- 6 weeks ago
On a new episode of The Rolling Stone Interview, politics reporter Nikki McCann Ramirez sits down with Roy Wood Jr. for a candid, funny, and deeply reflective conversation about comedy, politics, and the personal stories that shaped him. Wood opens up about growing up in Birmingham, the complicated legacy of fatherhood explored in his memoir 'The Man of Many Fathers,' and how a wide circle of mentors helped guide him toward his voice – onstage and off. He also reflects on his time at The Daily Show, the limits of satire in a polarized America, and why empathy may be the most powerful tool a comedian has today.
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00:00Logic isn't necessarily going to be the weapon.
00:06Might need to be love.
00:16Joining me today is Emmy-nominated comedian Roy Wood Jr.,
00:19former correspondent on The Daily Show,
00:21host of CNN's Have I Got News For You,
00:24and the author of the upcoming memoir,
00:26The Man of Many Fathers.
00:27Roy, thank you so much for joining me.
00:28Hello.
00:29Hello.
00:30Thank you for having me.
00:31Do you want to dive right into it?
00:32Yeah, let's do it.
00:33Let's do it.
00:34I appreciate y'all putting out the nice furniture,
00:36this nice rug.
00:37I know.
00:38Let's do it.
00:39I'm matching the rug.
00:40It wasn't on purpose.
00:41It's a nice room in a time when things can be pretty bleak.
00:44How do you make it funny?
00:45I think you make it truthful first,
00:49and then from there, funny will follow.
00:52I think there are a lot of things that are happening right now
00:54that you can't necessarily go,
00:56well, what's the funny part of all the deportation?
00:59But then if you go, what's the funny part about the policies
01:02or the hypocrisy of it or National Guard troops sleeping in public
01:08because you sent them there without hotel accommodations?
01:11Yeah.
01:12It's like you can find moments of truth in the midst of all of this calamity,
01:17and I think through that you're able to find the humor.
01:20For you, is comedy is finding that humor a way to sort of process
01:26everything that's happening in this country,
01:28everything that people are experiencing,
01:30whether it relates to you or has nothing to do with you.
01:33Yeah, I mean, for me, comedy is a way for me to process everything,
01:41but as a Black American in this country,
01:45I don't necessarily feel any new weight.
01:48Mm-hmm.
01:49There's weight. There's always weight.
01:50There's always some injustice.
01:52There's always somebody dead that shouldn't have died.
01:55So for me, I've felt that for a long time.
01:59I've been doing comedy 27, 28 years now,
02:02so there isn't some sort of, oh, what?
02:07They're doing what now?
02:09Well, let me really dial in and really make it fun.
02:13I don't think any comedian that attacks issues in this world
02:16is doing anything different than they were 10 years ago
02:19or 15 years ago when they first started on those particular journeys.
02:23I don't think that John Oliver or Jon Stewart or Bill Maher,
02:31you know, take your pick of who you like and watch and enjoy.
02:34I don't think any of them are necessarily doing something different.
02:39They're doing what they've always done, but it feels different.
02:42It affects you differently.
02:43Water tastes different when you're thirsty.
02:46Yeah.
02:47It's the same water. It didn't change anything in it.
02:51So I think in that regard, comedy has always been a tool for me to process stuff.
02:57And it's for the people who enjoy that type of process.
03:00And not everybody wants to laugh.
03:02I have also learned that in the last, I mean, that's not even just Trump.
03:08I can take it back to COVID on that one where people didn't want to laugh.
03:11So, you know.
03:13How do you work that into your material?
03:15How do you deal with those kinds of crises that feel almost like people
03:19can't bring themselves to laugh at it?
03:21Where it feels like things are maybe so dark or just so despondent
03:25that how do you even begin to approach this in a way that is humorous,
03:29in a way that seeks to find that comedy?
03:32To me, I start from the place of, what can I joke about where there isn't necessarily joking
03:38or clowning the victims of the thing?
03:40Yeah.
03:41So you start there, and then you work your way back.
03:44Everything heinous that happens in this world, there was something that caused it.
03:50And everything heinous in this world, there's a solution.
03:53So mine from those two, that's kind of an old Trevor Noah trick that I learned
03:58where you don't necessarily have to talk about the crater in the ground.
04:03Who put the crater there and who's handling cleanup?
04:06And so, or who's mismanaging cleanup?
04:09And so I think from that place, that's where you can find something.
04:12And if I can get you to laugh at that, then we can talk about the gravity of why
04:16this crater here is important and why it's something worth discussing.
04:20And it may not be a joke there.
04:23Not at the usual clip, clip, clip that people are used to.
04:26So I don't think any comedian can expect,
04:29or I don't think any comedian sits down with their pen to write the joke
04:33that's going to heal you.
04:34I see you're in pain.
04:36Here, try this joke.
04:37I think you'll...
04:38No.
04:39I'm going to do the joke.
04:40You may not want to laugh at it yet.
04:42Because there's also people that are going to go,
04:43it's not time to laugh or it's too soon.
04:45But that's super relative.
04:46And there are people who can't wait.
04:49For some sort of release or escape.
