-[ Applause ] -[ Clears throat ] Thank you.

-So, as your moderator, uh, we're going to have a conversation for maybe about half an hour, and then we're going to open it up for a conversation with all of you, um, and so I'm just going to dig right in, uh... -Uh-huh.

-...and let me say I'm delighted to be moderating this discussion today, uh, but, Geoff, I have to admit, when I saw that you had written a book about... ...Black comedians... ...in America, I -- my first thought was, "Wait a minute.

This guy has been covering -- He knows the White House inside and out.

He -- He -- He's been covering all these major events," and now we see this pivot to comedy in America, -Black comedy in America.

-Yeah.

-What made you decide to make the move?

-Which you do well.

-Thank you.

Appreciate it.

-But what made you decide to make that move?

-Well, first, it's a real pleasure to be in conversation with you, and thanks to all of you for joining us here at the National Book Festival.

Uh, that is a fair question.

I've covered national politics now for 20, 25 years, and I knew that, when I wrote this book, my first book, I didn't want to have politics consume any of the empty spaces in my brain.

I'd been doing that for so long, um, and what I wanted to do was focus on the culture.

And so for me, this has been the book I've always wanted to read, because I had been kicking around this question as I got older and as our son got older and I was watching him, how he consumes media, how was it in the 1990s that you had all of these now-seminal sitcoms, "A Different World," "In Living Color," "Living Single," "Fresh Prince," "Martin."

Arsenio wasn't a sitcom.

He was the king of late night, as far as I'm concerned.

And then beyond that, you had "Showtime at the Apollo" in syndication in -- in late night.

How did all of that happen in the '90s?

I've worked in television long enough to know there are no coincidences.

So what was the business decision that led to that?

The great thing about being a journalist is that it gives you license to call up anybody around the world, and, if they'll give you time, you get to ask them a question.

I am now a pseudo-expert in maritime law and maritime, uh, whatever.

T-Tariff policy, I know it front and back because that's what I cover, uh, in my day job.

But this question allowed me to call up Erika Alexander and Karyn Parsons and Sinbad and Arsenio and all of these people who, for me, were comic legends, really, in many ways.

And I asked that question and pieced it together.

And as I was doing the research, I realized I couldn't tell the story of the '90s fully or responsibly without looking at all of the history that made that possible.

And so I started tracking back decade by decade by decade, and then I realized, you can't do this without starting at the beginning.

And, of course, the beginning of comedic expression in this country, Black comedic expression in particular, is minstrelsy, which then became vaudeville and the Chitlin' Circuit and all of that.

So that's in the book, too.

The other half of this is, and this is certainly true of the work I do now at the "NewsHour."

Yes, we cover hard news and we cover foreign news and politics and all of that, but we also cover the culture and cultural coverage, I think, is so often dismissed as soft or secondary.

You know, as a matter of fact, in most shows, you'll see the arts and entertainment at the back half of the show.

It's usually in the back half of the paper.

I think it's just as important because the culture is where we have conversations first about how we see each other, what we -- what our ambitions, what we want from our leaders, what we want out of policy.

And that happens in the culture first before it is translated into politics and policy and legislation.

And that was certainly true of those of -- those sitcoms, and -- and we got to see a lot of those at the time, real -- real issues that we were grappling with in culture, on television before they ever made their way to Washington, D.C.

-Mm.

And -- And why did we see the change we did, that 1990s, all of a sudden, you know, I remember "In Living Color" and all these things that I'm watching on television, I'm wondering, "Why are we seeing it all at once?"

-It was this wild convergence of talent, timing, and a cultural urgency.

You had the booming Clinton economy.

You had a growing Black middle class.

You had advertisers and you had networks that were looking for different audiences.

The first interview I did for the book was with Barry Diller, who launched Fox, the Fox broadcasting network.

And for the younger people in the room, sometimes when I say Fox Broadcasting, people think Fox News, but that's not what this was.

This was -- At the time, there were the Big Three networks -- ABC, NBC, CBS.

And so Fox was the new kid on the block.

And Diller told me he knew that in order for Fox to be successful, it had to be two things.

It had to be bold and brash.

It had to break away from what was on the other Big Three networks, which he described as ing-- indistinguishable.

He said their sitcoms, you couldn't tell them apart what network they were on, and the network, the Fox network, had to have a foothold in the cities.

Now, Black folks, obviously, were overrepresented in cities, and we were also at the time overrepresented in terms of TV viewers.

So it was a business decision.

As it was also explained to me, Diller kind of had to be helped along [chuckles] uh, because, at the time, Fox was sort of tinkering with shows like "The Tracey Ullman Show," and the idea was to have it be this sort of countercultural, still mostly white-focused, highbrow network, uh, but when word got out that Diller was looking for this network to be different, he got a pilot submitted to him, and the working title at the time was "Not 'The Cosby Show,'" which you have to give it to whatever producer that was, 'cause who's going to make it difficult for your show to get green-lit?

So what do you do?

