Writer and comedian Ziwe has made a career out of conducting charged and satirical interviews. She joins us this week to discuss her debut essay collection, Black Friend (5:45), the backstory behind her essay WikiFeet (10:19), her early affinity for broadcast news (13:06), the influence of satirists Jonathan Swift and Stephen Colbert (15:10), and her early, formative experiences working in comedy (35:05).
On the back-half, Ziwe reflects on the making of her YouTube series Baited (38:06), a memorable episode with Aparna Nancherla (41:30), her pandemic pivot to IG live (43:30), and the Showtime variety show that followed (46:30). To close, a philosophy on art-making from Ira Glass (50:40) and what Ziwe hopes for in her next chapter (56:15).
Pushkin.
This is Talk Easy.
I'm standing Forgoso. Welcome to the show.
Today. I'm joined by writer, actress, and comedian Zee Way. As you may remember, zee Way came to prominence at the height of the pandemic, when most of us were trapped at home endlessly doom scrolling in search of signs of life. For most of twenty twenty, though, zee Way would take the instance Graham Live every Thursday at a PM, where she would conduct a series of charged interviews with actors, authors, and fellow comedians, many of whom had either been quote canceled or had recently made a public misstep on social media. These conversations, especially when the subjects were white, would invariably turn to the matter of race, and this is where things got famously complicated, as zee Way would pose questions.
Like can you name five black people off the top of your head? How many black friends do you have?
And when you say black people, do you capitalize the bee?
Comedian Larry Wilmore called these ig live performances a kind of racial high wire act that would often reveal the subject's ignorance or self involvement, or frankly both. Zee Way would then move these interviews out of her Brooklyn bedroom and into a studio where she would create her self titled late night variety program for show Time, starting in twenty twenty one. It ran for two excellent seasons before abruptly being canceled this past spring. She's recently returned with her debut collection of essays entitled Black Friend, which you can now find wherever you get your books. She's also at the tail end of her tour, so if you'd like to check out one of her shows, visit zway dot com. That's zway dot com For today, I wanted to talk to the writer comedian about the art of interviewing, the influence of the Cobert Report, the power of satire, why she turned to memoir, and how she found her singular voice after years of searching. That's all coming up next with our guest ze Way. I hope you enjoy Seaway.
Hello Sam, thank you for being here, Thank you for having me.
You have called your work a modern deconstruction of the American interview, which has devolved from thoughtful discourse to inconsequential conversations about celebrities promoting their movies. Yes, so, I was thinking we try to do the former a little bit. If you're up for it being something thoughtful, got it? I think? Sure? You're writing your excellent new book, Black Friend with everything that I create. My question as always, why am I doing this? Is it for money? Is it for attention? Is it to help people? Is it to heal myself? Is it because if I am anything less than perfect, I feel I do not deserve love. Now that you finish writing, how would you answer those questions in this moment?
Ooh, so your question is just repurposing my question? I'm kidding. How would I answer that? Let's see, is my book for money? Is my book for what? Are the questions? Reminded?
Attention? To help people, to heal myself? And for money?
All of the above? I would say. Honestly, I got paid to write a book, but writing a book was a really difficult process for me, and interestingly enough, I found that in the first draft of the book there was something fundamentally missing in my writing, which was that I wasn't being vulnerable or connecting with my audience. And so I thought it would be a disservice to the people who have supported me both recently and for the majority of my career to not offer something with a little more weight. But the fear of that with vulnerability is that if I show myself, will I regret it because people won't love to see me. So I think that that's probably part of the process, especially with a book which took me three years to write, So every single one of those tempoles I definitely hit.
How do you feel now that it's out there?
I feel relief that it's over. Honestly. What's interesting is that when you write a book, you write a book and you turn it in for the last time, and then that is so relieving because my book would haunt me every day during the process because I'd think, why am I not writing? Why is it not finished? And so I got to that point and then immediately you have to do an audio book, which requires you to sit down and read it, which was not I won't say painful, but I will say it was work. It was labor.
Can I add I listened to the audio book really as well.
Oh my gosh.
I would want to have like someone else read it for me.
I wanted someone. I wanted Chet Hanks to read it. Actually people said no, but I was actually adamant.
Did he say no?
No?
He didn't say no. On my side of the street said no if we did not want to go out to.
Him, and go out to him, yeah, I mean that would have.
Been iconic, amazing, freeing, liberating, relieving.
So how was it reading passages of your book that are deeply vulnerable that you have already lived and then like worked hard to put them into an.