04:52And so I feel like that's what comedians are here to provide.
04:56We're here to provide an escape.
04:58The solutions, that's not our responsibility.
05:03In your memoir, you write a lot about pain and human connection.
05:08And the way you and these men that you encountered in your life helped you navigate those pitfalls.
05:17I'm curious at what point in your life you felt that comedy became sort of a lifeline.
05:23You talk about all these different father figures.
05:25And I wonder if politics and political comedy have in and of itself been kind of a father figure for you.
05:32Something that shaped you.
05:34Something that helped you navigate the world that you were growing up in.
05:38The experiences you were living.
05:40So my dad was a radio news journalist.
05:43And he covered every global conflict you can name from the 1950s up until the L.A. riots.
05:49You know, I grew up in a house where C-SPAN was on.
05:52There's a side room that my pops had that was just for C-SPAN.
05:56And he recorded it all day and then would pull quotes from the sessions to play on his news radio and commentary shows or whatever.
06:05So I grew up constantly digesting the news.
06:08But my father also extremely pro-black and extremely about black Americans getting what they deserve from this country.
06:16So the narrative that I was fed was enough for me to not necessarily seek that part of it out, journalistically speaking.
06:24You know, I want to got a degree in journalism, but that's because I wanted to be Stuart Scott.
06:29I wanted to be funny.
06:30I wanted to talk about sports.
06:32And, you know, you start, you graduate and you're bathing in student loan debt and it's hard to find a good job.
06:40And then the next thing you know, oh, wait, this country is set up against me.
06:44This is just like they were telling me in Florida A&M.
06:47And the material changed.
06:49So this idea of doing comedy, you know, I always felt funny and desire to entertain strangers.
07:01But to have comedy that really touched nerves from time to time, I was early 30s.
07:08I'm 46 now.
07:09So, I mean, it was, that was, there was a long stretch of me just doing jokes about your roommate eating your Oreos.
07:18Yeah.
07:19Before I got to Confederate flags and Kaepernick protest and, you know, police reform and, you know, VA hospitals not treating the troops with respect.
07:32Like any topics I've talked about in my last four specials, none of that was breached in the first 15 years.
07:40Yeah.
07:41Because you really cut your teeth in the comedy circuits of the South.
07:44And I'm curious how you began introducing that material and how audiences reacted.
07:49Late in the set.
07:51That's for sure.
07:53You know, performing in the South or, you know, when you, performing in the, being a road comedian gives you a different perspective on the voters of this country.
08:06Yeah.
08:07Because you don't see a Republican party.
08:10You just see a person.
08:12And they vote a Republican.
08:14And it sounds stupid, but there's a, there's a difference when you're viewing Republicans through graphs and pie charts and, and Gallup polls versus you being at a comedy club on a Thursday in a red state and telling jokes to voters who would never vote for your interests.
08:33Mm-hmm.
08:34And there being some degree of synergy and understanding, it's, it's interesting.
08:40It really is.
08:41And it doesn't necessarily make you completely sympathetic, but it definitely puts into perspective that more often than not, most people in this country are voting to preserve themselves.
08:53And that's what politicians tap into.
08:55I got to find the one thing you really care about and make you think that I care about it the same as you.
09:01After that, no other issue on the table matters.
09:04If you're a coal miner and buddies say he bringing back coal, you're in.
09:10Mm-hmm.
09:11What you care about immigration?
09:13What you care about women's rights?
09:16For what?
09:17It's bringing back coal.
09:19So I think that you start learning right away that people only really care about themselves.
09:25That's probably the biggest thing I learned from just touring the country and just being a road comic.
09:30But I'm grateful for that because, you know, these people, their voices matter just as much as everybody else's.
09:36And it's easy to write them off.
09:37But, you know, that's what Trump did.
09:39Trump went out in middle America.
09:41That's what Trump did.
09:42Trump went out in middle America and looked under them rocks, found a couple votes over here, found a couple votes over here.
09:50And here we are.
09:51I want to bring that back to this idea of, like, building human connection.
09:57You discuss it in your memoir.
09:59I also think it was really present in the way you discussed your parents and their media diet and the role your father held in his community.
10:08This idea that when you were growing up, even to an extent when I was growing up, media consumption was much more local.
10:15There were people within communities that were sort of arbiters of information that were very connected to the people around them.
10:21And we've lost that over time.
10:24I think, you know, the advent of social media, the sort of 24-hour news cycle.
10:29People can feel, like you said, very disconnected from things that don't impact their immediate environment.
10:34Corporate consolidation of print media and the death of local reporters.
10:38Yeah.
10:39And I'd love to hear how your experience as not just a traveling comedian, but a thinking man who is meeting people and building connections with audiences around the country has lived that transformation.
10:51And how it's informed how you approach your own work.
10:54So, first off, my father, he covered everything, like, all over the place as a radio news reporter.
10:59Then he had a call-in show where he took calls and talked to people.
11:02Then he would go out and do speaking engagements at black churches.
11:05Then he would go and be a guest journalism professor at XYZ College for a semester.
11:10I also had two older brothers who were news anchors and reporters during the course of my life.