You call it "Not 'The Cosby Show'" if what you're looking for is a show that is not "The Cosby Show."

And, of course, "The Cosby Show" was number one.

Feels like it was -- It actually was number one for the almost entire duration of its, uh, air on TV.

Uh, that show later became "Married...with Children," and when "Married...with Children" found success, that helped really etch the formula for what Fox became.

And then you get "The Simpsons" and "Cops" and you get "Living --" "In Living Color," uh, and all of the shows that -- that came after that.

-And -- And when you talk about, uh, representation on television, what do you mean when you say representation?

-This is a great question because, of course, there had been Black folks on TV before the 1990s.

What's different is that in the late '80s or early '90s, there was a level of authorship, and that matters.

It's not enough just to be seen.

You have to hold the pen.

It's important to be able to tell those stories directly.

And the other takeaway here is that you would think -- and anyone who's involved in content creation would know this to be true.

You would think that.

in order to reach the biggest audience, the widest audience, you have to be really generic and broad and general.

The lesson of the '90s and the lesson of everybody who's found success on Instagram and YouTube these days, is that the more specific and the more authentic you are, that's where you find success.

So take a show like Martin Lawrence.

Martin -- there was nothing about Martin's show -- the fact that he was this successful deejay in Detroit, uh, married to a successful, uh, marketing executive who had these friends and these crazy characters like Sheneneh and Bruh-Man and all these people.

There was nothing about that show that would suggest that if you were, let's say, a white person living in the Midwest with no Black friends, that you would watch that show, and yet there were tons of white people in the Midwest with no Black friends who watched that show and found themselves either just not necessarily reflected in it, but found entry points into it.

Uh, and so that is also the lesson of those shows, too.

-And, speaking of lessons, there are a number of comedians that you go into detail about their, uh, lives, both positive and negative.

Um, and I'm just going to put it out there -- -Bill Cosby.

-Yeah.

-How did you figure out the balance between the things that are very positive and innovative in the story and the things that are distasteful and shameful?

-I knew going into it that the -- the way to handle Bill Cosby is to know that both things are true, that, yes, his -- what he represented as the -- sort of the first Black successful comedian on network television with a show like "I Spy," and the fact that he was so focused on respectability before there was a word for that, where he was always on stage in a crisp suit and was always, uh, presenting himself in a way that he thought he wanted the entire race to be seen.

That was important in the day that he was doing that.

And it's also true that what he is accused of and what he served time for is monstrous and horrific, and you cannot tell the story of the 1990s, you can't tell the story of Black comedy, you can't tell the story of the cultural impact of comedy in general without Bill Cosby as a figure, and yet his -- his personal behavior and the -- the -- the assaults for which he served time, again, are -- are horrific.

So what I did in the book is I held both truths simultaneously and focused on the art and focused on the impact of -- of what he put out into the world.

You would not have "A Different World" were -- obviously, were it not for "The Cosby Show."

And you would not have had all of the -- the Black cultural renaissance.

I'm focused on television in this book because I work in television, and also I watched a lot of TV as a kid.

um, but think about the Black cultural creation in the '90s, whether it was music, '90s R&B, or television, movies, uh, fashion.

You had Karl Kani, Enyce, FUBU, the list goes on.

Just across the board, uh, and my view of it is you would not have had that were it not for a show like "The Cosby Show" that gave people entry points into that specific family, but also into a broader look at different people's lives and laughter and love.

You would not have had a Colin Powell Secretary Colin Powell.

You would not have had a President Barack Obama as early as we had them, were it not for the impact of "The Cosby Show" and having that -- that vision of that family projected into millions of people's homes.

That show was number one for as long as it was because it gave people so many different entry points.

-And -- And let -- let me just say, one of the beauties of the chapters is, on the -- on the one hand, we get this analysis of the things that we're able to -- what comedy generates in -- in society, but you also take us into the laughter itself, and so I don't know how you did it, but there were these moments where I was immersed back into a particular scene from "The Cosby Show" or back into a particular, um, stand-up routine -from a Richard Pryor... -Yeah.

-...and then immediately flipped into the politics and -- and the business practices that -- that were just kind of crazy.

-You know, my favorite -- my favorite business decision I write about in the book is how "In Living Color" transformed the Super Bowl halftime show.

Are you all familiar with this?

So, before the 1992 Super Bowl, the Super Bowl halftime shows were pretty pedestrian affairs.

It was, like, literally a marching band on the field, and Brian Boitano was out on the field, even though he's an ice skater and there's -- there was no ice.

But it was because, at the time, the networks would use the halftime show to promote whatever they had next.

And so, for CBS, it was the Olympics, uh, and that's why Brian Boitano was there.

Uh, so Fox had this idea to counterprogram the 20 minutes -- the 20-minute halftime show, and you can see this on YouTube.

It's really kind of cool.

Jim Carrey says, "Hey, if you're concerned about missing the rest of the Super Bowl, we're going to put a clock, and at the end of this clock, you can click back over.

Don't worry.