Essay we living? It is not challenging to Okay, writing is challenging to me because I am a professional writer. Yeah, of course I'm a professional writer. I've been a professional writer since I mean, free five. I wasn't getting paid at age five. You should have been, I should have been, right, But I probably got paid for my first joke when I was twenty twenty one. So I've been writing for a minute. And when you I'm reading my book on an audiobook, I'm still editing this. So I'm thinking, as I'm reading it aloud, I'm thinking, wait a second, this sentence should be a move like this. Oh this is wrong. Oh gosh, I wish I had more time. So it's like the constant critique of this being like my work. So that was really the difficult part, honestly. So at one point when I was recording the audiobook, I put air pods into my ear and listened to classical music by Johnny Greenwood The Phantom Thread How Yeah, House of Woodcock. I love that song, and I would listen to that as I was reading, so I could relax and just appreciate that, appreciate the journey of it.
That is incredible.
Yeah, and it was really weird. My director Unice said, quote, no one's ever done that, which I appreciated.
To get back into what you were referring to earlier, this push and pull between wanting to write these essays but not wanting to share too much, but feeling like you want to share more than you previously had. Like I was thinking, how do you hold that? With this upbringing that you had that did value privacy? Yeah, how did you hold all that? And putting this unto the book?
I mean it was quite difficult. I think that ultimately I I worked through it. So in essays, some essays are completely cut from the book because I didn't want to share those facets of my identity. And there are other essays that I really pushed forward because I wanted to share more. So Wikifee is one of the first essays that was complete for the book, and it was about my feet score being really terrible on wikifeed dot com being rated okay, And over the course of three years I started to really unpack why I felt so self conscious about that rating. And so that's an essay particularly that went from being super just. I mean, it was really funny, but it was not vulnerable at all. It was just a straight joke, super like straight satirical, and then it unpacked into something that was like an examination of what it means to be a public woman. So rewriting and writing are my process. And so I held that all together by just like going into essays and thinking, do I enjoy this essay? Is it good? Is it worth publishing? Will people appreciate it? Do I appreciate it? And then interrogating that at every.
Turn for people who are maybe not familiar with what wiki feet is, how would you explain it?
Wikifeet is a photo sharing app that rates people's feet. It gets I think twelve million unique visits a month, and I am on it and I didn't know I was on it until twenty nineteen when my friend found my profile. That led to a lot of spiraling as well as comedic fadder.
Does it signify that you've made it if you're on that site.
I write in my book that my friend believed, Kelly, believed that me being on wiki feet was a sign of my fame, because once you're a woman whose feet are on the Internet, you have now reached an upper echelon of public space. But I when I was on wikifeed, I this was before the pandemic, this was before my show, before everything, really, but I had still been coming up as a comedian in New York and had done a bunch of shows, written on shows, been cast on shows.
But yeah, has your rating changed?
Oh?
Of course through the ruth it is now four point five. I want to say I have beautiful feet, not gorgeous, but beautiful feet. And so every day I am racing to get to the top of that little list.
I wish that for you, even though you don't like lists.
I hate less but wikifeet I want to be the number one foot goddess on that site.
That's still an aim.
That's a tangible goal. I like to have something to hold on to.
Yes, I'll try to give you a memento after this type.
In think well, I'm holding onto this cup that I will steal.
It will be given to you. Thank you.
Now, who is manipulating?
Who's you know that we'll figure that out there or whom I don't know?
Is it?
Who? Whom? I thought it was like interchangeable.
It's not interchangeable. But it has to do with the object and subject of the sentence.
Well, you went the Northwestern you would know No.
I learned that from an episode of the Office.
I want to go back to some of the key influences that shaped all the comedy that people know you from.
Yeah.
Now, you grew up as a middle child of three to Nigerian parents and Lawrence, Massachusetts, a working class city that had a local paper called The Eagle Tribune that you and your father would read daily, a tradition only rivaled, I think by ABC World News, which you both would watch every night at six point thirty as a kid. How do you think these programs shaped your interest?
I love news. I consume a lot of news. The Ego Tribune was really popular. They had this thing called the Sunday Funny where they had the Family Circus comic, So that was really really hot in my elementary school.
And ABC World News. I don't even know. I'm not even sure. I remember that now.
I know, and I was talking to someone at ABC. Was it Peter Chennings.
I believe that sounds right right.
Yeah, I watched it, and that was during all of the beautiful era that is the George Bush administration. So I really got American history at its most. Poet.
I heard that from kindergarten to eighth grade you had perfect attendance. I did straight.
A's, straight a's, Yeah, I did a shoot a's.
What was it like to have a decade of never being sick.
I think it's not that I wasn't sick. I think it was that I was spreading disease. I just took school really seriously. Nigerians take education really seriously. Fun fact, I think the majority of African immigrants in college in the United States are from Nigeria. Like that's how serious they take it. It's cultural. I also didn't get the flu until I was eighteen in college, and I thought I was going to die. It was the worst experience I've ever had, but I treated it like a job. You'll find that I am very I'm both unseerious and very serious.