11:15I grew up in a house where we had two papers.
11:19We had the Birmingham News in the morning and we had the Post Herald in the afternoon.
11:23My pops came home.
11:25He watched local news on three different channels.
11:27Larry King live.
11:29Like, you name it.
11:31Crossfire.
11:32I'm in the seventh grade watching Crossfire.
11:35Or listening to your parents debate the morning paper over the kitchen table.
11:38A million days.
11:39Oh, my lord.
11:41And I'm just trying to read Garfield.
11:44You know, this idea of understanding everything about the world.
11:49I think one of the things I was most very grateful for were my pops.
11:52He took me to a barbershop in Birmingham, you know, every two weeks or whatever.
11:57And it was the barbershop where all of the black, you know, kind of politicians in the upper class, like the blacks, the movers and shakers, the politicians, the city councilmen, you know, all of that type of stuff.
12:10So I started understanding how local politics work and the importance of local reporters.
12:17And I think the difference between then and now, and this is coming from me also working 10 years in radio when I graduated from college, is that everything is cookie cutter.
12:29So because there's no more local reporters reporting on stuff anymore, because your local radio station, I think it's 80% of radio stations are owned by five companies or something.
12:41Yeah.
12:42And so all of these radio stations don't hire local DJs anymore.
12:46They got one person that lives in St. Louis that's voice tracked into nine different markets.
12:51So you don't even have a voice on the radio that honors your community.
12:54So how can the radio be the voice of the community and give the community access to uplift one another?
13:00Then you put the rise of social media on top of that and the community turned to one another.
13:05So now you have people of varying levels of informed talking and then eventually arguing and then eventually shouting at one another what the truth is.
13:15So now the truth is only what you choose to believe.
13:18The truth becomes what makes you feel good, not what actually is.
13:23And so you've got these local TV stations.
13:26Now they've got local reporters, but they don't even have a photographer with them.
13:30Most things locally are missed because of the monopolization of media that makes social media the only place where you can really find out what's going on around the corner from you on an accurate and intense, constantly updated level.
13:49So it's made it very, very prime for disinformation, especially when your grandma doesn't know the difference between AI or Photoshop or the real picture.
14:00Yeah.
14:01So you can make up news as well. It's a lot easier to manipulate people, you know, in that way. But profits are up.
14:10Is comedy a way for you to kind of cut through that, to ground yourself sort of in what is your reality or the interpretation and analysis that you can give people?
14:21I think the comedy for me is about finding a way to digest this with the proper seasoning.
14:28Yeah.
14:29Because it's all dark. It's all messed up.
14:32A joke is not going to change the terribleness that's happening. But I don't think that... How can I put it? The comedy helps me. So I'll do it on stage in case it'll help somebody else.
14:51Mm-hmm.
14:52I don't know if it will. But if it does, good. Good. You know, I think most comedians are just out there hoping they're not alone and thinking the way they think. That's all they want. They just want somebody to just be able to match energies with.
15:08In the vein of sort of mismatched energies, I feel like now a couple years out, you've talked a bit about the reasons you left The Daily Show in your book you describe wanting to do a really well-reported segment on historically Black colleges, the funding problems, and sort of that not really appealing to the higher-ups in the sense of this isn't a national story that people relate to.
15:30And I think that touches on the conversation we were just having of local issues being sort of pushed to the side in the favor of a national horse race political conversation.
15:40Yeah.
15:41I'd love to hear about sort of that energy mismatch. Did you feel like you'd outgrown The Daily Show at that point?
15:48I don't want to say outgrown, but I understood what the objectives and the directives of the show are.
15:53Mm-hmm.
15:54And some of the stuff that I wanted to start doing, and this is in addition to not knowing for sure, because Jon Stewart was not in the mix when I left.
16:04He wasn't even rumored. I think he was still under contract with Apple at the time.
16:09Yeah.
16:10So not knowing what the whole situation was, the Paramount Skydance merger stuff was happening back then.
16:17Oh, yeah.
16:18So everything that Skydance is coming in and doing now, and everybody's going, we don't know who's going to survive.
16:25I was feeling that at the time.
16:27Yeah.
16:28And then on top of that, if I'm here, well, what do I want to do? What do I want to talk about?
16:33Of course, there's going to be Trump stuff, and there's going to be election stuff, but man, that would have been really fun while we were in Atlanta to go and do that.
16:43And to talk about Black colleges and to talk about the idea of whether or not they're going to live and die, and at the time, just for context, this was about the Biden administration needing to give more money to keep these institutions afloat.
17:00Yeah.
17:01I don't know. That's just what I wanted to talk about, and I knew for sure this wasn't going to be the place for that type of stuff.
17:07Coupled with these two or three other things, I should leave now, because if I'm going to find another place to go, it's going to be during an election year.
17:20Yeah.
17:21And since that time, there's only been two new political, satirical late-night shows. It's us at CNN, and it was after midnight at CBS. And now it's just us.
17:30Mm-hmm.
17:31So there was no fear in leaving, but it was definitely, all right, I need space to try and do something different. I loved all the work we did there. Like, it was never about, oh, you won't let me. I get it. We have to follow the headlines.
