Unlike a lot of people, I wouldn’t say I’m scared by what’s happening in the world right now. I would say that I’m mortified. I wake up every day to more insane news and think, “I can’t wait to get back on TV.” When I shot the pilot for a new late-night show at the end of last year, I knew I wanted to focus on stories in both politics and pop culture, because there really is no separation anymore. Everything political has become pop culture, and most pop culture has a political bent to it—on Instagram, the Women’s March looked like Coachella! I scroll down my timeline and it’s equal parts celebrity gossip and political posts. Same with most people I know. You’re not dumb for having a pool among your friends to guess the sex of Beyoncé’s twins, and you’re not a genius for having a position on Betsy DeVos. You’re probably just American.
I trace it back to President Obama. He was the biggest rock star we’d ever seen in modern politics, and whoever was gonna follow his act had to try to match that star power. The image of Kanye West meeting with Trump after the election was the very definition of this; the fact that our new president could find the time to meet with a rapper but couldn’t bother getting a daily intelligence briefing told us everything we needed to know about his priorities. Trump only cared about putting on a show, and instead of my social feed being equal parts celebrity gossip and political posts, everything was all at once about Kanald.
It only seemed logical to re-create that combination on a late-night show, to bring to life how people actually consume news now. You can’t just come out and make a silly topical celebrity joke anymore, and you can’t just make fun of somebody’s small hands or dumb hair. You need to dissect the tough subjects and find the irony in people’s beliefs and misconceptions. You need to focus on creating comedy that explains not only why something is funny but why it’s wrong or complicated or hypocritical. That’s where the real funny comes from. Late-night hosts used to have to worry about getting political—didn’t want to upset anyone, didn’t want to jeopardize the ratings—but people like John Oliver have proven you can succeed with niche audiences. It’s like they’ve got their own social feeds: If people didn’t agree with them, they wouldn’t be following them.
Robin Thede (@robinthede) was head writer of The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore.
Fake @POTUS tweets by Owen Ellickson (@onlxn).
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