Creator of the Peabody Award-winning The Bernie Mac Show Larry Wilmore spoke with us about his history of writing for variety and sitcom programs, and the new direction his career is taking with the launch of The Nightly Show on Comedy Central.

Transcription Notes

• Interviewer: Matt Shedd
• Interviewee: Larry Wilmore

This is Stories That Matter, a Peabody Awards Production and I'm Matt Shedd. In each episode of this show, I talk with creators, writers and producers about how they made their Peabody Award winning work.

My guest for this show is Larry Wilmore, host of the brand-new Nightly Show on Comedy Central. Wilmore is well known for his appearances as a Senior Black Correspondent on The Daily Show, but he had a long and successful career as a comedy writer long before that. One of his first jobs in the industry was actually writing sketches for In Living Color from 1991 to 1993. Throughout much of the decade, he also wrote for sitcoms like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Sister,Sister and The Jaime Foxx Show.

After that he went on to co-create The PJs, a claymation series on Fox depicting life in the inner city projects. In 2001, he created the Peabody Award winning Bernie Mac Show and would go on to work as a consulting producer for another Peabody winner, The Office.

I talked to Wilmore as he was still developing Nightly Show and hiring writers. Our conversation opens up with Wilmore telling me that the news stories in 2014 made it a tough year to be waiting to go on the air.

Larry Wilmore: I mean the fact that I'm doing a show and we weren't on this year feels criminal, you know in some ways. I got people saying "Larry, when are you coming out?" I'm like "It's not my fault. It's not ... give it some time. We gotta have a chance to premiere."

So are you chomping at the bit to get on the air?

Sure, absolutely, you know. I mean, but there's a lot of things that we wanna do, I mean it's not just covering ... you know we're not doing like a serious-themed show or, you know, people shouldn't look to us to solve everything. You know, "Finally, Larry's gonna fix the race problem." You know, "Thanks Obama, you're a big help." Our show, is basically, it's still first a comedy show that, you know, is going to have my comic take on a lot of these things.

Comedy news has kind of turned into a genre in it's own right it seems like, I mean largely from people like you who were on The Daily Show, and John Oliver is doing really well on HBO now. What do you think that phenomenon is about? Do you have any insight into that?

Well it's said over and over, I mean I used to, over the past years I talked to a lot of colleges and that kind of thing and a lot of the young people, you know, said they get their news from Jon Stewart, you know, or [Stephen] Colbert. It's just a phenomena that started happening and a lot of people, I think they trust Jon's take on things, you know. I think it was a combination of when what you might call regular news got more opinionated, young people felt "well as long as i'm getting an opinion, I may as well get Jon Stewart's." That's what it felt like to me ... so yeah. I'm flattered, I mean, to be considered in that same category, certainly on The Daily Show I handled mostly racial issues, but on The Nightly Show, we'll handle everything, so it'll be interesting.

So what is it about working with and for Jon Stewart that has allowed so many people like you to launch really great, I mean you already had a career as a writer, but now you've got a whole other career as a star of your own show and executive producer, and I mean the list goes on – there's John Oliver, Colbert, but then, you know, Rob Corddry and Steve Carell. I mean what is it about that, that environment that has led to so many great careers?

You know, it's a great question. You know, believe me, if I had that answer, I'd be a manager and not a performer. Sometimes talent just tends to cluster in certain places, I mean Saturday Night Live has certainly had a good track record for that over a long period of time. Certain areas do that. Vaudeville, a lot of people came out of there. The Comedy Club Circuit, a lot of people came out of there, you know and this just happens to be another one of those places where, John's voice is so strong and his standards are so high where the people coming out have just been able to do other things too. It’s kinda cool.

I mean just from my standpoint as someone who watches the show and reads the articles and sees his quotes, he seems like a very generous, gracious person.

Absolutely. I say Jon is like a combination of Johnny Carson and Walter Cronkite. He has that generosity of Carson as a host–Carson wanted you to be funny, he knew it didn't threaten him at all because, I mean, there was no one more charming than Johnny Carson. And Walter Cronkite, you just trusted the things that he said, and there's if Walter said it, I mean, Lyndon Johnson, our president said, "Well, if Cronkite is against me, I guess I'm done." That's pretty powerful. I mean I'm paraphrasing, but that's pretty much what he said.

Jon has that rare ... he's so smart, you know, he's funny as heck of course too. But he's really smart too, and you're always continually amazed at how thoughtful and smart he is. He makes you want to be, want to raise the bar on what you do.

[Clip from The Daily Show]

In this next part of our conversation, we jump back to the beginning of Wilmore's career when he worked as a sketch writer on In Living Color.