17:47And, like, The Daily Show has a very delicate balance of, and I'm speaking strictly about The Daily Show, not, like, Oliver or anybody else.
17:55Yeah.
17:56The Daily Show has a very delicate balance of, here's more information about what you already know, and here's things you may not have considered and you should start thinking about.
18:07And that's kind of the field piece and the death segments and the Louis Blacks and, like, the correspondence. And so, I just, you know, like, perfect example. A while back, there was a viral moment on TikTok with these, with a bunch of Black people from Scotland.
18:24And Black America was, like, all shocked that there were people who looked like us but sound Scottish because you don't normally see it.
18:32Yeah.
18:33The algorithm, we're not taught Scottish shit, for whatever reason.
18:36Yeah.
18:37I just so happened to be in Scotland at the time, and I went out and interviewed Black people who were born in Scotland.
18:44Being able to just follow my impulse and go do something on 48 hours notice and have it back out on the internet within 36 hours, that was exciting. That's fun.
18:53That's the shit I want to keep doing more of.
18:56I'm fascinated by what Don Lemon is doing right now.
19:00I'm fascinated by the young kid, Andrew Callahan. Joy Reid started doing her own thing.
19:05Yeah.
19:06So, I wonder if that's the sandbox to play in. And, you know, being a correspondent is a very, very time-consuming and mentally-consuming job.
19:17There's more that I want to do, and I recognize that I needed space and opportunity to do it, and I needed to create that space and opportunity.
19:28That's why I left. I'm very thankful for the time, you know, that I had at The Daily Show, you know?
19:34The other thing The Daily Show, you know, showed me is just how little coastal people care about the nuances of life in middle America.
19:43Yeah.
19:44And the things that affect people in middle America, you know? And I think that those things matter. We're talking about America and America first and blah, blah, blah, doing stories like that. And those stories would have been out there a long time ago, but those communities don't have a local reporter anymore.
20:05Yeah.
20:06And they have a news, they have a TV news station that only has two slots for local stories because the other five slots in the A Block are allotted to big syndicated stories.
20:16They go to all the stations that company owns.
20:19I think to me it sounds also sort of like you returning to the roots of the person you describe in your memoir, even from a child, someone who's really self-motivated, someone who would take a bus, hitch a ride to whatever show they needed to get to, who would up and go and not tell their mother about where they were sleeping, and who loved having that freedom.
20:44And I'm curious what you learned as a comedian in The Daily Show, because it was eight years of your life. I'm sure it was instructive, informative, full of growth, but also if this is in a way you also returning to the type of person that really loved and first entered comedy.
21:04What's really odd is that that black college story is exactly the type of story my dad would have done.
21:11Yeah.
21:12Now he would have been angry, and there wouldn't have been no jokes.
21:15You know, at The Daily Show, you know, one of the main things I learned is that there's always a third side that's not being considered or another angle to the issue that's not being considered.
21:26I'm grateful that my first comedy special didn't come out until I started working there.
21:30Mm-hmm.
21:31I think also, and this is just more watching Trevor Noah and how he did interviews with adversarial guests or whatever you want to call it, you seek to understand, don't necessarily seek to be right.
21:45You can feel you're right.
21:46You might.
21:47You might.
21:48Very well might.
21:49Yeah.
21:50But ask questions that help you understand instead of trying to prove your point.
21:55And sometimes you can talk people into not agreeing with themselves.
21:59But yeah, it's the best eight years of comedy learning, you know, that you could ever receive.
22:09You know, people talk about Saturday Night Live and just, you know, what a journey and what a comedy college that is.
22:16You know, I would put The Daily Show in that same realm because especially once we started doing more sketches and started doing more parodies and more stuff for the internet because we had a whole separate digital creative wing of the building, I learned a lot about why people think the way they think politically.
22:40And it really just confirmed a lot of what I already thought from just being on the road.
22:46I could go into a red state and know that this joke will work here.
22:50But this joke, like if I'm going to do the joke about police reform, I can't lead off with it.
22:55But if I do the joke about college football and then the joke about police reform, then you're with me.
23:01And so The Daily Show was how do I gain that type of trust in under 30 seconds with someone, a man on the street?
23:08Yeah.
23:09Because I need you to be open and honest with me.
23:11So, you know, those skills of being able to understand, that transfers perfectly over to CNN because now I have, I got news for you.
23:22I'm the host.
23:24I can't get into the emotions of the thing.
23:27Yeah.
23:28I'm here to keep the game.
23:29We're playing.
23:30My job is to present the current events as a game show.
23:33Now, Amber Ruffin can get into the weeds.
23:36Michael Ian Black, the co-host, they can get into the weeds.
23:39But my job is just to seek understanding, ask a clarifying question or two, and try to get more information to truly understand why somebody feels the way they feel.
23:48And then from there, we can have a deeper conversation.
23:51Our show isn't built for those deeper conversations, but I would have never approached people that I don't agree with with the same light had I not worked it today.
24:00And so at CNN, with this game show, which, you know, based off the original...
24:05But we don't keep score.
