A good comedian has to "know what regular people are going through," Roy Wood Jr. says. In his new Hulu special, Lonely Flowers, Wood riffs on how isolation has sent society spiraling. He spoke with Tonya Mosley about leaving The Daily Show, learning from other comics, and how an arrest pushed him to pursue stand-up.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the main theme of Roy Wood Jr.'s comedy?
I've been thinking a lot about the journalism industry with the decline and trust and the fractured attention spans. And as you said earlier, you feel like comedy is a form of journalism.
But through your role on The Daily Show as a correspondent in this new news quiz show, I want to know from you, like, that hasn't always been the case where, you know, you actually studied journalism and then you decided to be a comedian. But when did it become clear to you that, wait a minute, this thing that I'm doing as a comedian is actually a form of journalism?
when I started researching all the stuff I wanted to talk about, and it was just like researching a dang story from college, documentary research. And then once I approached it as that, then it became, oh, you can find interesting, like if you can sneak in something that people didn't know or didn't consider into your bits, oh, cool. You know, The Daily Show changed a lot for me creatively.
Daily Show taught me over analysis and how to find the angle on a topic that no one has touched yet. You know, we know what they're saying. What are they not saying? And how can we say that? And then Trevor Noah taught me through observation as a black man. when to use your anger and when to keep it in your back pocket performatively.
But performing in a state of aggression, as I was for the most part coming into The Daily Show, doesn't help your point to land with everyone.
Did you have a moment when you were on the show where that became clear to you?
Yeah, the first piece that I did, the first segment I did, that ever aired on the show was a segment with Jordan Klepper. The first field piece, I mean. It's the first week of the show. It was a segment called Are All Cops Racist? And Klepper and I did a... a ride-along with the Appleton, Wisconsin Police Department. It wasn't Madison. It was a Wisconsin city.
And we interview a former NYPD detective about over-policing and police bias and, you know, just all the things in 2015. And this man said the N-word in the interview and...
To you? With you there?
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Chapter 2: How does Roy Wood Jr. address societal issues in his comedy?
Yeah, in Chicago, yeah.
Yeah. Did you get to be around his work much when you were growing up?
Yeah. I mean, I was there. I mean, he was a great father. Hey, come with me to the radio station. I would sit at his feet while he read AP Wire stories in the 80s. And, you know, I spent every summer with my father before my parents got back together.
So I was around, you know, this man holding court in barbershops, you know, talking to people about issues, talking to the mayor, you know, talking to everyone about stuff. And... I really feel like that was the early days of, how can I put it, the foundation of my ideologies. You know, my father knew all the black leaders.
You know, my father was, you know, I don't want to say the man around town, but he kind of was.
He also was like, I mean, he was the news guy. You describe him as the voice that we would hear on the car radio in the morning, giving the news on the way to school, on the way to work. It just got me thinking about how much radio, that kind of media, it leaves an imprint on us. But it's also ephemeral, you know? Do you have any tapes or recordings of his work still?
Yeah, but they're all reel-to-reels. I haven't straightened that out yet. You know, that's something I definitely need to get to because, you know, so much of what my father talked about in his commentary work was about a lot of issues with the black race that are still happening today.
You know, as much as I spent, you know, like any child, you go through a rebellion period against your parents while you want to be nothing like them. And then I look up and I look at the type of comedy that I talk about and I am him. I'm just a little funnier.
Right. Did he have a sense of humor?
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the N-word in Roy Wood Jr.'s comedy?
Oh, wow. Wow.
So, yeah, my dad was, you know, there was an actor that cast him. That whole get pulled over scene is in the show. That's your dad. Yeah.
That's in the show.
I was very kind to them.
Yeah.
I was very kind to them.
You mentioned your son, and I'm just wondering, as your son gets older, are there any parts of fatherhood that you're like, now I understand, looking back at your dad?
It's more of an in reverse. How could you miss all of this? I know this is the wrong can of beans to open up this late in our conversation, but I think... The moments I have with my son, a lot of them are moments that my father missed with me. So it's like, damn, man, how did I miss this? You missed this? You didn't show up to the Boy Scout joint. You didn't show up to the chess tournament, baby.
Where was you at? What were you doing? Like, that would be the bigger question is, hey, man, I need you to account for your absences. So it would probably be like a terrible accountability evaluation conversation. Like if my dad was alive today, it'd be me yelling at an 80-year-old man. Probably not fair.
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