Latest / Dear Chelsea / Trifling White Women with Roy Wood Jr.
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I just announced all my tour dates. It's called the
- 0:02Speaker 1: High and Mighty Tour. I'm coming to Washington, d c Norfolk, Virginia, Madison, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Detroit, Michigan, Cleveland, Columbus,
- 0:12Speaker 1: and Cincinnati, Ohio, Denver, Colorado, Portland, Maine, Providence, Rhode Island, Springfield, Massachusetts, Chicago,
- 0:19Speaker 1: of Course, Indianapolis, Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky, Albuquerque, Masa, Arizona, Kansas City, Missouri,
- 0:27Speaker 1: Saint Louis, Missouri, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Nashville, Tennessee, Charlotte, North Carolina, Durham,
- 0:34Speaker 1: North of Carolina, Saratoga, California, Monterey, California, Modeesto, California, and
- 0:40Speaker 1: port Chester, New York, Boston, Massachusetts, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
- 0:48Speaker 1: I will be touring from February through June, So go
- 0:52Speaker 1: get your tickets now. If you want to come see
- 0:54Speaker 1: me perform, I will be on the High and Mighty Tour.
- 0:58Speaker 2: Hi Catherine, Hi, Chelsea. How are you.
- 1:01Speaker 3: I'm wonderful and you're in.
- 1:03Speaker 2: An Arctico right now. I am in the Southern Hemisphere
- 1:06Speaker 2: right now.
- 1:07Speaker 1: I am hiding in a closet recording this introduction to you.
- 1:11Speaker 1: I can't tell you what's going on yet because I'm
- 1:13Speaker 1: going to download everyone when I get back. So it
- 1:17Speaker 1: has been transcendental.
- 1:20Speaker 3: Well, since everybody is dealing with Thanksgiving stuff, we'll get
- 1:23Speaker 3: right into it.
- 1:24Speaker 2: But our guests today had a great book. I really
- 1:26Speaker 2: loved it.
- 1:27Speaker 1: You know, our guests today from The Daily Show and CNNs.
- 1:30Speaker 1: Have I got news for you. He is here to
- 1:32Speaker 1: talk about his new book, The Man of Many Fathers,
- 1:35Speaker 1: Life Lessons disguised as a memoir. You're listening to Roy
- 1:39Speaker 1: Wood Junior on this episode of Dear Chelsea, and I
- 1:42Speaker 1: have to say, let me tell you something, Roy.
- 1:44Speaker 2: From a woman to a straight man, it is.
- 1:47Speaker 1: So refreshing, Catherine, I think you would agree to read
- 1:50Speaker 1: a book by a straight man that is so reflective
- 1:54Speaker 1: and self aware, and it was really just such a
- 2:00Speaker 1: great book, like thank you for women to read and
- 2:04Speaker 1: for mothers to read about how to raise a good man.
- 2:09Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of stuff in here about
- 2:12Speaker 1: that and your relationship with your mother more specifically, and
- 2:16Speaker 1: your relationship with your father. So let's start there with
- 2:19Speaker 1: your relationship with your father, because you didn't really start
- 2:22Speaker 1: out living with your father. Your mom and you you
- 2:25Speaker 1: guys lived alone for a while, and then you started
- 2:28Speaker 1: to get into a little bit of trouble, and she
- 2:30Speaker 1: decided to move so that you could be close to
- 2:33Speaker 1: your father. So she essentially got back together with your
- 2:36Speaker 1: father in a kind of open relationship because you started
- 2:41Speaker 1: to act up.
- 2:42Speaker 4: Yeah, now that I'm older, I can say I don't
- 2:45Speaker 4: think she ever got back with him. She moved in.
- 2:48Speaker 4: We moved back in with them, which is a different
- 2:51Speaker 4: dynamic because they never slept in the same bedroom like
- 2:53Speaker 4: my parents, never as far as I know, ever had
- 2:58Speaker 4: sex again. But the idea of I'm a single mom,
- 3:03Speaker 4: I work all day, I'm in grad school all night.
- 3:05Speaker 4: I cannot keep an eye on him. I will lose
- 3:08Speaker 4: him to the streets if I don't make this choice.
- 3:10Speaker 4: So in a lot of ways, I think that my
- 3:14Speaker 4: mother sacrificed her own happiness and comfort in a way
- 3:20Speaker 4: to ensure that I had some degree of upbringing having
- 3:23Speaker 4: a male in the house.
- 3:24Speaker 1: So you guys moved to Birmingham right when you moved
- 3:28Speaker 1: back in with your father.
- 3:29Speaker 4: Okay, correct, they're great.
- 3:31Speaker 2: So but you talk in the book.
- 3:33Speaker 1: We're going to jump around a little bit because in
- 3:34Speaker 1: the book, since you just brought it up in the book.
- 3:37Speaker 1: You talk about your dad's other you know, he had
- 3:40Speaker 1: children with another woman, He had two young sons with
- 3:42Speaker 1: another woman, and you talk about her coming over to
- 3:45Speaker 1: your mom's house or your parents' house, and your mom
- 3:48Speaker 1: flipping out and being like, as long as I don't
- 3:50Speaker 1: see any of these women, it's okay, but don't bring
- 3:53Speaker 1: them around here, which implies that they were in some
- 3:55Speaker 1: sort of romantic relationship.
- 3:57Speaker 4: No, yeah, I guess some sort of open relationship, or
- 4:01Speaker 4: you're disrespecting me because I'm your wife, but you have kids,
- 4:05Speaker 4: and you take this woman out all over town to
- 4:08Speaker 4: the point where people thought that was my mom, Like
- 4:11Speaker 4: anytime I Pop stepped out, it was with her, And
- 4:14Speaker 4: so for my mom, I think it was I know
- 4:18Speaker 4: what's happening, but I'm gonna keep my head down. The
- 4:20Speaker 4: money I'm saving on rent, I'm pouring into law school,
- 4:23Speaker 4: and then I'm gonna fucking leave you. In the meantime.
- 4:27Speaker 4: These women are not gonna be so blatant with the
- 4:29Speaker 4: disrespect that they think that they can just come over
- 4:31Speaker 4: to your house and say hello to you or check
- 4:34Speaker 4: in with you and things like that. And so that's
- 4:37Speaker 4: where my mom drew the line. My mom is very
- 4:40Speaker 4: gangster man like, I just think that it's not a
- 4:43Speaker 4: part of herself that she likes to access. I mean,
- 4:46Speaker 4: she went toe to toe Jim Crow in Mississippi in
- 4:48Speaker 4: the sixties. She was the first wave of students to
- 4:51Speaker 4: integrate Delta State University, a university that, as of recent
- 4:56Speaker 4: is in the news because of two black people Bey
- 5:00Speaker 4: found hunged. So she's talked a lot of shit to
- 5:04Speaker 4: a lot of people in strange places and could have
- 5:06Speaker 4: paid a much larger price. So no, she's not gonna
- 5:09Speaker 4: be scared of some random woman coming to the house
- 5:12Speaker 4: trying to cuss my daddy out. You gonna get You're
- 5:14Speaker 4: gonna get slapped up.
- 5:16Speaker 2: Well, she's gonna come back with a bat, is what
- 5:18Speaker 2: happens in the book.
- 5:21Speaker 4: Yeah, my bat and I couldn't even use it anymore.
- 5:23Speaker 4: And littlely after that because the glass ended. That's a
- 5:26Speaker 4: separate conversation.
- 5:27Speaker 2: Well yeah, yeah, you can read about it in the book. Everybody.
- 5:30Speaker 4: My mom was just very no nonsense, And I don't
- 5:34Speaker 4: know how that changed my look on relationships. I definitely
- 5:38Speaker 4: know how it changed my look on marriage for sure.
- 5:41Speaker 4: Like I don't have an idealistic view of marriage I'm
- 5:46Speaker 4: not anti marriage, but you're not gonna tell me everybody
- 5:49Speaker 4: that is married is successful and truly happy. So don't
- 5:53Speaker 4: throw these thirty year forty year relationships in my face
- 5:56Speaker 4: as an example of what could be. You know, forty years,
- 6:00Speaker 4: how many happy mm hmm. And that's the question Mary,
- 6:03Speaker 4: people never answer, right.
- 6:05Speaker 2: Right exactly.
- 6:06Speaker 1: It's kind of like when you talk about raising a child.
- 6:09Speaker 1: I mean I find it analogous to that only because
- 6:11Speaker 1: I've done neither of those things. When you think about
- 6:14Speaker 1: raising a child and all the things that come along
- 6:16Speaker 1: with it, it's like, how many moments of bliss are there?
- 6:20Speaker 2: Obviously you love.
- 6:21Speaker 1: This person more than anything else in the world, But
- 6:23Speaker 1: how many moments of bliss compared to the moments of
- 6:26Speaker 1: stress and agony and all of the other things that
- 6:28Speaker 1: come with it? And how how do those moments of
- 6:31Speaker 1: bliss just overpower all of the other stuff? You know,
- 6:34Speaker 1: it's kind of similar to marriage, like it can't be.
- 6:37Speaker 1: I guess it has to be more good than bad.
- 6:40Speaker 1: But raising a kid, you know, if you get an
- 6:42Speaker 1: if you get an off one or one that's not cooperative,
- 6:46Speaker 1: that's fucking stress.
- 6:47Speaker 3: Or really unload on me either.
- 6:49Speaker 4: Yeah, nobody wants to raise the murderer. No, and I'm
- 6:53Speaker 4: sure they didn't set out to do things that made
- 6:55Speaker 4: their child commit crimes. But with my son, I'll say this,
- 7:01Speaker 4: it feels like an opportunity for me to create the
- 7:06Speaker 4: version of myself that I wish I had been, and
- 7:09Speaker 4: then to set that out into the world to better
- 7:12Speaker 4: the world, if you will, that idea of it. You know,
- 7:15Speaker 4: I'm not really caught up in legacy or not. Like
- 7:19Speaker 4: I didn't name him Roy Wood the third.