You're not going to miss a thing."

And they did a truncated version of "In Living Color."

They counterprogrammed it.

Do you know that some, like, 20 million people switched over and never went back?

[ Laughter ] They never went back to CBS.

And so the next year, CBS and the NFL were like, -"We can't have that."

-[ Laughter ] -So they went and they booked Michael Jackson, and that's how you get the halftime show as spectacle.

The other half of this story, and I learned this from one of the production designers who told me about it, 'cause I was like, "This is crazy."

Like, how do you convince Michael Jackson to perform in the middle of a football game?

Well, Michael Jackson thought that he was doing a concert and that there was, like, football on the front end and on the back end, as it was explained to me, and he -- and he said, "Why can't we just do this at night?

Because I want to have -- I have a whole pyrotechnic scheme and the lighting would be better at night.

Let's just do this at night."

And so they basically had to convince him that, "Okay, we can do this the way you want to do it.

We just can't do it at night."

And so if you go back and watch the performance, he, you know, pops out and he just stands there for like, I don't know, five minutes and just bathes in the adulation.

And that, I'm told, was part of the deal to get him to do it.

But -- But -- But it's just -- it just speaks to the ingenuity and it also speaks to -- you have to credit.

And this didn't last for the entire duration of -- of -- of "In Living Color," but you have to credit the executives at Fox who let smart, creative people do their thing and trusted them and got out of the way.

Now, granted, they collected the -- the -- you know, the advertising profits and all that -- the revenue and all that, but they -- they let them create and got out of the way.

That doesn't happen anymore, and there's a lesson there.

-Yeah.

And... speaking of lessons -- I-I love lessons.

Uh, there are also some lessons about, uh, how we think about free speech... -Yeah.

-...throughout the book, uh, and -- and I-- I'm going to admit that one of my favorite, um, comedians is, uh, Dave Chappelle.

I know he's done some stuff that got him into lots of trouble.

Uh, but one of the things that you do in the book is you kind of show us a little -- you peel back a little bit more of the Dave Chappelle story.

-Dave Chappelle, I mean, I -- I can say he's brilliant, and you all will agree.

He -- His whole -- Everything about him is different.

His parents were intellectuals.

Most comedians have some form of, like, a tortured childhood.

That was not his story.

Um, he, I think, is probably one of the last comedians who still exists in the tradition of social criticism.

Nowadays, and this is especially true because of Instagram, You have comedians who are doing crowd work.

You have comedians who are still doing sort of the conventional, you know, set up, punchline, and then they'll clip the best two minutes and serve it up to the algorithm.

I don't say that derisively.

That's -- We live in an environment where that is now required of anybody who wants to make a living doing this work.

Um, but -- but Dave Chappelle is an interesting character, one, because he was brilliant.

Two, the -- the question that he grappled with, which was, "Are -- Are people laughing with me, or are they laughing at me?"

That goes to the very beginning of Black comedic expression in this country.

It's -- It's who is the joke for?

How much should I care about the -- the perspective or the prejudice of the audience so that when I'm making a joke from this stage, it might land differently than I intended it?

Um, and, you know, he tells the story about how they were doing a sketch.

Someone on crew laughed in a way that caught his ear differently, and then he decided in the moment, "That's it.

I'm not taking the deal from Comedy Central.

I'm going to go take some time and find myself."

That requires -- I cannot tell you how much discipline and how much character that requires to get off of the -- of the rocket, the rocket of fame and money.

That takes so much discipline.

And the fact that he was able to do that is -- is extraordinary.

Now, to your point about him being controversial, my colleague Amna Nawaz interviewed him.

Um, if you didn't see the interview, you should check it out on -- on YouTube.

And what's interesting is he -- he is -- he is not indifferent to the criticism.

I think what he rejects is the culture, the culture that would try to say that, "If what you're saying is too provocative, you don't have a right to say it."

That is what he is pushing against.

And what's really interesting about him is that he is now incorporating that perspective into his act, uh, which, again, just shows just another level of -- of brilliance on -- on his part.

-Yeah, and -- and as I was reading the Chappelle, I found myself going back to the chapter on Richard Pryor.

-Yeah.

-A very different upbringing.

-Oh, absolutely.

I mean, his was a -- his was a rough, rough childhood.

And his daughter, Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor wrote a book.

She was on the "NewsHour."

You should definitely check out -- check out her book.

What's -- And I told her, I said, "The most difficult thing in writing this book was trying to figure out what was true about Richard Pryor's upbringing."

-Wherry: Mm.

-And she said, "Yeah, my dad had a way of crafting his own narrative," uh, because he would just invent stories in interviews, and it was part of his -- now it -- we know it was, like, a defense mechanism, um, but it was -- it was really -- we were doing the fact-check for the book and I was like, "I hope this is the correct version," until we get -- we finally got to it.

But, you know, before Richard Pryor, most comedians were doing safe observational humor.

Now, if I say, "Oh, that comedian is authentic, and he pulls from his own experience," it's like, well, who doesn't?

