May 3, 2023 • 32 mins
Recorded on 5/1/23. From Tucker Carlson to Dominion to Biden’s age, Roy Wood Jr. didn’t hold back at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In this episode, he sits down with some of his writers for the correspondents’ dinner – Christiana Mbakwe-Medina, Felonious Munk, and David Angelo – to reflect on the writing process leading up to the dinner, why the Property Brothers threw a wrench in Roy’s speech, the Kanye joke that didn’t make it in, and which conservative is now a big fan of Roy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Beyond the Scene. It's the podcast. It goes
deeper to topics and segments that normally air on the
Daily Show. This is what you gotta think about this
podcast as all right, So, like we like eggs, right,
everybody love it egg This is an omelet. You got
the eggs. That's the Daily Show. But then we come
in and we give you a little We sprinkle in
some crumbled up sausage, We put in some green pampers,
(00:29):
we put in onion, cheese, all types of stuff to
make something even better for you. Today is kind of
a different type of episode. This is a topic we
don't we haven't had a chance to get into on
the Daily Show just yet, but we want to talk
about the White House Correspondence Dinner that I had the
pleasure of hosting not too long ago, and I want
to get into it with some of the writers so
(00:51):
we can go into I guess, showing you all the
process of what it's like creating that type of script,
what it's like creating that type of show, and you
know what, I think it would be a joy if
we first heard a couple of clips from the Correspondence
Jenner before we get into everything. Roll the clip, y'all
look good, You're dressed nice, you got the nice threads on,
(01:14):
you got the jewelry glistening. Look like everybody got a
little piece of that settlement money from Fox News. And
that's all I have to say about that, because I'm
not going to have dominion on my ass. I loved me.
Matter of fact. Let me just say right now, my
favorite voting machine is dominion voting machines. When I go
(01:37):
to the polls, I make sure it is a dominion
machine that I use. If your election need the truth,
put dominion in your booth. That's we should be inspired
by the events in France. They rioted when the retirement
age went up two years to six. They rioted because
(02:03):
they didn't want to work till sixty four. Meanwhile, in
America we have an eighty year old man begging us
for four more years of work, begging, begging. Okay, so
those were some of the highlights. We might even get
into a few more a little later on than the show,
(02:24):
before I get the writers in here and add them
to the program. Let me just say that politics is
crazy in this world, and things change so fast. Like
as a performer, you cannot do this without writers. Last
week donaland And got fired, Tucker Carlson got fired, there
was all the stuff with the Fox Dominion vote settlement,
and then this week Smartly seeing Inn well played announced
(02:49):
after the Correspondence Dinner that they are going to have
Donald Trump on their network doing a town hall. So yo, man,
at the Correspondence dinner was a couple of days away, Yo,
it would have been a whole different situation. So when
you're in a media landscape where things are changing so
so so so fast, it's hard to always find a
(03:12):
joke that hits what is basically a constantly moving target
of the American zeitguy. So it's my pleasure to talk
a little bit about this today. We're gonna answer a
couple questions. I know some people ask some stuff and
my social media comments about the Correspondence dinner, so maybe
we'll get to some of that. But first let's meet
the writers with me in the studio. I'm joined by
Daily Show writer David Angelo.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Hello, David, Hey Royd, it's great to be here today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Thank you. I'm joined by another writer that wrote with
me on the Correspondence Dinner. He was formerly a writer
for the nightly show on This Beautiful, Beautiful Paramount Plus
Network as a wonderful work and stand up comedian as
well Filonia's Mark. How you doing, I'm here?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I'm here.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yes, that is the blackest answer I've ever heard, Like, how.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
You trying to get.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Here?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I woke up and I didn't get shot yet, you know,
I got.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
To My back hurt a little bit, but I'm making
it out.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Here and also joining us. I don't know if she's
still an investigative reporter, form investigative reporter. Former writer for
The Daily Show, Christiana and Backway Medina, who was our
head writer. How you doing, Christiana?
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Hi Roy, I'm great. How are you?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Let's unpack this because I've been tweeted a bunch of
quite actually, I've been tweeted a lot of ship I
can't read on that air, but I have been sent
a couple of questions that I think people had about
the actual writing process in the assembly of the correspondence Center.
