The Watch - What Are the Secrets of the Peacock Library? And an Interview With Roy Wood Jr. of ‘The Daily Show’

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

Though it’s dense and complicated, ‘Dark’ is still an enticing show (3:25). NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, will be here soon, along with a large back catalog of shows and the sneaky-popular ‘Yellowstone’ (13:04). Plus, an interview with Roy Wood Jr. (25:34). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Roy Wood Jr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Ringer.com. And joining me on the other line, he used to listen to the moldy peaches. Now he just thinks about moldy jam.

It's Andy Greenwald. How dare you? How dare you open our podcast that way, Chris? The second moldy jam joke I've made on podcast today, I'm sorry to tell you. Andy, it's Monday. It's lovely to see you. We're here.

to talk about pop culture. And also, we're going to have a chat today, second half of the show with a comedian and Daily Show correspondent and all around entertainer, Roy Wood Jr. I'm very excited to have Roy on the show. Long time coming. I'm going to talk to me about all kinds of things. This is one of those things. Usually, there's a little, you know how I'm, I'm all about peeling the onion, just letting people know about process. That's what I'm about these days. And usually when we're like, we might talk to Kristen Bell about Frozen too when we've already banked the interview. Sure.

This one, we haven't done yet. Don't know. So when I tell you, we're going to be talking about a variety of topics from quarantining in New York City to his time on the Daily Show, to showing up on better call Saul, to the protests. It's all in play. We don't know. But I'm excited.

Andrew, there's a couple of things I wanted to talk to you about today that are happening in pop culture. Obviously, this week, we've got Peacock launching on the 15th, I believe, what day is today? Today's the 13th. Lucky 13th. And everything's going great, by the way. I don't know if you've been paying attention. Especially in Cali.

Things are, we're crushing it. We are not crushing it. So, yeah, like, obviously, do you know what this weekend was?

It was like, it was like a little bit one of those weekends where you're just like, it's hard to find the pop culture thing to like kind of get in the zone with, you know? Like,

I watched a bunch of stuff this weekend. I finished Love Life. Loved it. I finally finished it. That was something one that I'd kind of like, been piecemealing, like giving myself once a week for, almost like watching it as if it was on like every Thursday or something like that.

So I finished Love Life. You do it slowly like that. you build up the antibodies. I don't want to spoil it for anyone. And Juliet and I talked about this a little bit on TV concierge, but you know your boy from High Fidelity, Kingsley Banadier, Mac from High Fidelity? You mean the most handsome man alive?

He's just like the number one draft pick if you want a boyfriend right now on television. I don't know who he has replaced, you know, which actor had that belt before, but right now he is currently the number one boyfriend in America. I mean, I thought Jamie from Devs had the inside track on that. But I guess he turned out replaced on Love Life. Yes. He has a comeback. He does try to put together a most improved season.

But it kind of falls apart at the playoffs. So I finished Love Life. I watched Palm Springs, which I enjoyed greatly. And, you know, other than that, we've just been kind of like doing saddle work over here, you know, getting ready for the lonesome dove trail. What about you? What have you been up to? Well, I think, you know, like I'm back on that dark beat.

And we can talk about it a little bit later in the show or we can just kind of get into it because we are going to kick off a month late. And I apologize our coverage of season three of dark on Thursday. So our household- I've decided you shouldn't apologize. I've decided that's a very dense show. Okay. I've decided that if that show had been on any other network, we probably would have just been talking about it every week for two months. So don't work.

It is an odd show for a binge. It's intense. It's an intense. One of the things that I'm kind of excited to talk about when we're fully talking about as opposed to the sort of stutter stepping is why is this show good? Because it breaks almost every rule

that I carried around like on a laminated card when I was a TV critic. Like I was a backup quarterback. You know what I mean? It is humorless. It is. wildly dense.

Episodes seem to have themes individual to an episode, but they get subsumed in the churn of multiple episode seasons. Its proudest point, at least, I'm almost finished the second season, seems to be demonstrating that

human nature and human free will are impossibilities. And it is so deeply German because it basically seems to be like life is you know, this is not a German company, so I apologize for the mixed metaphor,

but like life is a complicated piece of furniture from IKEA. And your best case scenario is you just Allen wrench all the things in the right places and then you sit on it for the time you have to sit on it. And that seems to be the goal. And yet... When they say that you have lost your fastball, the truth is that what you just did was mix

IKEA, time travel, and forest dump into one sort of metaphor. You're like the Jamie Moyer of television. I am approaching his age. When people say that I've lost my fastball, what they don't know is that I've been getting my reps in in the Taiwanese baseball league. That's how I keep it active. Look, I am so excited to talk about this show because I've just really been having a good time watching it. And you know, people listen to this podcast know that like when I love a show. I love a show, but sometimes, sometimes it's, it's a little bit like homework to catch up

on something. Especially like, something as dense as this. Yeah, and yet, I've really been enjoying watching it. I don't ever reach for a second screen. I'm not sure I care. I just really enjoy it. Technically couldn't unless you knew conversational German. Oh, so you're suspecting. Okay, so can I, let me just quickly. You just wouldn't know what was happening. If you were just like, I've been looking at Twitter for 30 minutes. What's up with this jam situation? And then you looked up. I don't want to put people on blast here. I'm not naming names. But last week when we talked about dark, I recounted an anecdote who my wife, who has been a member of Sycamundas with me throughout. She has, she's committed now. She is watching this with me. But I said that she wanted not our recommendation, although

upon further conversation, she says she would have taken your recommendation about it, just to be clear, that she'd got a recommendation about Dark from a friend. The same friend mentioned to her that her boyfriend, the friend's boyfriend, doesn't really need to look at the subtitles anymore because from watching three seasons of the show, he quote, pretty much knows German now. So also, I would say that in the third season, they only really say seven lines of dialogue. They just repeat it constantly. They just always say, we have to untie the knot.

The end is the beginning. The beginning is the end. And then there's some stuff about like, you know, our desires and our wants and whether or not they dictate us or we dictate them. We can keep chatting about dark. I guess the reason why. Sometimes they say, sometimes they say voist do. Yes. They say that a lot.

I mean, the show gets very far away from its original premise of these, these people, ordinary people that extraordinary things are happening to, which I think is actually, you know, usually the DNA for all great stories is something like that. And that's why you have, you know, when you do jaws, you've said. And Martin, who's never been on a boat or doesn't like boats, out on the boat because it makes his experience that much more dramatic to see him go through this. When you're watching dark, I think for me, it resonated a little bit more beyond just like incredible sci-fi when it was about this very unique group of German teenagers who are experiencing something absolutely supernatural. now that it is more about like time hunters traveling through through the galaxy, it's it's like it's a different hang, but it's still very good. And I'm really looking forward to talking about it. It is a Netflix thing though, just to just have the end be the beginning.