24:07Oh, no, I know.
24:08Yeah.
24:09But it's more so how you balance out that sort of level of frivolity, the reality that we can't get super in-depth into things with this impulse you have to just pursue the things that call to you.
24:19Is it...
24:20Do you feel like you're striking the balance you were looking for?
24:23Yeah, to a degree.
24:25CNN gives me a platform to present everything that happened that week.
24:31And we get to exist in the silly stuff as well.
24:34It's not just, oh, the administration is going to take away Medicaid this week.
24:41It's also, guess who this person was before Botox?
24:47Mm-hmm.
24:48And we show you an un-Botoxed face of a political figure.
24:52Is it Kristi Noem?
24:53Yeah.
24:54And then we show you the Botoxed face.
24:56And we laugh and we goof off.
24:58And because the British version of it, which has been running for 30 years, that version, that's how the Brits are able to balance their stuff.
25:06And I think we found a very, very unique place in political satire in late night where we're able to give people everything that happened, whether you're blue or red.
25:16Mm-hmm.
25:17And we have blue and red guests on.
25:19Mm-hmm.
25:20Like, sitting elected officials.
25:22We have them on.
25:23And we get to dabble a little bit in what's happening, why it's happening, and then try and have a breather on the backside.
25:30Whereas, you know, we're not ever going to be John Oliver.
25:33We're not going to give you 30 minutes of what you should know.
25:35Mm-hmm.
25:36Oliver will touch on what happened this week, but he's going, here's the real grift.
25:40Mm-hmm.
25:41In that vein, I'm curious, of course, 2024, incredibly transformative year for everyone, the nation.
25:50Do you feel that the comedy you do, the way you travel, the amount of shows you do, and the places you go, do you think you saw the second Trump term coming?
26:00Or did it feel like a little bit of a blindside?
26:04If knowing what we know now about who won the 2024 election, who the president is now, do you think, in retrospect, you would have made different calculuses about the decision to leave?
26:13I didn't see a second Trump term happening.
26:18And then when Kamala came in, I was like, oh, mm, mm, they might get it now.
26:25Mm-hmm.
26:26They might get it.
26:28And I think that there is a patented disregard for middle America voters in this country.
26:37And their opinions and thoughts, I think, aren't necessarily held with the same degree of importance or priority because you don't agree with the point of view or you think it's ridiculous.
26:47This person who believes this thing also believes the earth's flat or something like that.
26:52So therefore, I'm not going to respect your political view on that.
26:55So I'm not going to do or say anything campaign-wise that appeases to that.
27:00I don't think you are ever going to beat Trump by telling Trump supporters, just look at the guy.
27:05Yeah.
27:06And I think that's the playbook that a lot of liberals ran.
27:14And even now, and I'm not just talking about liberal politicians.
27:16I'm talking about just liberals as a group where they just go, that guy is ridiculous.
27:21How could you vote for that guy?
27:23And then the right is going, yeah, but your guy was lying too.
27:27And if you won't admit to the lies on the Biden side of the game, then you're not going to gain any credibility with these people, some of whom inevitably you're going to have to flip.
27:40Because it's only two ways Democrats get any of this back.
27:44You activate passive Democratic voters who don't have any faith in the Democratic Party, or you flip those people over there.
27:51And you're not going to flip any Trump supporter by just going, look at Trump, they're obviously lying.
27:56Logic isn't necessarily going to be the weapon.
28:02Might need to be love.
28:05And then from that, you find, you hope that they find some logic.
28:11But just yelling and berating people?
28:13Doing that for eight years.
28:16I mean, honestly, like, there's also a world where I wish Trump had just went back to back so we could have just got it over with.
28:24Yes, but then would it be over?
28:27I mean, we'd be in the third one by now.
28:29We would be in the third one by now.
28:30We'd be used to it by now.
28:31You ever had a shoe that don't fit, but then after eight years?
28:33Yeah, you'd break it in like a pair of docks, you know?
28:36A couple walks, some bad blisters, and then you're good.
28:40No, I'd say that the presidential election was more of a factor in me leaving The Daily Show than staying.
28:45I knew I wanted to land somewhere else and do something different, and I observed the landscape of political satire two previous elections.
28:52Mm-hmm.
28:53I saw when Sam Bee and her show came on the air.
28:58I saw when Robin Thede had her show.
29:01I saw when Wyatt Cenac had his show.
29:04W. Kamau Bell.
29:06And you start looking at when those shows, and both Kamau Bell administrations.
29:10I'm talking about Totally Bias on FX, and then when he did United Shades on CNN, and you look at the start points of all of these shows, it's either midterm or election year.
29:22Yeah.
29:23That's when you get the new stuff.
29:25So if we're coming into another election year, I should probably leave now, because otherwise it's going to be two years.
29:34So the window to leave and have somewhere to land, it's going to be a two-year window.
29:40And I don't know what this show is going to be in two years.
29:43Mm-hmm.
29:44Yeah, I should leave now, because I don't know if the new hosts will want me.
29:48I don't know if the new merger will fire me.
29:52Or pay for the Trump administration in a really egregious way.
29:56That was a new curveball.