You write in the book that your father's interest in news you only understood later to be surprising, or I think, what do you call it? Uncommon? Or I can't the way you discribe.
I think that I can only speak for myself, which is that I did not know what was normal and what was not normal, right, And so I assumed, because I grew up with my parents that that was normal, that reading the news every day and being hyper informed about local politics was normal. And I realized as an adult that that is a choice that people actively make, and so that informed the choices that I actively make. What's interesting about my work is that it has a certain it comes at an intersection of like evergreen and topicality. The things that I cover are like both pertinent today and you know two years down the line. Like even watching like old YouTube episodes of Bated, It's like, how precient are some of the things that I'm talking about?
Still I was rewatching a bunch of them.
Oh yeah, oh yeah hot.
What were the things that you thought were normal that you later felt were not normal? Yeah?
I mean I even have an essay about it called Discomfort, where I talk about how normal it was for my parents to absolutely refuse me being allowed to go to sleepovers? But how not normal I felt as I rejected constant offers because I was very popular. So that's I think a great example of my experience as a child, which is that my parents were really strict, and so that was normal to me until I realized that that wasn't normal.
Was everyone heartbroken that you couldn't attend their sleepover?
They thought it was weird for me to constantly be like, no, sorry, I can't lead my house. I don't even know. I've had people from my past reach out to me about this book, and it's been really compelling. What do you mean, Well, because they congratulated me on this book, and I'm like examining moments that they are sometimes a part of, and that's really wild to me.
We're talking about news the Eagle Tribune and the ABC World News. The other key influence of your work, I think came like your freshman year of high school. In that first year that I mentioned, there was a teacher that introduced you to both Jonathan Swift and Stephen Colbert. Yes, do you remember the first time you encountered both of their work?
I found it to be deeply radical, But the things that those two particular people got away with saying obviously or not so obviously. Jonathan Swift wrote an essay about how citizens should eat Irish babies, and it's like a satirical commentary on how disenfranched as the Irish people were by the Brits.
This was a honest proposal.
Exactly in decent proposal.
Modest proposal. I think it's modest proposal. Indecent would be.
I think there's a movie called indecent Proposal that plays off of.
That, right, I think so that's the Redford movie. Yeah, where he tries to buy Woody Harrelson's wife.
Oh gosh. Regardless, a modest proposal was such a it like shook the countryside and got people so riled up and got Jonathan Swift in so much trouble. And then similarly, Colbert, he was doing that show daily the things that he said during the White House Correspondence dinner when he jokes about shooting someone in the face right next to the President of the United States, to comment on Dick Shaney famously, you know, having an incident in which he famously did do that I found to be groundbreaking, Like I did not know you were able to be so honest and so disrupt in your work. And so that really inspired me because suddenly I moved from a space where I felt like I had to be so codified into understanding that there's a world with satire where you can really say whatever you want.
Can we take a look at that Colbert White House Corresponds Dinner Share.
I'm obsessed with.
It, Mark Smith, Ladies and gentlemen, the Press Corps, Madame person, lady, mister president. My name is Stephen Colbert, and tonight it is my privilege to celebrate this president because we're not so different, he and I.
We both get it.
Guys like us. We're not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the Factinista. We go straight from the gut, right, sir, That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut then you have in your head.
You can look it up now.
I know some of you're gonna say, I did look it up, and that's not true. That's because you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did my gut tells me that's how our nervous system works. Every night on my show, The Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut. Okay, I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the No Fact Zone Fox News. I hold a copyright on that term.
It's so genius because it is it's that's two thousand and six. It's really actually before we got into like a post fact world, and so I find it to be brilliant, so brilliant.
Saw that was it one of those like light bulb moments in a movie where you went, Oh my god, I didn't know people could do that.
One hundred percent. I mean, it's so funny because it also doesn't. It both relies on media and the environment which we live, and it also relies on just absolutely abandoning facts. And it's very silly. And so I really appreciate that because I find that it's important for comedy to be like funny, and so it allows me to be to walk the typrope of being smart and intellectual while also laughing.
It seems to me that that performance, but also the the Kobe Report in total, served as a kind of template for you in years to come.
One hundred percent.
You're writing the book about a high school memory. That quote fundamentally changed my brain chemistry. Which took place during a school assembly between fame director Spike Lee and a fellow classmate. Happened that day? And how did it change your brain chemistry?
Well, oh, gosh, what happened?
We can read from the book if you also, if you want to read that passage.
Oh, I don't want to read any of my book, okay, but do you want to read it, you should read it.
I'm not going to read it for you.
Why not?
I'm no chet Hanks.
I think my book deserves to be to be read by a man. I want that on record. I so in my book, I write an essay called Affirmative Actions. To last essay in the book because it was the hardest essay to really figure out for me, even though it's one of the first essss I wrote.
