Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Beyond the Scene. It's the podcast that goes
Speaker 2: deeper to topics and segments that normally air on the
Speaker 2: Daily Show. This this is what you gotta think about
Speaker 2: this podcast as all right, So, like we like eggs, right,
Speaker 2: everybody love it egg This is an omelet. You got
Speaker 2: the eggs, that's the Daily Show. But then we come
Speaker 2: in and we give you a little We sprinkle in
Speaker 2: some crumbled up sausage, we put in some green peppers,
Speaker 2: we put it in onion, cheese, all types of stuff
Speaker 2: to make something even better for you. Today is kind
Speaker 2: of a different type of episode. This is a topic
Speaker 2: we don't we haven't had a chance to get into
Speaker 2: on the Daily Show just yet, but we want to
Speaker 2: talk about the White House Correspondence to Dinner that I
Speaker 2: had the pleasure of hosting not too long ago, and
Speaker 2: I want to get into it with some of the
Speaker 2: writers so we can go into I guess showing you
Speaker 2: all the process of what it's like creating that type
Speaker 2: of script, what it's like creating that type of show,
Speaker 2: and you know what, I think it would be a
Speaker 2: joy if we first heard a couple of clips from
Speaker 2: the correspondence Jenner. Before we get into everything, roll the clip. Yo,
Speaker 2: look good, you're dressed nice, You got the nice threads on,
Speaker 2: you got the jewelry glistening. Look like everybody got a
Speaker 2: little piece of that settlement money from Fox News. And
Speaker 2: that's all I have to say about that, because I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna have dominion on my ass. I love to me.
Speaker 2: Matter of fact, let me just say right now, my
Speaker 2: favorite voting machine is dominion voting machines. When I go
Speaker 2: to the polls, I make sure it is a dominion
Speaker 2: machine that I use. If your election need the truth,
Speaker 2: put dominion in your booth.
Speaker 3: Us.
Speaker 2: We should be inspired by the events in France. They
Speaker 2: rioted when the retirement age went up two years to
Speaker 2: sixty four. They rioted because they didn't want to work
Speaker 2: till sixty four. Meanwhile, in America we have an eighty
Speaker 2: year old man begging us for four more years of work, begging, begging. Okay,
Speaker 2: so those were some of the highlights. We might even
Speaker 2: get into a few more a little later on than
Speaker 2: the show. Before I get the writers in here and
Speaker 2: add them to the program, let me just say that
Speaker 2: politics is crazy in this world, and things change so
Speaker 2: so fast. Like, as a performer, you cannot do this
Speaker 2: without writers. Last week Donalandman got fired, Tucker Carlson got fired,
Speaker 2: there was all the stuff with the Fox dominion vote settlement,
Speaker 2: and then this week Smartly seeing Inn well played, announced
Speaker 2: after the Correspondence Dinner that they are going to have
Speaker 2: Donald Trump on their network doing a town hall. So yo, man,
Speaker 2: If the Correspondence Dinner was a couple of days away, Yo,
Speaker 2: it would have been a whole different situation. So when
Speaker 2: you're in a media landscape where things are changing so
Speaker 2: so so so fast, it's hard to always find a
Speaker 2: joke that hits what is basically a constantly moving target
Speaker 2: or the American zeitguy. So it's my pleasure to talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about this today. We're gonna answer a
Speaker 2: couple questions. I know some people ask some stuff and
Speaker 2: my social media comments about the Correspondence dinner, so maybe
Speaker 2: we'll get to some of that. But first let's meat
Speaker 2: the writers with me in the studio. I'm joined by
Speaker 2: Daily Show writer David Angelo.
Speaker 4: Hello, David, Hey Royd, it's great to be here today.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm joined by another writer that wrote with
Speaker 2: me on The Correspondence Dinner. He was formerly a writer
Speaker 2: for the nightly show on This Beautiful, Beautiful Paramount Plus
Speaker 2: Network as a wonderful work and stand up comedian as
Speaker 2: well Filonia's monk, you're.
Speaker 3: Doing, I'm here? I'm here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is the blackest answer I've ever heard, Like,
Speaker 2: how you doing?
Speaker 3: To get you here?
Speaker 2: I woke up and din't get shot yet, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I got to my back hurt a little bit,
Speaker 3: but I'm making it out.
