No comedian grows up saying, “One day I hope to get a show on CNN!” But by this point in my career I had learned, for better or worse, that I just didn’t do things the way most people did them.
The day after the last episode of Totally Biased aired in November 2013, I found out that the head of MSNBC was interested in meeting with me. Rachel Maddow, who I consider my Patronus, had set it up. I was still stunned by everything that had happened in the last few days. I was only twenty-four hours removed from having the show, but I wanted to go to the meeting. I felt like I was being recruited, like a draft pick.
Shortly after that, me, Melissa, and Sami went on vacation, or at least we tried to. I was still in shock about the last year or so and I had no idea what to do next. College dropout, stand-up dropout, late-night TV dropout. I was depressed again. Sami was about two and a half years old. My agent said, “MSNBC is great, but let’s take some meetings.” Jeff Zucker from CNN wanted to meet with me, and I was like, Huh . . .
The only thing I knew about Jeff Zucker is that I’d read he’d screwed Conan O’Brien out of The Tonight Show. I had heard this during my effort to become a better talk show host during Totally Biased when I had read Bill Carter’s book The War for Late Night. In the book, Jeff was painted as the enemy and Conan was the hero. I was honestly reluctant to meet with him. The comedy world had been knee-deep in the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien thing. But I got over my reluctance pretty quickly because Jeff was in the middle of transforming CNN from a straight news network into a news and relevant-programming network. And they employed some people whose work I loved. Anthony Bourdain, Morgan Spurlock, Mike Rowe, and Lisa Ling had recently gotten shows at CNN, and Jeff was clearly letting them continue to do the good work they were already doing. And ultimately, the meanest thing Jeff has ever done to me was to have my show follow Bourdain’s show. It was a lot of pressure. But I also knew it showed how much he believed in the show.
Jeff was behind his desk with about eight thousand TVs on and his computer up. He was clearly short on time. There was a lot going on in the news that day. (Remember when there wasn’t a lot going on in the news?) I didn’t blame him. He got right to it—“So, your show got canceled. Congratulations. It was good. So, do you pay attention to the news?”
“Yeah, I sure do.”
“So you know what’s going on? Here’s a quiz . . .”
And he gave me a news quiz. I was like, OK . . . I had been waking up to the news alerts on my phone, watching the news shows at night, and listening to NPR since the early days of the Bell Curve, so I shouldn’t have been worried, but I was. How deep would this quiz go? Would he ask, “How do we solve the problems between Israel and Palestine?” “Give me a cost benefit analysis of the Keystone Pipeline!” But it was more like a game show about the news. “Do you know about Bridgegate?” It was 2014 by then, and I was still living in New York City. I don’t know how anybody wouldn’t know about Bridgegate. Basically, if you watched CNN for ten minutes, you’d know all the answers. Luckily, nobody expects comedians to be that smart.
I was aware I wasn’t just one of many comedians that CNN was meeting with that day. Which is what my career has always been like—I end up places other people aren’t even trying to go to. I’m not really competing against anyone; I’m just trying to do what I do and make it better. Which is good for me—there are so many comedians who think they’re competing with Kevin Hart; some are, but most aren’t. I know I’m not competing with Kevin Hart. I think it’s weird that I can even claim that I have the same job: comedian.
After I passed the quiz, Jeff left and brought a couple of his vice presidents in. I was happy to see that they weren’t all dudes. It was two women, Nancy Duffy and Amy Entelis. It became very clear that they didn’t want a late-night talk show. That wasn’t what they brought me in for. They told me that a production company had pitched them an idea called “Black Man, White America,” where a Black man would travel across America and visit all white places. And I thought, That idea seems horrible, although I liked the idea of a travel show. I’d written up a pitch for a show called Don’t Go There, so I pitched them my version. I told them I wanted to go to more than just white places, because I was from the Bay Area, and I wanted to see all kinds of cultures I don’t know about, not just white places. I joked, “I already have white in-laws.” They liked my twist on the idea.