Yeah, in the three parts, Yeah.
And so I wrote about affirmative action, especially in this climate of like it being canceled. And so I remember in high school we would have these guest speakers, and all of them were sort of iconic, but Spike Lee came to speak, and I loved his speech because it was so groundbreaking and like revolutionary and fundamentally caused so much raucous Where Spike Lee gets on this tangent about how race is a merit, which made the student body lose their mind.
When you say lose their mind, what did that look like?
I mean, we just were having conversations about race being a merit or not being a merit at a time when I was specifically applying to college, and I mean, you just catching shrapnel at that point, eighteen years old. Seventeen years old, not equipped to have these conversations. This was pre Tumbler, where I thought that the gen Z which I identifies gen Z, but gen Z really has a lot of the language around like intersectionality and micro aggressions and whatever that I didn't have growing up. I was like, man, I just don't feel good. And so I was not equipped to have these conversations, but found myself in these conversations constantly. It was probably the first time in my life that I was required to really think about the context of my body in any space. So in the exchange where Spike Lee says that race is a merit, someone came up to the microphone and said sort of challenged him on the idea that race was a merit and talked about how people were taking their spots. And that is sort of the argument around affirmative action, right, is that do these people deserve to go to these schools if they don't necessarily have the quote unquote grades or the skill set or the talents. What constitutes a good college applicant, what constitutes a good college body student body? And so this like teenager was challenging Spike Lee about race, and it was just such, it was wild. It's something that's imprinted in my brain.
The teenager said. My question is that people should pull them sous by their bootstraps to succeed, and only then they can achieve the American dream. My question is, are we doing minorities, African Americans, black Americans no favors when we give them our spots on elite schools like Yale and Harvard.
I don't think that's a direct quote. I think that's honestly my memory of it. So I don't know how paraphrase. Yeah, I don't know how accurate it is. It's more about like the sentiment I felt. But the reason why I like to redact people's names. Honestly, is because I think that these stories are less about the individuals and more about what they represent. Right, because affirmative action has been fundamentally repealed in the United States of America, specifically in colleges, right, and there are several organizations working to get protections in jobs removed as well. So it's not an individual's idea. It doesn't belong to one singular person. This is a ground swell of people who believe this, And so why I'm obsessed with this moment, it's because it so perfectly crystallized during my childhood what is still very relevant today. And someone asked me recently, like what do you think about from an action being repealed? And the truth is, like, I went to college, I got my degree. It's not my problem. It's maybe my children's problem, if I ever choose to have any if the world exists in that much time. But it's not something that I have to deal with on a day to day basis. But how can you not start to ruminate on the political climate.
It was repealed this summer, Yeah, exactly six to three. Yeah, can I go back the thing you said that was fascinating that was the first time you had those conversations like that moment sparked a bunch of dialogues in high school. What was that like to have those conversations at that point?
Difficult? They're deeply uncomfortable conversations to have with your friends. Yeah, it's deeply uncomfortable to talk about race society.
Yeah, you've done a good job of doing it.
I mean, my show is deeply or my work rather is deeply uncomfortable.
Yeah.
I employed tension in my work, and so tension and then the relief or relief of tension is that's just a tool I use.
Are you employing tension now?
No, not at all. I'm honestly just thinking. But maybe my.
Body No, your arms are cross, that's why.
Yeah, this is my thinking. But but I'm also leaning back looking at the ceiling because I'm honestly trying to like take your questions at face value and offer of sincere and direct answer.
And you have I hope so I know, because I don't I've read every interview done or have you?
Oh Yeahard, my goodness, gracious, what's the underlying theme?
What would you think the underlying theme would be?
Well, I asked you how I know the.
Underlying theme because you're in them.
I haven't read them all. I don't. Sometimes you don't even remember. Have you seen the John Mulaneyssue special where he talks about the GQ interview and he's like, I have no recollection of saying that. I found that to be really compelling because reading that interview before I knew about his journey, you just think, wow, comedians are eccentric. And then you start to really delve into where he spec where he was at that time of that interview, and it reveals, it reveals so much. So I don't have distance from the work for when I say.
I think for him that interview took place with a significant amount of drugs.
Yeah, I guess I'm making an observation about what it means to have a record of your conversations and the distance that each year brings in referring back to that record.
And the book of it, I think this book is another record of certainly your feelings and thoughts, and to have a paper trail, it's kind of amazing.
I don't know. So I'm a privacy privacy hive, so part of me is ruteful that I exist at all on the Internet. But I accept that that is a form of that, that is life. There's probably stuff that I've done that I'm not happy about it, but that's you can interrogate that and make really good books and you.
Have after the break.
More from ze Way.