Watching the second season being like, oh, so it's just the eight episode, the eight hour second season begins with five solid hours of here are the mechanics of closed, closed loop bootstrap paradox time travel. And then in the sixth episode, they're like, oh, but also this was really ever about family. And it's wonderful, as you correctly pointed out, a wonderful enjoyable episode. That's not what you said when I asked you what you thought.

You said, you were like, you definitely were like, Chris, this one is definitely a mood. Well, I said specifically, I said, talking your dad into hanging himself for the good of the spacetime continuum is a mood. That's true. And, you know, weirdly, it's a very 2020 mood. It's a well-made episode that harkens back to the things that I felt love to begin with.

But, and I just think it's worth saying that if this was a week-to-week show, you would have been like, I don't know how to say, get the fuck out in German. I could try, but no one's going to be happy with it. If you couldn't just immediately keep churning them, I think. So it does fall. It does lean into that. If people have it caught up yet, I think you're actually in really good shape because I would say that the hardest thing for me was to get back into the groove because of the delay between two and three, which was not there. It was totally normal amount of time. But I was like,

I don't remember how this works. And it took me half of the third season to kind of get back into that flow. Do you know who doesn't have that problem that you're describing? And I hope people who haven't watched Dark will at least just like hear this pitch out. The people who don't have that problem are the time travelers of Dark who just sit in carpeted rooms. And and twiddle their thumbs for 30-year stretches and then pop in at important moments just to drop some mind jewels. Really unclear also, like when they eat,

when they, like, do you go to the bathroom? Like, do you ever do anything other than like pop up in 1913 and like, you know, tell your younger self? Yeah, I nail that timing, but now I'm going to go just peace out for three decades. I can't wait to talk about it. We'll at least do the first two episodes of season three on Thursday. while we're on the topic of house cleaning,

let me also just say that in a very disheartening time, the number of people who appear to be purchasing copies of lonesome dove by Larry McMurtry because of our just unabashed adoration of this book makes me so happy. Please keep at it. Let's read the book. Larry, call us. Larry, come on a podcast. Call me on your landline.

We are going to cover the show and the book. in August, so you have time if you haven't already jumped on the cattle train. Okay, now you want to do some, like, you want to go through the transom wire. You want to talk about entertainment. Danny Deadline. You know, like, you're so professional now, man. You're so, like, I'm all about process tweets. I just want people to.

It's important to me that if you are not into dark and lonesome dove, you still have something reasonable. Okay, let me just ask a hypothetical for a friend. What if you're only into dark and lonesome dove and you are the co-host of this podcast? What is my recourse? The reason why I brought up sort of searching around this weekend for stuff to watch was because I was just looking at the sort of list of stuff that's going to be on Peacock. And, you know, I was curious about whether or not there would be something in there where I was like,

oh, you know what? I haven't, this hasn't been available or I haven't thought about this in a while or I'm primed for a rewatch. And you know what was kind of funny looking at this list of stuff? which is a lot of it is NBC Universal stuff. There's a few other things. The one thing that really jumped out, and I don't know, maybe this can be Dove Adjase here,

is finally digging into America's most popular drama, which is Yellowstone. And I watched a few episodes from the first season, but now, like, when I probably have read more Q&As with Taylor Sheridan about Yellowstone than I have watched Yellowstone. And it's one of those shows now that has become,

when when someone's asking him a question about something that happens in season three, you're like, he was serious about that? Like, that happened? I don't know this show. And I think, first of all, it's very bizarre and fascinating glimpse into the permutations of modern media culture that a breakout hit for the still kind of baby-stepping Paramount Network is going to end up streaming on the NBC Comcast, Universal Shineheart Whig Company streaming service. Peacock. Yes. It is also worth noting that I know you may think otherwise if you are a dedicated listener

of this podcast and you feel that the dominant cultural touchstones of America in 2020 are the German show dark, the 1985 Western novel Lonesome Dove, and the currently dormant born franchise. But Yellowstone, Chris was not kidding. Like, Yellowstone is an outrageous hit. Like, it is a hit at a magnitude that is really hard. hard to, honestly, it's hard to comprehend. There may be some of us, and again, it's a friend. I'll say I'm saying this for a friend who has gotten a lot of support from promulgating the notion that basic

cable is dead and that it is impossible to get high ratings week to week on basic cable. It's just something that I'd heard, you know, and people, sometimes people talk about it for self-care reasons. Crucially, when did you hear that? From February to April, but it doesn't matter. The point being, Yellowstone is getting 4 million viewers on live airings on a network that many people probably don't know they have. Yeah. It does, when you and I are here and we're trying to like, you know, like in biology class where you're just doing the genus and the, you're like, you're trying to like identify all the things

that make TV essential today or what the new generation of television is, whether it's these 28-minute dromedies that are personality. base, but explore all manner of human existence. And then Taylor Sheridan just floats down the wind river and plops Kevin Costner in a fucking cowboy show and, and is just like 56 minutes, my G, we're going five to six seasons. It's about this dude who is protecting his ranch, mount up. And four million people are like guide, search, Y, E, L, L, DVR series, and they're there. like what do we know? And I think, you know,

and I bet we'll get some interesting response to this online, but the vibe I get is that this is not the most extremely online fan base, which is a good thing and probably instructive and informative for people programming all these new streaming services. When it works, it's never that, it never looks that complicated, I guess is what I want to say. So we should check this out. We've been remiss and not checking it out.

So Yellowstone was the thing that sort of caught my eye, Because the funny thing about Peacock, and we just went through this with HBO Max when they released a bunch of stuff. And I think that the thing people reacted to is, oh, man, like, look at this movie catalog. Look at this collection of Turner Classic and Criterion movies that are there at the fingertips. And then, of course, the HBO Library with the few exceptions of Studio Ghibli. And Studio Ghibli. Yes. But the funny thing about watching, looking at the Peacock catalog is my reaction is more like, this stuff never. felt like out of touching distance. Like all the stuff that's in their library has been like pretty readily available either on Netflix or Hulu or I feel like has just been in the ether these last five, six years. Like many people I know, I know several people who have done Friday Night Lights rewatches or never stopped watching 30 Rock or never stopped watching Frazier in wherever it was.

And some of those things have been pulled off of whatever services they were on. But it is interesting to think about like, can you kind of re-contextextual? things that are, it's like taking a bunch of items off of a pathmark or an Acme shelf and putting them in like a more of a boutique, like shop. I hear that. But I would say, and I'm sure there are people who actually do this research, there probably is hard data to back this up one way or another. But my guess is the appetite, the audience for shows that people are used to watching versus the audience for shows that people haven't thought about in a while. is probably, that's probably a little bit out of whack.

