Who’s with comedian W. Kamau Bell?

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:11It's the treatment. We're going old school with an old friend who hasn't been here in way too long. W. Kamau Bell. He's on tour with his Who's With Me tour. I'm with you. Hey, there we go. We're done. I can leave. Okay, yes, that's right. Just leave a silver bullet and move on your way. What you do on that show, what you do in your act, what you do in your subset, is about the ways that politics and popular culture intersect, and that they're inextricably entwined. And I was looking at your Instagram feed and I just love what you posted about Kimball but also you making a point that Jimmy Kimball was going to be okay.

0:44Yeah. Yeah, don't cry for Jimmy in America. I mean, you know, fighting for his job was a symbol of fighting for all of us and hopefully it gets us united to fight for all of us. But Jimmy was going to be fine. Oh, golly, of course, because he was even saying before Trump kind of called him out, he said, well, maybe I'll retire because my contract would be up next year. But I was like, Trump just threw that in a gauntlet. And in this weird way, by giving more oxygen to the opposition, he's actually helping. Yeah, he's actually reinventing late night. Trump is actually bringing late night back to prominence.

1:15All these networks will be like, well, late night's going to air. We're going to phase out soon. We're going to phase out Colbert. But he's actually like, you know, he actually improved Jimmy Kimmel's ratings, which is the Streisand effect on steroids. It's the question. I think it's actually something we talked about the last time you were here, which is, does it help to have an adversary for comedy? Yeah, you can't have, even if the adversary is the missing sock in the dryer, you got to have something that is causing you dismay. You know what I mean? I think dismay is what the thing is where you're like, I thought it was this, but it is this.

1:47And that disconnect, that distance between those things is where the comedy lies. But yes, certainly, you know, the president being a fascist is a little bit more dismaying than the lost sock in the dryer. Apologies to Jerry Seinfeld. but I think so much of what you do comes from a position of passion rather than a position of anger and I feel like that's always been the sort of dividing line between you and a lot of comics who deal in the kind of things you deal with, it's really as much about it's more about passion than it is anger if I'm not fired up about something I can't really tell a joke more than once or twice if I'm not invested in it, like I gotta get this out then it's not gonna work for long especially in stand-up, like you can't tour the thing for months and months and months or years and years and years unless you're still connected to the original idea.

2:32Also the passion about communicating your feelings about the idea, too. Because, I mean, that really is the fun of it for me because that's your delivery, the passion. And I think it's one of these things that, because it can often be oratorical and fiery, people mistake that for anger. The older I get, the more I feel lucky that I come from the greatest generation, Generation X. We call that the greatest generation, right? the greatest generation and I think a lot of that generation especially in the 90s when when we were young the old days in the 90s that was about like expressing an idea and being able to do it with naked passion like not being sort of self-conscious about it like this grunge movement is about like we may not have all the right instruments or we may not have it it may not sound the way as polished as the other music and hip-hop is about like we have two turntables and a microphone and we're going to make the most out of it.

3:26And so for me, I think that generation, seeing those people around that time and being a part of that, I mean, you know, I can't be in KCRW without talking about Henry Rollins. Like he was a guy who was like, if I care, I'm going to be super passionate about it. And you can tell with Rollins, you could look at it as anger, but it came from like love and sadness. Like, why isn't this better? Why isn't this better? And I think for me, that's how I feel about this. This could so easily be better and we're ruining it. It's funny you say that because your Substack really, it's interesting, so much of that stuff sounds like it's been written by AI.

3:58You know what I mean? Yeah. And your stuff sounds, it has your verbiage and your cadence. I know, I do. I purposely write it in a way because when I talk, I spread out words like, I haven't seen you for years. And if I do it in suspect, I will write Y-E-E-E-E-E-E. Just because I'm like, I am trying to communicate the idea that I want you to hear it in my voice. And it's funny, I get some emails sometimes from people like, you know, I think you shouldn't. Like things that they want me to change. And sometimes this woman responded, I said, absolutely not. Like I cannot do anything you're asking me to do.

