The Best of SBS: Roy Wood Jr.
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What inspired Roy Wood Jr. to pursue a career in comedy?
Kings Network.
Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm excited about this one. It doesn't mean I haven't been excited about the others, but my level of admiration for this person with what he's done, just sort of flippantly being a journalist while also being a comedian, honoring the things that his father was about in what now passes for the Old South when he was a journalist who was... more joyless than he was. And so I sort of recognize in you some of the things I saw at my dinner table where my dad was really unhappy at work. And I'm like, I don't want to do it that way. Like, I'd like to work hard, but there's got to be joy in it because I don't want to be miserable. But Roy Wood Jr. should be, if you've been paying attention, the Daily Show host now.
Thank you for that. If television executives weren't perpetually idiots. He would already be the Daily Show host because what you've done, I admire you so much, but at least in part because I don't think many people know how hard it was for you to make a career out of all of this.
What's weird, man, is, all right, here's – because I started comedy at 19, which I would argue – If you start anything as a teenager, you're just learning the art of it. You don't have an opinion. You don't have an angle on what you want to do. And then when you start realizing, oh, no, these are the things I really want to talk about that I really care about. Well, then that comes at a cost to a degree, because now. Certain clubs aren't going to book you or you're going to deal with certain criticism. So that part of it has always been a weird balancing act. But at the end of the day, if I'm not excited to talk about the stuff I want to talk about, then I can't I can't be up here.
But foundationally, when did you decide that you were going to do funny as a living?
I don't I don't know. Like, that's a weird it's a weird question to answer because I just kind of got. I fucked myself for lack of a better phrasing. So when I was in college and we can go down this rabbit hole if you want, but like when I was in college, when I was 18, 19, I got arrested for stealing credit cards to buy clothes. So we're buying jeans and shit and selling them on campus, whatever. I get caught. I think I'm going to prison. That is what my lawyer told me. That is what everyone said. Well, these cases are usually adjudicated at a five-year sentence, but with good behavior, you're a young man with no priors.
But it's a federal felony, right?
Correct. Correct. So I end up somehow getting probation instead of prison. So in that time, up until sentencing, I started doing stand-up comedy just because I had no friends. I was sad. I stopped short of saying depression, knowing now what people who are depressed deal with. But whatever it was, I was in a bad place. Comedy made me happy. So when I found out I got probation, I just kept doing comedy. So when I got back in college, at that point, I was so focused on standup that I made good grades just so my parents, just so my mom couldn't say shit to me. Like, you can't tell me I'm throwing my life away with comedy. I'm over here on the Dean's list. So when I graduated with my degree in broadcast, no one would hire me because I had no internships because I spent every summer doing comedy.
But then when you do the math and I look back on it, I go, oh, that was my internship. It was comedy. And so when I graduated from school, I had two jobs that I could have applied for and probably would have gotten. One was the Tampa Tribune to do the page two sports 2 a.m. Oh, you could have been a sports writer. You were headed down the possible. I was on that Stuart Scott, Kenny Maine, Van Earl Wright, Jenny Moose type thing. offbeat like that. Those were the journalists that I respected.
You worked at ESPN some and you were watching Stuart Scott basically change what sports television looked like because Stuart Scott, Stuart Scott was rebellious. I mean, all he was doing was being black and I didn't know that. All I knew was just that this motherfucker talk like me.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What inspired Roy Wood Jr. to pursue a career in comedy?
0:04–6:09
2
How did Roy transition from stand-up comedy to The Daily Show?
6:09–12:29
3
What challenges has Roy faced in the entertainment industry?
12:29–22:49
4
How does Roy Wood Jr. view the future of late night television?
22:49–32:36
5
What lessons does Roy share about balancing career and family?
32:36–40:29
6
How does Roy incorporate his upbringing into his comedy?
40:29–51:40
7
What insights does Roy provide about the current state of the industry?
51:40–1:00:09
8
What are Roy's thoughts on the impact of social media on comedy?
1:00:09–1:49:44