- 7:21Speaker 1: I wouldn't dare that would be really embarrassing. It's also
- 7:24Speaker 1: a love letter to your son in a way. It's
- 7:27Speaker 1: telling your son what you missed. And I think what
- 7:31Speaker 1: you're saying is also it's really powerful for fathers to
- 7:34Speaker 1: talk to their sons in this way, especially you know,
- 7:37Speaker 1: as men, because the language, you know, the softer the
- 7:41Speaker 1: language becomes, and the more insightful it becomes, the less
- 7:45Speaker 1: violent the world becomes.
- 7:46Speaker 2: You know, raising a guy is tricky.
- 7:48Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about your relationship with
- 7:51Speaker 1: your father.
- 7:52Speaker 2: This guy was like a major communicator.
- 7:55Speaker 1: You say some very funny things about him, but he
- 7:57Speaker 1: was very influential. He was on the radio, he was
- 8:01Speaker 1: part of the civil rights movement, right.
- 8:04Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'd say a civil rights journalist is probably
- 8:07Speaker 4: the best way to somebmate. Like he's just a journalist
- 8:11Speaker 4: who focused solely on struggling conflict on issues affecting black
- 8:15Speaker 4: people globally.
- 8:16Speaker 1: And when you expect time with him, like in the book,
- 8:19Speaker 1: it sounds like you were kind of like he just
- 8:21Speaker 1: kind of took you wherever he went. You were kind
- 8:24Speaker 1: of his little sidekick, right like, and he wanted to
- 8:28Speaker 1: keep you occupied. He didn't want you out on the streets.
- 8:30Speaker 1: He wanted you to either be in class. I mean,
- 8:32Speaker 1: in one instance, he enrolled you back in school after
- 8:36Speaker 1: you've had already finished your school year because he didn't
- 8:38Speaker 1: want you hanging around the house, which I think is
- 8:41Speaker 1: a clutch move.
- 8:42Speaker 4: Actually, he didn't even enroll me. He just took me
- 8:46Speaker 4: to the school because I would spend the first when
- 8:49Speaker 4: Memphis City schools ended, I get sent to Birmingham. First
- 8:52Speaker 4: month in Birmingham, Birmingham City Schools are still in session,
- 8:56Speaker 4: So rather than get a babysitter, he just dropped me
- 8:59Speaker 4: off at it. Knowing what I know now, it's probably
- 9:01Speaker 4: some teacher he was fucking and like damn, you know
- 9:05Speaker 4: how good. Your dick games got to be to just hey,
- 9:08Speaker 4: put my son in your class and teach him shit,
- 9:11Speaker 4: I'll be back at three. And that's what he would do. Man,
- 9:14Speaker 4: My pops would take me around with him and I
- 9:17Speaker 4: never got to go do put or have a fun
- 9:20Speaker 4: cool father. It's literally, hey, man, Jesse Jackson's in town
- 9:25Speaker 4: for the Democratic National Convention. I'm gonna go interview him.
- 9:29Speaker 4: You're coming, bring a snack, and that was it.
- 9:33Speaker 2: And if you could pay for it yourself, even better.
- 9:36Speaker 1: Because his dad was hugely penurious, didn't want him to
- 9:39Speaker 1: spend any money. So Roy, like myself, was very resourceful
- 9:43Speaker 1: as a young person, creating his own business raking leaves,
- 9:46Speaker 1: drumming up a lot of business. Also, we have something
- 9:49Speaker 1: in common, which I texted you about last week, is
- 9:52Speaker 1: in the book he tells. One of my favorite stories,
- 9:54Speaker 1: or the one that resonated with me the most, because
- 9:57Speaker 1: there's actually a lot of similarities between our childhoods, is
- 10:00Speaker 1: that your parents forgot to pick you up from school
- 10:03Speaker 1: and you walked home in the freezing cold.
- 10:05Speaker 2: How long did it take you before you got a
- 10:08Speaker 2: ride from that guy at the convenience store.
- 10:10Speaker 4: It was a liquor store. It's way worse than you wish.
- 10:13Speaker 4: It was a convenience store. I was walking forty minutes
- 10:18Speaker 4: before I got to the liquor store, and I still
- 10:21Speaker 4: had about another hour to go to get home.
- 10:23Speaker 2: And what was the temperature it was?
- 10:26Speaker 4: It was about fifteen degrees maybe twenty. It's Birmingham in January.
- 10:31Speaker 4: Baseball season starts late January. Both my parents thought the
- 10:34Speaker 4: other one was going to get me from practice. I
- 10:37Speaker 4: get home and they're fucking watching Jeopardy, just chilling like
- 10:42Speaker 4: life is sweet. And I get into the liquor store
- 10:46Speaker 4: and there was just a drunk dude in there, and
- 10:48Speaker 4: I'm like, hey, man, just will you give me a ride?
- 10:52Speaker 4: Like he offered the ride, and I'm you know how
- 10:54Speaker 4: you like you talk those in that era in the nineties,
- 10:57Speaker 4: don't take a ride from a stranger. I'm like, fuck it, bro,
- 11:02Speaker 4: even if you're gonna molest me, I bet you got
- 11:04Speaker 4: a heater, so let's do it. And the guy, God
- 11:09Speaker 4: bless him, was a drunk, but he cared enough to
- 11:13Speaker 4: cap the liquor and not drink and drive while he
- 11:15Speaker 4: took me home.
- 11:16Speaker 1: I know that was a very nice touch to that story.
- 11:20Speaker 2: You think it's almost a misdirec.
- 11:22Speaker 1: You think he is going to molest you, and instead
- 11:23Speaker 1: he's like, you know what, I'll save my drink.
- 11:25Speaker 2: It's a laughter. I get this kid home.
- 11:27Speaker 4: Yeah, he's like, I'm a drunk, I'm not a pervert.
- 11:29Speaker 4: I was like, I respect that, bro. Yeah, I appreciate that.
- 11:32Speaker 4: But that's the kind of community Birmingham was. Man, It's
- 11:35Speaker 4: just strangers would still look out. There was still Southern hospitality.
- 11:38Speaker 4: It's just it's a fifteen year old kid shivering to
- 11:41Speaker 4: his bones. Give him a ride.
- 11:44Speaker 1: I told you my parents once did that to me.
- 11:46Speaker 1: They forgot to pick me up from Hebrew School. And
- 11:47Speaker 1: I walked home two and a half miles in a snowstorm,
- 11:50Speaker 1: and I immediately I was conn I just walked in.
- 11:53Speaker 1: I saw them the same thing. They're sitting at the
- 11:55Speaker 1: fucking kitchen table. I was the youngest of six kids, though,
- 11:59Speaker 1: so like my parents, both of them together had six children,
- 12:02Speaker 1: and so I guess that's some sort of excuse of
- 12:05Speaker 1: being just fucking too many, bankrupt of you know, time, emotion,
- 12:09Speaker 1: or any sort of logistical planning. But yeah, I walked
- 12:13Speaker 1: in pissed and I was like, fuck both of you
- 12:16Speaker 1: and Roy when I texted Roy this. I was like,
- 12:18Speaker 1: I also got left at school, and he said, did
- 12:20Speaker 1: you call the cops on them?
- 12:21Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, as soon as I got home, I
- 12:22Speaker 2: called the police.
- 12:23Speaker 4: I was the only child in that house with my parents.
- 12:27Speaker 4: How y'all not notice that I'm not here yet?
- 12:30Speaker 3: Now, the fact that they both each thought the other
- 12:32Speaker 3: was going to get you, but neither of them looked
- 12:34Speaker 3: at each other and was like, where's Roy when they
- 12:36Speaker 3: got home.
- 12:37Speaker 4: Yeah. But see, that's the thing. My parents didn't really
- 12:39Speaker 4: like completely like rock with each other like that, So
- 12:42Speaker 4: if they were in the same room watching TV, they
- 12:44Speaker 4: just had to enjoy that moment of peace. I could
- 12:46Speaker 4: understand my mom not looking at him and going, hey,
- 12:49Speaker 4: don't forget responsibilities, and then my dad snapping on her
- 12:53Speaker 4: about something.
- 12:53Speaker 1: You tell a story about being a kid and getting
- 12:56Speaker 1: in an argument with your mom over a toy that
- 12:59Speaker 1: you wanted at the moment, and then your mom was
- 13:01Speaker 1: like you started to kind of throw a tantrum, and your.
- 13:03Speaker 2: Mom just walked out and left you there.
- 13:05Speaker 1: And then a white woman got involved, somebody who was
- 13:10Speaker 1: scared for your safety. So I want to know in
- 13:12Speaker 1: what other ways have trifling white women impacted your life.
- 13:16Speaker 4: Roy, you know what, that white lady was trying to help,
- 13:22Speaker 4: but she didn't know she was interrupting an important lesson
- 13:25Speaker 4: about discipline, because my mama was one of the ones
- 13:28Speaker 4: where I'll just leave you. I'm not going to argue
- 13:31Speaker 4: with you if you want to have a temper tantrum
- 13:32Speaker 4: about a fucking voltron lion, I'm just gonna leave you
- 13:36Speaker 4: in the mall. And my mom walked off from the
- 13:39Speaker 4: poor little white lady. Miss you left your son, miss
- 13:45Speaker 4: like she knows that was the whole point of it.
- 13:49Speaker 4: I remember one time getting separated from my mom in
- 13:51Speaker 4: the fifth grade and having a panic attack in Macy's
- 13:54Speaker 4: in the galleria and a white lady comes over and sir,
- 14:00Speaker 4: what's going on? And I'm gonna I'm gonna help you,
- 14:04Speaker 4: And what's going on? Baby? What's your mother's name? George?
- 14:07Speaker 4: Come over here? And this fucking white cashier, Chelsea, pulls
- 14:11Speaker 4: up the PA system in Macy's and hands it to me.
- 14:15Speaker 4: And then I'm just on the my mama, where are you?