We did one sketch that Les Firestein and I wrote together and it was "Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton" but kind of as Abbot and Costello. They were Al and Lou instead of Bud and Lou. And instead of "Who's on first?" it was "Jew's on first?" is what it was. It was right after the Crown Heights thing where the Jews and Blacks were having this tension and it was really, really funny. Les actually pitched the thing, but I ended up writing it with him and I thought, "Man, if we could do this kind of stuff, this is fantastic."

[Clips from In Living Color]

Were you surprised about some of the things you were able to write on that show and how bold you could be?

Not at the time. If I look back, I'm surprised, but at the time, we were just allowed to do it and we did it. I think television was a lot freer back then.

Why do you think that is?

Well I just think it was and I think we came into a time where it got more politically correct. I mean if you look at All In the Family, some of the content that was done in the 70s was insane compared to. I mean Maude, they did a whole episode about abortion. The content on TV was a lot more controversial for your main stream content levels on networks. Now that stuff would have to be on paid cable.

That kind of leads into the next period of your career where it was more ... I guess I had no idea that you wrote for Sister, Sister, Fresh Prince, Jamie Foxx–shows that people would typically think of as more conventional sitcoms.

Yes, those are conventional sitcoms. I wouldn't say there's much commentary going on. The next commentary show that I did after all that was The PJs show I co-created with Steve Tompkins for Eddie Murphy. And that was the animated show, and that was chock full of social satire. I mean we had a crack head in that show. I remember having to fight to keep him, I said "Look, there is, Andy Griffith Show had the Town Drunk, Taxi had the Town Drug Burnout, so this is the natural progression of that. This is the Town Crackhead." And he had lines like [imitates the character] "Welp, gotta go. Crack don't smoke it self."

[Clip from The PJs]

I loved doing that show. We put so much satire in that, so that was my first coming back to that after In Living Color in a whole different way.

I gotta tell you, I was in junior high, I think, when that show was on, and it was one of those shows that I, I mean I thought it was great and I love the animation, and I love the commentary, but it was one I wouldn't let my parents catch me watching it.

I love that! I love hearing that. That's great.

But it all came back to me when I watched the pilot. You know, the crack patch, the band-aid that was a crack patch and they're drinking malt liquor-just how vicious that show was.

I mean, we had lines like "Welp, Juicy, you know what Juicy, I hope we never grow old." And he'd say "Well, the statistics are in our favor." These lines where I'm like "Oh man, that's a hard joke." That was a rough joke. And we did that on network television in 1999. You could not do that show on network television now. You'd have to be on Adult Swim.

Not only is there all the stuff that we're talking about, the social commentary, but there's violence. I mean there's guns being pointed at the main character and a child, and then …

But there's a distinction between the good people of the projects and the bad people, so we weren't painting brush [?] that everybody was the criminal element. But also the way the criminal part of that was also an everyday thing, where, you know, Thurgood and his wife Muriel were walking down the street and he goes "Hmm, gun shots coming out the west tonight, Muriel." And they're just walking down the street, just having an evening stroll.

To go back to the earlier shows that you worked on, what did you take away from that time in these more conventional shows?

Well, I mean during that time, it's kind of your apprenticeship in television. I was just learning about storytelling in television, you know. So while I was there, that's all I was trying to do was try to write those episodes and learn how to do it. At that time, the reason why I started writing and producing was because eventually I wanted to learn how to write something for myself, so I took it very seriously in terms of "How am I going to do this. What am I here to do." And all the lesson that I needed to learn. So I wasn't looking at it from a content point of view so much as a structure and, you know, how to point of view.

And that apprenticeship, it seems like from things I've heard you say in the past, that that's kind of what allowed you to make The Bernie Mac Show, which, as you've stated, kind of deconstructed the sitcom.

That's right. That's exactly right.

So it seems like you needed to go through that apprenticeship of working on all those shows to do what you did with Bernie.

Right. To know what I didn't want to do. Got to have a foundation of knowing what the norm is before you can deviate from it.

Here's a clip from the pilot of The Bernie Mac Show that earned Wilmore an Emmy.

[Clip from The Bernie Mac Show]

It was part of the Peabody Award winning first season.

[clip continues]

So I mean the most obvious thing that stands out about that show is his direct connection with the audience, with America, and that's so great. I'm curious to hear the other things about network television that you were trying to deconstruct or the network sitcom.

Well one of the big things was the rhythm. I thought the rhythm of the sitcom was very much in people's ears and I wanted to disrupt that rhythm just so it would create, on its own, a surprise. Because just innately you wouldn't know what's coming next just because the rhythm was messed up. So where the rhythm of sitcoms is duh, duh, duh, duh, joke, duh, duh, duh, joke, duh, duh, duh, joke–even if you don't know what the joke is, you know can sniff that joke coming at any second, but if I went duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, [long pause] joke. Or just disguise it a little bit of how the humor was delivered, or just the rhythm of the show, just how the even the dialogue was delivered. How I can catch you off guard.