(04:53):
Because I've never been on the inside of this at all,
I can't speak to the three of you. Angela. I
don't know if you've written on any of them.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
In the past or anything I did with Hassan and
with Trevor?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
What was that? Like, what would you say? Is the
difference then between the three processes because I don't know
how to approach this, like because to me, the thing
that was weird was that I don't I've never used
writers for stand up right like I used writers in
the show, so there's some degree of trust. But when
I got the call about this, Christiana was literally the
(05:27):
first person to call because I'm like, all right, I
know we can find funny people, but you usually had
arguments within the Daily Show that I agreed with that
were fair, like building the actual structure in the north
star of it. So for me, I wanted to build
from what am I trying to say? And now how
can I make that funny? Which is how I build
my stand up. But like with Hassan and Trevor, like,
(05:50):
was the construction process the same or was it?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Like I mean, everyone was a little different. This one
was like probably the least number of people working on it,
so I think it went tighter. I think everything was
a little more like organized and sync like that. The
other one, like Trevor's with there were so many people
involved that it was kind of like I didn't really
even know what was happening. Sometimes it's like I was
sort of on the periphery. And then Hassan it was
(06:13):
kind of just like, uh, I mean, I barely remember,
but he had kind of like a head writer, sort
of like how Christiana, Like he had this guy yeah,
and he sort of just kind of would ask for
jokes and then we'd get the joke. It wasn't that
different from this one. Actually, it was kind of the
same sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I had no idea what to put together. And then Filonius.
I always respected you. I don't even you wanted them comedians, man,
but I don't even remember where the fuck we met,
Like it's like it was before you were at Nightly Show.
I feel like we were parlaying on Twitter some but
then it's possible that we just bumped shoulders at some
(06:52):
points around the Chicago comedy scene where you where you
started out. But you always had takes and angles on
the Nightly Show that were like very black, like I
gotta dig into crates and find some amnk shit, and
I'm like, Okay, I know I'm gonna need some of
that in the script. At some point as well, and
(07:12):
also the way you look at politics from the perspective
of a black man, which I am. It was I
don't know, I just I just felt like it was essential.
But like in terms of like writing for Larry Willmore,
who ultimately did the correspondence Dinner as well, around that,
there was some overlap in the time that you were
at the Nightly Show. Did will Moore talk at all
(07:34):
about this process.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Not really, But I will say one of the segments
that I was able to do for with Larry, we
made light of him calling former President Obama, I can
say the N word, can say the N word?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Oh yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Know if I can say nigga. He called him nigga,
and so we had a play off of that in
a segment that I did where I said, you know
you my brother of sub Sahari and content and he
was like, wait, did you just called me? I was like, yeah,
I called you my nigga. The idea for me is,
you know, we make fun of all of these spaces
being extremely you know, scented on white men, but we
(08:12):
have we have people of color in the room. The
issue is always that we're writing for a specific voice,
and you can't make I can't make Jimmy Kimmel say nigga.
You know what I mean. You couldn't get John John
Stewart to say niggas. So when you're pushing, when you're
pitching jokes, you have to think about the person who's
saying the joke. So this was fun for me because
I was talking to a guy over forty who had
(08:35):
experiences in the South and in the North, who knew,
you know, what it was like to do this room
full of people who may not look like you but
still want to sound like yourself. So that that part
to me was, you know, was reminiscent of The Nightly Show,
because that's I think what Larry Wilmore did. He presented
the same format that everyone else that presented. He just
tried to do it with a little bit of color.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
So Christiana, having taken everybody these jokes, and then let
me just give the viewers the understanding of me and
Christianna's relationship over the last two weeks, because really, if
we're being real about this, we wrote this on a
three week runway.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
It was quick. This was the quickest turnaround of the
three out.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I feel like we had some loose suggestions a month out.
But the problem was that my guest hosting week for
Daily Show ran three weeks before this, and I was
so focused on getting ready for content and stuff and
segments for my guest week. I couldn't split my mind
into two partitions. I just go fuck it. The day
after Friday morning after guest hosting, We're going to really
(09:43):
dig in, and I started. The process was essentially I
would take whatever we had written in a big Google
doc that we were all sharing with the other writers,
and I would take that and boil that down to
a little bit of herbiage, take that out into the
comedy clubs at night. Whatever didn't work, that's what I
(10:04):
would change in the scripts, and that to Christiana. She
would look at it in the morning, get it back
to the writers who would do punch up, and by
the time I looked at the script again at eight
o'clock at night, I could rejigger everything and then go
back out from eleven o'clock to one in the morning.
So I was essentially sleeping I don't know, probably three
four hours a night. And then Angelo was kind enough
to come out on one of those nights and kind
(10:26):
of give tweaks and move stuff around. But it was
a lot of just Christiana and sending the audio to
Christiana of every single show that I did, and just
agreeing like what joke worked, what didn't work, what the
crowd didn't respond to, and then just going from there.