Speaker 2: Here and also joining us. I don't know if she's
Speaker 2: still an investigative reporter, former investigative reporter, former writer for
Speaker 2: the Daily Show, Christiana and Backway Medina, who was our
Speaker 2: head writer. How you doing, Christiana?
Speaker 5: Hi Roy, I'm great.
Speaker 6: How are you?
Speaker 2: So? Let's unpack this because I've been tweeted a bunch
Speaker 2: of quite actually, I've been tweeted a lot of ship
Speaker 2: I can't read on that air, but I have been
Speaker 2: sent a couple of questions that I think people had
Speaker 2: about the actual writing process in the assembly of the
Speaker 2: Correspondence Center. Because I've never been on the inside of
Speaker 2: the at all, I can't speak to the three of you. Angela.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've written on any of them
Speaker 2: in the past or anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did it with Hassan and with Trevor.
Speaker 2: What was that? Like? What was what would you say?
Speaker 2: Is the difference then between the three processes because I
Speaker 2: don't know how to approach this, like because to me,
Speaker 2: the thing that was weird was that I don't I've
Speaker 2: never used writers for stand up right like I use
Speaker 2: writers in the show, so there's some degree of trust.
Speaker 2: But when I got the call about this, Christiana was
Speaker 2: literally the first person I called, because I'm like, all right,
Speaker 2: I know we can find funny people, but you usually
Speaker 2: had arguments within the Daily Show that I agreed with
Speaker 2: that were fair, like building the actual structure in the
Speaker 2: north star of it. So for me, I wanted to
Speaker 2: build from what am I trying to say? And now
Speaker 2: how can I make that funny? Which is how I
Speaker 2: build my stand up. But like with Hassan and Trevor, like,
Speaker 2: was the construction process the same or was it?
Speaker 7: Like I mean, everyone was a little different. This one
Speaker 7: was like probably the least number of people working on it,
Speaker 7: so I think it went tighter. I think everything was
Speaker 7: a little more like organized and sync like that. The
Speaker 7: other one, like Trevor's. There were so many people involved
Speaker 7: that it was kind of like I didn't really even
Speaker 7: know what was happening. Sometimes it's like I was sort
Speaker 7: of on the periphery. And then Hassan, it was kind
Speaker 7: of just like, uh, I mean, I barely remember, but
Speaker 7: he had kind of like a head writer, sort of
Speaker 7: like how Christiana, Like he had this guy yeah, and
Speaker 7: he sort of just kind of would ask for jokes
Speaker 7: and then we'd get the joke. It wasn't that different
Speaker 7: from this one. Actually, it was kind of the same
Speaker 7: sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I had no idea what to put together. And then Filonius.
Speaker 2: I always respected you. I don't even you wanted them comedians, man,
Speaker 2: but I don't even remember where the fuck we met,
Speaker 2: Like it's like it was before you were at Nightly Show.
Speaker 2: I feel like we were parlaying on Twitter some But
Speaker 2: then it's possible that we just bumped shoulders at some
Speaker 2: points around the Chicago comedy scene where you, well, you
Speaker 2: started out, but you always had takes and angles on
Speaker 2: the Nightly Show that we're like very black, like you
Speaker 2: got to dig into crates and find some amnk shit,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, okay, I know I'm gonna need some
Speaker 2: of that in the script at some point as well.
Speaker 2: And also the way you look at politics from the
Speaker 2: perspective of a black man, which I am. It was
Speaker 2: I don't know, I just I just felt like it
Speaker 2: was essential. But like in terms of like writing for
Speaker 2: Larry Willmore, who ultimately did the correspondence Dinner as well,
Speaker 2: around that, there was some overlap in the time that
Speaker 2: you were at the Nightly Show. Did will Moore talk
Speaker 2: at all about this process?
Speaker 3: Not really, but I will say one of the segments
Speaker 3: that I was able to do for with Larry we
Speaker 3: made light of him calling former President Obama, I can
Speaker 3: say the N word? Can I say the N word?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I ain't.