4:28Like the whole point of the suspect for me is really inherently selfish. These are ideas that are in my head. I want to get them out. I hope you enjoy them. But it's not. It's actually more for me than it is for you. so I'm not you can pay me for it and I appreciate if you do but I'm not forcing you to pay me for it so this is really a salvage activity and a way to keep my brain sort of connected to what's going on and also a way to like vent the ideas like when I see members of my fellow comedy community taking money from the Saudi Arabian government I'm going to be thinking about that anyway like I'm not a thing I don't have to go what do I write about on Substack this week I go in my mind I'm already tearing this idea apart and rolling it over and going and trying to defend what they did and trying to and then you go wait a minute i think i can get 2 000 words out of this you know what i mean and often when i start writing i have a little bit of the thing but it's like when i'm on stage i just start following wherever my writing's taking me it's not chat gpt live from ryan i'm no it's not it is not i'm here with our old friend must have been in a way too long w kamar bell you'll see the showcase here w.com slash the treatment again i just felt like the thing you're just talking about, Henry Rollins, where there's an element of sadness.

5:36And because that whole, again, it's voicing, not venting. You just say, why aren't you asking yourself this question? How can you ask questions of the world and not ask this question of yourself? I mean, this is the whole thing you wrote about self-awareness and lack of self-awareness, which I thought was astonishing. Oh, thank you. I mean, the thing about being a stand-up comedian, a lot of people are talking about it, but I felt like I could frame it as like, here's what it is to be a standing comedian when you start there's two different gigs there's the good shows where you have fun but you don't get paid and there's the good gigs where you get paid but the show's not fun a la private gigs in people's living rooms standing against the fireplace while it's on for some birthday party like which i've done i've done that uh and they say you can't say this this and this and you go and you go okay i am making two hundred dollars you know what i mean so it's It's just the nature of the game.

6:29And also, it's feast or famine. You get a lot of gigs. Sometimes you get no gigs. I don't think that mind ever leaves you. But at some point, you have to ask yourself, who am I? There's been plenty of times. I'm sure all those comics have turned down gigs that had good money where they're like, I don't want to do it for X, Y, and Z. I definitely have done that. I've done it recently where I was like, oh, I can't. I can't. And a lot of times, that's because I don't want to be associated with the thing that that thing is associated with, is connected to. And it is hard sometimes to tell my wife, not that she understands, but like they offered me this, but I just, and she understands.

7:02But it is like we could use that money. And it was way less than$1.6 million. That's such an astonishing, again, lack of self-awareness. That's why I want to talk to you about that piece. I'm glad you're here today to talk about this, because that piece is really about this fundamental question about where we live in popular culture, especially for somebody who positions themselves as people who observe the world. And who have criticisms for the world. Because I think whatever you think about Kevin Hart, nope, I don't think he's ever endorsed any presidential candidate or ever. I'm not even trying to put him down.

7:32He's just not that guy. He's trying to make it. He's trying to. He's made it clear. I want to be a billionaire. He's made that. He said it out loud. And somebody who also comes from a really hard scribble life would tell him his father being a crack addict when he was a kid. And money means a different thing to you. And you, like, got to get all. I'm not giving him total cover. But I just but then Bill Burr, who like was recent, like in the last time we heard about Bill Burr in the comedy press was him talking about all these comedians inviting racists and anti-Semites on their podcasts and giving them license to sort of like basically like clean up their reputations.

8:01And everybody's like, that's a good point, Bill Burr. Once again, you did it. And this is Bill Burr, who is famous for regularly railing against billionaires as being unethical, because if you're not paying, if you're a billionaire, but the people who work for you aren't making a living wage, then that's not right. And for example, said you learned about the greatest generation and said, how can you call these people the greatest generation where they basically were racism was as much a part of what they were as anything else? Yes. Yes. I mean, so the idea of the first greatest generation. Yeah.