Hey everyone, this is Sam. As you've probably noticed, the writers and actors in Hollywood had embarked on a historic strike over these past six months. Both guilds have now recently reached a deal with the AMP. Thank god for that. Obviously, for a show like ours that has on writers, actors, filmmakers, this has proven to be a challenging time. I'll just be honest with you. It's been difficult to make a show about culture when culture has basically been put on pause for the most part, and yet myself, along with our incredible, incredible team, have continued to make new episodes just about every Sunday. We've done this with authors like Zadie Smith and WashU, musicians like Leave and Ludwig Gorenson, who created the score for Oppenheimer. We had on st Higham, we had on reporters like Sam Sanders and Matt Bellanie. We did an episode about the border with Beto O'Rourke and my father. We had a conversation with screenwriter Alex O'Keefe at the height of the strike about the conditions of being a modern screenwriter, the state of Hollywood, and really so much more. Through this turbulent, precarious time, we have continued to find stories that I think are worth telling and worth sharing with you. And so if any of those episodes, or if any of the episodes that I did not mention, have meant something to you, if the show has meant something to you, I would really appreciate if you shared the program on social media or with a friend, with a family member, anyone that you think would be interested in the kind of researched, thoughtful and honest conversations that we try to have here each in every Sunday. You can share and tag us at talk easypod across social media. If you want to drop us a line, you can reach me at SF at talk easypod dot com. That's SF at talk easypod dot com. This year will be starting our newsletter, which we are very excited to do and put out, But until then, sharing the show or reviewing it on the platform that you're listening to this right now, I know every podcaster talks about it, but it really does help us continue doing the work we so love to do here each and every week. And with that, I hope you enjoy the rest of my conversation with ze Way. When you went to Northwestern you double majored in radio, television and film and African American studies. Yes, you wrote lots of poetry, probably even more tweets. When you got that internship at Comedy Central. Was that where you found the template for the kind of work you wanted to do professionally?
I think it deconstructed the mystique around entertainment, which is really fundamentally just office jobs. Specifically, being a writer is just an office job. I thought it was so glamorous when you're an intern. You get into the rooms and you realize, oh, these are just regular people with regularly who went to school and have regular lives, and that made it really accessible. And so I was able to strive for that profession because I knew it was something within my reach versus something I thought was far away.
How quickly did you realize that?
Well, I got a joke on Colbert Report as an intern, and so I was I felt very cocky Wow, I started dabbing. I was enterning there the week of George Zimmerman's trial proposition eight and then I think Edward Snowden and also fled the country, and so it was a I mean, talk about American politics are so weird because everything has just started. It's a flood, a flood of news and a flood of watershed events. I'm tired, actually of existing in a space where historical moments are constantly happening.
I thought you were just going to end the sentence after existing.
I'm tired, no existence, cool with it in different mid Yeah.
That you mentioned you got the joke on the air. Then a jury reached a not guilty verdict in the Zimmermann Cheyvon Martin case. Yeah, you called that moment your own racial awakening in the book. What did that awakening look like?
Wow, that's what it looked like. Wow. Shocked, shock. I was shocked. I was young.
You're twenty one, mon, Yeah, something like that.
Young. I was young, and I didn't know what I had know. This was the first viral story like that, and I found it to be really eye opening. It was shocking. That was a wild case. We're still talking about it.
Today.
Yeah, this little this town in Florida.
It's funny there are people older than me because we're basically the same age. I remember nineteen, yeah, both nineteen Goo goo ganga, Goo goo goga. When that moment feels like a precursor to what was to come, because it seems like your professional success often arrives on the heels of, or in response to, these national tragedies. Because again I'm thinking of November ninth, twenty sixteen, the day after Trump was elected, was also the day you filmed your first episode of Baited with z Way on YouTube after you won. Were you like, I need to make this show?
No, Also, that day is not a tragedy to a good portion of the country. So that's all about perspective.
Well, it's a tragedy for the person asking the question.
Got it. I think that I don't feel at any point in my day that what I'm doing is necessary. That would be wild and deeply disturbing. But I am a human that exists in society, and so I have a response to the world around me, and particularly with my work, like it allows me to process the news, and my trauma response is to like joke about it.
I really stuck on the thing you calling your work not necessary.
I didn't say it was not necessary.
Would you say it was that.
That I don't move through the day and think, wow, this is so necessary. My work is urgent, but also it is evergreen. So there are things that I was talking about in twenty sixteen or still lot.
Yeah, you're write in the book about the piece of advice that Ira Glass has about. Oh yeah, the gap. For those who don't know, it's like, in the beginning, you make art because you have good tastes, and like that's what got you into making all this work. But in the beginning, there's this gap between the good work you love and the bad art that you're probably making, And your taste is why your work disappoints you, because what you're making is not particularly good at the start, but eventually, over time, if you keep at it, that gap closes and your work is as good as your ambitions. And I wondered if it felt like the gap closed for you during the pandemic when you started making those Instagram live interviews.