Speaker 3: Know if I can say nigga? He called him nigga,
Speaker 3: and so we had a play off of that in
Speaker 3: a segment that I did where I said, you know,
Speaker 3: you're my brother of sub Saharian content and he was like, wait,
Speaker 3: did you just called me? I was like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: called you my nigga. The idea for me is, you know,
Speaker 3: we make fun of all of these spaces being extremely
Speaker 3: you know, centered on white men, but we have we
Speaker 3: have people of color in the room. The issue is
Speaker 3: always that we're writing for a specific voice, and you
Speaker 3: can't make I can't make Jimmy Kimmel say nigga. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean. You couldn't get John John Stewart
Speaker 3: to say niggas. So when you're pushing, when you're pitching jokes,
Speaker 3: you have to think about the person who's saying the joke.
Speaker 3: So this was fun for me because I was talking
Speaker 3: to a guy over forty who had experiences in the
Speaker 3: South and in the North, who knew, you know, what
Speaker 3: it was like to do this room full of people
Speaker 3: who may not look like you but still want to
Speaker 3: sound like yourself. So that that part to me was,
Speaker 3: you know, it was reminiscent of The Nightly Show, because
Speaker 3: that's I think what Larry Wilmore did. He presented the
Speaker 3: same format that everyone else that presented. He just tried
Speaker 3: to do with a little bit of color.
Speaker 2: So Christiana, having taken everybody's jokes, and then let me
Speaker 2: just give the viewers an understanding of me and Christianna's
Speaker 2: relationship over the last two weeks, because really, if we're
Speaker 2: being real about this, we wrote this on a three
Speaker 2: week runway.
Speaker 4: It was quick. This was the quickest turnaround of the.
Speaker 2: Three outs, I feel like we had some loose suggestions
Speaker 2: a month out. But the problem was that my guest
Speaker 2: hosting week for Daily Show ran three weeks before this,
Speaker 2: and I was so focused on getting ready for content
Speaker 2: and stuff and segments for my guest week. I couldn't
Speaker 2: split my mind into two partitions. I just go fuck it.
Speaker 2: The day after Fridday, morning after guest hosting, We're going
Speaker 2: to really dig in, and I started. The process was
Speaker 2: essentially I would take whatever we had written in a
Speaker 2: big Google doc that we were all sharing with the
Speaker 2: other writers, and I would take that and boil that
Speaker 2: down to a little bit of herbiage, take that out
Speaker 2: into the comedy clubs at night. Whatever didn't work, that's
Speaker 2: what I would change in the scripts, and that to Christiana.
Speaker 2: She would look at it in the morning, get it
Speaker 2: back to the writers, wh would do punch up, and
Speaker 2: by the time I looked at the script again at
Speaker 2: eight o'clock at night, I could rejigger everything and then
Speaker 2: go back out from eleven o'clock to one in the morning.
Speaker 2: So I was essentially sleeping I don't know, probably three
Speaker 2: four hours a night. And then Angelo was kind enough
Speaker 2: to come out on one of those nights and kind
Speaker 2: of give tweaks and move stuff around. But it was
Speaker 2: a lot of just Christiana and send in the audio
Speaker 2: to Christiana of every single show that I did, and
Speaker 2: just agreeing like what joke worked, what didn't work, what
Speaker 2: the crowd didn't respond to, and then just going from there.
Speaker 2: But what are your from what we constructed, Christiana? What
Speaker 2: are some of your takeaways from the correspondence? Jenner?
Speaker 8: You know, it's so interesting when like our initial conversation
Speaker 8: a couple months back, was it February, Like time means
Speaker 8: nothing to me right now. It was we had all
Speaker 8: of these people we wanted to hit. We were like, oh,
Speaker 8: Marjorie Taylor Green, and we should do some t J.
Speaker 8: Holmes and Amy, and we should like they because they
Speaker 8: were in the zeitgeist. They were in the news so prominently,
Speaker 8: and it was kind of like the Gift and the cursed.
Speaker 5: We just kept getting the gift of being used.
Speaker 8: That meant we would just have to just rip up
Speaker 8: what we had or you know, what we were trying
Speaker 8: to say. And then obviously, you know, the Trump arrangement
Speaker 8: happened and that changed a lot, I think, And then yeah,
Speaker 8: Elon just seemed irrelevant what was happening at Elon and Twitter,
Speaker 8: even though when you got the gig it was a.
Speaker 5: Pretty big story, is what everyone was talking about.
Speaker 8: And then Bloody Monday where Tucker and Don lost their jobs.
Speaker 5: It was just like, there's no.