8:28Yeah. Not that we've taken it. GeneX has taken it. But yeah. And so it would be malpractice for me if I didn't talk about this. To me, it would be like an obvious like, oh, come on. I was not talking about it. Did he get this? He's about to go to Saudi Arabia. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like sometimes there's this thing that happens where I'm like, if I am who I say I am, then I have to say this out loud. If I am who I say I am, I got to take the hit because it's like it's not it's not great to be a comedian talking trash, quote unquote trash about other comedians. But also, as I get older, I'm more dead than comedian at this point.

9:00You really feel that way? Yeah, because when I'm on stage, I'm still a dad. When I'm off stage, I'm not a comedian. I'm a dad. You know what I mean? to the extent that like I even do show sometimes like my oldest daughter sings and plays guitar she'll sometimes open for me wow my my middle kid will sometimes hang out next to like I'll give her a mic and she'll hang out next to the stage with me and like when she has things to say she'll say so I am more aware of my dadness than I am as my comedian-ness and there's also this part about like part of this is about like I gotta try to make sure that the work of liberation is lighter when it becomes their turn than heavier because when my mom gave me the black baton as I call it it was lighter.

9:38When her dad gave her the black baton, it was way lighter. You don't have to go to too many of a jury. You're in enslavement. You know, where it was like, the fact that they got out made the baton lighter. And now we're in this time of like, I may be handing my daughters not only a heavier baton, but two and three batons. Because you gotta, here's the black baton is heavier. The LGBTQ baton is heavier. The immigrant baton is heavier. Like, you know, and you gotta carry all of them. We're gonna take a break. My guest was giving his daughters an enormous amount of spiritual aerobics to deal with.

10:06It's W. Kamau Bell. The show is, who's with me? It's The Treatment. We're with him. More that comes. Stay with us.

10:22It's The Treatment. My guest was caffeinating right here across from me, and it's not as bad as it sounds. It's W. Kamal Bell. He hasn't been here in way too long. The show can also be here at KCRW.com slash The Treatment. But I've been thinking so much about your great television work. and those shows which also, each show was kind of an issue show. They're also shows about self-awareness, which is questioning how do I live in a world that has this and what's my relationship to it? I mean, I think it's been amazing to me that you've been able to bring your sensibility, you've been able to transport your sensibility to so many different venues, so many different areas.

10:59Yeah, I mean, it's funny. By the last couple seasons of United Shades, I would say this, I don't know if CNN enjoyed me saying this, that the show had radicalized me because I saw America in a way that I did not know America before. So like we did two shows in Hawaii. The first time I went to Hawaii, it was really like, what is Hawaii? What is the history of Hawaii? And I think the show was at its best when I got to ask the sort of the quote unquote dumb questions, but I really didn't know anything about Hawaii. Second time we went, it was the final season and CNN was like, we want you to go back to Hawaii.

11:30And I was like, yeah, no problem. And they said, we want you to do an episode about how tourism has brought Hawaii back after COVID and about how Hawaii has encouraged people to move there. The digital, like the sort of the, they encourage people from the mainland to move there and give them like, you know, incentives to move there. And I was like, I don't think that's true. Those two statements. I don't think, I don't think that tracks with what I have to ask you what that meeting was like. And they sent you that pitch because that episode definitely was not. Yeah. I just read, go to Hawaii. That's all I read.

12:04That's all. I was like, go to Hawaii. Yeah, I'll do that. And then we booked an episode and we talked to tourists and we talked to. But that was primarily about. And this was my premise for the show that you hear me say a couple of times. They may take it out. Is it possible to move to Hawaii and not be an a**? I was like, that's the question. The question is, is there any way to move here ethically and not sort of like build on the settler colonialism that is already sort of that already runs Hawaii? And I got to have so many native Hawaiians or people who are multi-generational Hawaiians go for the most part of no, it's not.

12:38No, because every time you move here, you make it more expensive on us. And tourism is an extractive industry because none of the hotels or none of the major hotels are native owned. And so that money that you spend at the hotel goes off the island. And so for me, it was just such a great way to be like, I'll ask the question. If everybody says, yes, it's possible to move here, then you get what you want out of the CNN. but nobody said yes maybe a couple people did but not in any sort of like real way with a substantial point of view about hearing you say that it's almost like have they not seen any of the other episodes of this show?