Like, my guess is, my guess is you're going to attract, and this is Peacock's whole strategy, but my guess is, let me rephrase that, my guess is you're going to attract more people who are going, who will find the things they are already used to looking for on Peacock, then I think that's a more robust audience than the audience that's like,

huh, you know, I haven't really watched Princess Monanoque or all of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air in a while, how lucky I am to have stumbled into a $15 a month service that provides that. And piggybacking on that, there was a big article in Variety last week about the launch of Peacock. That was kind of an interesting read. And the one piece in there that stood out to me, and I don't really understand yet because I'm not one of the chosen few with like Comcast Xfinity flex.

I think only our moms are. They probably are. So I haven't seen the interface. But the suggestion in this piece was that part, like an important building block of Peacock's interface is something that we've talked about in the abstract before, which is, basically TV channels. Like you can choose a feed and get TV broadcast to you. Sure.

Which, again, like Yellowstone is something that hasn't really gone out of style. Right. It's all kind of an interesting, it's an interesting one-to punch to go from last week, which was just the probably premature, in fairness, burial of Quibi and then the launch of Peacock. And the thing that there's that big, it was shared a lot. We didn't talk about it. There was a big Quibi piece in New York Magazine that was just like, what the hell went wrong? and it was full of all these delicious schadenfreudey shouts to my fluent German from dark moments.

But the line that really jumped out to me from the writing of the piece was that was would be essentially a feathered fish. Like did they spend hundreds of millions of dollars to solve a problem that didn't exist? To create something that didn't need to be creating. Whereas maybe they were backed into this corner by being late to the marketplace, by being last to the marketplace, by being outbid or whatever for other. stuff. But is Peacock actually a smart play because they do not seem to be reinventing the wheel. They're just like, hey, remember wheels? Wheel store over here. Yeah. So I feel like if I was just a dude who was going through his life and that's, that's tough to. By the way, news flash. Well, no. Okay. I think when I look at the lineup of stuff here, because what I was looking at the peacock library

for her was what is the next show that people are going to be like, everybody's watching on peacock and they're going back in time to like investigate to whether it's like where everybody's doing a I don't know a house rewatch right like everybody's checking out house now the same way there was like is that is that true I mean houses on peacock I don't know if people are going to go back and be like damn it was lupus but I think it was never lupus don't you remember house it was often meningitis yes yeah that was because that dude loved he loved prescribing spinal taps. But I was kind of wondering whether or not any of these shows would find new life. But when I looked at this library, I was kind of like, this is the first one where I'm like, if I had,

if I was just like somebody who was like, I have X amount of dollars, not that I'm not a person who has a budget, but like, if I was just like, I can only spend so much money on these streaming services, this is now a point where I would have to consider either not getting this or dropping something I had. Well, to be, to be fair and to be clear, Peacock's strategy is to be mostly free. Like the free, their free tier is the entry level tier that they are pushing. And they are very proud. Again, I haven't seen the interface, but they're very proud of the way they have

apparently minimized commercial interruption even on the free tier to make it feel like a good choice for people without adding to their budget. Now, again, that might be something they feel forced into because they looked at the marketplace, but I think it was probably a savvy look at the marketplace. because if you're number seven out the gate in the streaming sweepstakes, especially even before coming out of the gate, in this deeply uncertain and troubling economic and just generally awful time, free is not a bad price.

No, you're right. The only other piece of news that I was going to mention, and we can just do this quickly, is that today it was announced that there will be some new Star Wars content in the foreseeable future. It just happens to be animated. It will be a series called, I believe it is called Bad Batch, Star Wars Bad Batch, the Bad Batch,

and it's a spin-off of Clone Wars. Can I just jump in to say? Yeah. The Bad Batch is the second feature directed by Briarpatch Pilot Director on a Lili Amirpur. Aware of that. It is a movie that stars

Jason Mamoa as a sensitive painter slash cannibal. I was always wondering whether you were able to stomach that because you don't seem like a big cannibal guy to me. That was a tough... I mean, I watch a lot of horror and I usually pass on cannibals.

I couldn't really hang I mean I watched the movie I'm not gonna lie that I didn't watch part of it on mute with my head turned slightly but Lily I mean I fell in love with Lily's first movie

which I still you know I recommend Girl Walks Home Alone at night I think it's brilliant Bad Batch was like she can film heat and desert and she's incredible visual director but the idea that Star Wars just snatched the title

I wish that it was a mashup in a different sense sounds like it's supposed to be basically like a team up movie or a team up show where it's like 18 or 30 dozen or suicide squad or whatever, where it's a bunch of, I'm not going to pretend like I know of them,

I'm talking about when it comes to Clone Wars. It's a bunch of clones who are like, we each have a separate skill and we do jobs. Not jobs like postmates, but like jobs like. I wish Mallory Rubin could crash this Zoom right now, Zoom bomb us like the Kool-Aid man. Do you know what my thing is, is can I be,

if I'm being really real with you? Yeah. I feel like I'm just getting a little too much. news about new animated content. You feel personally triggered by that? No, I just get worried, man. I'm just like, is this going to be the only thing we can make for a definite period of time? Well, I don't have confirmation, but I'm pretty confident that Mandalorian Season 2 finished

filming. They were filming in like December, January. Favs, come on. Maybe they didn't, but also so much of that show is done in post. So who quite knows what's going on that. And those screens, you know? But yeah, like, look, you know, we should clear. clear out of the paint for Roy who's going to join us in a minute, but

things aren't going back into production. Yeah. You know, so we don't really have like a cross-industry update. Like some things have managed to muddle through. Some things have gotten green lights. Some things are still planning to start in September. But you know what else was planning to start in September? School for children. So, you know, sorry, end of billion season five, but like, I know what I choose. But things are, you know, beginning to film again in non-failed state countries around the world. But even that is extremely fraught and risky. So, yeah, we are, we may be headed towards a lot of like

just put Obi-Wan in Iceland, man. Let me get, let me totally hold that. What do I have to do? I don't see what- True detective New Zealand. Come on. Here's one thing to put into people's heads as they are hungering for new content. Like, some things will go back into production. Some things will figure out a way to work. Things will eventually, I do believe, come back to some semblance of at least a new normal. But if you are a show that already was shooting in a country that seems to have its shit together, like Canada, for example, they can go back into production. But talking to people I know who are crew or who are, I've talked to some actors,

I heard secondhand about an actor who is returning to work on a show in Canada. but in order to return to work, to have a career and provide for his family here in Los Angeles, he has to fly to Canada once he's allowed in, quarantine, isolated quarantine for two weeks, and then be there for five months, unable to go back and see his family, and his family can't come see him.