But what are your from what we constructed, Christiana? What
(10:47):
are some of your takeaways from the correspondence? Jenner?
Speaker 5 (10:50):
You know, it's so interesting when like our initial conversation
and a couple months back, was it February, Like time
means nothing.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
To me right now.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
It was we had all of these people we wanted
to hit. We were like, oh, Marjorie Taylor Green, and
we should do some t J. Holmes and Amy and
we should like they because they were in the zeitgeist.
They were in the news so prominently, and it was
kind of like the Gift and the Cursed.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
We just kept getting the gift of being used.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
That meant we would just have to just rip up
what we had or you know, what we were trying
to say. And then obviously, you know, the Trump arrangement
happened and that changed a lot, I think, and then yeah,
Elon just seemed irrelevant what was happening at Elon and Twitter,
even though when you got the gig it.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Was a pretty big story is what everyone was talking about.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
And then Bloody Monday where Tucker and Don lost their jobs.
It was just like, there's no way we can't open
with Fox Dominion and into these massive firings. So I'm
happy with how it went, but the reshuffling and the
resinking and listening to the audio, and then it's funny
(12:05):
because I was listening to all of it so religiously.
What would get a hard laugh like the week before
in light of everything that happened the next week. Oh,
we don't really care about that. You know. You could
just feel the temperature changing as the news cycle went.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
So it was like a real gift.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
But it just meant that we were messaging you on
WhatsApp literally why you were sitting.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that a little bit. We'll
get we'll get to that in a little bit. Let's
let's watch a clip real quick from the correspondence dinner.
Don't give it up for dark Brandon, Oh this joke?
Oh shit, happy to be here real quick, mispresisient. I
think you left some of your classified documents up here.
You can get the Yeah, no, don't get him to him.
(12:51):
I'll put him in a safe place. He don't know
where to keep him. Mamas. We never ran that joke, yeah,
dark Brandon, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
The document. Jock never on it.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
No, I remember watching that, I think, and I don't
recall that in the document he's freestyling.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
No, no, no, like that was.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
He pitched it in the day, right, Roy, You were like, yeah,
because both the property brothers.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Yeah, that's what happened with our whole thing.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
So for the people who know, the White House Correspondence
Association gives us a list of the confirmed guest but
you don't know who's going to show up or not.
And we were told from the jump there would only
be one property brother, only one property brother. So the
initial opening line was greetings, distinguished members of the media,
our greatest leaders, and a property brother. And then I
(13:45):
go down to COVID testing that morning, I fucking see
the other property brother and I'm like, you gotta be
shitting me. What the fuck are we got? How do
we like?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah, So we started trying to figure out a new
and that's what we ended up coming up with, and
that ended up being way funnier then the Property Brother line.
Then I find out from one of our other writers,
Matt Naggering, that Doctor Fauci was there, because you all
are at the table or whatever, just checking Twitter and
looking at stuff, and they're sending me jokes in real time.
(14:19):
At the table, they go, Fauci's here, and I go, oh, perfect,
We'll sneak him in behind the Property Brother joke and
just fucking go from there. So it's a pleasure to
be here, Amoss. Our country's greatest leaders distinguished media organizations,
both Property Brothers and Doctor Fauci. If you see Faucher
(14:40):
tak a picture with them that showed new booster shots
all right, after the break, I guess we should talk
more about the actual night and the jokes and the people,
And I guess I should tell y'all, Oh, I'll tell
you who loves me. Now, I'll tell.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
You that I'm saying after the break not.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You will not guess this person fucking loves me. You
don't even get understand. It's beyond the scenes. We'll be
right back. Beyond the scenes. We are back. We're talking
about the White House Correspondence dinner, which I had the
honor of being a part of and we're here with
some of the writers and head writer from that evening.
(15:23):
Before we do anything else, let's just go into a
quick clip of some of the best jokes from that evening,
and then I want to come back and get y'all's opinion.
I'm gonna go around the horn and find out which
joke that y'all think was gonna bomb. One of them
did bomb? They ain't hating another, right first to clip
(15:43):
the untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job. Now, Okay,
some people celebrate it, But to Tucker's staff, I want
you to know that I know what you're feeling. I
work at the Daily Show, so I too have been
blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a
fake news program. But can we just all acknowledge? Can
(16:07):
we just all be honest and just say that the
Trump arrests didn't hit like we thought it was gonna hit.