Speaker 8: Way we can't open with Fox Dominion and into these
Speaker 8: massive firings. So I'm happy with how it went, but
Speaker 8: the reshuffling and the re sinking and listening to the audio,
Speaker 8: and then it's funny because I was listening to all
Speaker 8: of it so religiously. What would get a hard laugh
Speaker 8: like the week before in light of everything that happened
Speaker 8: the next week, Oh, we don't really care about that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 8: You could just feel the temperature changing as the news
Speaker 8: cycle went, so it was like a real gift. But
Speaker 8: it just meant that we were messaging you on WhatsApp
Speaker 8: literally why you were sitting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that a little bit. We'll
Speaker 2: get well, we'll get to that in a little bit.
Speaker 2: Let's let's watch a clip real quick from the correspondence dinner.
Speaker 2: Don't give it up a dark branding, Oh this joke?
Speaker 2: Oh shit, happy to be here real quick, misprais, and
Speaker 2: I think you left some of your classified documents up there.
Speaker 2: You can get the Yeah, no, don't give him to him.
Speaker 2: I'll put him in a safe place. He don't know
Speaker 2: where to keep him. Amast. We never ran that joke, yeah, Brandon,
Speaker 2: the document joke.
Speaker 5: Brandon, Yeah, the document joke. Never on it.
Speaker 3: Now, I remember watching that, I think, and I don't
Speaker 3: recall that in the document he's freestyling.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, like that was he.
Speaker 8: Pitched it in the day, right, Roy, You were like, yeah,
Speaker 8: because both the property brothers. Yeah, that's what happened the
Speaker 8: whole thing.
Speaker 2: So for the people who't know, the White House Correspondence
Speaker 2: Association gives us a list of the confirmed guest but
Speaker 2: you don't know who's gonna show up or not. And
Speaker 2: we were told from the jump there would only be
Speaker 2: one property brother, only one property brother. So the initial
Speaker 2: opening line was greetings, distinguished members of the media, our
Speaker 2: greatest leaders, and a property brother. And then I go
Speaker 2: down to COVID testing that morning, I fucking see the
Speaker 2: other property brother and I'm like, you gotta be shitting me.
Speaker 2: What the fuck are we going? How do we?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So we start trying to figure out a
Speaker 2: new open and that's what we ended up coming up with,
Speaker 2: and that ended up being way funnier then the Property
Speaker 2: Brother line. Then I find out from one of our
Speaker 2: other writers, Matt Naggering, that Doctor Fauci was there, because
Speaker 2: you all are at the table or whatever, just checking
Speaker 2: Twitter and looking at stuff, and they're sending me jokes
Speaker 2: in real time. At the table, they go, Fauci's here,
Speaker 2: and I go, oh, perfect, we'll sneak him in behind
Speaker 2: the Property Brother joke and just fucking go from there.
Speaker 2: So it's a pleasure to be here amongst our country's
Speaker 2: greatest leaders distinguished media organizations, both Property Brothers and Doctor Fauci.
Speaker 2: If you see Fauci tak a picture with them, that's
Speaker 2: show new booster shots all right. After the break, I
Speaker 2: guess we should talk more about the actual night and
Speaker 2: the jokes and the people, And I guess I should
Speaker 2: tell y'all, Oh, I'll tell you who loves me. Now,
Speaker 2: I'll tell.
Speaker 4: You that I'm saying after the break not you.
Speaker 2: Will not guess this person fucking loves me. You don't
Speaker 2: even understand. It's beyond the scenes. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Beyond the scenes. We are back. We're talking about the
Speaker 2: White House Correspondence Dinner, which I had the honor of
Speaker 2: being a part of, And we're here with some of
Speaker 2: the writers and head writer from that evening. Before we
Speaker 2: do anything else, let's just go into a quick clip
Speaker 2: of some of the best jokes from that evening, and
Speaker 2: then I want to come back and get y'all's opinion.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go around the horn and find out which
Speaker 2: joke that y'all think was gonna bomb. One of them
Speaker 2: did bomb. They ain't hating another. Right, First the clip
Speaker 2: the untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job. Now, Okay,
Speaker 2: some people celebrate it, but to Tucker's staff, I want
Speaker 2: you to know that I know what you're feel I
Speaker 2: work at the Daily Show, so I too have been
Speaker 2: blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a
Speaker 2: fake news program. But can we just all acknowledge? Can
Speaker 2: we just all be honest and just say that the
Speaker 2: Trump arrests didn't hit like we thought it was gonna hit.