And that's why I was going for more of a realism and at the time, remember nobody was doing the single-camera show, I think Malcolm in the Middle was the only show on the air, and I had watched, I think I may have talked about this on WTF, but I was watching this show 1900 House where this family was put into a house, I think, in England and they had to act as if it was 1900 and they had to behave like that and there were all these cameras all set up and I thought it was fascinating to watch these people. And I thought "Boy it'd be interesting to do a sitcom where we're just observing. Instead of the action being pushed out to us, we're observing." So there's doesn't have to be this forced type of performance or action or that sort of thing.

And then the other component was the actual structure of sitcom, at that time, was really dominated by farce and having studied playwriting in college, you know what the rules of farce are, you know it's a lot of slamming doors, it's misunderstandings and "Oh he's gay, oh no.” And so a lot of sitcoms were built on misunderstandings and on the farce rules, and the farce rules are very high stakes, what I call, big act breaks–something very important is happening at the act break that makes you want to come back after the commercial. "Oh no, is this going to happen?" dun, dun, dun. And that's how the sitcoms were doing.

And I wanted to disrupt that and I was looking at reality shows. I was watching The Real World, and when it would go to commercial, there was no big moment that would happen, it would just go to commercial, and I'm like "Well why do I want to keep watching this." And I just kept playing it back, and kept playing it back and kept playing it back and I kept asking "Why do I want to come back? There's nothing going on here in the plot. There are just coming back." and I thought "Well, maybe I'm just interested in these characters and what's going on. Maybe there's something happening in their lives and I just want to see more of that." And it was a revelation to me, I go "Oh, okay, I don't have to manipulate the audience in this manner. I can get them invested in a character's emotional journey." And that was a revelation to me.

And if you watch, you'll see that the act breaks are not manipulative. Something actually ends at the act break and then when we come back, we're moving on to something else. And that was on purpose. But the network I was dealing with, they would give me notes based on the farce form, you know, they wanted these act breaks that were based on plot and I was giving them things that were based on story, on the emotional journey, and so we never saw eye to eye, and they ... you know ... I won't go into all that. But it was very frustrating. But now you see many shows have copied that too. Whether it was The Office, who redid a lot of that type of storytelling, or there wasn't those type of act breaks at The Office, we were just, we were getting in deeper into that character's psyche, you know, and that sort of thing. So it's a whole different type of story telling for sitcoms.

And Bernie Mac, the man, was just such a great performer.

Very enigmatic, very charismatic, very interesting as both the character and a performer and the perfect instrument for doing this type of thing because he looked like something we hadn't quite seen doing that. And, you know, he's pulling from the tradition of Jack Benny, who spoke directly to the audience, or George Burns, who would "Say goodnight Gracie" you know, talk to the audience. Or Gary Shandling kind of revived, didn't make fun of it in his show, It's Gary Shandling Show, where he talked for dune [?] So Bernie was taking, he was in that tradition of relating directly to the audience but in a slightly different way. For The Bernie Mac Show, I wanted it to represent his emotional life and what was going on over ... he was pleading to America to relate to his plight.

One of the standout episodes to me, and I think what's so powerful about it, that slice of life that it gives is a black experience that you didn't see, I mean, it's a different view and it felt more authentic than what you saw on Fresh Prince or on Sister, Sister.

Absolutely right. And without commenting on it as well. It's just taking it for granted.

Like the religion one where Bernie gets saved and he goes to church. That's a great example of that. There's no "this is the right thing or the wrong thing" for him to go to church. He's just thinking as a pragmatist, like "How do I get these kids in line?"

Yes, exactly. It's all to shut up the kids, you know, and he doesn't care about his soul, he wants their souls saved. He thinks they're the devils. He has a problem when someone tries to save his soul. Yeah that's a problem.

[Clip from The Bernie Mac Show]

And he's just such a powerful performer that he could take you on that journey, that psychological journey that you're talking about with a look, you know, he could do it with a look and you're there.

Yes, absolutely. It was fantastic.

Him and James Gandolfini, actually, since we talked about The Sopranos, they're both powerful, powerful performers that we lost way too early.

Absolutely. I agree, what a great analogy. I agree. They both had stored up power where, in the simplest of things you saw this energy in everything, and that's that stored up energy where you know something could happen at any second.

Before he was offered his new show on Comedy Central, Wilmore was helping produce the ABC sitcom, Black-ish. He tells me about how he got involved in that project.

I was called by ABC because they were thinking of picking it up to shoot the pilot, if I would help shepherd it through the pilot stage and so I did that with Kenya and helped rewrite it and get it ready and, you know, produced it, cast it, all that stuff and did the pilot. And then the whole Comedy Central thing came around and I had to ... I was gonna run Black-ish full time but I ended up just helping out on the first like eight to 10 episodes.