So this is, again, this is not a prison sentence. This is a, you know, relatively, I hope, well-paying job. But people's lives versus livelihood is going to, is coming into play. This industry, as it is, in all industries. It is a huge paradigm shift. As you attested many times, the style with which you shot Byer Patch, you know, people were in for three days, out for four days, back, staying sometimes the weekend, sometimes going home. So it's a completely different animal when you're asking people to be a part of a project for an indefinite period of time or at least for extended

period of time. Yeah. It's weighing on people's minds a lot. Okay, so we can wrap up there. We got Roy coming up. We got Dark, the first few episodes of season three. on Thursday and we'll have some other stuff to chat about. Maybe we'll get some of the, we'll get a look at Peacock before then. But thanks for listening as always. And start reading Lonesome Dove and we're going to talk to Roy Wood now. This is an overdue pleasure to have Roy Wood Jr. on the podcast. Roy, I, we met like four or five years ago, been a fan of all your work, stand up on Daily Show. I'm so sorry it took a global pandemic to get you, but it fears to be a closet to get on this podcast. But we thank you so much

for joining us. Yes. Yes. The one quiet place in my home. in New York City. The corner of a bedroom. That was going to be my first question for real because I have two small children. You are in an apartment, I believe, in New York City with one small child.

How are you? I mean, we can buy, Chris has nobody, no small children in that house, so we can team up, we can dunk on him, we can just be honest, this is a safe space.

I'm going to go play PlayStation after this is over, so yeah. Must be nice. Oh, my God. Must be nice. I haven't played my play my PlayStation. I still have a,

NHL 15, I'm waiting to crack open. And I refused to buy any of the other ones until I play 15. I'm like, no, play the one you bought. Like, I'm turning it to my father. Like, you got to eat the snacks you already have. Yeah, the continuity. That's right. But also, you can mark the time when your old life ended, right?

Because that must have been the year when you found out that you were about to have a kid. Yeah, yeah. NHL 15. That was when I found out, I'm pregnant. I'm like, all right, well, let me put this shit on the shelf in the closet because it's never going to get played. I got Red Dead Redemption 2. I'm like 20% done with that.

That was like, those were the early days when the kids take two naps a day, but not anymore. No, we're good, man. It's me and my girl, our son. We snuck away to Alabama for two months so we could get some grandma time and a front yard and have a little bit of space to kind of operate. But

as I started to see Alabama get worse, I just kind of turned to my girl one day. I was outside. But this had to be, I don't know, mid-June, early June, in Alabama and Florida and Texas. The numbers in the South were creeping, but they hadn't exploded yet. And the fucking ice cream truck came down the street. And I just went inside and I told my girl, I was like, we need to leave this week. Like, this is not a safe situation.

Like, it's just something eerie. So, you know, we got my mom up to speed on how to order girls. And, you know, we brought my mom up to speed in the gig economy. Do you have a manual you'd like to share with me? Because I'm still working on that. Good luck, bro. I had to get her a better computer first off. Yeah.

That was the first thing. She literally just didn't have a computer fast enough to handle half of the Zoom calls that her offices are doing now. So I really went down there on some geek squat shit for two months to get my mom straight. But we left. We left. We came back to New York and that was right before things really got bad down south. And then also at the time, there was still rumors on whether or not the daily show, whether or not we were going to, whether or not Viacom was going to allow us to reopen the studios. They were still making assessments and you just don't want to be in the wrong

place at the wrong time. So we drove both ways as well. So that was the other thing. It's like, if I'm going to drive 15 hours back from Alabama, I need to have a couple days. buffer to rest and kind of, you know, write my body before we get back in it. But, you know, right now we're still doing everything remote, same as everybody else. That was, uh, that, I actually, I want to ask you a few things about your time back in Alabama, but before that, since you mentioned the Daily Show, um, how has that transition been for you? Because so much of what that show is about and by extension, so much of the stand-up comedy you do is about the connection with the audience, is about the rhythm of waiting for laughs and building bits for that. I mean, you guys have been

doing incredible work, and Trevor's sweatshirt game has been unparalleled. Don't give him that much credit. It's just hoodies with the interesting colors that you can't find at most fashion outlets. It's the colors you can't find. The colors do have the work of Trevor's wardrobe. It's like a weird mustard gold, yellow. Like, it's not just yellow. It's not burnt orange.

It's a mustard apricot or some weird shit. I saw him throwing, he was throwing to you in a segment. you were talking about the Bubba Wallace situation and half the time I was listening to you and half the time I was like, is that red? It doesn't look like any red I've ever seen in the store. You don't know. It's that pantone fashion week shit, man.

We're not entitled. We don't have access to these types of stores, Andy. We're all very poor. But you're still, I mean, but even bits like that are still really funny and you seem to have fallen into a rhythm. But how has that been just as a performer and as a comedian?

To not have an audience is weird. But the cool thing is that performatively, Trevor's kind of changed the dynamic. Like if you watch a studio segment that I may do with Trevor, there's more ping pong where if you watch us over Zoom conducting a segment, it's a lot more ease. It's a lot more conversational. And the jokes come out wherever they are. You almost want to give the audience to feel that your eaves dropping on two old friends having a chit-chat versus a proper, thanks, Trevor.

Tonight, I am going to explain to you why NASCAR and a noose. Versus, yo, man, did you see that news? Brough, everybody need to just stop. They don't need to. Why don't they have garage door open? Why are you still pulling a door down with a, like, it's much more, more barbershoppy. Yeah. And that's also depends on the rhythm you guys and the chemistry you guys have formed over the last few years.

Yeah, we've tried. Like, you definitely wouldn't, wouldn't have been able to do this as a new hire. you know, I think, you know, thankfully everybody that's on the show, you know, the other five correspondence, you know, I think Djibuki, Djibuki is the rookie. And I think even he's sitting at like a year and a half, you know, in the building. So for Djibuki to have been there that long, that's more than that time to have chemistry and understand what the job was and then changing the style up a little bit, you know, for what it is now. Like the only thing I can. compare it to is like in studio is five on five basketball, but what we're doing now in Zoom

feels like three on three. Like it's the same, but it's the same objective. But you can be a little more loosey-goosey with the execution because you don't have as many things at your disposal. We don't have all of the super cool green screens. When we're doing field pieces, we can't even go outside. Like I went outside for a field piece in Birmingham where I was interviewing a small business owner whose house guy, whose optometry office got torn up during some of the rioting. And there's a single shot of she and I from 20 feet away.

