv, don't do this. You can't do this, Shiv.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
No. Why? No, why? What, just? I love you. I really, I love you, but I can't un-stomach you. This is disgusting.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
It doesn't even make any sense. I'm the eldest boy. I am the eldest boy. You're not. And you know, it mattered to him. He wanted this to go on.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Hey, Dad. Hello. You're going to be OK. And I'm sorry. Is he dead? I don't know if he's dead. Is he dead? I don't know. Tom? Tom? Tom?
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Is he even alive? I don't know, honey. Are you just being nice to me? Is he gone?
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
He's, uh, I don't know. I don't know. We, uh, we don't know. We don't know. Okay, I'm putting you back there, okay?
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Daddy? Uh, I love you. Uh, uh, don't go. Please, not now. No, I... I love you.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
You... God, I don't... There's no excuses for being... But I... And it's okay. It's okay, Daddy. It's okay. I love you.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
You're too transparent to find in a book. You're pathetic. You're pathetic. You're a masochist and you can't even take it.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
I think you are incapable of love. And I think you are maybe not a good person to have children.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Well, that's not very nice to say, is it?
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But you, you, you have hurt me more than you can possibly imagine.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
And you... You took away the last six months I could have had with my dad.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Yes. You sucked up to him and you cut me out.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
It's not my fault that you didn't get his approval. I have given you endless approval and it doesn't fill you up because you're broken.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
I don't like you. I don't. I don't even care about you. I don't care.
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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Shut up. Take a look at me. You got delusions. You have intentions. You think that this is real.
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Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
What is your business, Donald? Real estate. I'm vice president of a Trump organization. Oh, you're Fred Trump's kid? That's right. He's Fred Trump's kid. It sounds like your father is a little tangled up. It looks like he could use a good motor.
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Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
File a lawsuit. Always file a lawsuit. Fight them in court. Make them prove you're discriminating.
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Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Of course, it helps if Nixon and the attorney general are your pals.
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Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Look, he has a great track record. So we think this is a very reasonable ask.
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50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
How'd you do, I'm? See you've met, my'n. Faithful Candyman He's just a little brought down Because when you knocked He thought you were the Candyman Don't get strung up
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
By the way I look, don't judge a book by its cover. I'm not much of a man by the light of day, but by night I'm one hell of a lover. I'm just a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
Come up to the lab and see what's on the slab. I see you shiver with anticipation.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
You're going down a very dangerous road. You know that. And we ain't been down dangerous roads before. All of a sudden, we can't go down dangerous roads. This is a road that I'm not going down because you're going to take us all down. This is not the way. You know, it's just a matter of time you're going to get pinched. But don't forget, you're a racketeer. You're a gangster. Come on.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
All of a sudden, you want to be half in, half out, half a racketeer? You can't have it both ways. You're either in or you're out. And whether you're half in or half out, that don't mean you ain't going to get caught the same way I could get caught or I could go down. It's the same thing. Come on, don't be naive. We don't control this, somebody else does it. This is a death sentence.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
It's a big, big mistake. Look, you do what you want. You want to be a diplomat, that's your business. Me? I'm a gangster. I'm a racketeer. That's it. That's it. That's the life.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
Enchanté. Well, nice. And what charming underclothes you both have. But here, put these on. They'll make you feel less, um, vulnerable. It's not often we receive visitors here. Let alone offer them hospitality.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
Hospitality? All we wanted to do was to use your telephone, damn it, a reasonable request, which you've chosen to ignore. Dad, don't be ungrateful. Ungrateful?
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
How forceful you are, Brad. Such a perfect specimen of manhood. So...
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
I say there should be more violins on television and less game shows.
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
Oh, well, that's different. Yes. Never mind.
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
So what does she do? She opens her perfect little purse and takes out her perfect little Kleenex and draws her perfect little face and then throws the perfect little Kleenex into a perfect little Tiffany trash can. But what this cutie didn't know was when she wiped off her nose, she didn't push back in this one little perfect little nose hair.
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
It just stuck out there and it was long and it was black and it was perfect and I thought I was gonna die. Just between you and me, Roseanne, Roseanne, and Dana, I felt like yanking down two more hairs, braiding them, and putting a bead at the end. Then, her nose would have looked like her head, but I yelled, hey, bull, shove that hair back up your nose. What are you trying to do, make me sick?
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
Tonight's commentary is very important because I hear that President Ford wants to make Puerto Rico a steak. Now, why does he have to make the mistake? I didn't think those people even liked meat. What's all this fuss I keep hearing about violins on television? Now, why don't parents want their children to see violins on television?
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
My very first audition for The Office, I had to sit in a chair, and the producer interviewed me in character. There was no script. He just said, we want you to act like Pam or your idea of Pam, and we're going to interview you like a documentary film crew might. And they asked me a lot of questions about, did I like working at a paper company? How long had I lived in Scranton?
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
How did I feel about being filmed by a documentary crew? And my take on the character of Pam was that she didn't have any media training. So she didn't know how to be a good interview. And also, she didn't care about this interview. And so I gave very short one-word answers.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And I tried very hard not to be funny or clever because I thought that the comedy would come out of just, you know, the real human reactions to the situation. And it was great. It was great. We clicked quickly. And they liked that take on it.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Well, it's funny. The casting director, before I went in, I had known her for a few years, and she had called me in for other jobs. And she gave me some coaching on the phone. What she said was, don't come in looking pretty. Which, you know, a lot of times when you go in on an audition, they want you to look inappropriately sexy or hot for the role.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And I used to get called in to play things like, oh, like a third grade school teacher, but look really hot. Yeah. And and so in this instance, the when I went in for the office, the casting director said to me, she said, please look normal. Don't make yourself all pretty and dare to bore me with your audition. Those were her words. Dare to bore me.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
She said, please do not come in and do a bunch of stick and try to be funny and clever because it's not that kind of show. So when I went into the audition, the first question that they asked me in the character of Pam, they said, do you like working as a receptionist? And I said, no. And that was it. I didn't speak any more than that. And...