But that's not what comedians were doing before he really pivoted, and I say pivoted because he started in the model of Bill Cosby at the time.

He was basically a clean comic.

Which is understandable.

If you're trying to find your own voice and you're coming up in any sort of creative field of expression, you tend to mimic what works until you find your own voice.

And, boy, did he pivot.

[ Laughter ] Uh, but, yeah, I mean, you -- you won't find a comic working today who does not credit the brilliance of -- of Richard Pryor and his ability to turn his pain into humor on stage and allow people to find entry points into his work through their own trauma, or just the fact that he was so funny.

-Yeah, and -- and he -- as -- as all the, uh, comedians that you discuss, they emerge as social philosophers... -Mm-hmm.

-...as social critics, and, for some reason, being foolish gives you license to say things that you might not have said otherwise.

So what is it about the function of the -- of the comedian that allows them to -- to -- to deal with really difficult topics?

-Comedy has a way of lowering our defenses.

Uh, politics asks you to choose sides.

Comedy doesn't do that.

One of the interviews I did for the book that I was proudest of was a conversation with Sinbad, uh, and he was telling me -- Richard Pryor -- he was playing a Richard Pryor record in his room, and his father was a preacher and his mother was the mother of the church.

And he could hear them stop in front of his bedroom, and he was playing the record that I cannot tell you -- -I cannot say in -- in... -Wherry: No, you cannot.

-...good company, uh, and he heard his parents laughing -and he said -- -[ Laughter ] -He said, "Man, Richard Pryor got everybody."

-Wherry: Mm-hmm.

-And -- And it's true.

And to take those shows, for instance, episode six, season one of "Fresh Prince," Will and Carlton are driving a friend's Mercedes to Palm Springs, and they get pulled over by the police and Will knows instantly.

He's from, well, West Philly, born and raised.

So he knows -- he knows exactly what's happening.

He realizes they're being profiled.

-Carlton, God bless him... -[ Laughter ] ...doesn't because of his proximity to wealth and the way that he was raised and the whole thing.

And so you see this -- you see this moment of police profiling play out, which, again, when I talk about windows and mirrors.

So for the Black families watching that show, it was an opportunity for Black parents to talk to their Black children, their Black sons, about what to do if you get pulled over by the police.

And for everybody else, they were windows into this specific experience.

But the way that they handled that on the show is Will and Carlton go back home and they talk to Uncle Phil, and Uncle Phil's like, "Oh, yeah, That -- That happened -- That happened to me."

And for the first time, Uncle Phil and Carlton have a conversation about what it's like to get profiled by the police and -- and what to do.

And, again, it's a serious topic, but it's enveloped in humor and heart.

Uh, and we certainly saw that on "A Different World."

That was a show -- It was not -- None of these shows were, like, socially conscious.

They were still -- I mean, they're sitcoms, right?

So sitcoms exist as advertising.

That's essentially what they are.

Um, they are economic products, business products before they're anything else.

But the decision to -- to infuse these shows with -- with a heart and some sort of social meaning, uh, is huge.

And, again, that's one of the reasons why they are so impactful and why we're still talking about them today and why these shows are getting rebooted.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-And when I think about the impact of these shows, um, there is a way that they could have been pigeonholed into something that just only belongs on BET, Black Entertainment Television.

-Which is fine.

Which would have been.

-Would have been fine.

-Yeah.

-But that's not what happened.

-No.

-So what is it about writing about the particulars of an experience that still, uh, generates a universal appeal?

-Yeah.

And the other -- [ Chuckles ] Since -- Since I ask people questions for a living, I'm going to ask myself a question, building on your question.

[ Laughs ] The -- The other part of this, too, is, 'cause I get this question sometimes, how did you choose which shows to write -- write -- write about?

And the answer to that question is I chose the shows that expanded the form.

Um, and the shows that expanded the form are also the shows, to answer your question, that weren't the "Black shows."

And I don't say that derisively.

If it had been just a-a Black show with Black folks and Black people in the writers room, and the -- and the audience was entirely Black, terrific.

These shows, though, had universal reach.

They had universal appeal.

They were top of the Nielsen ratings for a reason.

Um, and it gets back to this authorship point.

In many cases, they had executive producers, they had showrunners, and they had writers who were Black and Brown.

Uh, and that's -- that's a lesson, too.

If you watch the first season of "A Different World," it is very much unlike the rest of that show.

And it is because Phylicia Rashad went -- you want the whole story about "A Different World"?

Okay, here it is.

So back whe-- before the bottom had fallen out of -- of TV [chuckles] and networks had a lot of money.

If there was an actress on your show who you wanted to remove from your show, you would create a spin-off for her.

These days, you'd just write her out.

So Lisa Bonet, as it was explained to me, had done a film called, uh, "Braveheart --" "Lion --" -"Angel Heart."

-"Angel Heart."

-"Braveheart."

Not the one with, uh, Mel Gibson.

-No, no, no, no, no, no.