It's a single shot. It's the only outdoor shot that we've done since the lockdown begin of any field piece. and there was like discussions for like a week on okay how's it going to happen how are you going to have a camera I have a tripod it's fine okay but we need to understand it if you can send us some some pictures I'm like look go to Google Earth and figure it out I'm curious by the time this airs I think Jordan Klepper would have figured out a way to go out as well but you know that's what Clepper does Klepper's a psychopath I wonder whether or not the reason why people are able to like adapt viewers to this is that this is something that's happening to everybody. Like, you guys are making this show the way you're making it. This is also largely the way people are still like interacting with each other. Like if you think about it, that's almost unprecedented to have the, the sort of platform and the audience be affected in the same exact way so that like almost over, not overnight, but after a couple of weeks, I feel like everybody was pretty much like, yep,

if I'm going to watch shows like this, it's going to probably be taking place over Zoom as are most of my human interactions. There's a scene in the abyss. You're talking to the right guys. I'm in. Let's go. Then I already, then I don't even have to explain this scene to me. It's a scene we should leave that. Where, what was the woman's name?

Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio. Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio. Always at the forefront of my mind. Scarface sister. So there's a scene where Ed Harris for the viewers who haven't seen it, they're super deep underwater, and the only way to go out in the water

in their suit is to breathe liquid oxygen instead of regular oxygen. So they pour liquid oxygen into a space suit, and your lungs have to fill with liquid oxygen. And as the spacesuit starts filling with liquid oxygen, I think it was Ed Harris. His character starts writhing around

and as if he's drowning. And then all of a sudden, he's chill and he's breathing liquid oxygen and it's the most surreal new normal that he's experienced that's what switching to Zoom was like I think as a society where it was like he in his house now it's just oh yeah cool he's in his house

we're all in our houses because the news started looking everybody started doing a new you know what I think really helped normalize it was when Andrew Cuomo had to go home for COVID for a minute And he was doing the news from his house. Chris. I'm Chris. Andrew.

Yeah. So Chris is at the house. And everybody's like, oh, shit. Okay. Well, if the news is going to do this with a bookshelf and a kids playroom in the background, I guess everybody could do it. And, you know, the talk show started doing it, you know. And it was, it is the new normal.

And I don't know. My bigger concern is when we transition back, what's, that going to feel like? Is that going to be the same liquid oxygen convulsion period? Well, that's what I'm asking. As a couple of three abyss super fans just talking about the greatest underrated deep sea sci-fi movie of the 80s on a Zoom, if we collectively are Mary Elizabeth Mr. Antonio dying from drowning on the floor of the vessel, who in this metaphor, once we come out of this period with the vaccine, who is pounding on our chest refusing to let us succumb to the metaphorical Abyss that is the afterlife.

James Cameron. Probably. He probably has a cure. I think entertainers. Can it get us out? As entertainment goes, I think that's where a lot of the direction

on our societal norms go. News, unfortunately, to a large part, is more entertainment than information. So, you know, I think as you start getting the talk shows back. And it sounds stupid. But when you start getting the court, like when divorce

court is back to normal, you get family feud back to normal and shit like that. You get a comedy show or two back to normal. I think that's going to eventually start showing people that it's okay to come out a little bit. It's okay. Like, I hate to say it, but like all of these celebrity variety shows, and I've done a couple of them where it's just a bunch of celebs on Zoom for an hour doing whatever the fuck. Like, I did one with Quest Love and a bunch of people and we're all cooking in our house, right? It was a Quest Love's potluck,

and it was to raise money for America's Food Kitchen. I'm not talking shit about the show. What I'm saying is that these shows where you see celebs all indoors, when you start seeing celebs all outside, then it's going to start inching back to what I believe to be some degree of a norm. So I recently rewatched your comedy special

from last year. People can watch it on Comedy Central. They should. It's called No One Loves You. It's fantastic. But it's also a trip because I'm watching it. And I'm like, what year did he record this? No One Loves You was recorded in 2018.

It aired January of 2019. It's surreal to watch it now because, you know, there's a whole bit about it's heartening to see white people at protests for social justice. You recommend that it's so bad out there. Black people should call the police. themselves just to control the narrative. It's very funny. And then also watching it now, it does feel like we're stuck in a time loop.

And the things that you were talking about from the stage, now, you know, what felt like a better time, it's today. You could have recorded it a month ago. Yeah. You know, I hate that, was it Michael Che that said it in an interview? And it just rang so true for me. was that I hate that some of what I joked about then is still relevant now. I can't remember how Che put it, but that's kind of how I feel seeing it stuff.

I'm like, in the back of my head, I'm like, oh, this would be a good time to post that bit about why black people always need to leave the store with a receipt because of presumed theft. Oh, that sucks that we're still being treated. But fuck it, I need the link And I need the likes Post it So yeah, it was I've always tried to talk about stuff That I've enjoyed more with my comedy

Talking about issues instead of people Because I believe that issues live longer Than the people trying to fight against them And so I guess that maybe just rings true You know, I guess this is kind of proof positive To a degree but, you know, when I wrote it, I wasn't hoping that, man, in two years, this is going to be the shit. Right.

This is evergreen. Yeah. Racism is evergreen, but unfortunately, it kind of is, you know, for right now. But you hope that it doesn't continue to be that. The thing that's weird now is figuring out, like when I see comedians that are going back on stage now and, you know, and I'm starting to get the emails. invites to do these Zoom shows and outdoor shows. And in the back of my mind, I'm like,

I don't even know what I want to talk about right now. Like, the world is still in flux. Yeah. So I don't even know what I have to say about anything other than something that's in the now and in the now is going to change so fast that I'm working on jokes that may not even be relevant in a week, let alone two months. And for me, that's just not, it's not worth the risk of catching COVID to tell a joke that nobody will see on a bigger stage.

And I, you know, I'm not knocking the comics. Sure. It's just for me and my process, I can't figure out what I would be inspired to talk about. And I don't want to be on stage if I'm not inspired to say something, you know, of substance. As you said, jokes are jokes and they live in the moment. But you always try and you can tell this through your stand-up that you are, trying to say things of substance and you're thinking about all these thoughts and all these issues. There's one line from that special that stood out to me, especially when you were talking

about how there's no politics from the floodwater's up to here. You know, and like the one time people actually get along is when they're underwater. When there's chaos. When there's chaos. And I just wanted to bring that up and ask you about this moment because the flood water's up, you know, and I feel like there's too much, I feel like they're definitely still politics. You know, it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was, hell, I was just saying literal flow. Like, the only time there's no racism is after a hurricane.