No, not at all. I thought my work was good in twenty sixteen. I thought my work was good in twenty nineteen. When I interviewed like a Partner. And also I did the New Yorker Fest and they showed What was really humbling about doing that was that they showed a clip of me talking to Rose McGowan on IG Live, and I was really humbled by the fact that the audience was laughing at this live interview I did in twenty twenty, like in my bedroom in Bushwick. So while I'm working through my comedy, I think it's I think it's good. So the gap, to me, I'm like, oh, well, there's no gap. I see no gap, no thigh gap versus you.
Never had to close the gap.
So there are two answers, and there are two sides to this sword. Because every joke I tell, I'm like, is that the last joke I'll ever tell? Well, I ever tell a good joke again. But then also there's a part of me that is really trying to impress myself in that moment. So I don't even know how to answer your question in a way that feels accurate. I don't feel like I've closed the gap at all. But conversely, I do feel like the work that I'm doing or have done at that moment, I really enjoyed.
That's a good answer. I agree that one that you mentioned with Parna is like unbelievable.
Wild right, that was like so hard to do too.
Was that where you learned the power of editing and post and reconstructing people's words.
Oh yes, I think that is. But I would have to rewatch every single interview I've ever done to answer that with accuracy, because but I feel like it was a fundamental breakthrough because the interview was so deeply difficult. She was a Parna n Trila is such a deeply sweet, kind, not problematic person. I left interviewing her and thinking, Wow, what a mistake. Why, Like we did not hit the game at all? And as I was editing the interview with this editing named Corey, I found we found that the way to make it work in the game of the show was to at it was to employ the like sound by the culture of that current time. Is this person a model minority?
Yes, Tiger Woods, he's a model minority for golf and adultree Wow. I think if you win anything with the word master in it and you're a minority, you're winning.
That logic is sounds He's hot, oj Simpson, Is he a model minority. I want to say, no, he's a minority.
Yeah, but he hasn't modeled.
Has he? Yes too, Mary, Yeah, he's great.
Here's my controversial stance. Okay, I think of the rock not even as a human person.
You're to humanizing this person of color can be better than people. Master.
Could you say one just before we go, one thing that will make people go.
Wow, Black lives matter? And that's the show. This is a part of Nancherla.
Coming back. When you look at those IG live interviews, there's like an immediacy and an intimacy to them because anyone watching is feeling like a kind of secondhand mortification of seeing people fall into traps that you are very much setting for them.
Yeah, certainly, I think that the timing of those Instagram lives were really really mapped onto like the discourse trademark of media. So if you think about like Oprah Winfrey in the early aughts, you think about particularly her interview with Tom Cruise and how shocking it.
Was right jumping on the coup.
It was a spectacle, like no one had any expectation of how that would go, including I'm sure the guests in the host. I feel like we've moved into a really manicured presentation of interviews, and that Instagram Live, Instagram Live and live television in general doesn't allow you to have the same amount of control machene and edit so that everyone is experiencing everything in real time. What's really fun about live is that one it's the moment is the moment, and you all create it together and it never happens again because you never have that alignment of people and the tech working and the exact way and the timing, and you tell the jokes slightly different. Everything is so new. And so that's why I think that those interview popped is because you have the contrast of like a really wild and high stakes conversation and then really urgent response of everything being live and happening in real time, and then me being so unserious. The comment I actually thought really made the show because they were so deeply unseerious. But yeah, the comments, the comments were beyond I remember. And while the comments were like Io and Zach Fox and Quinta, just so many people were in the comments. Gabrielle Union, when we were deeply isolated because of this indefinite pandemic, we were allowed to come together at this appointment of Thursday at eight pm for this weird performance of Like Americana.
I want to take a listen to one of those clips with Caroline Callaway.
Now, I saw on your Instagram that you were promoting black authors like Wesley Laurie who wrote They Can't Kill Us, and then you Jim crow by Michelle Alexander Austin Schanning. Let's fucking god, let me go.
Now, you're a vaciferous reader. How many of these books have you read? Honestly?
Of the nine books that I recommended on my Instagram, I've read four.
Wow, But I but I've ordered the other five from black bookshops.
So I would like my ally cookie.
Now there are no cookies in this game.
We're talking about how like compelling, the live wire act of it all, the tightrope when you go to make the show at showtime, did you have to rethink how you would approach an interview since it wasn't live anymore and that it would be pre taped and edited?
Of course, but I have been doing this for a minute, so I had like Aparna and Gary Richardson and Cudie Greed and Matt Rogers and all of those interviews prior to sort of rely on like, okay, this, what does this permutation look like like for me? Like my comedy and work build on each other, like they're not silos. So what I do in live shows builds on like how I would treat an interview, which builds on like how I would approach fashion Week, like they all exist in conversation because I am a singular being, like there aren't duplicates of me. And so that permutation was influenced by the work I had done before.