- 14:18Speaker 4: I'm the women's stockings this Roy click and my mom
- 14:25Speaker 4: comes over furious, cusses out the white lady. My mom
- 14:30Speaker 4: is one thousand percent in the wrong. But my mom
- 14:32Speaker 4: is framing it under some sort of I knew where
- 14:34Speaker 4: he was, he knew to stay there, you need to
- 14:37Speaker 4: mind your business. But because in my mom's mind, it's
- 14:39Speaker 4: they're going to take you from me.
- 14:41Speaker 2: Yeah, right, that's all.
- 14:43Speaker 4: That's all her thoughts were was that you called the police.
- 14:46Speaker 4: You called you have involved an employee, who will involve management,
- 14:51Speaker 4: who will involve the police. So my mom had to
- 14:54Speaker 4: come in on the offensive and just immediately like cuss
- 14:58Speaker 4: her out like that. That's that's really the most really
- 15:01Speaker 4: weird white women that there was a semi racist incident
- 15:05Speaker 4: in Tallahassee with a partner in mind, But like, is
- 15:10Speaker 4: it racism? If they're right?
- 15:13Speaker 2: What's which a partner here? What do you mean a partner?
- 15:16Speaker 4: Ask you?
- 15:17Speaker 1: Well, I'm not the one to answer that, roy as
- 15:19Speaker 1: you know, but what was the other experience?
- 15:25Speaker 4: So in college, me and a partner we went to
- 15:27Speaker 4: the mall. We're like seventeen years old, maybe eighteen, and
- 15:31Speaker 4: we walk into Wilson's the Leather Experts. You have to
- 15:34Speaker 4: say the full name of this store. We go into
- 15:37Speaker 4: Wilson's and we're just looking at leather jackets. White woman's
- 15:41Speaker 4: sales rep comes over. She goes, we don't have Layo Way.
- 15:46Speaker 4: We haven't said shit, She hasn't said hello, how you
- 15:49Speaker 4: doing shit? Can I help you? My name is whatever,
- 15:53Speaker 4: And we go we don't need Leo Way, and we
- 15:55Speaker 4: snapped back at her real fast, and she walks off.
- 15:58Speaker 4: And then we looked at the price of it jackets
- 16:00Speaker 4: and fucking we need it. Layaway them shits. It's like
- 16:04Speaker 4: a it's a level jacket. It's just like starts at
- 16:07Speaker 4: one thousand dollars. We thought this would be one hundred
- 16:09Speaker 4: and fifty dollars, like fucking starter jacket, like some NBA
- 16:14Speaker 4: Jordan Chalcolne. It was one thousand dollars. So me and
- 16:17Speaker 4: Barrett spend the next thirty minutes in the store pretending
- 16:20Speaker 4: we have money because we don't want her to think
- 16:23Speaker 4: we don't have money, because that's how you fight racism.
- 16:26Speaker 4: It's just aggressive browsing. So's just kept trying on shit.
- 16:33Speaker 2: Let's circle back to your dad.
- 16:35Speaker 1: So how do you look at your relationship with your
- 16:37Speaker 1: dad now that you're an adult man with a son, Like,
- 16:40Speaker 1: how do you frame it and how do you feel
- 16:42Speaker 1: about it?
- 16:43Speaker 4: I think forgiveness without forgetting it's probably the best bucket
- 16:47Speaker 4: to put it in for however, our parents failed us,
- 16:51Speaker 4: be it mom or Dad. You get older and you
- 16:54Speaker 4: start looking at some of them and I can draw
- 16:58Speaker 4: lines to go ahe that's why you did that, That's
- 17:02Speaker 4: why you behave like that. That sucks, but at least
- 17:06Speaker 4: I understand now. One of the biggest blessings for me
- 17:09Speaker 4: was doing finding your roots, and I did that, you know,
- 17:15Speaker 4: the DNA show or whatever, and they find out all
- 17:18Speaker 4: of this history about my dad's side of the family
- 17:20Speaker 4: that I never knew was my dad never brought me
- 17:22Speaker 4: around his side of the family, only like family reunions,
- 17:26Speaker 4: and I know my half said, I know all my
- 17:29Speaker 4: half siblings, but his extended family tree never met him.
- 17:34Speaker 4: So I found out that my grandfather was killed when
- 17:37Speaker 4: my dad was four what he disappeared in the night
- 17:41Speaker 4: without a trace in Georgia in the nineteen thirties, so
- 17:46Speaker 4: we know what that is. The census data that PBS
- 17:50Speaker 4: found showed that my father did not have another male
- 17:53Speaker 4: head of household the rest of his life. So for
- 17:57Speaker 4: all I know, he didn't have a version of what
- 18:00Speaker 4: I had growing up, just somebody there to check his
- 18:03Speaker 4: ass and he also was hit by a car when
- 18:07Speaker 4: he was sixteen and crippled permanently while running after a
- 18:11Speaker 4: woman that had just broken up a girl, because he
- 18:13Speaker 4: was sixteen running after a girl who had just broken
- 18:16Speaker 4: up with him. So how do you think that informed
- 18:19Speaker 4: his idea and opinions about women and dating and who
- 18:23Speaker 4: was there to give him any type of game on manhood?
- 18:26Speaker 4: Truth be told, I walked away from that television show
- 18:31Speaker 4: that day just understanding that my pops was pretty much
- 18:35Speaker 4: fucked from age four and was solidified at age sixteen.
- 18:39Speaker 4: And anything else he became, he became as a byproduct
- 18:43Speaker 4: of trying to get past whatever traumas he was still
- 18:47Speaker 4: dealing with. So you comfort yourself and women, I guess,
- 18:52Speaker 4: but you comfort yourself and the people you know that
- 18:55Speaker 4: praised you and adore you. You know, he was loved
- 19:00Speaker 4: for his voice because he couldn't be athletic anymore, and
- 19:05Speaker 4: you know, he changed a lot of people's lives. I
- 19:07Speaker 4: think that's the part that's like so weird when you
- 19:10Speaker 4: have a parent that was different for you than what
- 19:14Speaker 4: everybody else got. Because you know, my Pops dies when
- 19:17Speaker 4: I'm sixteen, and then you start hearing all these cool
- 19:21Speaker 4: stories and great stories about him, and I didn't get that.
- 19:26Speaker 4: I never saw or experience that. One of the hardest
- 19:30Speaker 4: things for me to do is I follow my two
- 19:33Speaker 4: younger siblings. My two young I'm closest to them because
- 19:38Speaker 4: we're closest in age, and with me and the older
- 19:41Speaker 4: halfs it's a twenty year age gap up. So like
- 19:45Speaker 4: with the younger ones, one of the hardest things is
- 19:48Speaker 4: following them on social media because they'll post pictures with
- 19:51Speaker 4: them and Pops and they got the old school polaroid
- 19:55Speaker 4: Kodak joints to have the date printed on the photo,
- 19:59Speaker 4: and I can look at the photo and look at
- 20:01Speaker 4: the date and tell you whether or not the lights
- 20:03Speaker 4: were on at our house or they're at disney World
- 20:08Speaker 4: or they're at damn six Flags. My little brother post
- 20:13Speaker 4: a picture me and Daddy that summer when we went
- 20:17Speaker 4: to the thing and we had a good time, and
- 20:20Speaker 4: I'm like, I had to fucking sit and watch you
- 20:22Speaker 4: interview Michael Ducaccus in eighty four, like I didn't get
- 20:27Speaker 4: to go to nothing fun. And then on top of that,
- 20:29Speaker 4: you're beefing with my mom at the time, but you're
- 20:33Speaker 4: living the normal life over there. And after a while
- 20:38Speaker 4: you just got to respect it, Chelsea, like, it's not ideal,
- 20:41Speaker 4: it wasn't cool. But as I got older and I
- 20:43Speaker 4: had a son, and I started thinking about the idea
- 20:46Speaker 4: of showing him love and what does love look like?
- 20:49Speaker 4: And well, what were the examples I had of love?
- 20:53Speaker 4: I have to look to my dad and the other woman.
- 20:57Speaker 4: I have to and I have to unpack that if
- 21:00Speaker 4: if I want to have any shot of understanding how I
- 21:02Speaker 4: would show up in love with a woman, I need
- 21:06Speaker 4: to look at how my dad showed up, so I
- 21:09Speaker 4: have something to compare and contrast my behaviors to. And
- 21:14Speaker 4: that was ie opening because I mean, you know my
- 21:17Speaker 4: stand up, I don't talk about my life. I don't
- 21:19Speaker 4: talk about but because it was just so weird, it
- 21:22Speaker 4: was so complicated, it was easier for me to just
- 21:24Speaker 4: talk about the world. But you know, I look at
- 21:30Speaker 4: the choices he made, and I really feel like my
- 21:33Speaker 4: pops didn't understand how to get love right until the end,
- 21:39Speaker 4: until like the last ten years of his life. So
- 21:42Speaker 4: you go around, I'm the ninth of eleven kids by
- 21:44Speaker 4: five different women. Just for perspective, so you spend a
- 21:48Speaker 4: front half of your life and career dedicated to the
- 21:54Speaker 4: job that you love, but also running from this commitment
- 21:59Speaker 4: and your responsibly just you know, having kids all over
- 22:03Speaker 4: the place, and I start unpacking that, and I look
- 22:07Speaker 4: at it to a degree, and it feels eerily similar
- 22:11Speaker 4: to my pattern. Separate. I mean, I don't have a
- 22:14Speaker 4: bunch of kids all over the place.
- 22:15Speaker 1: But and you don't have two partners. I mean, I
- 22:19Speaker 1: bet you wish you did, but you don't, not that
- 22:22Speaker 1: I know of.
- 22:22Speaker 2: Do you have two partners? I tried to set you
- 22:24Speaker 2: up sexually a couple of months ago, but I don't
- 22:26Speaker 2: know if that panned out or not.
- 22:28Speaker 4: That person would not want two partners either, Just so
- 22:33Speaker 4: you know that. No, I have one child that I
- 22:38Speaker 4: co parent with with his mom, and that's that's great.