I went to other meetings at other networks, but CNN called me back and told me they took my idea back to the production company that had pitched it, and the production company liked it even better. They set up a phone call with Jimmy Fox, the head of the production company. Jimmy told me they’d changed the name to United Shades of America, a WAY better title, and a way better feeling for a show like this. He wanted to hire an executive producer named . . . Let’s call him Showy. Showy had a long résumé and had run another show that I liked a lot. That show was funny but more important, it was smart. It was a natural fit.
We talked about the first idea for the show. I was the one who said, “The Klan.” I had been thinking about the Ku Klux Klan all my life. You can’t learn about the history of America without reading about the KKK, America’s own terrorist group. My mother is from Indiana, which was a big Klan stronghold. I had heard about a Klan museum in South Carolina. I would regularly go on the Klan website—I mean, not every day, but I’d always kept my eye on them, to read the rhetoric and work on the Klan jokes in my act. It was something I had always been interested in, and if we were going to do it, I wanted to go all out. Jimmy had originally thought of the show as a broad comedy show, but I saw it more like Anthony Bourdain’s show—a serious take on something from someone with a big personality. I’m a big personality, and I’m funny, but I wasn’t doing this in a funny way. Some of the ideas were like, “Kamau could go to an Indian wedding!” and I just thought, What does that even mean? They’re Indian. If they get married, I’ll go to their wedding. I give Jimmy lots of credit though. Every time I pushed back on something, he would listen. He allowed me to explain what I, a Black man who wanted a show based on inclusiveness, needed from the show. Jimmy was a white guy and a TV executive who had produced many, many shows. He had lots of reasons not to listen to me. But more often than not, he did.
So I kept saying, “What about the Klan?” and one guy actually said at one point, “Is it too on the nose?”—a classic showbiz thing! People are so inside their rabbit hole they don’t see the outside perspective. Do you see a lot of shows about Black people visiting the Klan? You know that Chappelle’s Show sketch wasn’t real, right?
We settled on it, and the production team started looking for Klan members we could talk to. But the bigger conversation among the team ended up being about representation. Because I sat down with Jimmy Fox and later the whole the production team, and I realized that they were all white people. And mostly dudes. I was already feeling, OK, I’m not going to be able to rely and lean on these people in the way I was expecting. They aren’t going to get it on the same level as people of color. The difference between two people talking about cancer. If only one person has cancer, then the person with cancer has to spend time explaining cancer to the other. If they both have cancer, then they can get past the explanation and directly to the conversation about having cancer.
We got to Kentucky. Ethan Berlin, from Totally Biased, was there. Ethan was the “white guy” from the Totally Biased field piece, “Do You Have Anything to Say to a White Guy?” He found out from the YouTube comments that many white guys feel like his Jewish-ness outweighs his whiteness. I love Ethan. He matches an extremely dark sense of humor with a sensitive soul. He gets me. But with most of the crew, I just felt like they were a TV production crew. I didn’t get the feeling I was with people who had any interest in, or empathy for, the subject. I really felt alone and isolated.
Part of that may have been that the first day of work was also the day we shot with the KKK. The night before we shot was the first time I had met most of the crew. It felt weird to do something so vulnerable with a bunch of strangers. The guy in charge of security was a FORMER LA POLICE OFFICER! I thought, Greeeeeeeat . . . Now who’s in charge of protecting me from him? In case he has an LA riots flashback while we are shooting? It was just another example of how whoever was in charge was not thinking about how these decisions would affect me . . . or worse . . . Maybe they didn’t care. The ex-cop ended up being a good guy. We had some really interesting drives, which will force communication to happen. Not that I’m suggesting every Black person be forced to take an eight-hour car ride with a cop.
But this was a classic example of the problem of the lack of representation in show business. No one was thinking, Oh, Kamau should probably be surrounded by people who understand what he’s trying to do here. I was having to translate my ideas to this white crew, hoping they could understand them so they could then translate them to the screen. And it’s awful. I couldn’t just make a good show; I also had to manage my relationship with the crew. And hold a diversity training seminar that no one had signed up for.