Speaker 2: What's so desensitized the scandals now that Trump arrest it
Speaker 2: didn't do what I thought it was gonna do.
Speaker 5: The Trump arrest was like a pot brown and.
Speaker 3: You ate four hours ago.
Speaker 2: And you are do I feel justice?
Speaker 3: This gonna feel like justice.
Speaker 2: Let me try one of them, Georgia Raemond Brown is
Speaker 2: maybe that'll hit. Okay, that one's ask got some kick
Speaker 2: to it. I think Republicans y'all would be surprised. Man,
Speaker 2: if y'all would just be real about what CRT is,
Speaker 2: that you.
Speaker 3: Can be surprised.
Speaker 2: Some black folks might might meet your halfway. But you
Speaker 2: got to tell the truth. You can't lie to black people.
Speaker 2: Call it what it is. Anti CRT policies are an
Speaker 2: attack on black history and an attempt to erase the
Speaker 2: contribution of black people from the history book. That's what
Speaker 2: it is. You are trying to erase black people, and
Speaker 2: a lot of black people wouldn't mind some of that
Speaker 2: erasure as long as that black person is Clarence Thomas. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, So a lot of good jokes in there.
Speaker 2: Thank y'all for the assistance. Oh and also shout out
Speaker 2: shout out to Matt Nagre and Lily Brumkin. We're talking Khalia.
Speaker 2: What's Kalia's last name? I write as assistant And so
Speaker 2: of all of the jokes that we did, the joke
Speaker 2: that I thought would get a laugh or a clap,
Speaker 2: and it got neither was the joke about this is America.
Speaker 2: We don't make laws. We make a promise to pass
Speaker 2: the law, then we don't do anything. I thought that
Speaker 2: would get something.
Speaker 4: It got something in the club, Roy I.
Speaker 5: Did.
Speaker 2: If there's one person that could use the scandal, it's
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis. That boy is just running around just passing
Speaker 2: every controversial law he can think of, thinking that's gonna
Speaker 2: activate voters. That's not how you activate voters in this country.
Speaker 6: Ron.
Speaker 5: Everybody know how you do politics.
Speaker 2: It is a miracle. We don't pass laws. You make
Speaker 2: a promise to voters and then you don't do it.
Speaker 2: That's what the great leaders in this room understand.
Speaker 3: You know how to make things not happen.
Speaker 5: I want to say.
Speaker 2: I was like, runn then the line. Then the line was,
Speaker 2: that's what you all understand. Y'all are the best at
Speaker 2: not making things happen. And do you remember the original line, Christiana,
Speaker 2: because that was the softer version. The original line was
Speaker 2: that's why you're all in this room.
Speaker 8: Because you're the best line, and I was like, Y
Speaker 8: can't say that, but.
Speaker 2: I but saying you're the best at not making it Wow,
Speaker 2: that was it got nothing. It got nothing, and like
Speaker 2: in my head, as soon as it came out of
Speaker 2: my mouth, I was like, fuck her. She was right.
Speaker 3: But you know what, you know what I realized as
Speaker 3: a comic, you thought, because when I read it, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, this is hilarious. Because my brain can
Speaker 3: only see me performing that joke and making it work.
Speaker 3: It didn't cross my mind that this wasn't a room
Speaker 3: that you were going to be able to with a
Speaker 3: facial expression or a change in tone. You weren't going
Speaker 3: to be able to make it work because they were
Speaker 3: focused on what you were saying more than how you
Speaker 3: were saying it, which I'm not used to that.
Speaker 8: They're like Hilton, They're like five drinks in right, so
Speaker 8: like those type of like really nuanced, like I think
Speaker 8: by the time it landed, we can't be bother to laugh.
Speaker 5: Let me ask that was it? That's what I felt
Speaker 5: it was.
Speaker 7: And at that point in the night, they were already
Speaker 7: getting their orders from the CIA for the tomorrow's broadcasts,
Speaker 7: you know what they needed to say, so they were distracted.
Speaker 4: Although you did it, You did that joke in the club.
Speaker 4: I worked in the club.