- 22:43Speaker 4: I've I love what I do, and I think part
- 22:46Speaker 4: of it where I feel like there's similarities between me
- 22:49Speaker 4: and my dad is comedy is the one place that
- 22:52Speaker 4: makes me feel alive. Entertaining and writing and creating. Everything
- 22:57Speaker 4: else fall second. So when there are huge respect abilities
- 23:00Speaker 4: and big things that I have to take care of,
- 23:04Speaker 4: I might all runs not the right word, but I'm
- 23:07Speaker 4: anxious avoiding that shit to the end of the day
- 23:11Speaker 4: or the end of the week or the end of
- 23:12Speaker 4: the month if I have to. So, you know, comedy
- 23:17Speaker 4: as an escape from something you know, or does it
- 23:21Speaker 4: fulfill you. I don't know what the difference is, but
- 23:23Speaker 4: I feel like Radio meant that to him, which is
- 23:26Speaker 4: why he was so superb at it, which is why
- 23:28Speaker 4: he helped so many people while he was doing it.
- 23:32Speaker 4: I did the White House Correspondence dinner and afterwards, just
- 23:36Speaker 4: random black people are come, yeah, you're dad. In nineteen
- 23:39Speaker 4: seventy one got me in my first Pepper Bard and
- 23:42Speaker 4: I remember I needed a tape recorder and we was
- 23:45Speaker 4: at the Presca and your daddy loan meet his audio
- 23:47Speaker 4: and like, it's just these He loved what he did.
- 23:52Speaker 4: And also, I think to a degree, just ran from
- 23:56Speaker 4: everything else. So you know, you have to unpack with
- 23:59Speaker 4: your parents or if you're going to figure out who
- 24:01Speaker 4: you are and what the best parts of them are
- 24:04Speaker 4: so that you can take that and pass that on
- 24:06Speaker 4: to your children.
- 24:07Speaker 1: You open the book by saying, trying to raise a
- 24:10Speaker 1: child before healing your inner child is a motherfucker. So
- 24:14Speaker 1: where what do you feel like you've healed your inner child?
- 24:19Speaker 4: Getting there? Oh? Guess what I bought About a month ago,
- 24:24Speaker 4: I bought that same black Voltron lion that I was
- 24:27Speaker 4: crying to my mom about in Memphis in the eighties,
- 24:31Speaker 4: and I saw it. I saw it at like a
- 24:34Speaker 4: collectible story. I was like, yeah, I might, I'm gonna
- 24:36Speaker 4: get that fucking lion. Now I don't. I don't have it.
- 24:42Speaker 4: On one of these days, it'll it'll make it to
- 24:44Speaker 4: this shelf. But the idea of you know, I have
- 24:49Speaker 4: a responsibility to my son, so I'm not here to
- 24:51Speaker 4: play video games and watch baseball all day. But I
- 24:54Speaker 4: do feel like there's a degree of joy and fun
- 24:57Speaker 4: that I lost because I had to worry. I had
- 25:00Speaker 4: to rake leaves, I had to cut deals in the
- 25:02Speaker 4: neighborhood because I didn't know when the next argument was
- 25:05Speaker 4: going to happen between the two of them, and he
- 25:07Speaker 4: wasn't going to pay a bill, and then the gas
- 25:10Speaker 4: is off or the heat is off, you know, the electricity.
- 25:15Speaker 4: You know, my mom was working her ass off to
- 25:17Speaker 4: jobs in night school and law school and grad school.
- 25:21Speaker 4: I don't want to bother her with needing fifty dollars
- 25:24Speaker 4: for the sneakers or the field trip. So I'm gonna hustle.
- 25:27Speaker 4: So yeah, I missed out on a lot of things. Yeah,
- 25:31Speaker 4: I missed out. I missed out on a lot of
- 25:33Speaker 4: things because because I had to grow up a little faster.
- 25:39Speaker 2: Right you know.
- 25:41Speaker 1: Yeah, being a latchkey kid when you were growing up
- 25:44Speaker 1: is probably, well not probably, it's a lot different than
- 25:47Speaker 1: it is today.
- 25:47Speaker 2: And what it means today.
- 25:49Speaker 4: Oh, it's illegal. Not what we were doing. Oh, they
- 25:51Speaker 4: would have taken me away from my mom in her heartbeat.
- 25:56Speaker 1: First of all, let's talk about your almost threesome that
- 25:59Speaker 1: you had getting a home.
- 26:01Speaker 4: Is that how you're classified?
- 26:03Speaker 2: That's how I classified it. Yeah, why don't you tell
- 26:05Speaker 2: us that story.
- 26:06Speaker 4: It's one of those things though, where like here's the
- 26:09Speaker 4: thing they tell kids, Hey, be careful, don't let nobody
- 26:14Speaker 4: touch you in your area, right, like make sure no
- 26:18Speaker 4: one touches your breast. They never tell you how pervert
- 26:23Speaker 4: spit gain? Is that? Is that a better way of
- 26:26Speaker 4: putting it?
- 26:27Speaker 1: Like the groom, Basically, you say, when somebody really wants
- 26:30Speaker 1: to go out of their way for you or do
- 26:33Speaker 1: you a favor and they're too eager to do it,
- 26:35Speaker 1: watch out.
- 26:36Speaker 4: Don't trust them. And I'm like that to this day.
- 26:39Speaker 4: I don't trust anybody. That's anxious to help me. What
- 26:42Speaker 4: do you want? What do you need? It's not all
- 26:45Speaker 4: molestation now, it's it's more industry angling. What's your angle?
- 26:50Speaker 4: What are you trying to do. It's like when women
- 26:52Speaker 4: are nice to me and then like two days in
- 26:54Speaker 4: they go, hey, is Trevor Noahs single? I'm like, ah,
- 26:58Speaker 4: you motherfucker. I knew that's what it was. So the
- 27:02Speaker 4: reason why I told that story in the book is that.
- 27:05Speaker 1: Can give us the story, give our listeners a little
- 27:08Speaker 1: version or the abridged version of that story.
- 27:10Speaker 4: I worked at a hospital in the cafeteria and my
- 27:14Speaker 4: supervisor used to give me rides home from work if
- 27:17Speaker 4: my car was broken down that week. At a supervisor
- 27:20Speaker 4: who did not live on my side of town, there
- 27:23Speaker 4: were coworkers who lived on that side of town who
- 27:25Speaker 4: would take me. And my supervisor would go, no, I'm
- 27:28Speaker 4: taking Roy. Y'all go ahead and go home. I'm taking
- 27:32Speaker 4: Roy home. And we would ride home and he would
- 27:34Speaker 4: ask me a million questions about my life and what
- 27:37Speaker 4: you're doing, and talk about girls. I'm sixteen. For context,
- 27:41Speaker 4: this it's like a thirty thirty five year old man
- 27:45Speaker 4: and what you're doing, what you're up to take you
- 27:47Speaker 4: to the gas station, get your candy, to the point
- 27:50Speaker 4: where after a while my favorite candies were already in
- 27:54Speaker 4: the car, and I'm just I'm thinking that's odd, but
- 27:58Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, this is my this is cool. Also,
- 28:02Speaker 4: I'm sixteen. At that point, I think I'm out of
- 28:05Speaker 4: the molestation window, because they make you believe that, Like
- 28:09Speaker 4: for all the back to school specials and all the
- 28:11Speaker 4: stuff they talk about with child kidnap and all of that,
- 28:14Speaker 4: they made it seem like middle school was the cutoff
- 28:16Speaker 4: for attractiveness the pedophiles and perverts. And so my guard
- 28:22Speaker 4: was down. It was very much down. And so one
- 28:24Speaker 4: day he gives me a ride home and he goes, hey,
- 28:26Speaker 4: I need to stop at a friend's house real quick.
- 28:27Speaker 4: You know, I gotta get ready. I'm going to this
- 28:29Speaker 4: thing to night. I'm go, okay, cool, I'm waiting in
- 28:32Speaker 4: the car. It's a pretty rough neighborhood. And he goes,
- 28:35Speaker 4: you shouldn't wait in the car. You know, GDS out here,
- 28:39Speaker 4: Gangster Disciples, they out here, the GDS or get you whatever,
- 28:43Speaker 4: Come on in the house. I get in the house,
- 28:45Speaker 4: I sit on the couch. Ten minutes later, the cook
- 28:49Speaker 4: from the hospital, he walks into the living room. He's naked.
- 28:54Speaker 4: He's got a towel on, but he's to me, you're naked,
- 28:58Speaker 4: You got on none but a towel. You naked. You
- 29:00Speaker 4: shouldn't be in another room with another man, like your
- 29:03Speaker 4: dick should never be flapping. It's what my uncle Derek
- 29:06Speaker 4: told me. It's like, if your dick's flapping, you don't
- 29:08Speaker 4: have enough clothes, go back, put some drawers on. And
- 29:14Speaker 4: he comes in and he sits on the couch and
- 29:16Speaker 4: starts making small talk with me, and then my supervisor
- 29:21Speaker 4: he comes out from the back.
- 29:23Speaker 1: This is called a power dynamic, everybody, this is a
- 29:25Speaker 1: power dynamic from the hospital cafeteria.
- 29:28Speaker 4: He's in nothing but a towel, freshly showered, both of them,
- 29:33Speaker 4: still got well, ain't even dried off. Up top, two
- 29:36Speaker 4: shirtless men in bath towel sitting next to me, and
- 29:39Speaker 4: they start trying to make chit chat. And that's when
- 29:43Speaker 4: it clicked, and took it took a while, but that's
- 29:46Speaker 4: when it clicked. And I'm like, hey, my mom is
- 29:50Speaker 4: waiting for me, and she's going to be looking for me.