What's so desensitized the scandals now that Trump arrest it
didn't do what I thought it was gonna do. The
Trump arrest was like a pop brownie, you ate four
hours ago and you are do I feel justice? This
gonna feel like justice. Let me try one of them
(16:29):
Georgia or Raymond brownies. Maybe that'll hit lookod that one's
lask got some kick too. I think Republicans y'all would
be surprised. Man if y'all would just be real about
what CRT is, that you can be surprised. Some black
folks might meet your halfway. But you gotta tell the truth.
You can't lie to black people. Call it what it is.
Anti CRT policies are an attack on black history and
(16:53):
an attempt to erase the contributions of black people from
the history bus.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
That's what it is.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
You are trying to erase black people, and a lot
of black people wouldn't mind some of that erasure as
long as that black person is Clarence Thomas. Okay, all right,
So a lot of good jokes in there. Thank y'all
for the assistance. Oh and also shout out shout out
to Matt Nager and Lily Bumpkin. We're talking Khalia. What's
Kalia's last name? I write as assistant. And so of
(17:30):
all of the jokes that we did, the joke that
I thought would get a laugh or a clap and
it got neither was the joke about this is America.
We don't make laws. We make a promise to pass
the law, then we don't do anything. I thought that
would get something.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
It got something in the Clubroy, I did.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
If there's one person that could use the scandal, it's
Ron DeSantis. That boy is just running around just passing
every controversial law he can think of, thinking that's gonna
activate voters. That's not how you activate voters in this country.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Ron.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Everybody know how you do politics, and this is America.
We don't pass laws. You make a promise to voters
and then you don't do it. That's what the great
leaders in this room understand. You know how to make
things not happen.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
I want to say.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I was like, runn then the line. Then the line was,
that's what you all understand. Y'all are the best at
not making things happen. Yes, And do you remember the
original line, Christiana, because that was the softer version. The
original line was that's why you're all in this room.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Because you're the best line, and I was like, Roy,
you can't.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Say that, but saying you're the best not making it?
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Wow, that was.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
It got nothing. It got nothing, And like in my
head as soon as it came out of my mouth,
I was like, fuck her. She was right.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
But you know what, you know what I realized as
a comic, you thought, because when I read it, I
was like, oh, this is hilarious. Because my brain can
only see me performing that joke and c and making
it work. It didn't cross my mind that this wasn't
a room that you were going to be able to
with a facial expression or a change in tone. You
weren't going to be able to make it work because
(19:31):
they were focused on what you were saying more than
how you were saying it, which I'm not used to that.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Also, they're like Hilton, they're like five drinks in right,
so like those typeel like really nuanced.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Like I think by the time it landed, we can't
be bother to laugh. Let me ask some that was it?
That's what I felt it was.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And at that point in the night, they were already
getting their orders from the CIA for the tomorrow's broadcast,
you know what they needed to say, so they were distracted.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Although you did it.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
You did that joke in the club worked in the club.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
When I called them the best liars in the club,
it was great.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Because it wasn't about them, that audience. Yeah, the constituents
jo the people like that you said it to them
about them, and they were like, well, isn't that part
of the isn't that part of the balance.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Though, you're playing to the room, but you're also keenly
aware that the constituents are watching this, right, and you're
trying to make the room feel But the clips that
are going viral aren't necessarily the ones that killed in
the room. It's the ones that the constituents connected with
the most, are the ones that they're repeated, right, Yeah,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
I want to hear what your jokes were, like, I'm
glad you said that, think.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It's funny, but I don't even know that was one
of them, the one that you just mentioned that I
was heavily that my fingerprints were on. I really was not.
I wasn't sure specifically, because I knew that the BMF
and the power lines were verious it to a particular demographic,
and I didn't think that was a room full of
that demographic.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
But I also thought the people who watch BMF and
power are very dedicated. But it is not that.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
But I also but but that was my my thinking
was the same way that room won't get the BMF reference.
The people who watch BMF won't get the succession reference,
and that's the issue there. But I knew that somebody
who there would be one, one power viewer, one BMF
watcher who will go, hey man. They mentioned Big Beach
(21:31):
and that that was all I wanted.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I felt like you.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
I felt like you reached out to me specifically for
that joke. He was like, put something real, specifically blackness
only going to be for them, seventeen people, and that's
what we did.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So right after a van pump.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Seventeen people, which turned it into one point seven million people, seventeen.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Don't forget fifty to seventeen.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Oh yeah, that's what we need.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
But here's the thing. The thing with that, though, was
that even with fifty cent right reposted that part of
the joke because he's an executive producer and co creator
on those two series. The line after about Biden we
got to replace Chuck Across and the millions of Americans
don't know why they hate you, and then they cut
to Biden's face. I never saw that. Yeah, I remember,
(22:23):
I'm gonna say I don't see the cutaway shots. I
don't see any of that. So Biden's reaction to the
joke was almost like a punch up tag to the joke,
like in and of itself, because I didn't know. He
had this surprise look on his face, like, what the
fuck did you just see? Tucker got caught up? Got
caught up like that dude from Vanda Punk Rules text
(22:47):
message shuff. I don't know what Vanda Punk Rules is about.