Okay, so you've completely stepped away from that?

Yes, at this point I'm completely away.

Okay. Did you see that project as continuing, kind of, the trajectory that we were just talking about with Bernie Mac of showing a more authentic African American experience?

Well it's a little different from Bernie. For me, what attracted me to that script, to Kenya's script, was I felt there was some content in there that, you know, when we talked earlier about All in the Family and that there was content in those sitcoms and to me it seems like sitcoms today don't have any content in them, you know, they're all very silly, you know some of them are very funny doing that, but nothing's really being discussed of any consequence it seems like to me. I can't think of one, I could be wrong, at least on the networks I can't. I mean Louis [C. K.] tackles some interesting things in his show, but more of those are so lipstick, you know it's more about his character and kind of the psyches and that. But it's very interesting though, you know. But in terms of commentary on anything or content about issues, it just didn't seem like it was out there. So I was like "Wow. This is very good for you Kenya, you got some interesting stuff" and it's funny how timely it ended up being, especially this year. But that's what drew me to it was that part of it. And this was a different type of family that I hadn't quite seen, you know, in this way.

[Clip from Black-ish]

Were you a little bit ... I mean it's a good problem to have the option of two different shows, but was there part of you that was a little disappointed to step away from that?

Oh absolutely, I mean you're so looking forward to it and you're so excited, so as excited as I was to be doing my own show, I was very kind of sad to be leaving Black-ish.

So what's this like, I mean what stage are you at now with The Nightly Show. I'm sure you probably hired your whole staff and, are you guys writing every day?

No. We're still putting people together. We're still closing deals on all the writers, so no we're still doing all that.

So are your days now a lot of meeting with people, deciding whether or not they're right for the show, auditioning people. Is the kind of the stage you're at right now?

All of that kind of stuff and figuring out the show at the same time. So it's all of that stuff.

And I think this is something you mentioned in other interviews, that it's going to, I think it was the WTF one actually, that what you kind of have in mind is something similar to the Bill Maher's format with Politically Incorrect

Well it's hard to compare it to Politically Incorrect. His was strictly a panel show. This will have me at the beginning like Jon and Stephen and even Oliver, where I'm giving my take on what's going on in that form. And then there'll be a panel aspect to it. And there will be some correspondent type stuff as well. So it's kind of a mashup of a lot of those things, but our own thing, you know. I mean I understand that for people normally to understand shows, they have to compare it to something that's out there, it's hard to just describe something on it's own.

Right, right. I mean since you've run sitcoms, you ran a cartoon, and now you're running your own talk news type show, what do you prefer as a writer, or do they just satisfy different parts of your brain?

I think they satisfy different parts of my brain. This one is probably the most daunting because I'm performing in it as well, and the others, my job was just to write and produce, you know, which is a tough enough job in and of itself. But to be the one who is the messenger, so to speak, the one who's being written for, this is it's own challenge

Well here's a question: Were you surprised to hear that Bernie Mac had won a Peabody Award when it did?

Absolutely. I mean, I didn't know how people were going to react to our show. When I wrote that, keep in mind, I knew I was disrupting the rhythms and doing something different, but I didn't know if people would like it, you know. It was just something I was interested in. I didn't know. And so when people accepted it in a way, it was all surprise, a pleasant one. I was very happy about that, I was very honored to get a Peabody. And, by the way, Walter Cronkite gave me the award, I mean it's so ironic that he did. I was a huge Cronkite fan growing up and the fact that he gave me that award makes it one of the most special awards I've ever gotten.

[Clip from Wlmore's Acceptance Speech at the 2002 Peabody Awards Ceremony]

And he really laughed at that last line and I was like "Oh! Very good. You made Walter Cronkite laugh." So that made my day.

And then, I had no idea I'd be working with Jon Stewart and I'd be doing this kind of thing in the news business. I had no idea at the time. Here I am getting an award from Walter Cronkite having no idea I'd be on a path to giving the news, so to speak, to America.

Well that's great. I mean I'm really looking forward to the new show. I'm a big fan of your work up to this point, as you can see. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all shakes out.

It was my pleasure and thank you so much. I appreciate it.

That's it for this episode of Stories that Matter, a Peabody Awards production. Dr. Nate Kohn, Associate Director of The Peabody Awards, is our Executive Producer. Our Associate Producers are Ele Ellis, Wes Unruh and Noel Holston. Jana French is our Production Assistant. This show was edited and mixed by Wes Unruh. Special thanks to WUGA-FM, Chris Shupe and Michael Cardin. Subscribe to our podcast to hear other creators, writers and producers talk about their Peabody Award winning work. You can also check out the podcast and the rest of our exclusive content at peabodyawards.com. Also, follow us on Twitter @PeabodyAwards. I'm Matt Shedd and thanks again for listening to Stories that Matter.