The ex-cop was Mexican-American, so he understood where I was coming from, but he was WAY more ex-cop than current Mexican-American. We ended up laughing a lot more than I expected. But he got it way more than anyone else there, although during the shoot he had to pretend to be white. The Klan said they wanted no other people of color there. The producer said that the reason there were no other people of color in the crew was because the Klan didn’t want that. And I thought, Why do they get to pick? Why are we putting them in the position of power? Also, that didn’t explain why there weren’t POCs in the remaining seven episodes either. Let me be clear: Occasionally there were POCs on the crew as production assistants or editors on the show, but there were none in positions of authority. None existed in the positions that mattered.
Early on the first day of shooting, we walked around town and did some man-on-the-street stuff. I thought, Oh, I’m talking to people, being funny, this is OK. I know how to do this. And while we’re filming, some white guy recognized me and said, “Hey, Totally Biased!” which was great, because the crew weren’t necessarily fans of Totally Biased. To them, I was just this guy who was the star of the show. I understood. They had all worked on hundreds of productions. This was just another day at work. So when people recognized me, I’d think: See? Hey, guys, I’m actually already in showbiz.
At the end of the first day, we went to a clearing in some trees off a dirt road. We pulled up, and there was a long wait getting the KKK ready while I sat in the car with Patrick, the director of photography who I would eventually come to love like a brother, the sound guy, and the ex-cop. There was a long wait—maybe five minutes, maybe an hour. It didn’t make it into the show, but I was singing Tom Petty: “The waiting is the hardest part . . .”
We finally pulled into the clearing where they were going to burn the cross, and there was a guy with some sort of rifle. They had told me no one would have a gun, but the LAPD guy tried to reassure me by telling me that the guy with the rifle clearly didn’t know how to use it. And I thought: That actually makes me MORE worried. He might accidentally shoot me. The ex-cop told me that no matter what happened, he had my back and he would do whatever it took to get me out of there if the shit hit the fan. “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six” was his mantra. Only time I would hear a cop say that and feel good about it.
They finally waved the car in. I got out and walked toward the group. When you watch it on TV you can hear me say, “I’ve had some bad ideas . . .” I wasn’t acting. I immediately felt like this was a dumb idea.
There was a phalanx of Klan members in front of me in full regalia, ironically dressed in all the colors of the rainbow. There were several in white robes but also one in blue, who I took to calling Klanny Smurf (in my mind) and a young blond woman who looked like an eighteen-year-old Britney Spears, who looked like she wanted to kill me the entire time we were there. Klanny Smurf got all up in my face talking about Ferguson and policing in America, about how Black people can’t be policed. Showy stepped in to calm him down, because that wasn’t going to work for the show. We needed conversation, not a ’90s-era Jerry Springer show. I had been worried that some of the KKK members who were on the periphery would really not be OK that I was there. I was worried that someone was going to run up and attack me. But when someone did run up, he handed me a bag of Skittles and iced tea, which is what Trayvon Martin had bought before he was killed. He handed it to me, clearly trying to insult me, and I laughed it off and said, “Oh you got jokes?” I thought: Why didn’t you do that on camera? We should have got that on film!
I was trying to pay attention to everything, looking all around me. Things began to settle down, and I started to feel comfortable enough to be funny. At some point the crew stopped filming because they had everything we needed in one conversation. I pulled Showy aside and I told him, “You need to tell me when you stop filming, because I don’t actually enjoy talking to these guys.” I realized, again, that they just thought they were making a TV show. They didn’t realize I was a Black guy TALKING TO THE KU KLUX KLAN. I was paying an emotional toll for being here. He just said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” But it was a big indicator of how our relationship would not work out over time. He was always just making a TV show. He never realized that in all the shows we made I was paying a human cost.