-Lord, it's been a long day.

Forgive me, y'all.

Yes, had done -- had done that show.

She was dating Lenny Kravitz.

Bill -- Bill Cosby was not pleased and wanted her off the show.

He created "A Different World" as a -- as a star vehicle, a spin-off for her.

What's interesting about that was the show shot on a studio in Los Angeles.

"The Cosby Show" shot in New York.

And the reason for that is -- it was explained to me, was because if the show was a failure, it allowed everybody back in New York to wash their hands and say, "We knew nothing about that show.

They didn't even film on the same coast as us."

-Mm.

-So as it was explained to me, Phylicia Rashad went and visited the set and saw the first, uh, season, parts of it, and realized it wasn't working.

She comes back and tells Bill Cosby, "This show is part of your legacy.

We need to fix it.

And the way to fix it is to bring in my sister, who will overhaul the entire thing."

And that is precisely what happened.

Debbie Allen comes in on the second season.

They -- They basically re-- rewrite the -- the premise of the show in many ways, uh, overhaul the writers' room.

She was so focused on details that she went down to The Pit and said, "If this is an HBCU, where's the hot sauce?

Why is there no hot sauce on these tables?"

And it was that level -- the granularity, the specifit-- the specificity, the level of detail, and now she's involved in the reboot on Netflix, which I've seen, but I can't tell you about until it debuts on September 25th.

It's worth your time.

Um, but, yeah, I mean, it's just -- it just -- it just speaks to, again, when you -- when you let the folks who know the story in the room and tell the story, it yields success.

-Mm.

Could this ever happen again?

-No.

-Okay.

-[ Laughter ] -No.

-[ Exhales sharply ] -And it pains me to say that.

I often say -- you know, I work in television news.

I often tell people I'm so grateful that I rolled under that garage door as it was closing, uh, and -- and got into this business because I worked with people, veterans of this -- of this industry in particular, who, I mean, paid their dues, who really honed their craft, who invested in people, who poured into the next generation.

Uh, it made me a better writer.

It made me a better storyteller.

But the economics of it just don't sustain, uh, the -- the kinds of sitcoms and the way those sitcoms were produced, the way they were back in the '90s and even the early 2000s.

One of the reasons why the cultural renaissance ended was because reality TV.

Uh, the -- the saying "talk is cheap"?

It -- It is.

It's certainly -- It's true of -- of daytime TV.

Talk shows are cheaper to produce than soap operas, which are cheaper to produce than, you know, longer scripted, well-formed dramas, uh, and so it -- it could not happen again.

The economics aren't there.

What we're seeing now -- you know, there are what, 80 billion people on the planet, 80 billion cellphones, 80 billion stories on social media.

There is more content, but it's far less impactful.

Um, will there be a room of people talking about any of these content creators 30, 40 years from now and about the resonance of their work?

That's not a dig on any of the work that they're doing.

It's just that, you know, for younger people in the room, there was a time back in the day when you would sit down with your family in front of a television, in a living room, and there might be one remote control and you'd have a conversation about, "Well, if you want to change it, you're going to have to wait until the show goes off."

There was no instantaneous DVR.

It was very intentional.

And for the most part, people were watching the same things.

They were having conversations the next day at the water cooler at -- or at the, like, high-school locker.

There are a million reasons why our -- our cultural cohesion, our social -- social cohesion is not what it was.

I would suggest that a large part of that is because we're not watching the same thing.

We're not listening to the same thing.

Everybody's sort of in their own silos doing their own thing.

And now there is -- there's an entire business model that is -- is based on that being pushed and propagated.

Uh, so until that is broken, we're not going to see what we saw before.

-Oh.

And now that we have a moment that's a little low... -Yeah.

-...from myself... [ Laughter ] ...I'm going to ask the audience to help lift us up.

So, um, we have microphones here and here.

You may come forth.

We will let you know who goes first and who goes second with questions or comments.

Um, but thank you for being honest.

-I didn't -- I didn't mean to kill the vibe with the honesty.

-No, thank you for being honest.

Thank you for being honest.

Uh, no-- and -- and so now the vibe will be revived.

-Absolutely.

-So first here.

Uh, your name and your question.

-Davis: I'm Darnella Davis, and there are two, uh, pieces of film that I've seen recently that I'd really love you to put in context.

One is "Hollywood Shuffle," 1987, which I had not heard about until I read about it in The New York Times last week, I think, to watch it.

Why don't I know about this?

And the other is, at the Metropolitan Museum, in their Egyptology exhibit, they have that clip of Richard Pryor going on an expedition into Egypt, finding the pyramid that tells that African-Americans are the aliens, and it reveals everything.

And the -- his white colleagues come in and -- and basically close up the tomb with him saying, "Yes, we invented this, we invented that.

We invented all of these things."

These are two just signal pieces of media.

I can't believe that I -- I grew up without knowing about them.

-Well, you know about it now, Ms.

Davis, and that's all that matters, so thank you -- Thank you for the -- for the question.