- 29:55Speaker 4: And that was the one thing. But that was the
- 29:57Speaker 4: one thing I remember that somebody had taught me at
- 29:59Speaker 4: the boy club was that if somebody's harassing you you
- 30:03Speaker 4: feel like you're gonna get kidnapped, let them know that,
- 30:06Speaker 4: you know, somebody going to the search will begin shortly
- 30:10Speaker 4: after you snatch me. Like, I don't know what y'all
- 30:13Speaker 4: trying to do, but whatever it is, we're not gonna
- 30:15Speaker 4: do that shit today. Bro. My mama waiting on me,
- 30:19Speaker 4: and you can see them kind of both looking at you,
- 30:22Speaker 4: and they're like asking me, like very like non hospital
- 30:26Speaker 4: questions about you know, do you when the last time
- 30:29Speaker 4: you had sex? Do you like blow jobs? Do the
- 30:33Speaker 4: girls give you blowjob? Like? It was just very very
- 30:37Speaker 4: on the nose, y'all trying to y'all trying to do
- 30:40Speaker 4: some shit. And I say, we gotta get the fuck
- 30:42Speaker 4: up out of here, man, and and they agreed, and
- 30:46Speaker 4: they got dressed, and they took me home, and my
- 30:48Speaker 4: supervisor never talked to me again at work, no more
- 30:51Speaker 4: rides home either.
- 30:52Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 30:53Speaker 1: I would think that confirmed, you know, in case you're mistaken.
- 30:58Speaker 4: Yeah, it's confirmed.
- 31:00Speaker 2: When they came out in bathtowels.
- 31:02Speaker 4: I mean, but you compare that to a manager I had.
- 31:04Speaker 4: I had a manager at Baskin Robbins hate it taking
- 31:08Speaker 4: me home made it known that he didn't want to
- 31:12Speaker 4: but would, but hated it. We're still cool to this day,
- 31:17Speaker 4: are you. Yeah, because that's honesty, true benevolence. I don't
- 31:22Speaker 4: think real benevolence comes with excitement. People would rather be
- 31:27Speaker 4: doing something else, but they do it for you out
- 31:30Speaker 4: of some love or respect or whatever, but or out of.
- 31:33Speaker 2: Some moral ups to do the right thing.
- 31:35Speaker 4: Ye yeah, or they just trying to fuck on the.
- 31:37Speaker 2: Couch right right.
- 31:38Speaker 1: Another similarity we have you and I is I had
- 31:41Speaker 1: a big bomb at the Montreal Comedy Festival when I
- 31:44Speaker 1: write before I got very successful, and you talk about
- 31:49Speaker 1: being booed out of the Apollo and this.
- 31:51Speaker 2: Was supposed to be your life changing moment, and.
- 31:54Speaker 1: So what I want to talk I want you to
- 31:56Speaker 1: talk a little bit about when your life changing moment
- 31:59Speaker 1: doesn't become the moment that you wanted.
- 32:01Speaker 2: It to be.
- 32:02Speaker 4: How did you stay at the festival after you got booed?
- 32:06Speaker 2: It was so I didn't get booed.
- 32:07Speaker 1: I bombed, but I known booby But I mean it
- 32:11Speaker 1: was a loud enough for me to understand that I bombed,
- 32:13Speaker 1: And then I had a show the next night, and
- 32:15Speaker 1: then I left and I remember being on the plane
- 32:18Speaker 1: seeing all of these executives who were there to see me,
- 32:22Speaker 1: and ah, it's sickening. It was sickening. I was so
- 32:26Speaker 1: mortified at my own existence.
- 32:29Speaker 4: I went, It's one of those things where as soon
- 32:33Speaker 4: as I walked on stage, I knew I picked the
- 32:35Speaker 4: wrong jokes. I had a joke that could have won
- 32:38Speaker 4: me that round, and I saved it, thinking well, when
- 32:41Speaker 4: I get to round two, that's when I'm gonna really
- 32:43Speaker 4: hit them with the good jokes wrong. And I had
- 32:47Speaker 4: already had in my head like how it was going
- 32:51Speaker 4: to play out, because Apollo, this is my first ever
- 32:54Speaker 4: TV gig, this is O two. I know if I
- 32:57Speaker 4: do well here and I come back next week, I
- 33:02Speaker 4: can get like literally, this sounds stupid, but my goal
- 33:06Speaker 4: was to get in an ice Cube movie. That was
- 33:09Speaker 4: the It was the ice Cube to like Hollywood start
- 33:15Speaker 4: them Pipeline. Because Chris Tucker did well on Deaf Jam
- 33:20Speaker 4: ice Cube song put him in movies. Mike Epps did
- 33:23Speaker 4: well ice Cube, soam put him in movies. Kat Williams,
- 33:27Speaker 4: Don d c. Curry some more. Like there's so many
- 33:31Speaker 4: black comics that ice Cube was just like yeah, you
- 33:35Speaker 4: you're famous now. And I was like, this is gonna
- 33:38Speaker 4: be my moment. And I went out there and I
- 33:40Speaker 4: ate shit. Not only did I eat shit. I was
- 33:42Speaker 4: supposed to do three minutes. I came off stage at
- 33:46Speaker 4: two fifteen. Two minutes fourteen fifteen, so I had one
- 33:49Speaker 4: more joke left. I go, they're not gonna let me
- 33:51Speaker 4: do it. I know they're not gonna let me finish
- 33:54Speaker 4: the next joke. I should leave now so that I
- 33:57Speaker 4: don't get booed, and I said, good night. I walk
- 33:59Speaker 4: off stage. But here's the joke on me. You walked
- 34:03Speaker 4: off stage. That means you got to go back out
- 34:05Speaker 4: and get Kiki Shepherd it where she you know, they
- 34:07Speaker 4: put the hand over your head to judge and like,
- 34:10Speaker 4: give it up for the first comedian, Yeah, give it
- 34:13Speaker 4: up for Roy but Jr. And the boo was louder
- 34:16Speaker 4: than what would have been if I'd have just taken
- 34:19Speaker 4: the original boo. And the ride back to the hotel
- 34:25Speaker 4: that night was just like so fucking like, it's it's everything.
- 34:30Speaker 4: You know, you're on a high and then immediately you're
- 34:35Speaker 4: at your low as low and it's gone. Now rip
- 34:39Speaker 4: to the forty second Street McDonald's and Times Square, but
- 34:43Speaker 4: I went there and had a big macmeal, I see
- 34:46Speaker 4: orange to lick the wounds, and just sat there. It
- 34:49Speaker 4: was one of those nights where you're sitting there sad,
- 34:51Speaker 4: and then you can see your reflection in the window
- 34:55Speaker 4: and you're just like all this happiness streaking by and
- 35:00Speaker 4: you're sitting there. It's just I don't know what's next.
- 35:03Speaker 4: This was the way out and there's nothing I can
- 35:09Speaker 4: do now to change this. And I get back to
- 35:13Speaker 4: the hotel we were staying. I was bunking with another guy,
- 35:16Speaker 4: Henry Coleman, great comic out of Memphis, and Henry and
- 35:20Speaker 4: I were sharing a hotel room and Henry don Apollo
- 35:25Speaker 4: same day got booed. And we get back to the
- 35:29Speaker 4: hotel we're staying at the Night's End in Elizabeth, New Jersey,
- 35:33Speaker 4: and it's all open air prostitution and drugs, like the
- 35:37Speaker 4: whole street. Like, I don't know what it is now.
- 35:40Speaker 4: I know that Night's In is still there, number one,
- 35:43Speaker 4: but I don't know what it is. I don't know
- 35:45Speaker 4: what that neighborhood is now. We get back and the
- 35:49Speaker 4: sex workers and the pimps and the dope boys that
- 35:52Speaker 4: are out there. They give us a round of applause,
- 35:56Speaker 4: and it was one of the most meaningful moments of
- 35:59Speaker 4: just it's like community upliftment because they knew we were
- 36:04Speaker 4: there in town to do kind like we've been there
- 36:06Speaker 4: a couple of days, and we talked a little bit
- 36:08Speaker 4: in the parking lot. They didn't know before we get
- 36:12Speaker 4: out the car. They didn't know whether or not we
- 36:13Speaker 4: got booed or not. They didn't know shit. And it
- 36:16Speaker 4: was like, to this day, I'm still touching. Almost paid
- 36:19Speaker 4: for some sex that night out of respect?
- 36:21Speaker 2: Have you ever paid for sex? Roy?
- 36:24Speaker 4: Not outright, but right in theory all men have like
- 36:29Speaker 4: not like give me a Venmo, thanks a lot, not
- 36:34Speaker 4: like that.
- 36:35Speaker 1: Let's talk about walking away from jobs, another element that
- 36:39Speaker 1: you and I have in common. What was your final
- 36:42Speaker 1: decision in walking away from the like quitting the Daily Show?
- 36:46Speaker 1: Did you have the CNN opportunity for your show on CNN,
- 36:49Speaker 1: which is called Have I Got News for You? No,
- 36:52Speaker 1: you didn't have that job lined up.
- 36:54Speaker 4: No, that wasn't even rumored yet. I left Daily Show
- 37:00Speaker 4: October twenty two. The CNN conversation happened that following July.
- 37:05Speaker 4: But I don't get the CNN opportunity if I don't
- 37:07Speaker 4: quit Daily Show. It just didn't feel like a place
- 37:10Speaker 4: anymore where there was a solid plan for who the
- 37:16Speaker 4: next host would be. And then and I talked about
- 37:19Speaker 4: it a little bit in the book about Also, I
- 37:23Speaker 4: don't know, I just had ideas, Chelseay, I just had
- 37:25Speaker 4: other shit I wanted to do that I know I
- 37:27Speaker 4: couldn't do there. I tried to do some of it there,
- 37:30Speaker 4: it never got green. Look like, I don't want to
- 37:33Speaker 4: sound like somebody from SNL whining because I didn't get
- 37:36Speaker 4: enough sketches on. I got to do a ton of stuff.
- 37:39Speaker 4: But you start evolving and changing. I'm like, well, Also,
- 37:44Speaker 4: there was the paranoid of the merger. I was, look,
- 37:46Speaker 4: I don't know how you felt at the time, with
- 37:49Speaker 4: all the guests hosting and your name being in the hat.
- 37:52Speaker 4: I was hyper paranoid about the merger. Way depending paramount
- 37:58Speaker 4: sky Dance, which finally happened. Now that was cooking back then.