Speaker 2: When I called them the best liars in the club.
Speaker 4: It was great because it wasn't about them that audience.
Speaker 7: Yeah, constituents joke the people like that you said it
Speaker 7: to them about them, and they were like, well, isn't
Speaker 7: that part of it?
Speaker 3: Isn't that part of the balance though. You're playing to
Speaker 3: the room, but you're also keenly aware that the constituents
Speaker 3: are watching this, right, and you're trying to make the
Speaker 3: room feel But the clips that are going viral aren't
Speaker 3: necessarily the ones that killed in the room. It's the
Speaker 3: ones that the constituents connected with the most, are the
Speaker 3: ones that they're repeated, right, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: I want to hear what you jokes were like, that
Speaker 2: one's gone.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you said that.
Speaker 2: I think it's funny.
Speaker 3: But I don't even know that was one of them,
Speaker 3: the one that you just mentioned that I was heavily
Speaker 3: that my fingerprints were on. I really was not. I
Speaker 3: wasn't sure or specifically, because I knew that the BMF
Speaker 3: and the power lines were very specific to a particular demographic,
Speaker 3: and I didn't think that was a room full of
Speaker 3: that demographic. But I also thought.
Speaker 2: The people who watch BMF and power are very dedicated,
Speaker 2: but it is not that.
Speaker 3: But I also but that was my My thinking was
Speaker 3: the same way that room won't get the BMF reference,
Speaker 3: the people who watch BMF won't get the succession reference.
Speaker 3: And that's the issue there. But I knew that somebody
Speaker 3: who there would be one one power viewer, one BMF
Speaker 3: watcher who will go, hey man. They mentioned Big Meach
Speaker 3: and that that was all I wanted. I felt like you.
Speaker 3: I felt like you reached out to me specifically for
Speaker 3: that joke. He was like, put something real, specifically, blackness
Speaker 3: only gonna be for them seventeen people, and that's.
Speaker 2: What we did, so right after a vander Pump.
Speaker 3: People and which turned it into one point seven million
Speaker 3: people don't forget. Oh yeah, that's what we need.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. The thing with that, though, was
Speaker 2: that even with fifty cent right, fifty cent reposted that
Speaker 2: part of the joke because he's an executive producer and
Speaker 2: co creator on those two series. The line after about
Speaker 2: Biden we got to replace Chuck Across and millions of
Speaker 2: Americans don't know why they hate you, and then they
Speaker 2: cut to Biden's face. I never saw that. Yeah, I remember,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say I don't see the cutaway shots. I
Speaker 2: don't see any of that. So Biden's reaction to the
Speaker 2: joke was almost like a punch up tag to the joke,
Speaker 2: like in and of itself, because I didn't know. He
Speaker 2: had this surprise look on his face, like, what the
Speaker 2: fuck did you just Tucker got caught up? Got caught
Speaker 2: up like that dude from Vanda Pump Rules text message stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't know what vander Pump Rules is about. I'm
Speaker 2: just watching it. A couple of times. My friends told
Speaker 2: me it's like BMF but for white people. Or is
Speaker 2: that secession? No, secession is power for white people. No,
Speaker 2: Tucker crossing is power for white people. No, that's white power.
Speaker 3: You know it.
Speaker 2: Never mind, I don't worry about that. But no, don't
Speaker 2: know about that. We got to get Tucker back on
Speaker 2: the air, mister president, because right now there's millions of
Speaker 2: Americans that don't even know why they hate you.
Speaker 5: That was an angela, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: He didn't move for like two seconds.
Speaker 7: Sorry, And I knew Biden would be bewildered when you
Speaker 7: said his name, so I kind of I kind of
Speaker 7: worked it in.
Speaker 4: That was part of the architecture.
Speaker 2: All right, what about you, Angela, give me give me one.
Speaker 7: I was trying to look because I forget. But the
Speaker 7: the I thought everything was, I expected kind of everything
Speaker 7: to work because we went through it. I think the
Speaker 7: school shooting one was the most, like the biggest question
Speaker 7: mark about how they'd.
Speaker 2: Who gave me the Kanye joke that I didn't do
Speaker 2: because I just didn't want that heat.
Speaker 7: I didn't give it to you, said.
Speaker 5: A blend of that was a blend of myself and
Speaker 5: Lily was about to get me. And then Lily was like,
Speaker 5: maybe you shouldn't do it.