In two seasons of making the show, It in many ways originated from a program that you were making in your bedroom in Bushwick. You then took it out of your house and into a studio like setting at showtimes, that process of writing and acting and hosting and managing and making it all happen. How did you handle all that?
I really looked up to. So I feel like as a culture, we don't talk enough about how much of a pathfinder Ray is because she really kind of started the YouTube to television industrial complex. And when I was coming up in New York, before anything had happened, I remember really latching onto Awkward Black Girl and the popularity of that and how she turned that into the juggernaut that is Insecure in her career. And so if you're asking me how I prepared for the position of running my own television show or writing about running my own television show, I think that a lot of that had to do with me seizing opportunity on my own, not waiting for anyone to come and save me, but really being active in my own activation. And so that meant like producing like on YouTube Baited and other iterations of it that were flops, no one watched it, it cost me money that I didn't have, or doing constant live shows that sometimes people would go to, but initially no one would attend, and then eventually they started to really pop. Making a name for myself coming up in New York as a writer and producer and pop star. And so the alignment of me finally having the opportunity to be in a studio and work through what that looked like came at a time when I, as an artist, was really prepared for what exactly I wanted to say. And then the challenge is that it's now collaborative, that I am no longer the judge jury and executioner, like, there are several people involved in making this come to life, but I am collaborative, Like I come from an improv space. I come from a live show space. So I enjoy having the pressure of being like, I don't know, this is what I'm thinking. You take it and run with it. And I found really great people to collaborate with. So to answer your question, how did I prepare for that? I mean, every facet of my career has prepared me for the next facet of my career. Like, I get a lot of questions that are like, what are you going to do next? And I'm doing it. I'm working through my identity. Yeah, you're like crossing that out. I'm working through what my art looks like at every single turn.
The thing you're talking about is, uh, you had failed enough to be prepared to succeed.
I think yes, And that is a direct quote from my book, Right, I had failed enough to be prepared to fail again. Life is a series of failures and successes, but mostly failure.
Do you see the show's cancelation as a failure?
No, not at all. I wish I could say that I did. I think I kind of ate.
I think everyone ate, So you didn't take it personally.
No, I didn't take it personally. I think I did a great job and I think it was a success, and I think that people love me.
Have you looked on Twitter to see the amount of people that are outraged that is not coming back?
No, I know, I don't, but people send me things which I actually don't appreciate. When people send me like tweets and articles.
What kind of things do you not want to be said?
I talk about this in my book James Baldwin, and it wasn't Lorraine Hansbury Maya Maya Angelou had this conversation about what it means to be a successful artist, and they talk about specifically the dangers of getting high on your own supply and perceiving yourself as quote necessary or as quote a success, and having to constantly chase what that success looked like to that group of people at that time, and not being really present in your work. And so for me, it really helps me to have two feet on that ground because I am still alive, not dead, and so I must engage with the world through art until my last breath. And so for me that means that I don't really focus on critical acclaim or critical disdain. I focus on how others interpret it, and I say, oh, was that intentional or was that unintentional? Or interesting that they interpret it that way, And then I like shut my computer and like keep going and thinking.
That passage is really great.
Thank you. I mean I didn't, I just copied it.
I know. I'm glad you copied it for people to see, because they're talking about if you buy into other people's interpretations of you, whether as a success or not, that you will you will be someone else's version of yourself.
I am constantly confronted with others perception of me and having to integrate that, like that is constantly being projected onto me. What I mean, I find that people have an idea of me, whether it's that I'm scary or whether it's just that I'm constantly hilarious and sweet, whether it's that I am a serious person trademark or an un serious person trademark. People have perceptions of me. But I like put my fingers in my ear la la la la la, and I just have to be grounded in who I am to myself because that is the only thing that's going to guide me. People have hated me in my work before, Like, I know, I've been doing this for long enough that no one was looking, and then you you pop and then people are like, Okay, this is what people like about you do that, and it's like, well, actually, I got to this journey by just having an understanding of myself that Yeah, it's a lot too interrograte, it's too it's being perceived.
Is that your review of the show?
Yeah, being perceived?
Great, we'll put that on the the Apple reviews. Leeway says, I only have two things. Okay, sure, you know how you saw Colbert as a as a template for the kind of work you wanted to make. When you see other comics, do you think they're using you as a kind of template now? Because there's another show on Netflix called Not So Awkward Ohhh that genuinely replicated your set, Like, are these homages to you or would you use a less charitable word.