The -- How to put that in the context of this book?

What you see is that, again, back to this point about every generation of comedians pushing the boundaries, expanding the form, that was certainly the case with "Hollywood Shuffle."

And "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka."

You would not have had an "In Living Color" and you would not have had, really, any -- you wouldn't have had "Mad TV," any sort of Black sketch comedy that existed in that way, were it not for those shows.

And what's interesting is -- so Keenen Ivory Wayans was part of Eddie Murphy's posse, and he did not want to be part of his entourage.

And Keenen Ivory Wayans wanted to be a movie star.

But the word was, as it was told to me by a Paramount executive who was on Eddie Murphy's, uh, production team, that, at the time, and this is sort of true now, -there was only room for one.

-Wherry: [ Chuckles ] -There was only one -- room for one Black megastar, and Eddie Murphy had that cornered.

And Keenen Ivory Wayans had done "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," came off of that movie, and then there was this development deal waiting for him at Fox, and he was basically pushed into doing that show that was "In Living Color."

So that is probably the most tangential way I can put those two pieces of film that you mentioned into -- into -- into this timeline, which is to say that you keep seeing this.

It's comedian after comedian after comedian, opening the door and holding it open, either intentionally or with their creative product long enough for the next generation to come through and do their own thing.

Thank you for the question.

Yeah.

-Woman: Hello.

Thank you for the conversation.

Um, I'm very interested in what you said earlier about Black comedy evolving through the '90s and resonating with different audiences across America at the time.

I think we're seeing something similar with digital communities like Black Twitter today, which has felt like a respite for many, especially during major social, economic, and political moments in the world.

And so curious, based on your extensive research, um, what, to you, makes Black comedy so universally healing and sought after?

-Wow.

That's a great question.

Um, Black folks has -- have always laughed.

I mean, it's been a form of escapism.

It's been a form of survival.

Uh, it has been -- certainly, this was the case during the '90s.

It had been an economic engine [chuckles] with the success of -- of those shows.

So it has always existed as this escape valve, um, whether it was to laugh to keep from crying or just to have a good time.

Um, the other thing about those -- these shows in the '90s is that, to a person, all the people I interviewed, I said, you know, "Did you know at the time that what you were doing was going to be so culturally important?"

And they were like, "No.

Like, our goal was to put funny stuff onto the airwaves and keep a job and keep a check coming."

Like that was -- that was the goal, but because they were so good at it, uh, they -- these shows stand the test of time.

Thank you.

-Faith: Hi, my name is Faith.

Um, in following that conversation, I'm curious about what you think about the shift from Black sitcoms to Black dramedies.

I'm thinking of Issa Rae's "Insecure," -Donald Glover, "Atlanta"... -Yeah.

-...or "The Vince Staples Show."

-So I'm going to -- this actually -- this addresses your question, Ms.

Davis, because so Issa Rae and Quinta Brunson, when they got their development deals, one was at ABC and Issa's was at HBO, they turned to Larry Wilmore.

And Larry Wilmore, as you know, is this brilliant comedian.

He had a late-night show on Comedy Central.

But Larry Wilmore got his start in the writers' room of "In Living Color."

And the way he explained it to me was that Keenen Ivory Wayans, he had said, you know, "This is not a democracy, this writers' room.

This is a dictatorship.

And I grew up in a funny family, and no sketch is going to get on TV that doesn't make me laugh."

So imagine if you went into work every day -and that was the bar.

-Wherry: Yeah.

[ Laughter ] You -- You have to be good at what you do.

You have to be funny.

And today, in this current environment where people can just post whatever they want, and the idea is that, "Oh, there are no gatekeepers," gatekeepers serve a purpose.

Gatekeepers can make you better at what you do.

Uh, and so, when I look at Issa's work, "Insecure," that show was perfect.

I mean, the first -- I mean, I'd say the first three seasons, but the first season in particular, the point of view of that show was so well-defined.

The characters were so well-defined.

Quinta Brunson says that when she writes a character which she always has in the back of her mind is, if you put a $5 bill on the floor, every character should pick up the $5 bill differently, that they should have such a well-formed point of view and a well-formed world, so that when something as simple as picking up a $5 bill off the ground, that everyone does it differently, but they learn that because who was their first call?

It was -- It was Larry, right?

So these days where, you know, people are still finding success and they're still getting their work out into the world -- and to your point, it tends to be dramedies or it tends to be single-camera sitcoms -- um, there's no -- there's no substitute for -- for doing the work and for seeking out people who can help make you better.

And that's a lesson no matter what you do.

-Faith: Thank you.

-Thank you.

-Shamari: Hi, my name is Shamari.

-Um, I work in PR.

-Hey, Shamari.

-Shamari: Nice to meet you.

-You, too.

-Shamari: Um, and I wanted to circle back to the comment that you made about reboots and, like, if you'll ever get that cultural phenomenon of, like, amazing Black TV that we did in, like, the '90s and the 2000s.