Speaker 2: It worked in the clubs. It worked in the clubs.
Speaker 2: It was coming off of the BT joke. Mark. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure if you were on board yet by the
Speaker 2: time we dropped the Kanye jokes, which is probably for
Speaker 2: the best because you would have tagged it maybe even
Speaker 2: more can. But the joke was about it was come
Speaker 2: off of BT. BT Tyler Perry is sinking about buying
Speaker 2: BT and that's how broke These companies are there thinking
Speaker 2: about giving be et back to black people. And then
Speaker 2: the tag was Roy, don't say the.
Speaker 8: Joke, not not don't say the joke.
Speaker 7: Let me let me navigate as a white ally, let
Speaker 7: me navigate this.
Speaker 4: The joke.
Speaker 7: Generally speaking, generally speaking, it was you know, it was
Speaker 7: a joke about Kanye in his in his anti Semitism,
Speaker 7: which was in the news, and how like he says,
Speaker 7: you know that you all were familiar that the Jews
Speaker 7: run the media. That was the Kanye thing, and so
Speaker 7: the joke was about how they were selling it to
Speaker 7: a black person and that didn't fit with Kanye's.
Speaker 2: Proving Kanye's theories were wrong. Yeah, yeah, see, thank you.
Speaker 2: See Christiano, we gotta do that. Just fine. We all
Speaker 2: still got jo.
Speaker 5: But you didn't say it. Angelo did, so I was right.
Speaker 2: But yet we felt like we ended up paying that
Speaker 2: for length. And then also because the audience does not
Speaker 2: know me as a comedian. That's the other hurdle I
Speaker 2: was dealing with, is that even if you only know
Speaker 2: me from the Daily Show, I know you don't know
Speaker 2: my stand up because my first two specials was on
Speaker 2: the Comedy Central app and you know this is before
Speaker 2: Paramount Plus saved us and gave us you know, I'm
Speaker 2: just being real, like, so I can't assume that you
Speaker 2: know my heart as a comedian.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and when you're doing all this weird political stuff,
Speaker 7: like you don't have the time to make them trust
Speaker 7: you and what you're saying, or even before you get
Speaker 7: to the punchline, they're gonna get tense because you know
Speaker 7: how people have like yeah, and then they are already like,
Speaker 7: oh we heard this word, you know, so that they
Speaker 7: just start doing their Pavlovian thing and it loses the room.
Speaker 7: That's why I thought, you know, whether it's a point
Speaker 7: that is good with Kanye and this and that it's
Speaker 7: just more like I think in Christianity. You agree, it
Speaker 7: was just like it It was too much like math
Speaker 7: for the room for not the payoff.
Speaker 2: Come see me loud.
Speaker 3: But you know, you know what I will say, watching
Speaker 3: watching that says though, was interesting for me as a
Speaker 3: stand up because I don't think about that while I'm
Speaker 3: doing stand up. I think about whether or not the
Speaker 3: joke will work. Is the joke funny? Is the joke funny?
Speaker 3: And do I stand by the joke? And so to
Speaker 3: kind of see you guys have this insight to what
Speaker 3: will lose the room before you do the joke is
Speaker 3: different from me that but but I think you're right,
Speaker 3: like hearing the joke I'm like that the joke is tame,
Speaker 3: that will kill in a comedy club. But I could
Speaker 3: see how today was going to be a bunch of
Speaker 3: he supports Kanye Western, he made the jewser, and that
Speaker 3: would have been that would have been detrimental to what
Speaker 3: you accomplished worth it?
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, because it was strategic, like what where will
Speaker 7: we lose the room because we're gonna do that.
Speaker 3: You want to do it if you're going to do
Speaker 3: what you want to do it for something better than that,
Speaker 3: particularly such a good joke, but that's not the one
Speaker 3: you want to lose. Yeah, Then shooting joke was a
Speaker 3: joke where you're like, we're gonna say it, that's a
Speaker 3: yeah right.
Speaker 8: Well, so that's the thing, and it's that thought that
Speaker 8: we like, we knew there were certain moments where the
Speaker 8: room would not be behind us, but we felt that
Speaker 8: the final twenty five percent, when Roy did his Kumbai
Speaker 8: a thing as we started calling it, would bring them
Speaker 8: back because then they would be like, see that Roy
Speaker 8: is rooted in more than just like kind of like
Speaker 8: comedy and provocative ideas he kind of comes from.