Like, it's the, it's like a two-day break from racism where rednecks come and save black people off the roof of their house because no black people buy boats, which is the whole point of the joke is that black people need to buy boats. So you know, they definitely are going to come save you now, not with the way racial tensions have been going as of late. I think to some degree there's been there's been more unity but there's for sure more division there's people more

entrenched than what they believe I think the problem with change is that it requires you to work on yourself as well and I think that's the big problem I think that's why racism is probably the big cahuna because you can't completely

legislate racism away there has to be cognitive choices made by people to be better persons and you can restrict them by law to keep them from being discriminatory. But, you know, they're still going to go in the woods and have their little super secret meetings. But you just hope that what you're doing now is enough to an act changing people down the road. You know, I think what we're fighting for now is humanity in two generations. I think we're just planting seeds. I'm not even sure of everything that we're doing now, the people that are hearing on the ground fighting will be able to see all the

benefits of it. But, you know, it helps. I'm not being pessimistic. It's just a long, long-ass battle. I'm just picturing all of us really old, cracking open that NHL-15. Yeah. Being like, we can finally sit back and enjoy this ice hockey video game for 40 years ago because we fixed it. Dude, it is unopened and I'm going to play it. Sidney Crosby looks so beautiful back then. I bought it. You know, I bought it. My homie, Steve Byrne is a big hockey fan, fellow comedian.

and I bought it when I moved to New York, when I got Daily Show, I bought that game and I told Byrne. I'm like, yeah, man, and we can keep in touch. We can just play hockey online and talk, you know, and just keep it. Oh, shit, I got a kid on the way.

Hey man, let me call you back. Never see him again. Never seen them again. I was wondering, because you mentioned about the stand-up stuff. And I've seen a lot of comics talking about that. Some comics are like, I still want to go perform wherever I can. And some are obviously, like,

taking a break from it. for you, how much has it changed like your comic brain chemistry to not be able to go out and see an audience's reaction to some of your bits, some of your ideas? Do you feel like it's changed the tone of your comedy at all or like the way you think about stuff to not have an audience? Or do you feel like Twitter is that audience? Twitter's definitely not that audience. I learned a long time ago that my stand up, the deeper thoughts cannot exist in the lack of nuance on Twitter. Twitter lacks nuance. My standup is full. of it. So Twitter lacks nuance. I didn't know that. I should write that down. It's a good note for myself. You can try to have a nuanced conversation there if you want. It just ends in bombs and yelling and shouting. So, you know, I try to keep my Twitter, you know, light and fun for the most part. What's crazy is that I really don't talk a lot of politics on Twitter because

if I have a good political joke, I'm going to put it on the daily show. You know, I have a much bigger outlet than my Twitter page if I have a strong political opinion. But food and sports, people will fight with you over that. And, you know, we can, I'll spar with you over why a hot dog is the greatest. You know, like, that's fine. But my stand-up, what I'm finding now in this time away from the stage is that, like, I tend to start with just in terms of joke construction, creatively for me, I start with the end of the joke and then try to work my way back somehow. So the premise, I start with the premise of, all right, what are you trying to say? All right, I'm trying to say that we're trying to take down Confederate monuments and get rid of Confederate monuments when the sad truth is that for a lot of Black people,

our last name isn't in and of itself a Confederate monument. So you start with that point, right? And then it's how do you make that funny? And then you start backtracking to figure out all of the different ways that you can get to that point. The thing I've enjoyed about the time off is that it also helps me to construct an argument from a third side. If you look at a lot of my stand-up, a lot of it, or at least what I try to accomplish is present the third-s. side to what are perceived to be two-sided arguments. So the best example is probably my first special father figure,

where everybody goes, get rid of the Confederate flag, and then other people go, it's not hate its heritage. And then my point was coming in was, well, if we get rid of it, how will I know who the dangerous white people are? The flag has an upside. And it's defending the Confederate flag from a place of personal safety. and being able to know what are the dangerous establishments that I shouldn't go in. So it's not necessarily choosing right or wrong.

It's just presenting a different prism, which is essentially what I'm trying to accomplish with the Confederate monument thing, which is, okay, leave them up, take them down. Leave them up, take them down. Oh, wait, should I also change my last name? Fuck. Like it's, it's, and that's just an exploration of how deep down the rabbit hole of historical erasure should we go.

You know, it's not to question whether or not the, of course, the monument should come down, but if we're not going to stop there, well, how far do we want to keep going? And so that's what I try to do. And so that's the type of joke that I enjoyed the benefit of not having to put it on his feet for weeks and weeks and weeks because I can just watch the arguments unfold and slowly craft the joke instead of having to craft it on the fly and kind of. constantly make the edits performance after performance. So now I get to make the structural edits now, then come back in, like, the, the I beams of

support are the thesis statements that support the end thesis, which is your names were stolen from you, you know? Like, that's the end. Those are the support beams. So we can use the news and commentary and op-eds and consume all of that to establish what the support beams are. And then it's just connecting each support beam with a couple of jokes

and a couple of examples of hyperbole that get you from from lily pad to lily pad until you get to the end point. And like that's where the time, I'm sorry to answer so long, but that's where trying to figure out how to build material in this era is kind of coming from for me

where I just don't, it sucks to not have to be, able to be on stage, but creatively, the brain is still working. I still have premises. My notepad is full. I still bounce premises off of other comedians and stuff. So when the time comes to get back on stage for me, I know I can come out. What scares me is when you look at what Chappelle did with 846, Chappelle took his thoughts and he fucking, he cooked that shit up and served it. in under two weeks, you know, from consuming, consuming the media, working on the set, and airing it,

taping it, and then post-production and putting it up online. It's under two weeks. So the turn time on a stand-up special, because the country changes so fast, I think it's much shorter. So the time to polish jokes, I don't think, I don't think you have as long of a runway. You know, I would say Comedy Central of all the networks, the runway is probably the longest because they have. have more fixed content that they're married to. You know, like when I say lead time for the listeners, no one loves you.

We shot that, shit, man. July, maybe August. I want to say it was August of 2018, and it didn't air for another five months. It aired five months later. That's inconceivable now. Yeah. Racism is evergreen.