- 38:03Speaker 2: No I know, But why why did that worry you?
- 38:06Speaker 4: Because the first thing you do is cut You cut salary,
- 38:10Speaker 4: you cut weight, when you merge a company, you cut things.
- 38:14Speaker 4: So whatever it is that's happened to Colbert. If we
- 38:19Speaker 4: really want to believe it was solely budget I thought
- 38:22Speaker 4: that to be the Daily Show's fate with no host.
- 38:25Speaker 1: Well, it's the same people, right, right, right right, the
- 38:27Speaker 1: same people run Colbert did run the Daily Show.
- 38:31Speaker 4: Okay, so now you're coming off of the writer strike,
- 38:34Speaker 4: you you're a call from Comedy Central and they go,
- 38:36Speaker 4: what's up? You're coming back to work or not? And
- 38:38Speaker 4: then I go, y'all got a host? They go, no,
- 38:41Speaker 4: y'all got a plan for how you're gonna find a host? Nope?
- 38:45Speaker 4: Well I know right there, I'm not on your short list.
- 38:48Speaker 4: Number two. I know that if I stay, I don't
- 38:52Speaker 4: know what I'm agreeing to stay to be a part of.
- 38:55Speaker 4: And I don't know how bulletproof this new configuration of
- 38:58Speaker 4: the show will be. Well, this be recession proof and
- 39:02Speaker 4: merger proof. John Stewart was also not in the cards
- 39:04Speaker 4: at the time when I left the show. That's an
- 39:06Speaker 4: important detail because if John's coming back, all right, I
- 39:09Speaker 4: stay another year and ride it out through the presidential election.
- 39:13Speaker 4: But if John's not, and if we're gonna cut costs,
- 39:17Speaker 4: because even if you merge, right, let's just say they
- 39:19Speaker 4: cut the Daily Show to a week. Hey, we don't
- 39:23Speaker 4: need to do this every night, Let's do it weekly. Well,
- 39:26Speaker 4: if you're gonna do it every week, I bet you
- 39:28Speaker 4: don't need all these correspondents. And if you're gonna cut correspondents,
- 39:31Speaker 4: I bet you cut from the top, from the highest salary,
- 39:34Speaker 4: longest tenure people. This is just where my doom'sday brain
- 39:37Speaker 4: is going at the time. Right So they're gonna keep
- 39:42Speaker 4: guest hosting. The merger's gonna happen. They're gonna trim fat.
- 39:44Speaker 4: I might be some of the fat they trim, and
- 39:46Speaker 4: by the time they decide that they don't want me,
- 39:49Speaker 4: or I decide I don't want to be here anymore,
- 39:51Speaker 4: it's gonna be after the presidential election and the window
- 39:54Speaker 4: of opportunity to do anything new in late night political
- 39:59Speaker 4: satire will be gone. This is the window right now,
- 40:04Speaker 4: This is the window if you ever want to do
- 40:06Speaker 4: anything different? Are you willing to Are you willing to
- 40:08Speaker 4: stay here for another year? And bet? Not having anywhere
- 40:12Speaker 4: else to go, not knowing how the merger is gonna go,
- 40:14Speaker 4: not knowing how the Daily Show it's going to be
- 40:16Speaker 4: handled in the merger, or do you leave right now
- 40:20Speaker 4: and figure it out the same as you always have.
- 40:23Speaker 4: Same as when the sitcom got canceled on TBS, same
- 40:26Speaker 4: as when you got fired from the radio station. Same
- 40:30Speaker 4: as when you had the Whoopie the Whoopi Goldberg sitcom
- 40:33Speaker 4: on lock and then it didn't happen. So go back
- 40:38Speaker 4: out into what you know, which is the unknown. It's
- 40:40Speaker 4: the most familiar feeling I have is not knowing what
- 40:44Speaker 4: the hell is next. Like everybody looked at it as
- 40:47Speaker 4: some sort of courageous choice, but it's just like, no,
- 40:50Speaker 4: if there's a new show to be made, it'll happen
- 40:54Speaker 4: this year. I want to be in line for another show.
- 40:57Speaker 2: Prescient, very prescient.
- 40:59Speaker 1: Yes, a lot of people call into this podcast Roy
- 41:03Speaker 1: talking about this very thing. I mean, you know, in
- 41:06Speaker 1: different mediums and careers and professions, but when to take
- 41:10Speaker 1: a jump or a leap of faith and having you know,
- 41:12Speaker 1: not having the confidence to do that, and you talking
- 41:16Speaker 1: about it and knowing that you're going to be okay,
- 41:19Speaker 1: you know, because you've always been okay because of your
- 41:21Speaker 1: work ethic and because of your hustle. Like I think
- 41:24Speaker 1: that's very powerful for people to hear and to know that, Like,
- 41:28Speaker 1: you know, when you say no to something, you're saying
- 41:30Speaker 1: yes to a whole bunch of other opportunities that may
- 41:33Speaker 1: not have revealed themselves yet.
- 41:35Speaker 4: Trust yourself because they won't reveal themselves. Ceing inn. I
- 41:39Speaker 4: wouldn't have if I was under contract with Daily Show
- 41:41Speaker 4: for another year. The CNN wouldn't even call because Central.
- 41:44Speaker 4: There's no way they're going to let me out of
- 41:45Speaker 4: my deal to go do another show and essentially compete
- 41:50Speaker 4: against them during the presidential election year. Not gonna happen, bro,
- 41:54Speaker 4: So they were never going to do that. And then
- 41:57Speaker 4: true true to form, there were two things that happened
- 42:00Speaker 4: after that. There were only two shows that came out
- 42:03Speaker 4: that year. It was The CNN Show and After Midnight
- 42:07Speaker 4: with Taylor Tomlinson. Those were the only two, and both
- 42:10Speaker 4: of those shows are old ip that are remakes. So
- 42:15Speaker 4: it was even skinnier than I thought it was because
- 42:18Speaker 4: I thought there was still room for a new show
- 42:20Speaker 4: or a new idea. There was not. So, you know,
- 42:24Speaker 4: I'm not going to say I lucked out, but I
- 42:26Speaker 4: definitely had to leave to put myself in a position
- 42:29Speaker 4: to advance and do anything else different, you know, and
- 42:33Speaker 4: that it worked out, you know, But it just my
- 42:38Speaker 4: advice to your listeners would be whatever emotion or fear
- 42:42Speaker 4: you have, you've felt it before. I think the gift
- 42:47Speaker 4: is that you learn how to deal with that pressure
- 42:52Speaker 4: or that fear and manage it in a way that
- 42:54Speaker 4: makes sense. Okay, if I leave this show and nothing
- 42:58Speaker 4: else happens, what can I do? Okay? Oh, I never
- 43:02Speaker 4: got around to writing that book. I should write that
- 43:05Speaker 4: book about all the dad shit. Okay, I do that,
- 43:07Speaker 4: and I can sell that script. Maybe I could sell
- 43:10Speaker 4: the script. Yeah, I mean, you quit the Daily Show,
- 43:13Speaker 4: You'll be hot for at least two months. That's you
- 43:16Speaker 4: know that. I mean that's literally how my brain is
- 43:19Speaker 4: processing everything at the time. So I'm just like, there's
- 43:23Speaker 4: other ways, and I think something else will present itself
- 43:26Speaker 4: if I'm focused. It's like the space shuttle where you
- 43:29Speaker 4: keep coming around to Earth. You got two windows of
- 43:32Speaker 4: re entry. You missed this re entry. You gotta circle
- 43:35Speaker 4: all the way back around and run out again. Like no,
- 43:38Speaker 4: I'll just I'll jump now. At least this way, I
- 43:41Speaker 4: have control over when I jump and I'm not pushed.
- 43:44Speaker 2: Yeah, right, exactly.
- 43:46Speaker 1: I love that We're going to take a break and
- 43:48Speaker 1: we'll be right back with roy Wood Junior.
- 43:54Speaker 2: And We're back with roy Wood Junior.
- 43:58Speaker 3: We we'll start with a collar to Our first caller
- 44:01Speaker 3: is Danielle. She says, Dear Chelsea, I'm an actor, comic,
- 44:05Speaker 3: and now an associate marriage and family therapist, and I
- 44:08Speaker 3: love your advice. I started stand Up in twenty twelve.
- 44:11Speaker 3: I've quit a couple of times over the years, but
- 44:13Speaker 3: every time I leave, I can't stop thinking about it, and.
- 44:16Speaker 2: I always come back.
- 44:18Speaker 3: I restarted again in twenty twenty three, and this time
- 44:20Speaker 3: I'm determined not to quit. Right now, I'm hosting a
- 44:23Speaker 3: weekly mic at Westside Comedy and I love it. I'm
- 44:26Speaker 3: forty two, with an MFA and acting from USC. Over
- 44:29Speaker 3: the years, I've booked some great roles, and I just
- 44:31Speaker 3: finished filming a recurring role on a Netflix show coming
- 44:33Speaker 3: out in twenty twenty six. An agent once told me,
- 44:36Speaker 3: you're over forty and haven't been a series regular, so
- 44:38Speaker 3: your only hope is stand Up. But clearly that hasn't
- 44:40Speaker 3: been entirely true. At the same time, I'm now building
- 44:43Speaker 3: a career as a therapist. After earning my MA in
- 44:45Speaker 3: clinical psychology, I graduated and finished a year long internship
- 44:48Speaker 3: in June.
- 44:49Speaker 2: Here's my struggle.
- 44:50Speaker 3: I constantly compare myself to younger comics who seem miles ahead.
- 44:54Speaker 3: The voice in my head says, why bother? You'll never
- 44:57Speaker 3: get on late night, you'll never get your name on
- 44:58Speaker 3: the wall at the comedy store, and you'll never be
- 45:00Speaker 3: a real comic. I bomb Hard hosting four casino shows recently,
- 45:04Speaker 3: which left me wondering. Do I grind away and write
- 45:07Speaker 3: material for any crowd or should I focus on shaping
- 45:09Speaker 3: comedy that really reflects who I am? Psychology based material?