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And they started laughing and then they asked me a few more questions. My answers were really nothing. They were just yes and no answers. And I felt like the comedy would come in watching me think about what I wasn't going to say instead of what I said. Right.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Well, there's two different scenarios. When we're just shooting the show and it's a scene, the camera operator is this man named Randall Einhorn. And he's our director of photography. And we will look at him. We'll give him the look or we'll look into the camera at him. And he's become another character or another actor on the show. To us. So we do actually act with him. And it's really cute.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Whenever Pam smiles at the camera, Randall can't help but smile back. The man, Randall, smiles at you while he's holding the camera. And there are scenes that we've done that have been really touching. And you'll look at Randall and he'll be sort of teared up. And when we shoot our talking heads, our interview segments, the director of the episode serves as our documentarian for that week.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
some of the directors, we have them back again and again and again. And one director we're particularly attached to is Ken Kwapis. He directed our very first episode and he comes back every year and directs a couple of episodes. And last year he directed the finale. And he's always taken a particular interest in Pam and her journey. So I feel very close to him. And
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
In that moment when Jim burst into the conference room while Pam's giving an interview and he finally asks her out on a date. I turned to the camera, and in the moment that they used, I'm sort of tearing up. And the reason that I teared up was because when I looked back at the camera, I saw Ken Kwapis, and his eyes were full of tears.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And he smiled at me and gave me a little wink, like, that's right, you finally got what you wanted, sweetie. And it just, oh, it was a really powerful moment between me and the director.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Yes. When it came down to the end of the audition process, they took four Pams and four Jims and four Dwights and four Michaels, and they brought us into a real office, and they filmed us with a camera for two days, mixing and matching us. And over the course of that two days, I was mixed and matched with John several times.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And after the second day, we were walking out of a scene and he turned to me and he said, you're my favorite, Pam. I hope you get this job. And I smiled really big and I said, I'm so glad you said that because you're my favorite, Jim. And I don't think anyone could do it except for you. And when they called and told me that I got the job, I said, please tell me that John Krasinski is playing Jim.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Here's what we're going to do. Why don't we go around and everybody, everybody say a race that you are attracted to sexually. I will go last.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And they said, he is. And we're so glad to hear you say that because we thought you two had amazing chemistry. And we're glad you think so, too.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Oh, gosh. Well, my favorite Pam-Michael moment from the entire series happens in season one, actually. He comes up to my desk, and he wads up a piece of paper, and he goes to throw it into the trash can behind me, but instead it hits me in the head. And Pam looks at Michael, and she says... please don't throw garbage at me.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And I loved that moment because I thought, here's a girl who actually has to say to her boss, please don't throw garbage at me. It's like such a known thing, you know? It's just like such a thing that any normal person would know not to do. But I felt like that summed up their entire relationship, that Pam is constantly having to educate Michael on simple human interactions.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
How come Chris Rock can do a routine and everybody finds it hilarious and groundbreaking, and then I go and do the exact same routine, same comedic timing, and people file a complaint to corporate? Is it because I'm white and Chris is black?
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
So, I'm happy to be here. It's very nice to see all of you.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
You're all looking well. Today's a women in the workplace thing. Jan's coming in from corporate to talk to all the women about, I don't really know what, but Michael's not allowed in. She said that about five times.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Women today, though we have the same options as men, we often face a very different set of obstacles in getting there. Hey, what's going on? Michael, I thought we agreed that you wouldn't be here.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
I thought about it. I just have a few things I want to say.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Just hear me out. What is more important than quality? Equality. Now, studies show that today's woman, the Ally McBeal woman, as I call her, is at a crossroads.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And just... You have come a long way, baby, but I just want to keep it within reason. They did this up in Albany. You are not allowed in this session. And they ended up turning the break room into a lactation room, which is disgusting.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Well, I'm their boss, so I feel like... Anybody want any coffee or anything?
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
We're fine, Michael. We just need you to leave, please.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Michael Scott is someone with an enormous emotional blind spot. He is someone who truly does not understand how others perceive him. And if he did gain any knowledge, his head would explode. He would not be able to... He wouldn't be able to take in all of that information because it's just – certain people exist on a different level.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And they are only able to exist because they're in a sense of denial about who they are or how other people view them. And I think that's who he is. But he's not a bad guy. I think he's – He's a caring person. He wants what's best, but he doesn't always do the best things in order to achieve what he hopes to achieve.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
I think for me it stemmed mostly from various teachers that I had growing up because many teachers that I've had, especially fifth, sixth, seventh grade, would be people who were trying to be as cool as the students or wanted the students to think that they were cool. But – Indeed, they were not. And the harder they tried, the less cool they would appear to be.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And that's basically what Michael is up against. He thinks people think he's cool. He thinks people like him and think he's funny and charming. But he's really none of those things.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And incidentally, when you say everyone knows a Michael Scott, I guess the rule of thumb, Ricky Gervais told me this in regards to the character that he played, David Brent, in the BBC version of The Office, is that if you don't know a Michael Scott, then you are Michael Scott.
Fresh Air
Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
So better that you actually have a frame of reference for a Michael Scott.