So, you know, I dodged a bullet. But, you know, Netflix, I've heard of comedians, you know, having a runway as short as three months. The same with HBO, you know, two months, maybe three months for most of those other networks. Now I'm not even sure if I taped something now, if it would be relevant in three months. It's interesting. It sounds a lot like the, you know, it's the changes in the music industry where now it's basically back to singles. You know,

it's not really not longer an album industry. It's like the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. And this idea of like, the rhythm that as comedy fans

we've become familiar with that a comedian road tests and is in clubs and then maybe does a tour and at the end of the tour, like a celebration, that is filmed like a document and held up

and then another three or four years to build it up again. Maybe that is a relic of the older world. I think it might be an older construct. I think what you get now is a comic if you're doing hours now because we still haven't seen the first hour specials everything that's coming out now is shit that was taped before COVID yeah like i think jim jeffregey dropped a new one eric andre dropped the new one uh patten oswald uh just had one

tiffany had i'm just thinking of people evan orgy there's been a lot of specials that are dropped over quarantine but they were all taped beforehand so i think yvonne was one of the last ones like she taped in February, matter of fucking positive, she taped in February and then she aired Mother's Day weekend. That's about a three-month, three-month runway. I don't, I think what you'll get now post-COVID, or at least what I'm trying to do, is give you 40 minutes of polish and then 20 minutes of just in the now. You know, there's 40 minutes of Evergreen in there that we can for sure talking analyzed about, but then on the other side of that, what's happening now. And then, who's going to consume an hour of comedy.

I mean, we might live in a world of a bunch of 15-minute joints. That might be the new, it might just be comedians dropping the EPs all over again. You know, you're definitely going to get a lot more stuff from the greats because they can't hide on the road now. There's no revenue on the road because there's nowhere to sell enough tickets. So you're going to have to shoot something to put out,

to get a network or someone to pay you. So you're going to have to put out something if maintaining relevance is a priority. It just depends on every comedian's business plan. But, you know, I definitely have more things to say. I just don't know when I'll be able to structure them to say them. That's why the idea of pre-COVID, the plan was to shoot my special in November the week after the election. So that I could at least have that part of the new world. whatever this new world is, are we more fucked or are we less fucked?

Let's at least tape it after that. And in the back of my head, part of me is still like, fuck it. I still might do it then. Because having all, like, well, don't you need time to polish it? Yeah, but if you wait eight months to polish, the shit might not even be relevant anymore. Yeah. So you're better off just getting these ideas off your chest. And then that's where you go to some of the more private chat rooms.

the Facebook groups and stuff like that to try to work some of the material. I try to stay away from Twitter for the sake of not burning premises or having premises stolen or stepped on. Twitter's a great place, though, to go see what everybody thinks about a topic, though. So you can know what to avoid.

Because I feel like if it's easy enough for someone on Twitter to think of, then it's probably not a great, it's not a great support theme. It's low-hanging fruit that could be turned into moldy jam. Yeah, it could be parallel thought and we could use it as a, I could use that as a connector to something more profound that's more original. But it's not what I'm going to build the joke on.

It's not going to be the point of dismount if it's something that, if I'm on stage, I'm just flashing light saying the same shit that's on your Twitter feed, who am I? What is my worth to you? There's nothing, I'm not doing anything. of substance. I want to ask you a couple of the things before we let you go.

One particular, you mentioned at the beginning that you went back to Birmingham, which is where you grew up and where your mom, as you said, still is. For people who haven't heard this, one of my favorite interviews with you that I heard was when you were on fresh air with Terry Gross and you talked at length about your dad growing up there and your dad being on the radio and what your childhood was like. And we don't need to rehash all that here. But it was interesting that you were there, you know, at the, particular time that you were, you were, you know, your Twitter feed, you were out there helping to clean up after a night of unrest. Just wondering what, what was that, what were those nights

like for you in, in that city? Because I do think a lot of our, and you know this as a daily show correspondent, our media is really focused on the coasts. You know, we, we have a lot of opinions coming from New York and Los Angeles, but here you are in the southern city with a, let's say, complicated history of race relations. Yes. And, you know, you made a point in talking about when you were out the next morning, the sense of community that was there. And I've seen in other interviews talking about going back to Alabama and meeting the first black mayor of Montgomery. And, you know, I just feel like your perspective and your experience in your hometown is a particular value to people listening today. I don't think people, I mean, Alabama makes

enough noise when you have a governor that's not implementing mask policies and you have Jeff Sessions doing what Jeff Sessions does and you've got Tommy Tuberville running and you know like it's that stuff is funnier and more interesting when you have Roy Moore you know with 10 commandments in a courthouse you know getting banned from malls like it's I get it but at the end the day, I think the only people that are going to help uplift Alabama are people from Alabama, you know? So whenever I have an opportunity, I try to go home and do something or try to be something positive because I think it's good for the state. It's good for the perception of the state. You know, Birmingham is 75% black and it's a growing tech hub. And, you know, before all of the

financial collapses, it was a huge banking. There's all of these redempties. There's all of these redempties. things that happen in these places that people don't talk about. And so it was cool to be able to take a daily show camera down there. And well, but camera, I mean my own camera. Yes. And a tripod. To be able to take a camera down there and just go, yeah, there's racism. But look, there's a white child and a white woman and a black and a homeless person and a kid and a Latino.

And they're all, you know, working in unison to do something. And you have a mayor that took down a Confederate monument that same night. The day after the riots, the mayor said, get this out of here. Then the state fined the mayor and they find the city $25,000 for removing the Confederate statue. This is from the governor and from the state, right? the state attorney general. The citizens in Birmingham found out about the $25,000 fine, and a group called White Clergy for Black Lives Matter

did a go-fund me and raised $60,000 to pay the $25,000 fine plus to transport fees and dismantling fees, and they gave the difference in the money to Black Lives Matter Birmingham. Like, that's also Alabama, too, you know? And so those are the stories that don't seem to seep out as often in the news. I'm sorry my child is yelling. He's seeping out too. It's wonderful. It was a great cue.

So, yeah, it's a complicated place, but I don't think it's any more complicated than most. The difference is that a lot of the hate in the South is just in the open. Whereas up north, it's all, you know, it's undercovering camouflage to somebody asks you to put on a mask and then you explode into your race tirade. I wanted to ask you a little bit about a topic that's really near and dear to me

and Andy's heart is Better Call Saul, which was delightful to see you appear on that this season. He was so fun to see you on that. Cameo alert. Cameo alert. And I was wondering, like, is that I'm a fan and I get to come on that show and like, or is that more of a like,

I mean, what was that like to join a show in midflight like that to go in and do that part and to work on that set? It was a honor. Yeah. It was shut the fuck up and do your job. You better know your line. You better know, like that one was, I found out about Better Call Saul around the same time I did Space Force. Yeah.

And so it's like, oh, shit, I'm in space. Oh, shit. I'm in the scene with Steve's career. Oh, shit, John Malkovich is in the scene. I better have it together. I better have it together. And then you book Better Call Saul. And I'm like, oh, wait, this is a drama.