We filmed the cross burning. It was incredible. It was surreal. It was sad. I couldn’t help but think about all the Black people who had been in positions like me with the Klan, but were not there to make TV shows. The burning cross was probably the last thing they saw before they were murdered. Showy came up with the idea that we should end the episode with the image of the cross. He was right. It was dramatic that way.
By the end of the shoot, it was weird. We had been there for serval hours, and several of the Klan guys were laughing with me, except for Klanny Spears. I found out that she was fourth-generation Klan. I felt bad for her. She was classically Hollywood-looking. She looked like if she could sing she’d be on American Idol. I wanted to tell her: You’re filled with so much anger and enmity, and it’s just because you’re in this town and you are disappointed in your circumstances. And you think it’s my fault. You think that Black people are the problem. Come to Hollywood! I’ll make you a star!
I think a lot of the people there were like that. They lived in a town with no industry and not a lot of jobs and not a lot of future. They weren’t educated well, and they just blamed it on Black people. I had empathy for them. I laughed with them, but mostly because I wanted to get out of there.
Later during the shoot, me and the crew were in Harrison, Arkansas. I was standing in front of a barbershop with a huge Confederate flag. We were told it was owned by a man who was part of the Klan. It was nighttime, and I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside the barbershop. I had a walkie-talkie in my back pocket, and I could hear Showy saying, “Get closer to it! Get closer to it!” And I thought: Dude, there’s a guy in there who might be with the Klan. Do you understand? This is real. I’m REALLY walking toward a place where a guy who might be in the Klan could shoot and kill me.
I just stopped and started crying. And instead of asking me if I was OK, the crew sort of backed off. I realized I had to pull it together, because nobody really knew how to handle it . . . or worse, they didn’t give a shit. Ethan was there. And he came to me. Showy told him to get out of the way.
—
I don’t hate Showy. We had different working styles. He’s a talented, funny dude. He was a big part of why the first season went so well. But I was spending too much time arguing for things to be more inclusive, or less stereotypical. Smarter. And I had no one else on the crew who I could turn to and say, “You tell him.” Again, lack of representation is the problem. It was crazy. My show about inclusion had a problem with inclusion. The show wasn’t creating an environment where the person of color—who was the star and an executive producer—felt like he could be successful. But that’s showbiz, and that’s America. People think that representation doesn’t matter, but it does. It makes a difference. The problem is that sometimes people of color in show business—and this is true of women too—think that they just have to eat it. They don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings or be an asshole or be looked at as overly sensitive. I was certainly that way during Totally Biased. But now I think, Fuck that. Why am I not naming names? Why am I protecting white men’s feelings? They weren’t protecting my feelings. I don’t have to be in this business if it doesn’t work for my family or my soul. There’s always work at Starbucks.
Later, we started editing the show, and a lot of the funny moments were edited out. Showy had said, “When you start making jokes with the Klan, it makes it seem like they’re in on the joke, and we want them to appear scary.” And I thought, White man, the Klan is ALWAYS scary. If I make them laugh, I have power. If I make the Klan laugh, then they’re submitting to me. Then I’m winning. If you take out the laughter, then I just look like a Black guy who showed up and got lectured by the Klan.
We went back and forth, and I had to argue to get things in that were funny. But I’m glad I did. I got some of it in. And those things ended up being talked-about moments in the show. (There was a riff about how Klanny Smurf didn’t believe in gay marriage because of the Bible, but he did believe in eating at Red Lobster even though the Bible was clearly against eating crustaceans. Holy cognitive dissonance, Batman!) And in season two, we have replaced a lot of people. (Showy is gone. He’s found other work, because—again—he’s good at what he does.) But there are still moments when there are ghosts in the machine. If I learned anything from dropping out of Penn, it’s that I’m always ready to leave. Being able to say no is the most power you can ever have. It is either a luxury when you can afford to leave, or it is necessary for survival when the cost to stay is waaaaay too high.