I'm just watching it a couple of times. My friends
told me it's like BMF but for white people. Or
is that secession? No, secession is power for white people. No,
Tucker crossing is power for white people. No, that's white power.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Never mind, don't worry about that. But no, don't worry
about that. We got to get Tucker back on the air,
mister presidentcause right now there's millions of Americans that don't
even know why they hate you.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
That was an ANGELI, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
He didn't move for like two seconds.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You sorry, And I knew Biden would be bewildered when
he said his name, so I kind of I kind
of worked it in.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
That was part of the architecture, all right, What about
you give me, give me one.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
I was trying to look because I forget. But the
the I thought everything was, I expected kind of everything
to work because we went through it. I think the
school shooting one was the most, like, the biggest question
mark about how they'd respond.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Who gave me the Kanye joke that I didn't do
because I just didn't want that heat.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I didn't give it to you.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
That a blend of that was a blend of myself
and Lily was about to get me. And then Lily
was like, maybe you shouldn't do it.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
It worked in the clubs. It worked in the clubs.
It was coming off of the BT joke. Mark. I'm
not sure if you were on board yet by the
time we dropped the Kanye jokes, which is probably for
the best because you would have tagged it and made
it work more, maybe even more. Can Yeah, but the
(24:42):
joke was about it was come off of BT. BT
Tyler Perry is sinking about buying BT and that's how
broke these companies are. They're thinking about giving be et
back to black people. And then the tag was Roy, don't.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
Say the joke, not not don't say the joke.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Let me, let me navigate as a white ally, let
me navigate this.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
The joke.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Generally speaking, generally speaking, it was you know, it was
a joke about Kanye in his in his anti Semitism
which was in the news, and how like he says,
you know that you all were familiar that the Jews
run the media. That was the Kanye thing, and so
the joke was about how they were selling it to
a black person and that didn't fit with Kanye's.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Proving Kanye's theories were wrong. Yeah, yeah, see, thank you.
See Christiana, we got through that just fine. We all got.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
But you didn't say it. Angelo did, so I was right.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
But yet we felt like we ended up putting that
for length. And then also because the audience does not
know me as a comedian. That's the other hurdle I
was dealing with, is that even if you only know
me from the day show, I know, you don't know
the stand up because my first two specials was on
the Comedy Central app and you know this is before
Paramount Plus saved us and gave us. You know, I'm
(26:10):
just being real, like, so I can't assume that you
know my heart as a comedian.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, and when you're doing all this weird political stuff
like you don't have the time to make them trust
you and what you're saying, or even before you get
to the punchline, they're gonna get tense because you know
how people have like yeah, and then they are already like, oh,
we heard this word, you know, so that they just
start doing their Pavlovian thing and it loses the room.
That's why I thought, you know, whether it's a point
(26:38):
that is good with Kanye and this and that it's
just more like I think in Christiana you agree, it
was just like it's just it was too much like
math for the room for not the payoff.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Come see me.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Loud, but you know you know what I will say,
I'm watching that. Watching that process though, was interesting for
me as a stand up because I don't think about
that while I'm doing standing. I think about whether or
not the joke will work. Is the joke funny? Is
the joke funny? And do I stand by the joke?
And so to kind of see you guys have this
insight to what will lose the room before you do
(27:14):
the joke is different from me that but but I
think you're right, like hearing the joke I'm like that
the joke is tame, that will kill in a comedy club.
But I could see how today was going to be
a bunch of he supports Kanye Western, he made the jewser,
and that would have been that would have been detrimental
to what you accomplished it.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah, yeah, because it was strategic, like what where will
we lose the room because we're gonna do that.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
You want to do it, you want to if you're what,
you want to do it for something better than that. Particularly,
that's a good joke, but that's not the one you
want to lose.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, then go in.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
The booting joke was a joke where you're like, lose,
but we're going to say it.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
That's a yeah, right.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Well, so that's the thing.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
It's that thought that we were like, we knew there
were certain moments where the room would not be behind us,
but we felt that the final twenty five percent, when
did his kumbai a thing as we started calling it,
would bring them back because then they would be like,
see that Roy is rooted in more than just like
kind of like comedy and provocative ideas he kind of
(28:20):
comes from.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
I thought that was the best of this. I thought
that was the most important moment of the ent, and
I thought it was funny. I thought it was everything.