29:58Yeah.
29:59I don't think Daily Show will ever bend the knee in that regard.
30:02You want to talk about a show that's going to die on its sword?
30:06It will be Jon Stewart and all of my friends that sit at that desk.
30:10Yeah.
30:11So, yeah, the election year was more of a reason to go.
30:16And then sure enough, I leave, and then several months later, CNN calls and goes,
30:21hey, we're doing a British thing.
30:23You want to do some British stuff?
30:24But in New York?
30:25Yeah, let's do some British stuff.
30:26All right.
30:27Who going to be there?
30:28You know Amber Ruffin?
30:29Oh, yes.
30:31She's a delight.
30:32Yeah.
30:33And speaking of Amber, the White House Correspondents Dinner for the first time in decades this past year
30:39didn't have a comedian.
30:40Ooh, that shit was bland.
30:42Yeah.
30:43Shout out to all the journalists, though. I know it's to celebrate journalism.
30:47I would love to hear what that experience was like, because to me the White House Correspondents Dinner
30:52can often be this real sort of navel-gazy, self-congratulatory pageantry.
30:57I'd love to hear what your experience, because you really killed it when you hosted.
31:01The first thing people have to know about the Correspondents Dinner is that no two of them are the same.
31:05Yeah.
31:06It's not the Apollo where it's the same audience, same set of variables.
31:10Mm-hmm.
31:11It's the most stressed I've been as a performer next to the Apollo Theater.
31:17Yeah.
31:18I would still argue amateur night at the Apollo.
31:20That is the peak of anxiety for me. I'm not gonna speak for the performers.
31:26So the Correspondents Dinner, for me, is like second only to Showtime at the Apollo Amateur Night,
31:33which was still the highest anxiety.
31:35Really? Even more than getting the call of The Daily Show?
31:38I would take 1,000 Correspondents Dinners before I... Amateur Night at the Apollo is not to be played with.
31:45Okay.
31:46The difference with the Correspondents Dinner is that no matter what, half the room is gonna love the joke.
31:51You just don't know when, and you don't know every joke that half changed.
31:56The Apollo, there's a chance everyone will hate your guts in unison.
32:00Yeah.
32:01And there's no cover.
32:02And you lived that?
32:03I did it under the Biden administration, so the vibes were a little bit different.
32:07And when I say the vibes, I mean, it wasn't necessarily an adversarial audience.
32:12But, you know, you definitely take your shots.
32:14Tucker Carlson had gotten fired that week.
32:16CNN was going through restructuring.
32:18They had just fired Don Lemon.
32:20So there were a lot of things that I could've, you know, poked and prodded at.
32:26But, you know, I think as a gig, I think that I don't know if we'll ever have a comedian at the Correspondents Dinner again.
32:36I, it's still, for all of the, what we're talking about with Republicans, not wanting comedians, we don't know if these new Democrats are gonna want to be criticized.
32:47Because if the joke has truth in it, then it goes further.
32:51They're not reacting well to criticism currently.
32:53We don't know. We'll see.
32:55Maybe Gavin Newsom will drink two protein shakes and be cool when he up there.
33:01But I feel like the Correspondents Dinner is still something that's very important.
33:06And to have a comedian there, it's, it's a, I'm not trying to act all like comedy is the most important.
33:15But it is, it is the one night in comedy where all of these jokes could only work tonight.
33:23Yeah.
33:24I hate that my friend did not get an opportunity to perform at the Correspondents Dinner, but I'm very proud of her for making the choice not to.
33:30Yeah.
33:31But as much as we want comedy to be both sided at all times, if we are talking about a gig that is a summation of where we are in this moment, then it is far more important to talk about the National Guard and the streets and the deportations.
33:50Like, that to me is far more significant. We can, you can mention Epstein. Hell, mention Democrats that's on the list.
33:57Like, those things are far more bigger fish. So to act like you can only talk about, well, talk about some big fish, but talk about some of the, not in this.
34:09Yeah.
34:10And I know both sidedness looks different to a lot of different people. I'm not saying don't joke on Democrats. My first joke at the Correspondents Dinner was a joke on Biden.
34:18Yeah, being old.
34:19Yes.
34:20Yeah.
34:21To his face.
34:22Good.
34:23I called you old and forgetful to your face. Now that I've done that, now I can, now granted, strategically, I kind of had to do that because no one knows who I am in that room.
34:30Yeah.
34:31I'm on The Daily Show, so you trust the resume, but you don't really know my face. You don't really, you're not completely sure who I am. So I have to punch the biggest person in the room first to get equity with every, now I have your attention. Oh, wow. Okay.
34:47Yeah.
34:48So I wonder if we're going through a time where, where we're going to say goodbye to traditions. You know, I just think there's a lot of things that are getting reimagined.
34:56Yeah.
34:57Some for the better, some for the worse. I mean, even when you look at the idea of how young people aren't having kids, well, why should they? If you look at the numbers and look at the fiscals of it, it's not a wise decision. If it costs this much to send the kid to the college after, and to not get a job, what dream is it that you're really investing in?
35:19On the subject of children, you're a father.