13:12I mean I think I'll give him a credit like my boss at CNN Amy and Tellis is great we had a lot of great conversations and so I don't know that this stuff all came from her but like when I would talk to the people who were beneath her about this below her yeah I don't know how to say it correctly I think they kind of saw me as like Kamau's a blank slate. Like he just sort of shows up and is like, what are police? And it just so happened that as the years went on, I was like, I can't I can't ask the same level of questions. I have to ask, like, why are police? So by the last couple of seasons, there was definitely some like really back and forth with me in the network.

13:52And because the show is so highly acclaimed and always and they generally took home a trophy. till Stanley Tucci showed up and ate pasta. And people were like, that's actually what we want now. But the work was always talked about. And it became identified with CNN in a way that gave them more to the conversation nationally than they had without that. I always say globally too. Yeah, which they don't have now. They don't have, I mean, they still are doing shows, but they're much more like sort of touristy travel shows, you know, which is fine. It's on them. but I do know that like as much as they may have wanted me to do things differently, they couldn't help but go, people do talk about this show.

14:30I have to ask you this because it feels like what you've been doing your entire career is building a constituency. CNN gave you license to sort of say, there's more of these people out here than come to these shows. You got the word out to them. As this world is expanding and we now have to see getting back to self-awareness that you can build your own empire as much as waiting for an institution to see money in you and do, isn't this a better time to be you than other times now? I mean, it's a more interesting time. Like I would say like, as much as I've talked about CNN, I couldn't be here without that platform.

15:04I couldn't have the platform I have without them giving me this huge platform with which I was able to build off like a career off of. And also it gave me the ability to get into other things. Like I, you know, directing and do, and even though I never directed an episode of United Shades, people started to see me as a director because I was on that show, clearly had a big creative impulse. And so it has given me now the ability to have different arms of my career that I never even envisioned. So, yeah, yes, yes, I could have gone hardcore punk the whole time, but I wouldn't know what I know now.

15:34But the fun thing with that show, too, and again, to me, it gets back to where we started, again, about self-awareness. You acknowledged that you were learning with almost every episode. Oh, yeah, every episode. Even the episodes where I knew what I was talking about, I didn't know the depths of the issue. So you do Defund the Police. I know what Defund the Police is, and I did the episode because I was like, you don't know what the fun the police is seeing in viewer, but I don't have the depths of the knowledge of the people I'm booking. So for me, the important thing about that show and in my whole career is like, if you're going to surround yourself with people, surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

16:02Again, for me, the most fun thing about that show, knowing you a little bit, but certainly following you, that fearlessness about saying, well, why am I here? And I don't really know what this is, but let's ask that question and also wait for the answer, which is because you didn't answer it for people. And also include the parts. I think people don't understand this too. it's easy to edit an episode so I look like the smartest person in the episode. And there's shows where they do that, where they cut out the parts where the host is like, and so I always think about the moment we did, we did an episode about black trans women in Dallas, Texas.

16:35And there's a moment where I asked this black woman, what do you think heterosexual men can do, like straight heterosexual cisgender men can do better to support black trans women? And the person said, I don't know, you tell me. and they were like not like saying it you actually tell me right now and i'm like i can stand up and be a be clear i guess i got an answer out we could have cut that out but the whole point was me showing it's on me it's not like and that's it's and also not your typical journalist who's like no no i don't answer questions also i hate to break this to you that's great comedy i mean it actually is great it actually is looking looking like you don't know what you're doing is a great comedy.

17:18I mean, we often said a lot of the show is just watch Kamau do something poorly. You know what I mean? Often physical or sports or dance related. But yeah, no, it actually is great comedy. It is great comedy to see the guy go, I'll just see me stumble. So, and it's, it's more human. So to me, that's what the show was. If you're going to watch Lisa Ling's show, which was great in my show, Lisa's doing a very different thing than I'm doing. And Lisa's show has moments of humor too, but I'm leaning, I'm sort of panning for those moments of humanity, which are usually great comedy. Yeah, I mean, because at some point, that thing you're talking about does happen when somebody's flustered and kind of chewing their tongue trying to answer something.