But once I saw that version, because that wasn't the
original version I saw in the Google doc that was added.
It wasn't four or five.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So it evolved that part was that was to me
that changed.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
It was a back and forth right Roy, because initially
it was too I felt it was too long, and
I said it back to Roy with a bunch of cuts.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, that was too Emotionally, I was like, I.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Love the mom's stuff, but we need to figure out
the dad's stuff.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
But the way it was compressed came away people came
away feeling like, oh, he really really cares. And then
it tied into the broader theme of like these scandals
and the fact that you know what's going on with
the press that we're not necessarily talking about. But I
was just concerned, especially since that BT joke.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Was so up top.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
It was like one of the opening After like just agreeing,
I was like, yo, if he loses them at that point,
then you bomb. Yeah, And I'm aware that we're playing
to different constituencies, and my feeling was whatever goes viral
if the clip is a room full of people not laughing,
it's just like, yeah, you're bombing. Even if the person
(29:39):
watching it, it's like this BMF joke is hilarious, but
if no one's laughing, it's like is it funny?
Speaker 4 (29:45):
And I just didn't want that.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
And it was hard because we're constantly doing those calculations
of like, okay, we're playing to the room, and in
the room there's like this big ideological division. You know,
there's the politicians and then there's the press. Then you
got someone from vander Pump Rules and the people at home.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
I'm a brother.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Fanatic, so I was trying to get a Housewives or
vander Pump Rules in there somewhere, but like the rest
of the room don't know what the hell that is,
you know. So it was just like and we're like,
oh yeah, and then we want we want the people
in the Shade Room to have something that they laughed about.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
That was like we had a Shade room joke here initially,
Roy remember, but that we lost.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
That lost such a time, but then Shade Room picked
up the Kamlo joke. Okay, after the break, I will
wrap up this conversation with some of my wonderful wonderful
writers from the White House Correspondence Dinner and the Lovely
woll I don't even know why they call it a speech.
It's a performance. We'll be right back as we wrap
up here, because I want to hold you all up.
(30:41):
I'm going to tell you the one person who loved
the set that I was shot. But then it could
be the bridge we need to bring the Correspondence Dinner
back to being a beautiful bipartisan evening of roasting at
the CBS party Kelly Anne Conway, oh wow, oh my god.
(31:06):
And I don't know if that's success or failure.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
We don't know what she's say.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Likes a bit of color, So you know what should
I call you? See?
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Now you'll be twisted into something freaky. That's enough. Somebody
asked me this earlier. Would you do this again?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Depends on who the host is.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Yea, I would, Oh no, if it's you, yes, but
I'm not doing this again.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
No for you, Yes, I do it for you for
somebody else.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank
you so much, David Angelo, Christiana and back wait Medina,
and thank you Filonious month. Thank you all for going
beyond the scenes week you see you next time. Listen
to the Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Beyond the Scene. It's the podcast. It goes
deeper to topics and segments that normally air on the
Daily Show. This is what you gotta think about this
podcast as all right, So, like we like eggs, right,
everybody love it egg This is an omelet. You got
the eggs. That's the Daily Show. But then we come
in and we give you a little We sprinkle in
some crumbled up sausage, We put in some green pampers,
(00:29):
we put in onion, cheese, all types of stuff to
make something even better for you. Today is kind of
a different type of episode. This is a topic we
don't we haven't had a chance to get into on
the Daily Show just yet, but we want to talk
about the White House Correspondence Dinner that I had the
pleasure of hosting not too long ago, and I want
to get into it with some of the writers so
(00:51):
we can go into I guess, showing you all the
process of what it's like creating that type of script,
what it's like creating that type of show, and you
know what, I think it would be a joy if
we first heard a couple of clips from the Correspondence
Jenner before we get into everything. Roll the clip, y'all
look good, You're dressed nice, you got the nice threads on,
(01:14):
you got the jewelry glistening. Look like everybody got a
little piece of that settlement money from Fox News. And
that's all I have to say about that, because I'm
not going to have dominion on my ass. I loved me.