35:21Yes.
35:22And this book is, in my view, having read it, a very long love letter to your son about who his father is and about how you got to be this way, how you became the person you are, the fathers that shaped you.
35:37Yeah.
35:38If I'm recalling the timeline correctly, your son is eight years old now?
35:41He's nine.
35:42He's about the same age you were when you moved to Birmingham.
35:45Correct.
35:46With your father.
35:47Fourth grade.
35:48How has this new chapter of your life, because your son would have been born around the same time you arrived at The Daily Show.
35:53It was.
35:54And I'm curious how those intersected for you.
35:56I'd say the biggest way fatherhood changed my comedy is that it made me more intentional about what the hell is going on in this world.
36:05I became very aware of the world. Like, my comedy's just silly. Oh, Captain America got a black sidekick. That's crazy. He a white dude from the racist times. Ha ha ha.
36:20Perfectly fine joke to do on Craig Ferguson. All right, fine.
36:25Son gets born. Yo, we got to figure out what's going on with these Confederate flags and this discrimination, and we have got to get to the bottom of black history museums being under attack.
36:36Yeah.
36:37Like, this idea of what world am I leaving for him?
36:42Yeah.
36:43And what did I do to try and change it, you know? Like, that became a bigger thing.
36:50The other thing is that I started creatively, and especially more so now, wanting to be home more.
36:59Yeah.
37:00So the way I toured had to change. I started touring in blocks, shoot the hour special, develop material locally for another year, then go out, tour the hour in a three-, four-month block.
37:13And then, so these ideas of just being this perpetual 45 weeks on the road kind of guy, that went away, you know, immediately, you know, once he was born and once everybody was settled here in New York.
37:28But I've never been in a place where, since his birth, where he's not considered in a professional decision.
37:38Yeah.
37:39I think the thing you deal with when you travel for a living is the balance of providing versus the balance of being present.
37:48Yeah.
37:49And you don't know whether or not you did too much of one or the other, and you won't know for another 10, 15 years.
37:56My son liable to come in the house in 10 years and cuss me out and say he was never around. And then I'm gonna go, because I was doing da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
38:05So even now, you know, when I'm gone and I'm out of town, we FaceTime, we talk, we engage. I show him what's going on at the gig and the venue, or if it's a new city he doesn't know anything about, I'll go out on a walk.
38:18Which forces me to essentially be a local reporter.
38:21Yeah.
38:22So then when I get on stage locally, I'm tuned the hell in to what's going on in this market.
38:29So in a lot of ways, it's made me a better performer.
38:35A lot of hanging with my dad and having a front row seat to his stuff was just him not wanting a babysitter.
38:42Yes.
38:43Like, that's the difference.
38:44He didn't want to pay for childcare, yeah.
38:45My dad didn't want to pay for childcare.
38:46Yeah.
38:47So come with me.
38:49I'm interviewing Jesse Jackson backstage at the Democratic primary 1988 type shit.
38:55Sitting back there with a coloring book while Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson chop it up with my dad.
39:02Who they know from the other Marge.
39:04You remember Roy?
39:05We were down in Selma.
39:06Remember the Selma thing when they hit us over the head?
39:08Them were a good time.
39:09So, yeah, I got a front row seat to a lot of the respect that people have for me.
39:15And that was dope.
39:16The dynamic is a little different here in New York City because I might be out with him sometimes.
39:22And people might ask for a photo.
39:24Or people might want to dialogue about something from the show or a topic in the media at the time.
39:30And so I try to keep those interactions as quick or as minimal as possible so that he doesn't feel like he has to share me with the world.
39:41Yeah.
39:42And I'm also blessed to be in a spectacular co-parenting situation, especially right now, just in this pocket of my career.
39:51I need to bounce around a lot to build a new stable foundation.
39:56I'm rebuilding something that I tore down when I left Daily Show.
40:00And, you know, my son, you know, there's nights where, like, you know, he might wake up in the middle of the night, right?
40:07Just, you know, just usual nine-year-old, I can't sleep for a couple minutes.
40:11Yeah.
40:12He'll come out and I'm in the middle of editing some random interview thing that I did or some talk show thing that I did or some podcast that I did.
40:22And he'll sit and he'll watch five, ten minutes of it.
40:24And he understands the gist of it.
40:26He gets, you know, what I do.
40:28But the gravity of it and what I'm actually talking about, I think much like my pops, it's not going to hit him to way later.
40:37Yeah.
40:38You know, he may not even care about this type of stuff.
40:40You know, I don't push it on him.
40:42I do think I can't get through this interview without touching on probably the most important father in your life, which is your mother, who seems to me in a lot of ways like your true spiritual core.
40:53I think your father shaped you a lot.
40:56The men you describe in this book had a lot of influences on you.
41:00But after I read it and kind of sat with it for a while, I'm sure you will correct me if I'm wrong, but I felt like Roy Wood Jr.
41:07is in so many ways his mother's son.
41:10And I would love to hear more about her, how she's doing.
41:14But also when you were writing this book and thinking about yourself becoming a father, how that also related to the dynamics of your relationship with your mother, with your son's mother, and how that factored into this.