I don't think anyone has made it until they've made it to Bollywood one, and I can't speak to them being homages or not. That's like a question for the individuals who you feel my work influences. My comedy exists in ara that goes before me right, like Zach Gallifanakis, Colbert, like Eric Andre, Nathan Fielder, Pasasha Baron Cohen like you can see their work in my work, and Oprah Winfrey like you can see their influences. And I mean, what artists is worth their salt if they are not moving art in any direction for the better, for the worst. And so part of my job is to create and create something new, and if that inspires a multitude or an individual, I am fortunate.
That's a very polite answer. Why are you laughing at?
Yeah, I'm laughing because I think this is.
Funny, the whole podcast.
No, specifically, where we were and where we're going? What's your next question?
You know where we're going is where we're wondering where you're going to go?
Where you're going? And where are you going? And where have you been? Have you read that short story by Joyce.
Carol Oatez I have a long time ago impactful. She's a talented writer. But if Colbert was a template for you, he stopped doing the Colbert Report and went to another format, the doing the late night show. And so I guess I'm wondering, is there a new template that you're following, is there something else you want to do now? Or do you do you see his path as a something that you want to follow, Like would you leave a character that you created behind to do a late night talk show like him? Is that something you're thinking about?
I think that the world has changed so much in a year, in two years and five and ten, So I think that what my heroes have done is not duplicatable. Is that a word duplic cannot not be duplicated. It cannot be duplicated simply because they hit their moment at that moment, in that moment cannot be copied, Like George Bush is such an icon and you will never have that icon in the White House again. He served two terms And so I am not trying to repeat the successes of others, but I use their work as an influence for me and thinking, okay, this is a reference point, like how do I want to adjust? I really don't know what's next. I promise that I will always do interviews in some capacity in my lifetime. I have a bunch of unreleased interviews like in my heart, my hard drive somewhere that I will work and release at my leisure. But or maybe I'll never release them.
You know.
I read somewhere that Beyonce has like ten thousand hours of songs, right, So that's part of being an artist. Not to compare myself to Beyonce, but that that to me, I find out so much more so impressive to think that this brilliant songstress has a lifetime of work that we may never see, and that's part of her process. My process. I don't know where what's going to happen, but I'm going to meet every moment as prepared as I can be. But we'll see TVD.
In twenty sixteen, you did an interview with Amy Poehler's Smart Girl Oh Yeah website. Here's what you said when they asked you about your dream job.
Okay, what's your dream job? To be a television host. I look up to Oprah. A late night host would be amazing. If I could break through that barrier for late night television, it would be a self actualization beyond anything. I'm even getting emotional talking about it. Everything I've ever wanted or dreamed of, interacting with politicians and business people, writing comedy about it, That's what I would love to do. I want to interact with interesting people and make brilliant things. I think that's still true. I want to interact with interesting people and make brilliant things as far as my I mean, I feel like I did that job. Yeah, right, So how do you continue to expand? What happens after you make the iPhone?
Right?
What happens? I had a lot of impatience when I was coming up. I would always think, why isn't it breaking through for me? When is it going to be my turn? And then I feel like everything happened so organically, and I'm so grateful for having the grace and the time to learn and to grow with the universe. And so similarly, I am going to let go of my need to constantly control the outcome of things and just receive whatever the universe offers me.
Well with that, I thank you for somewhat letting go of the interview interviewee back and forth. You mostly let go of your hosting duties.
Thank you for me I people, I actually get this a lot as a comment on podcasts, But I thought podcasts were a conversation. Absolutely, yeah, and so I appreciate going back and forth because I expand as you expand, isn't the universe constantly expanding it is.
Look at one of your references here the way. Thank you for what you say being.
Perceived, I hate being perceived.
Well, I appreciate you indulging me and everyone listening.
Thank you for having this was such an experience on the expansion anytime.
Bye bye, great and that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. As I said in the interstitial, if you want to go above and beyond, leaving a review on Apple, sharing the program on social media. All of it is still even in twenty twenty three. The best way for new listeners to find the podcast to give a special thanks this week to the teams at a m p R Group, Abrams Books, and of course our guest ze Way. To order her new book or to find her upcoming tour dates, be sure to visit her website at zway dot com. If you'd like to hear other episodes with great performers, I'd recommend Tessa Thompson, Pedro, Pascal Quintin, Brunson, Natasha Leone, Tom Hanks, fran Leibowitz, and Oscar Isaac to hear those and more Pushkin Podcasts listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk easypod. If you want to join our mailing list, drop me a line at SF at talk easypond dot com. That's SF at talk easypond dot com. You can also purchase one of our mugs at Come and Cream or Navy, or our vinyl record with fran Leibowitz at talk easypond dot com slash Shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Nick sa Bravo. Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by Caitlyn Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Christian Chenoy. Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca. Photographs today are by Julius chu House. I want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Snars, Kerrie Brody, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan, Cura Posey, Tara Machado, Jason Gambrell, Justine Lang, Malcolm Gladwell, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and so long.