Matter of fact. Let me just say right now, my
favorite voting machine is dominion voting machines. When I go
(01:37):
to the polls, I make sure it is a dominion
machine that I use. If your election need the truth,
put dominion in your booth. That's we should be inspired
by the events in France. They rioted when the retirement
age went up two years to six. They rioted because
(02:03):
they didn't want to work till sixty four. Meanwhile, in
America we have an eighty year old man begging us
for four more years of work, begging, begging. Okay, so
those were some of the highlights. We might even get
into a few more a little later on than the show,
(02:24):
before I get the writers in here and add them
to the program. Let me just say that politics is
crazy in this world, and things change so fast. Like
as a performer, you cannot do this without writers. Last
week donaland And got fired, Tucker Carlson got fired, there
was all the stuff with the Fox Dominion vote settlement,
and then this week Smartly seeing Inn well played announced
(02:49):
after the Correspondence Dinner that they are going to have
Donald Trump on their network doing a town hall. So yo, man,
at the Correspondence dinner was a couple of days away, Yo,
it would have been a whole different situation. So when
you're in a media landscape where things are changing so
so so so fast, it's hard to always find a
(03:12):
joke that hits what is basically a constantly moving target
of the American zeitguy. So it's my pleasure to talk
a little bit about this today. We're gonna answer a
couple questions. I know some people ask some stuff and
my social media comments about the Correspondence dinner, so maybe
we'll get to some of that. But first let's meet
the writers with me in the studio. I'm joined by
Daily Show writer David Angelo.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Hello, David, Hey Royd, it's great to be here today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Thank you. I'm joined by another writer that wrote with
me on the Correspondence Dinner. He was formerly a writer
for the nightly show on This Beautiful, Beautiful Paramount Plus
Network as a wonderful work and stand up comedian as
well Filonia's Mark. How you doing, I'm here?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I'm here.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yes, that is the blackest answer I've ever heard, Like, how.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
You trying to get.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Here?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I woke up and I didn't get shot yet, you know,
I got.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
To My back hurt a little bit, but I'm making
it out.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Here and also joining us. I don't know if she's
still an investigative reporter, form investigative reporter. Former writer for
The Daily Show, Christiana and Backway Medina, who was our
head writer. How you doing, Christiana?
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Hi Roy, I'm great. How are you?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Let's unpack this because I've been tweeted a bunch of
quite actually, I've been tweeted a lot of ship I
can't read on that air, but I have been sent
a couple of questions that I think people had about
the actual writing process in the assembly of the correspondence Center.
(04:53):
Because I've never been on the inside of this at all,
I can't speak to the three of you. Angela. I
don't know if you've written on any of them.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
In the past or anything I did with Hassan and
with Trevor?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
What was that? Like, what would you say? Is the
difference then between the three processes because I don't know
how to approach this, like because to me, the thing
that was weird was that I don't I've never used
writers for stand up right like I used writers in
the show, so there's some degree of trust. But when
I got the call about this, Christiana was literally the
(05:27):
first person to call because I'm like, all right, I
know we can find funny people, but you usually had
arguments within the Daily Show that I agreed with that
were fair, like building the actual structure in the north
star of it. So for me, I wanted to build
from what am I trying to say? And now how
can I make that funny? Which is how I build
my stand up. But like with Hassan and Trevor, like,
(05:50):
was the construction process the same or was it?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Like I mean, everyone was a little different. This one
was like probably the least number of people working on it,
so I think it went tighter. I think everything was
a little more like organized and sync like that. The
other one, like Trevor's with there were so many people
involved that it was kind of like I didn't really
even know what was happening. Sometimes it's like I was
sort of on the periphery. And then Hassan it was
(06:13):
kind of just like, uh, I mean, I barely remember,
but he had kind of like a head writer, sort
of like how Christiana, Like he had this guy yeah,
and he sort of just kind of would ask for
jokes and then we'd get the joke. It wasn't that
different from this one. Actually, it was kind of the
same sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I had no idea what to put together. And then Filonius.
I always respected you. I don't even you wanted them comedians, man,
but I don't even remember where the fuck we met,
Like it's like it was before you were at Nightly Show.
I feel like we were parlaying on Twitter some but
then it's possible that we just bumped shoulders at some
(06:52):
points around the Chicago comedy scene where you where you
started out. But you always had takes and angles on
the Nightly Show that were like very black, like I
gotta dig into crates and find some amnk shit, and
I'm like, Okay, I know I'm gonna need some of
that in the script. At some point as well, and
(07:12):
also the way you look at politics from the perspective
of a black man, which I am. It was I
don't know, I just I just felt like it was essential.