Um, I remember having a conversation with my friend just about that, and we were talking about, like, how there's so many reboots of, like, classic Black TV shows, but also just reboots in general.

There's so many.

It's actually very overwhelming.

Um, and so I told her.

I was like, "I'm curious to know," and also for your point, if you think that there's only so many of these reboots, particularly for Black TV because they don't want to commit the dollars to fund new Black television shows?

-Yes, but that's true across all of entertainment.

How many Avengers, how many Marvel films keep -- how many Spider-Man -- I was asking my son, "What's different about this Spider-Man versus the other 17 Spider-Man films that have come out?"

It's because...the economics of cultural production, whether it's television or film, being what they are, executives, networks, studios are really only going to take a risk and spend millions upon millions of dollars on something that's tried or true -- -tried and true.

-Shamari: Mm-hmm.

And you take a show like, uh, "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and you get "Bel-Air" or "A Different World," and you get the "A Different World" reboot.

That-- That's why we're seeing that.

Um, and for -- for younger folks like yourself, I hope I'm not too harsh on -- I hope I'm not -- I hope I don't sound like a big downer on the stuff that you all watch and the stuff that's native to you.

And the -- the generational disconnect is, and I've told this story before, but I remember watching Kris Kross on "In Living Color" the Sunday that they were on.

The next day I go to school -- and Kris Kross performed with their clothes on backwards.

The next day I go to school.

It was Voorhees Middle School at the time, and all these kids had their clothes on backwards because not just us, millions of people in every community across the country had watched it and people were like, "Oh, that was really cool.

They were neat," or whatever, and they wore -- I didn't wear my clothes on backwards.

I wasn't allowed to, uh, but -- but they did.

And so that -- that's what's missing.

It's the -- we don't have the same cultural -- shared cultural vocabulary, um, that -- that we had growing up.

-So thank you for the question.

-Shamari: Thank you.

-And now we're going to start taking two questions at a time.

-Okay.

-So here and here.

And then you'll respond.

So go ahead.

-Melvin: Hi, y'all.

My name is Jasmine Melvin.

Thank you both so much for being here.

-Thank you, Jasmine.

-Melvin: Um, I wanted to revisit the Dave Chappelle conversation from earlier.

I also love Dave Chappelle.

I think he's brilliant.

And I recognize, as well, the perspectives of those who might feel offended by his work.

And so I wanted to ask, um, what is the social responsibility of a comedian of that magnitude, um, and how that plays in role with, like, the First Amendment, freedom of speech, as well.

-Bennett: Dave -- -Wherry: Ooh.

-Dave would say his responsibility is to be funny, um, and I think most comedians would say that.

-Wherry: Okay.

-Jessica: Hi, um, my name's Jessica.

Um, so I was just thinking about how we can often get stuck in our own sort of algorithm and a sort of echo chamber, and, um, I think that probably speaks to a little bit why so many things get rebooted, but I'm wondering how -- or, like, what are you watching now that kind of gives a similar nostalgia to, um, you know, like the "A Different World," the "Martins" and, you know, we -- we come to the "Insecure" and the "Abbott Elementary" because it sort of gives us that -- that sort of feeling.

But, like, what are you watching?

What are you engaging with right now that's sort of, um, new and interesting and exciting to you?

-That's a great question.

Um, unfortunately, my answer's going to be "Abbott Elementary."

[ Laughter ] And "Insecure."

I mean, any show that has well-developed characters, any show that has heart, that's -- that's what I'm drawn to in part because everything feels -- everything not feels, it is.

Everything is so fraught right now that, when I have time to watch television or anything on streaming, um, that's kind of what I -- what I'm drawn to.

Um, but thank you for the question.

-Jessica: Already watched those things.

Any other recommendations?

-Oh, I'd have to -- I'd have to think -and get back to you.

-Jessica: Okay.

[ Chuckles ] -Yeah, no, that's a great question.

-Jessica: Thank you.

-Wherry: Okay, we've got here and then here.

-Coleman: My name's Davion Coleman.

Thank you very much.

Um, when you -- in that same vein, when you think about, like, new media and even folks like Issa Rae and Quinta Brunson getting their start on BuzzFeed and YouTube... -Yeah.

-Coleman: ...how do you see, um, the potential democratization of creators, uh, through new media, like social media, but also maybe the fragmentation that that also brings with the algorithm?

Like, how do you feel like that's pushing -the medium forward?

-So Kevin Fredericks, whose Instagram name is KevOnStage, he is a really interesting case because he started, um, you know, content creation while also having a full-time job and then pivoted when he en-- he ended up making more money from what he was doing on Instagram and TikTok than what he was making, you know, with his full-time job.

And then, along the way, he got a deal with BET where he developed a show for BET.

And so that's an interesting -- not everybody can do that.

Most people can't.

But that's an interesting model, and I think we'll certainly see more of that.

And it might not necessarily be networks that are plucking these content creators.

It'll be brands that are doing that.

