I was most pleased to speak this afternoon with W. Kamau Bell, a Peabody Award and 4-time Emmy-winning comedian, filmmaker, and television host who is also a Celebrity Jeopardy champion!
He is best known as the creator and host of CNN’s United Shades of America on which he spent seven seasons traveling the country exploring communities, subcultures, and perspectives that often go overlooked. The show demonstrated his unique skill of helping people conduct difficult conversations without losing their sense of humor.
Not that he’s afraid to mix things up. Kamau’s 2022 HBO docu-series, We Need to Talk About Cosby dove deep into numerous allegations of sexual assault against legendary comedian and television icon, Bill Cosby, a comedian whose work Kamau deeply admired.
Kamau has a new podcast called Who’s With Me? on which he has already talked to Ted Danson, Delroy Lindo, Daveed Diggs, and Kristen Kish.
He spoke to me from his home in Oakland, CA where he lives with his wife and their three daughters. In this occasionally-serious, but most enjoyable conversation, we discuss:
The difference between craft and character
His love of podcasting
Comedy nerd-ship
The best part about Father’s Day
And—most importantly— Dave Barry
See clips and leave comments below. In the mean time, subscribe to Kamau’s ‘Who’s With Me?’ Substack here and to Paul’s ‘Reasonably Happy’ Substack here.
Some of my favorite clips
On podcasting (00:02:31)
Paul: Let’s talk about that podcast. I listened to Ted Danson and Delroy Lindo—great conversations with two very interesting guys. What do you enjoy most about podcasting?
Kamau: It’s a way to have conversations with people I want to have that I probably wouldn’t have if I didn’t have a work-related reason to reach out.
Paul: Would you do it for free?
Kamau: I would. In fact, I’m currently losing money on it, so the answer is clearly yes. The podcast gives you a dedicated reason to have those conversations, and it makes it less weird that I’m asking very focused questions. Because if I went out to dinner with you and said, “Tell me about that time you did blackface, Ted Danson,” that’s going to be a pretty strange way to start a conversation.
On being an “only” child (00:07:23)
Kamau: Only children don’t just want to be alone sometimes—they need to be alone. It’s a requirement. It’s no different from needing to eat or sleep. Only children need to be left the hell alone once in a while, and it’s not weird; it’s simply how we grew up. If we don’t get that time to ourselves, we get depleted.
I think this ties into the idea of a “social battery.” Everyone has a different-sized social battery, meaning a different capacity for being around other people. Some people actually get energized by social interaction—their battery charges up when they’re with others. Only children, on the other hand, tend to get drained pretty quickly by being around too many people for too long. Our social battery runs down.
Mine is definitely like that, although I’ve trained myself to function with a low social battery because I’m in show business. My middle child is the same way, and it’s helpful to give kids language for it. Sometimes she’ll be out and say, “My social battery is low.” What she means is, “I’ve been around a lot of people today. I need to relax. I need to be home.”
On Bill Cosby (00:16:56)
Paul: When you called out Cosby—on We Need to Talk About Cosby…
Kamau: Man—I didn’t expect this conversation to go from Scooby-Doo to Bill Cosby, but here we are.
Paul: Did you ever feel like the guy at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode exposing the crook who’d been hiding in plain sight? Like, “It’s Dr. Huxtable!”
Kamau: I definitely felt that way to some extent. So much of the Cosby story was known behind closed doors. People talked about it privately, but it hadn’t really been discussed publicly. When he went to jail, I thought, “Okay, now we can finally talk about this openly.” I had no idea he would get out of jail in the middle of our production. At that point, I thought, “Huh, I may never be able to leave my house again,” because I knew this wasn’t going to be popular with a lot of people.
There was definitely a period afterward where I took a lot of heat. It’s probably the best work I’ve ever done, but it also caused me the most personal stress. Every time I started feeling overwhelmed by that, though, I thought about the women who had spoken out. If they could come forward and endure what they endured, I could certainly take a few hits.
Thank you Laura 👗, Kit, Jinx Corle, Heather A Murphy, Dan Stone, and many others for tuning into the live video w/Kamau!