This is much more intense and different. And you also don't know which way your character's going to go. I would love, I hope I'm, you know, part of the next season of the show whenever it gets back cranking. But, you know, I, when you find out you get the audition, you're already stoked. And you find out you get the part and then you're super stoked. And so then when you get to set, you have to leave all those nerves at the door and actually calm down and be like, okay, I need to, I need to do my thing. even though she's an amazing actress and it's probably going to get nominated

and winning Emmy, I just need to be calm. The only thing I'll say about Better Call Saul, they don't tell you how your character fits into, like I didn't get the whole script. Sure. You get your pages and you get the background of your character and this is all you need to know for this to work. This is all we're going to tell you.

When I found out I had an audition, I was kind of hoping I would get killed by Giancarlo Esposito. I kind of, I just, I would consider the honor to be murdered by Gus Fring, you know, and they were like, no, you're going to be a lawyer and give me in a courthouse. I'm like, shit. But then, but then I was like, nah, that's cool, because then maybe, maybe Gus will come to the courthouse and murder me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's better. Good job, good job. Did that influence your performance choices?

Like, if I make this guy really, like, possibly. street like an asshole. Like this guy is clearly going to snitch on somebody. Yo, man. It was fun, man. But fuck stairs, bro. In that scene, in the scene, half our conversation takes place

up a flight of stairs. I have a lawyer's briefcase with legit files in it. I'm basically carrying a 30 pound dumbbell of three flights of stairs, needing to be on dialogue, up all three flights. At the same point on every stair, you got to hit the same line.

at the same time for the camera edits to all make sense. And by the end of it, I'm just, I changed, I changed dress shirts like two, three times, just drenched and sweat going up and downstairs. No, that was a blast, man. Steve Carell, I'll tell you, a Space Force, Jim. I don't know. I'm sure this has been said about Steve Carell in some interview before. But the man, he'll do a scene.

Like, it's like when you see an actor do some shit, you didn't even know. you could do, but then you go, oh yeah, that makes sense. And then he's also from that improv shit that I never got a chance to tell. I was signed up. Let me just say this. I was signed up for improv at UCB and ready to go. And I booked the daily show and had to forfeit my classes. Did they give you like your tuition feedback?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is before the classes that started. I had like paid up and hey, I'll be, I'll see you next. Oh, shit, I got to move to New York in three days. So Steve Carell, the director says action, and he'll do the scene as written, you'll do the scene with him, and then we'll just reset and do it again.

And each time he's finding something different in every repetition of the scene. And then by like the third or fourth take, he's taking something from the first take and integrated it in with something funny that he found from the other two takes to make one super funny take and then your job as his scene partner

is to not laugh. That's it. Just don't laugh. That's all you can... In the Space Force pilot, there's a scene where a rocket blows up and it's a big issue and he's stressed out. And he says,

Falk, Falk, Falk! And they really trim that down. That was a 20-second expletive run in the bunker where it's just Ham Thack! Favdarmat, messles. Shit.

I don't know, man. I still feel like in a lot of regards, like I'm still in school when I'm in a lot of places, you know, like I've been blessed to have a lot of opportunities that would give the illusion that I am a professional and that I know what I'm doing and I'm deserving to be there. But there's a lot of times where I'm on set, just as in awe as the people that are watching the final product.

Yeah. But you're in a great zone right now, though, for audiences, because when you show up in this stuff, and this is something that I was saying to Chris the other day, like, it's so, it's great to see you. It's like, look who's here. Roy's here in this show. Now he's in Space Force.

And it's like, we're in good hands for the next five, ten, 15 minutes. And then I saw the stairs and then I was worried. But in general, that's a good spot to be in. We should let you go before that door gets beaten down. But I want to ask, and this might be a selfish question because, you know, comedy is a gift right now for those of us who are professional comedians. or watching old comedy specials like yours or just watching the daily show,

like it is helping. Where are you mentally right now? Because you're doing your job, but you have to be immersed in the news and in the world to do your job. Like, are you one of those people who are like, you know, this is a low point, but I feel some hope in the ashes,

or are you one day at a timing it, like so many of us? I think I'm way day at a time in it. I'm trying as best I can to, I'm trying as best I can to check on friends and stuff like that, where if I can help them through something, you know, then cool. But, you know, comedy, you know, to be able to be working is a gift. To be able to choose to not go out on stage is a gift.

You know, that part of it I don't take for granted. I think that right now, you know, we're going to need stand-ups more than ever. they're the only ones that I think that are left telling the truth. You know, maybe some journalists are. There's some journalists. There's some media outlets that are still reputable. But I just don't know where collectively we'll be able to go to dissect, you know, all of this.

You know, I just hope that stand-up comedy itself doesn't die. You know, I think the comedy club, as we know it is dead, you know, and I could be just being a doom and gloom kind of guy. And, you know, I've been called that by some comedians since the pandemic started, which, you know, okay, that's fine. I'll wear that hat. But I don't think the concept of standing in a room and telling the truth will never go away. But where we do it, I think there is the strong possibility that will evolve because of the

economics of the business and going out. And, you know, as much as I love comedy, this is a disposable income occupation. This shit isn't nutritious. It's not, it might be emotional sustenance, but at the end of the day, when you've got an extra $25, if you have it with 50 million unemployed and hundreds of thousands that are, like the people who didn't die still going to have a shit ton of medical debt. So there's going to be a lot of people. that are going to be dealing with a lot of things. And there's going to be people in pain. And where there's pain, there's an opportunity to laugh.

I still think the wear is going to be TBD. You know, what Chappelle did might be the new norm. You know, we might have to take it outside, you know. Or deep underwater with James Cameron. Yeah, you know what? Underwater. Scuba shows. Yes.

Deep underwater exploration stand-up comedy. I don't know. Who says no? Yeah, but then I think about Jaws 3 and the shark banging on the glass. That's true. Deep Blue Sea also. And Lou Gossett can't save you this time. That's harsh truth. Roy, thanks so much, man.

Thanks so much for joining us today. And Roy, you're working on a podcast project too, right? So if we want to shop that out. Yeah, yeah. We're still pre-launch right now, but it'll be out later this month. It's called Roy's Job Fair. It's essentially, it's a digital job fair. That's the only thing I can really say at length right now about it.

But I'm going to do my part to help, you know, see what we can do to, you know, knock off some of these unemployment numbers in the country. That's awesome. That's awesome. Right. We love watching your work. We can't wait until we can watch you work again. But we can catch you on Daily Show. We'll be listening to this podcast. And if we're ever allowed to be in person again, we would love to have you in person.

But we will ask your son to come to. stand outside the studio door. Fair enough. Fair enough. He did good tonight. I'm proud of him. Take care of him. We missed him a little bit, but all right.

No. Roy, good to see you. Take care. Stay well. Thank you.