Um, but then the question is, do you really want to watch a comedy that is somehow connected to, like, Monster Energy drink?

Um, what would that be like?

It's one thing for these brands to -- to, um, you know, advertise in podcasts, but if you're watching something that's supposed to be a scripted narrative and it's connected directly to a brand, what does that look like?

And I think that's kind of what we're heading to.

-Thank you.

-Wherry: Yes, sir.

-Mike: Name's Mike.

Uh, excellent se-- session.

-Thank you.

-Mike: Go back to the '70s.

-Flip Wilson.

-Oh.

-Mike: First comedy -- uh, variety comedy show.

-Yeah.

-Mike: Just -- -Well, yeah, Flip Wilson was the -- the first African-American to have a network variety show.

Um, he expanded that form, and you would not have had any of the folks I write about in the '90s, uh, were it not for him.

He also was a really incredible businessman.

Part of the reason why Richard Pryor, uh, did not find continued success through the back half of his career was because he was viewed by network executives and the studios as a risk.

And Flip Wilson was not seen as a risk.

He was a brilliant businessman, um, and was really intentional about owning as much of his show as he could, to the point where I didn't know until doing this book that Arsenio owned his show, um, in much the same way that Oprah later in her career owned her -- her entire studio and all of the work product that came from it.

And that's not -- that's rare.

It's not like, "Oh, that was rare for a Black entertainer or -- or Black media figure."

That's rare for anybody to be able to do that.

Um, so, yeah, Flip Wilson, one of a kind for sure.

-Oh, so now we're going to do something that, um, -is absolutely necessary.

-Yeah.

-We are going to quickly take the last questions in a clump.

-[ Chuckling ] Okay.

-And then you will have -30 seconds to have a last word.

-Okay, and this is because we're live on C-SPAN.

-'Cause we're live... -Everybody watching at home.

-...and -- and... -We got a hard wrap coming up.

-We have to run this on time.

-Yeah.

-So it's going to be one, one, two, three.

By virtue of how long you've been standing.

So quick and quick and quick and quick.

-Matt: Okay.

I-- I'll try.

My name is Matt.

Thank you for being here.

Um, I am fascinated by this conversation about, uh, respectability and how Black folk should present themselves and navigate this world.

I think the conversation is not exclusive to comedy.

It goes back to Du Bois versus Washington, and, specifically thinking in the comedic context, when you were writing about "Fresh Prince" and, um, your -- your identities as a Black man and a journalist, did writing this book and researching this book, listening to these cultural conversations about respectability and identity affect your identity in any meaningful way?

-That's a great question.

-Now, may you step forward quickly.

-Micah: Hi.

Thank you for this conversation.

-Yeah, thank you.

-Micah: My name is Micah.

My question revolves around you mentioned that sitcoms are really just advertising, and when I hear that, I think about the musical elements that are perpetuated through every comedy, from Will Smith and Bell Biv DeVoe to Jodeci and Martin, the list goes on and on.

What would you say really brought that full circle and helped them both thrive in an era where the culture in each was so significant?

-Wow.

-Then here, sir.

-Man: Uh... -[ Laughter ] -Man #2: It's a memory challenge.

-Man: Um, can we get your survey on the impact, uh, on TV by the late, great Quincy Delight Jones Jr.?

-Wow.

-Goodness gracious.

-And the final.

-Delina: Uh, hi.

My name is Delina.

Uh, my question speaks to a lot of the stuff that's already been discussed, um, but it's going back to your comments about how this era of network television probably won't be replicated in the future because of how, like, fragmented and individualized the media landscape is nowadays.

Um, how do you think -- I'd like -- I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that fragmented media landscape would be able to -- like, specifically in terms of Black content, um, would be able to serve maybe less effectively, maybe more, um, as the dual window mirror, uh, to, like, given experience.

-And now for your 30-second wrap-up.

[ Laughter ] -To that -- to that last point, I think -- I think social media and digital media, I think it's already doing the work.

Um, it's one of the beautiful things about -- about the digital landscape is that, yeah, people -- people do encounter different lives and laughter and perspectives they would not otherwise encounter through the device they have in their hand.

To the question about identity, on a personal level, my identity was not formed through consuming TV, mainly because I had two parents in the home who cared a lot about me, uh, I was in church on Sundays, I had grandparents and aunts and uncles, so my identity was very much a -- as a result of growing up in Voorhees, New Jersey, the son of Gary and Jean Bennett.

Uh, but it was affirming to see at that time on television you could be Will Smith or you could be Carlton, you could be Regine, or you could be Khadija, you could be Hilary or you could be -- pick anyone else who was on TV at the time.

And all of that existed at the same time.

And the simultaneity was the point.

It meant that not one show had to represent all of Black America, which is impossible, but up until that point, that was the expectation.

And that was the beautiful thing about the 1990s.

And that's the heart of this book, "Black Out Loud."

[ Cheers and applause ] -Congratulations.

-Thank you.

Thank you.

-Thank you.

-Thank you all.

Thank you all for being here.

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