Speaker 3: I thought that was the best of it. I thought
Speaker 3: that was the most important moment of the ent. I
Speaker 3: thought it was funny. I thought it was everything. But
Speaker 3: once I saw that version, because that wasn't the original
Speaker 3: version I saw in the Google doc that was added.
Speaker 2: It wasn't four or five that it evolved.
Speaker 3: That part was that was to me that changed.
Speaker 8: It was a back and forth right Roy, because initially
Speaker 8: it was too I felt it was too long, and
Speaker 8: I said it that to Roy with a bunch of cuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was too emotional.
Speaker 8: I was like, I love the mom's stuff, but we
Speaker 8: need to figure out the dad's stuff. But the way
Speaker 8: it was compressed came away people came away feeling like, oh,
Speaker 8: he really sincerely cares. And then it tied into the
Speaker 8: broader theme of like these scandals and the fact that
Speaker 8: you know what's going on with the press that we're
Speaker 8: not necessarily talking about. But I was just concerned, especially
Speaker 8: since that BT joke.
Speaker 5: Was so up top. It was like one of the
Speaker 5: opening after like just agreeting.
Speaker 8: I was like, yo, if he loses them at that point,
Speaker 8: then you bomb. Yeah, And I'm aware that we're playing
Speaker 8: to different constituencies, and my feeling was whatever goes viral,
Speaker 8: if the clip is a room full of people not laughing.
Speaker 5: It's just like, yeah, you're bombing.
Speaker 8: Even if the person watching it is like this BMF
Speaker 8: joke is hilarious, But if no one's laughing, it's like
Speaker 8: is it funny?
Speaker 5: And I just didn't want that.
Speaker 8: And it was hard because we're constantly doing those calculations
Speaker 8: of like, okay, we're playing to the room, and in
Speaker 8: the room there's like this big ideological division. You know,
Speaker 8: there's politicians and then there's the press. Then you got
Speaker 8: someone from vander Pump Rules and the people at home.
Speaker 8: I'm a brother fanatic, so I was trying to get
Speaker 8: a Housewives or vander Pump Rules in there somewhere, but
Speaker 8: like the rest of the room don't know what the
Speaker 8: hell that is, you know. So it was just like
Speaker 8: and we're like, oh yeah, and then we want we
Speaker 8: want the people in the Shade Room to have something
Speaker 8: that they laughed about. That was like we had a
Speaker 8: Shade room joke here initially, Roy remember, but that we lost.
Speaker 2: That we lost such a time, but then Shade Room
Speaker 2: picked up the Kamlo joke. Okay, after the break, I
Speaker 2: will wrap up this conversation with some of my wonderful,
Speaker 2: wonderful writers from the White House Correspondence Dinner and the
Speaker 2: Lovely I don't even even know why they call it
Speaker 2: a speech. It's a performance. We'll be right back as
Speaker 2: we wrap up here because I want to hold you
Speaker 2: all up. I'm going to tell you the one person
Speaker 2: who loved the set that I was shot. But then
Speaker 2: it could be the bridge we need to bring the
Speaker 2: Correspondence Dinner back to being a beautiful bipartisan evening of
Speaker 2: roasting at the Seat b S party Kelly Anne Conway.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, oh my god.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if that's success or failure.
Speaker 3: We don't know what.
Speaker 7: Say.
Speaker 6: Ye like a bit of color, so you know I
Speaker 6: should I call you?
Speaker 2: See now, you'll have been twisted into something freaky. That's enough.
Speaker 2: Somebody asked me this earlier. Would you do this again?
Speaker 3: Depends on who the host is there?
Speaker 5: Oh no, if it's you, yes, but I'm not doing
Speaker 5: this again.
Speaker 2: No for you, Yes, I do it for you somebody else.
Speaker 2: Well that's all the time we have for today. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much, David, and hello Christiana and Bacway, Medina,
Speaker 2: and thank you Felonious Monk. Thank you all for going
Speaker 2: beyond the scenes weekly. See you next time. Listen to
Speaker 2: the daily Show beyond the scenes on Apple podcasts, the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: This has been a Comedy Central podcast