- 45:13Speaker 3: Should I be aimed at therapists, mental health professionals and
- 45:16Speaker 3: maybe try to get gigs at mental health conferences?
- 45:18Speaker 4: No?
- 45:19Speaker 3: How do I keep moving forward without abandoning myself to
- 45:21Speaker 3: comparison or self doubt?
- 45:23Speaker 2: Danielle Well? First of all, Hi Danielle, how are you?
- 45:27Speaker 4: Hi?
- 45:27Speaker 2: I'm so good, Thank you for having me.
- 45:29Speaker 1: This is our special guest, Roy Wood Junior. Two comedians
- 45:32Speaker 1: that you could talk to right now.
- 45:34Speaker 4: Hi, daniel One time for the West Side with the
- 45:37Speaker 4: good Mexican food upstairs.
- 45:39Speaker 2: Right on.
- 45:41Speaker 1: First of all, don't gear your casinos suck? Okay, just
- 45:46Speaker 1: so you know, I'm saying, I mean, you know, because
- 45:48Speaker 1: most casinos suck. I have a residency at a casino
- 45:51Speaker 1: that does not suck, but a lot of casinos do suck.
- 45:53Speaker 1: Especially you know that's not your target crowd, so don't
- 45:57Speaker 1: let that. That's part of the process. Also, bombing is
- 46:01Speaker 1: part of the process. It doesn't feel good when it's happening, obviously,
- 46:05Speaker 1: but it makes you a stronger comic.
- 46:07Speaker 2: Roy would you agree.
- 46:08Speaker 4: With that, absolutely, it's the repetition of it all. Also,
- 46:12Speaker 4: you're still stuck on you at twenty twelve, so you're
- 46:14Speaker 4: measuring yourself in progress from twenty twelve. I feel like
- 46:17Speaker 4: if you start comedy and stop, you essentially start back
- 46:22Speaker 4: at zero again whenever you come back in, because you're
- 46:26Speaker 4: a different person. You can't even do those old jokes anymore.
- 46:29Speaker 4: You can't compare yourself to the young And it's a
- 46:32Speaker 4: leap frog game. Some start late, some start early, Some
- 46:36Speaker 4: leapfrog and then fizzle out, some figure it out later.
- 46:41Speaker 4: I think that that part of it. I think the
- 46:44Speaker 4: name of the game. The advantage you have over any
- 46:46Speaker 4: actor is that you can build an audience. And if
- 46:49Speaker 4: you have an audience, then you have control, which means
- 46:52Speaker 4: you can write your own thing, you can create your
- 46:54Speaker 4: own thing, and you're a comic with the real world experience,
- 46:59Speaker 4: like you didn't just do this forever, like you've had
- 47:02Speaker 4: regular jobs and shit, you've had an experience. I think
- 47:06Speaker 4: that you lean into the material that will get you
- 47:09Speaker 4: rebooked at you know, some of these club spots and
- 47:11Speaker 4: stuff like that. But if you can find your own
- 47:14Speaker 4: audience online. If it was ten years ago, I'd have
- 47:17Speaker 4: told you be broad, pray for a Jimmy Fallon Late
- 47:20Speaker 4: Night set, and then maybe that'll be the thing that
- 47:22Speaker 4: gets you to the Montreal Showcase. Now, if you become
- 47:27Speaker 4: the person that has a sandbox that works exclusively in
- 47:31Speaker 4: a thing, you can grow and build from that and
- 47:35Speaker 4: have a very viable audience. You know, when I think
- 47:38Speaker 4: about like the guys We Fucked podcasts, or if you
- 47:41Speaker 4: think about, say, I'm trying to think of like some
- 47:45Speaker 4: of the other stand ups that just went off and
- 47:48Speaker 4: did their own thing. I'm just over here doing the part.
- 47:51Speaker 4: Mark Maron's a great example where it's just I'm just
- 47:53Speaker 4: gonna talk about the things that matter to me, and
- 47:55Speaker 4: the people who find me are the people who will
- 47:57Speaker 4: cherish it honestly. To pay bills and so you tell
- 48:00Speaker 4: me if I'm right or wrong on this. To pay bills.
- 48:04Speaker 4: Even in New York, you only need twenty cities where
- 48:09Speaker 4: you can sell about four hundred tickets. Maybe let's just
- 48:14Speaker 4: let's say a thousand tickets. If you do four nights,
- 48:16Speaker 4: two fifty a show, you could pay bills just on
- 48:21Speaker 4: twenty cities. Now, will you be big? Will you be huge?
- 48:24Speaker 4: Will you be everywhere? I don't know that's debatable, but
- 48:28Speaker 4: I really do think that the idea of success versus
- 48:32Speaker 4: stardom is something that's blurred. And I think that comedians
- 48:37Speaker 4: who are on, who feel like they're on the outside
- 48:38Speaker 4: looking in, look at stardom as the only form of success.
- 48:44Speaker 4: You can go do those corporate I bet you one
- 48:45Speaker 4: of them therapy conferences will pay your ass twenty five
- 48:48Speaker 4: K to one hundred k to Aventure. I remember there
- 48:51Speaker 4: was a guy I opened for. I think his name
- 48:55Speaker 4: is Mark Klein. If I'm not mistaken, Mark Klein used
- 48:58Speaker 4: to call himself the core corp, the corp gesture he
- 49:03Speaker 4: only did corporates. I don't think in my and I'm
- 49:07Speaker 4: not saying it's to shit on Mark Klein if he's
- 49:08Speaker 4: still out there doing stand up. I don't think he
- 49:11Speaker 4: had a television credit in the two thousands and was
- 49:16Speaker 4: living comfortably and great. So it's all about what your
- 49:20Speaker 4: idea of success is as well, because if you could
- 49:23Speaker 4: bring humor to the MFA world, there's not a lot
- 49:26Speaker 4: of people qualified to even tackle into that, so you
- 49:29Speaker 4: could be the beachhead.
- 49:30Speaker 2: Also, look at Leanne Morgan. I mean, she just hit it.
- 49:34Speaker 2: She's older than everybody here. You know, she just hit
- 49:36Speaker 2: it the last few years.
- 49:38Speaker 1: So you don't know when you know your success or
- 49:41Speaker 1: your version of success is going to happen. But you know,
- 49:43Speaker 1: comparing yourself to others is not uncommon. Everybody is doing
- 49:47Speaker 1: that because of social media. But it's not a great habit.
- 49:50Speaker 1: It doesn't bring out the best in any of us
- 49:52Speaker 1: to sit there and look at what other people are doing.
- 49:54Speaker 1: You have to be confident in the fact that you
- 49:56Speaker 1: have your own path and that you're going to go
- 49:58Speaker 1: down the road that you're going down, that the road
- 50:00Speaker 1: that is curated for you by you, you know what
- 50:03Speaker 1: I mean. You're the one who's making decisions around yourself
- 50:05Speaker 1: and around your career and what you're going to do,
- 50:08Speaker 1: and you have to have confidence in that in and
- 50:10Speaker 1: of itself, that's what you're doing something how many other
- 50:13Speaker 1: people are doing what you're doing not, you know, probably
- 50:17Speaker 1: not very many who have a degree an MFAA. Do
- 50:21Speaker 1: you have a marriage, Family, Child Counseling MFCC and your
- 50:25Speaker 1: other Bachelor of Fine Arts? Did you also say that
- 50:28Speaker 1: you had one of those MFA from USC acting MFA. Sorry, okay,
- 50:32Speaker 1: so they're a Master of Fine Arts. So that's already original.
- 50:36Speaker 1: You know, that's stuff you can use. And I wouldn't
- 50:39Speaker 1: curtail your material to different people.
- 50:41Speaker 2: It's like you kind of like, I feel this way.
- 50:43Speaker 1: I don't know, Roy, you tell me, I do my
- 50:46Speaker 1: thing wherever I am, Like, I don't ever adjust it
- 50:50Speaker 1: for people, because I just feel like you have to
- 50:54Speaker 1: really know what you're doing on stage and be completely
- 50:57Speaker 1: committed to that material because if you're or not, that's
- 51:01Speaker 1: when you have a bad experience or a week set
- 51:04Speaker 1: or you get or you feel like you bombed. Is
- 51:07Speaker 1: when you're not confident, you know, because you can.
- 51:11Speaker 4: Smell t to be something you weren't for an audience
- 51:14Speaker 4: that was never going to appreciate the truest version of you.
- 51:17Speaker 4: So now you're just it's like, you know, if you
- 51:20Speaker 4: think of comedy as a relationship and you on stage
- 51:23Speaker 4: is the first date. How much are you going to
- 51:25Speaker 4: pretend to be something just so that that particular date
- 51:30Speaker 4: likes you? Well, then who the who the fuck are you?
- 51:33Speaker 4: It's a great analogy. It's just likability and trying to
- 51:36Speaker 4: get people to like you enough to go on a
- 51:39Speaker 4: journey with you, and some people might not. I do
- 51:44Speaker 4: think one thing that, And I don't know what your
- 51:47Speaker 4: writing habits are, but critique yourself often and try to
- 51:53Speaker 4: find and squeeze an extra line of laugh out of material.
- 51:59Speaker 4: I'm not gonna like I write the tightest for laugh
- 52:02Speaker 4: per minute type sets, but I think a lot of people,
- 52:07Speaker 4: especially in New York, a lot of the newer comics,
- 52:10Speaker 4: in my opinion, they get very comfortable once the joke
- 52:13Speaker 4: gets a laugh or two and they go, Okay, that
- 52:15Speaker 4: joke's done. Like, no, it might not be. Think of it.
- 52:20Speaker 4: Listen to it a couple of different ways, Like just
- 52:23Speaker 4: you can message me offline and I can give you
- 52:25Speaker 4: what my approach has always been. It's just what happens
- 52:29Speaker 4: if I tell this joke louder, faster, or a different octave.