17:53That's in every episode of the show. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just thought, well, thank God that he is aware enough to know that this is the thing, again, that also creates empathy. When people see people trying to figure out what to say in a way that's not combative. Yes. But in a way that's about honest communication. See, that's the thing. As long as you're saying it made you look bad, it didn't. But also, it's a real situation where people are talking. You weren't trying to put somebody on the hook. And she wasn't trying to put you on the hook. No. So that's honesty. And I also was always trying to create an environment where it actually feels more like a conversation than an interview.

18:27We had a director, Michael Steed. And some directors will hand you, like, a dossier of information. And, like, the night before, here, read all this, study all this. And you try to get through it. And then some directors will be like, here's the eight questions we need. And then they'll come in and go, here's nine more questions we need. And, oh, don't forget to ask about this. because they're editing in their head, understandably. By the last few seasons, I was working with Port Ains Company, so great directors, Morgan Spurlock, Helen Cho, Michael Steed. Michael, we'd be talking about like, man, I can't believe the Democrats are so blah, blah, blah.

18:55Anyway, you got to talk to this Iranian guy, and he would just walk away. And then I would talk to him for a while. I knew what it was about, but I was just like, and then I'd look over at Michael, and he'd be like, we got it, are you done? Do you have anything else you want? And it gave me confidence at a moment where I was like, I didn't know. You got this? You know what you want to talk to this person about? And that is something I've took with me for the rest of my career. Is that what I responded to? Because the last season didn't feel so pro forma, where it was like, I'm going to do this, and this.

19:23Even though you sort of broke that mold in a lot of ways, there was that sense in the first season that didn't exist in the last season. No, the first, I mean, we went through, it's funny, somebody came up to me one time and was like, somebody's like, yeah, I've heard it's hard to work on that show. And we did go through a lot of showrunners, and we did go through two different production companies. And I sort of at some point was like, yeah, it's hard to work on the show because we're doing something that hasn't been done before. And a lot of people would come on that show and thought they understood it.

19:49But then they would try to do their version of the show instead of letting me do my version of the show. By the last two seasons with 0.0, Bourdain's production company, the producers, directors were like, you know what you're doing. Do it. Here we have some guide rails for you. And I'll say it come from working with Bourdain. I'm not going to push them as hard as Bourdain did or do. So I got to be more in the driver's seat, which made me which gave me a lot more confidence as a director. Like, oh, I know what I want. And then when I started to direct and I did, we need to talk about Cosby, whatever that thing is, I was like, that's the most version of myself I've ever put out in a project ever.

20:24I got to trust all my ideas or I got to have my ideas beat up against by other people. But at the end of the day, that's mine. You know what I mean? and it was really fulfilling in a way that a lot of times United Shades, there was too many ghosts in the machine for me to get the thing across I wanted to do. Or I didn't know enough to do it. Well, if you want to see my guest, W. Kamau Bell, be in the driver's seat and the car, go and see him on the Who's With Me Tour. I cannot thank my guest, W. Kamau Bell, enough for being here. You have to come back more often, like, every 10 years. I was surprised he'd get booked this time.

20:53I'm like, I thought he only talked to, like, major people. I didn't know he talked to—I was major at one point. It's only like major people. That's why you're here. Not major people, like major people. Mike Ranger. Okay, yes. When I speak out loud, you say I'm crazy. When I'm feeling proud, you say I'm lazy. W. Kamau Bell is an Emmy-winning TV host and director. He gave us United Shades of America for CNN and also the docuseries We Need to Talk About Cosby. But first and foremost, he's a stand-up comedian and now on the road with his act, Who's With May? His fellow bomb-thrown comic, Tiffany Haddish, can be heard on inspiration at The Treat at kcrw.com slash thetreat.

21:41And new installments of The Treat drop every week. Find them wherever you get your podcasts. The latest is from Eddington writer-director Harry Astor on a French film that has fun and finesse. The show is produced and edited by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilgrist. To better days, everyone. I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treatment.