41:27I think writing the chapter about my mom and really sitting there, like really dissecting how she raised me.
41:36You know, my parents were separated until I was in the third grade, so it was just me and her.
41:40My pops came to visit from time to time once a month.
41:43But, you know, my mother, her work ethic and her grind and her dedication to unfaltering faith and just doing the work, waking up every day, and good things will happen to you.
41:56A million percent is me.
41:57That's why I'm up at one o'clock in the morning editing stupid stuff.
42:01And I left a lot out, but just in terms of the dynamic between her and my dad.
42:05Yeah.
42:06Because to me that wasn't what the book was about.
42:07Yeah, that's their relationship.
42:08And that's her story to tell.
42:10Mm-hmm.
42:11But I can talk about the moments between them that I know affected me and start and tell the story from that place.
42:18But, you know, this is a resilient, hardworking woman who never stopped any time she could to show me that she appreciated and loved me.
42:26And I've spent the rest of my life trying to reciprocate that feeling to her.
42:31And that's our dynamic.
42:33You know, short of telling me what to wear on TV.
42:37Mothers will do that.
42:39Still any try.
42:40Mm-hmm.
42:41She'll critique this after this airs.
42:43She'll go, why'd you wear blue?
42:45The rug was blue.
42:46I didn't know.
42:47I didn't fucking know.
42:49Why are you cussing?
42:50Because you...
42:51I'm sorry.
42:52Like, that's...
42:53I think your mother and my mother were going along spectacularly.
42:56Yeah, people go, my mother's my best fan.
42:58My mother's my biggest supporter.
43:01Even when she didn't understand why I was doing or why I wanted to do the things I wanted to do.
43:06The moment that really sticks out for me, and it's really early in the book, is when you describe sort of the first fight you can remember having with her over the candy wrappers.
43:15You know, you yelling at her, and her not giving you the response you wanted.
43:19Yeah.
43:20But internalizing in that moment that you had a voice, and your mother was listening, and if you needed to talk to her, and needed to tell her something, or wanted her to understand something, you could just say it.
43:31Yes.
43:32And now that you have your own child, and of course, you work in a career in media, you built and found this voice and perspective that is available to a lot of people, how do you communicate that same message to your son?
43:47By giving them the freedom, and then thanking them when they do it.
43:51I think it's, kids aren't complicated, you just have to be consistent with them.
43:55Mm-hmm.
43:56It takes them a while to understand and comprehend, but if you have patience, they will get it.
44:03They're not dumb, they're new.
44:05And so, you know, I give my son the same freedom, but be respectful, you're not gonna raise your voice, because if you do that to me, you're gonna yell at somebody out there in the real world.
44:16And yelling has consequences, and people don't always hear something after a certain decibel level.
44:22You need to understand that part of it.
44:25If you have an opinion on something, speak it.
44:27You still might not get what you want.
44:29But by all means, you have opinion, you have some degree of agency, you know?
44:35I think you have to be careful about it, because you also don't wanna raise a kid who thinks they know everything.
44:41That's hard to do, I feel like, through the age of, like, 30, we all think we know everything.
44:46Yeah, because we did.
44:47I knew everything up until I didn't.
44:48Yeah, totally.
44:49I have not made a single mistake.
44:50But I, you know, I would not be extending that courtesy to my son if it wasn't extended to me by my mom.
44:57You've been in this field for a while now.
44:59You've grown, obviously.
45:00You've laid out all years.
45:01Since 98!
45:02Since 98!
45:03Oh!
45:04I used to send out audition tapes on VHS to get booked at comedy clubs.
45:11It was a luxury.
45:12It still exists anymore.
45:13When they invented the DVD burner?
45:15Ooh!
45:16Motherfucker!
45:17The family computer.
45:18You don't wanna just stand with a game changer.
45:21You're at the age and the experience now where I am sure you encounter young men, young comedians, young women, come to you for advice, who you encounter out in the world.
45:31And looking at yourself now, if someone else were to write this book and there was a chapter about the time they met Roy Wood Jr., what would you like that chapter to say about you?
45:45I gave as much advice as I could.
45:47I came up with a lot of, a lot of gatekeepers who didn't wanna help, you know, for whatever reasons, they just didn't, you know.
45:58But I feel like I have tried within the scope of standup comedy and the profession of entertainment to be the person and to try to help where I can.
46:09I'm very thankful for the people that have helped me.
46:12So I try where I can to be a realist and be honest.
46:16I don't know.
46:17I just hope that they, I just hope that's sad about me.
46:22I've done nobody wrong in this industry.
46:24Yeah.
46:25I've tried to always contribute positively to this industry.
46:29And when I'm dead and gone, any comedian that says otherwise is a fucking liar.
46:33Amazing.
46:34Roy?
46:35Especially the one that tried to fuck my girl back in 08.
46:41You know who you are.
46:43I know that's not the way to, I know you want to end like honest.
46:46No, that was perfect.
46:47And honest and warm.
46:48No, I hope they're scared.
46:49I'm sorry.
46:50Do you wanna go to his house?
46:51No.
46:52Okay.
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