- 52:33Speaker 4: You could take words that aren't even funny and make
- 52:36Speaker 4: them funny. Like there's ways to just juice another laugh
- 52:40Speaker 4: out of stuff, and be comfortable with hating yourself, because
- 52:45Speaker 4: sometimes I listen to audio of myself and I watch
- 52:48Speaker 4: it as a hater, like listen to it as he
- 52:51Speaker 4: and then I give tags like well what he should
- 52:53Speaker 4: have said was this? Oh, well i'm him. Well I
- 52:56Speaker 4: just tag my own shit just by listening to it.
- 52:58Speaker 4: It's a free joke, so you know that part of it.
- 53:02Speaker 4: Don't run away from it. But I really do think
- 53:04Speaker 4: that the idea of just performing and waiting for you know,
- 53:11Speaker 4: comedy Jesus to find us in the back of the
- 53:13Speaker 4: comedy clubs, I think those days are gone. I think
- 53:18Speaker 4: it's all about being yourself consistently enough and then growing
- 53:24Speaker 4: from there. I stop short of telling comedians to put
- 53:27Speaker 4: clips out every week or every month or whatever, but
- 53:30Speaker 4: find a pace that makes sense for you, or be
- 53:34Speaker 4: the comic that's responsive to a particular issue on a
- 53:40Speaker 4: regular basis. And maybe that's your thing, or maybe it's
- 53:44Speaker 4: the Hey, this current event happened. Let me show you
- 53:47Speaker 4: how this fits into the world of therapy. Yeah, here's too.
- 53:53Speaker 2: You know that's interesting.
- 53:54Speaker 1: I'm mentioning on like world events, pop culture, whatever, you're
- 53:57Speaker 1: the most passionate about through the lens of with that.
- 54:01Speaker 3: Bet Well, I think mental health and therapy stuff like
- 54:03Speaker 3: does play more broadly nowadays, Like we all have that language.
- 54:06Speaker 3: It's become Dear Weger, I also want to say that
- 54:10Speaker 3: Corpjester dot com is alive and well, so Mark Klein
- 54:12Speaker 3: is out there, danns Wow.
- 54:18Speaker 2: Awesome. Okay, Well, I hope that was helpful. Danielle very
- 54:21Speaker 2: I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for the time. Sure,
- 54:24Speaker 2: nice to meet you both. Nice to meet you, Danielle.
- 54:27Speaker 2: Nice to see you, Catherine. Thank you.
- 54:28Speaker 4: Guys.
- 54:29Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and we'll be
- 54:31Speaker 1: right back with roy Wood.
- 54:37Speaker 2: And we're back with roy Wood Junior and Senior.
- 54:40Speaker 3: Okay, so our last question comes from Carrie. This one
- 54:44Speaker 3: was just an email, she says, Dear Chelsea, I'm not
- 54:47Speaker 3: a stand up comedian, comedian or frontline act i E.
- 54:50Speaker 4: Entertainer.
- 54:51Speaker 3: However, I'm in the entertainment business and understand how it
- 54:54Speaker 3: all works. I'm heavily involved in the music SNL thirty
- 54:57Speaker 3: rock comedy scene on the business end. Years ago, I
- 55:00Speaker 3: pursued a guy who's involved with a comedy podcasting and
- 55:03Speaker 3: he didn't show reciprocated feelings. Now, two years later, I'm
- 55:06Speaker 3: really interested in another comedian, but I'm scared to be
- 55:09Speaker 3: labeled as a chuckle fucker. I feel like only women
- 55:12Speaker 3: get these labels, and I'm not sure how to navigate it.
- 55:14Speaker 3: Do I just say fuck it and shoot my shot?
- 55:16Speaker 3: Or should I look elsewhere?
- 55:17Speaker 2: Carrie? Yeah, fuck it? What do you care what?
- 55:19Speaker 1: It's a chuckle fucker anyway, I mean, who gives a
- 55:23Speaker 1: shit what anyone thinks.
- 55:24Speaker 2: If you like funny men, you like funny men.
- 55:26Speaker 4: Also, chuckle fucker's reserved for people not in the business.
- 55:30Speaker 4: And this is as a guy who's fucked a couple
- 55:32Speaker 4: chuckle fuckers. Chuckle Fuckers are not people that are within
- 55:36Speaker 4: the industry. You're just somebody in the industry dating people
- 55:39Speaker 4: in the industry. Cops fuck cops, sometimes they fuck firefighters.
- 55:44Speaker 4: I think you shoot your shot. I do think that
- 55:47Speaker 4: I would be very discreet about it. I wouldn't put
- 55:49Speaker 4: a lot of public appearance on that. Just know that
- 55:51Speaker 4: if it's taking off at some point, he's gonna tell
- 55:54Speaker 4: a friend or a buddy or whatever. But you know,
- 55:57Speaker 4: why not fill it out and just say hello, oh,
- 56:00Speaker 4: just you know.
- 56:01Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
- 56:02Speaker 1: I wouldn't worry about your label being labeled anything you're in.
- 56:06Speaker 1: You know you're in the business. You're in the business.
- 56:09Speaker 1: Just because you're not a comedian doesn't mean you're not.
- 56:10Speaker 2: In the business. It's all related and who cares.
- 56:14Speaker 1: My god, we're all gonna die soon anyway, it doesn't
- 56:17Speaker 1: fucking matter.
- 56:18Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know how old that person is, but
- 56:19Speaker 4: once they get into the thirties, you're going to realize
- 56:21Speaker 4: that there's a couple of comics that have all cross
- 56:24Speaker 4: pollinated and you know, never openly dated one not is
- 56:28Speaker 4: it like a title of girlfriend, but I've dated like
- 56:31Speaker 4: two or three comedians.
- 56:33Speaker 2: Well, I think you and Yaminika should start dating. That's
- 56:36Speaker 2: my start.
- 56:37Speaker 4: Rumors stn't start.
- 56:39Speaker 1: You know, she's looking for someone, she's looking for someone
- 56:41Speaker 1: to land on, and it might just be you.
- 56:44Speaker 4: It might just be you, and I've told her a
- 56:46Speaker 4: long time ago. I don't know if you step mo
- 56:48Speaker 4: material I got a nine year old, you might try
- 56:51Speaker 4: and cuss out my baby and then his mam would
- 56:55Speaker 4: be over. Let me stop.
- 56:58Speaker 2: Talking before we let you go.
- 57:00Speaker 1: I just want to know, since you have a political
- 57:01Speaker 1: show and you're a political commentator, Well, how do you
- 57:04Speaker 1: see what's your view or long lens of our current
- 57:08Speaker 1: political situation.
- 57:09Speaker 2: How do you see things?
- 57:11Speaker 4: I think that we are into an administration that, if
- 57:14Speaker 4: we are not careful, is going to be controlling the
- 57:17Speaker 4: messaging through all of the media, through lawsuits and intimidations
- 57:20Speaker 4: and leveraging money as a way to silence voices. And
- 57:27Speaker 4: I don't think that's something that's exclusive to liberals. If
- 57:31Speaker 4: you want to get you know, get into the weeds
- 57:33Speaker 4: of freedom of speech and stuff like that. Like that part,
- 57:38Speaker 4: you know, scares me for sure, Like that's real cancel
- 57:41Speaker 4: culture when you can't even vocalize or verbalize anything, or
- 57:45Speaker 4: someone controls all the airways so you can't even get
- 57:48Speaker 4: equal time to spit your opinions and perspectives. That makes
- 57:52Speaker 4: me nervous. But it was nice to see what I
- 57:57Speaker 4: perceived to be the comedy community together on the Jimmy
- 58:02Speaker 4: Kimmel joint and all saying well, wait, you can't do that.
- 58:07Speaker 4: And that gives me hope because comedians are still the
- 58:10Speaker 4: tip of the spear. If anything's going to change, I
- 58:13Speaker 4: think it starts with comedians and also strippers, because the
- 58:18Speaker 4: strippers be dancing for the politicians and.
- 58:20Speaker 1: Thank you very much for that sentiment. Thank you, Roy
- 58:24Speaker 1: Wood Junior. You can catch him on CNN. His show
- 58:27Speaker 1: is called Have I Got News for You? His new
- 58:30Speaker 1: book is called The Man of Many Fathers. It's an
- 58:33Speaker 1: incredible book. I recommend every mother getting this and reading it,
- 58:38Speaker 1: and any straight men that are listening to this you should.
- 58:41Speaker 2: Read it too.
- 58:42Speaker 1: But I doubt there are a lot of straight men
- 58:44Speaker 1: listening to this podcast, and women read more than men,
- 58:48Speaker 1: So there we go.
- 58:50Speaker 2: I'm glad to be a woman.
- 58:51Speaker 1: I'm proud of our female listener readers, and who needs
- 58:55Speaker 1: straight men anyway?
- 58:57Speaker 2: Thank you Roy Wait for a minute now.
- 59:01Speaker 1: Congratulations, right, We love you, Thank you for coming on.
- 59:07Speaker 5: The word of the week is penurious, adjective given to
- 59:12Speaker 5: or marked by extreme frugality. Penurious, the penurious miser declined
- 59:20Speaker 5: to put a coin in the Salvation army bucket.
- 59:24Speaker 2: Penurious.
- 59:27Speaker 1: I just announced all my tour dates. It's called the
- 59:29Speaker 1: High and Mighty Tour.
- 59:31Speaker 2: I will be touring.
- 59:33Speaker 1: From February through June, So go get your tickets now
- 59:36Speaker 1: if you want good seats and you want to come
- 59:38Speaker 1: see me perform, I will be on the High and
- 59:41Speaker 1: Mighty Tour.
- 59:42Speaker 2: Do you want advice?
- 59:43Speaker 3: From Chelsea right into Dear Chelsea Podcast at gmail dot com.
- 59:47Speaker 3: Find full video episodes of Dear Chelsea on YouTube by
- 59:50Speaker 3: searching at Dear Chelsea Pod. Dear Chelsea is edited and
- 59:54Speaker 3: engineered by Brad Dickert executive producer Catherine Law and be
- 59:58Speaker 3: sure to check out our merch at Chelsea ham Dour
- 1:00:00Speaker 3: dot com m