But like in terms of like writing for Larry Willmore,
who ultimately did the correspondence Dinner as well, around that,
there was some overlap in the time that you were
at the Nightly Show. Did will Moore talk at all
(07:34):
about this process.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Not really, But I will say one of the segments
that I was able to do for with Larry, we
made light of him calling former President Obama, I can
say the N word, can say the N word?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Oh yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Know if I can say nigga. He called him nigga,
and so we had a play off of that in
a segment that I did where I said, you know
you my brother of sub Sahari and content and he
was like, wait, did you just called me? I was like, yeah,
I called you my nigga. The idea for me is,
you know, we make fun of all of these spaces
being extremely you know, scented on white men, but we
(08:12):
have we have people of color in the room. The
issue is always that we're writing for a specific voice,
and you can't make I can't make Jimmy Kimmel say nigga.
You know what I mean. You couldn't get John John
Stewart to say niggas. So when you're pushing, when you're
pitching jokes, you have to think about the person who's
saying the joke. So this was fun for me because
I was talking to a guy over forty who had
(08:35):
experiences in the South and in the North, who knew,
you know, what it was like to do this room
full of people who may not look like you but
still want to sound like yourself. So that that part
to me was, you know, was reminiscent of The Nightly Show,
because that's I think what Larry Wilmore did. He presented
the same format that everyone else that presented. He just
tried to do it with a little bit of color.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
So Christiana, having taken everybody these jokes, and then let
me just give the viewers the understanding of me and
Christianna's relationship over the last two weeks, because really, if
we're being real about this, we wrote this on a
three week runway.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
It was quick. This was the quickest turnaround of the
three out.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I feel like we had some loose suggestions a month out.
But the problem was that my guest hosting week for
Daily Show ran three weeks before this, and I was
so focused on getting ready for content and stuff and
segments for my guest week. I couldn't split my mind
into two partitions. I just go fuck it. The day
after Friday morning after guest hosting, We're going to really
(09:43):
dig in, and I started. The process was essentially I
would take whatever we had written in a big Google
doc that we were all sharing with the other writers,
and I would take that and boil that down to
a little bit of herbiage, take that out into the
comedy clubs at night. Whatever didn't work, that's what I
(10:04):
would change in the scripts, and that to Christiana. She
would look at it in the morning, get it back
to the writers who would do punch up, and by
the time I looked at the script again at eight
o'clock at night, I could rejigger everything and then go
back out from eleven o'clock to one in the morning.
So I was essentially sleeping I don't know, probably three
four hours a night. And then Angelo was kind enough
to come out on one of those nights and kind
(10:26):
of give tweaks and move stuff around. But it was
a lot of just Christiana and sending the audio to
Christiana of every single show that I did, and just
agreeing like what joke worked, what didn't work, what the
crowd didn't respond to, and then just going from there.
But what are your from what we constructed, Christiana? What
(10:47):
are some of your takeaways from the correspondence? Jenner?
Speaker 5 (10:50):
You know, it's so interesting when like our initial conversation
and a couple months back, was it February, Like time
means nothing.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
To me right now.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
It was we had all of these people we wanted
to hit. We were like, oh, Marjorie Taylor Green, and
we should do some t J. Holmes and Amy and
we should like they because they were in the zeitgeist.
They were in the news so prominently, and it was
kind of like the Gift and the Cursed.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
We just kept getting the gift of being used.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
That meant we would just have to just rip up
what we had or you know, what we were trying
to say. And then obviously, you know, the Trump arrangement
happened and that changed a lot, I think, and then yeah,
Elon just seemed irrelevant what was happening at Elon and Twitter,
even though when you got the gig it.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Was a pretty big story is what everyone was talking about.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
And then Bloody Monday where Tucker and Don lost their jobs.
It was just like, there's no way we can't open
with Fox Dominion and into these massive firings. So I'm
happy with how it went, but the reshuffling and the
resinking and listening to the audio, and then it's funny
(12:05):
because I was listening to all of it so religiously.
What would get a hard laugh like the week before
in light of everything that happened the next week. Oh,
we don't really care about that. You know. You could
just feel the temperature changing as the news cycle went.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
So it was like a real gift.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
But it just meant that we were messaging you on
WhatsApp literally why you were sitting.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that a little bit. We'll
get we'll get to that in a little bit. Let's
let's watch a clip real quick from the correspondence dinner.
Don't give it up for dark Brandon, Oh this joke?
Oh shit, happy to be here real quick, mispresisient. I
think you left some of your classified documents up here.
You can get the Yeah, no, don't get him to him.
(12:51):
I'll put him in a safe place. He don't know
where to keep him. Mamas. We never ran that joke, yeah,
dark Brandon, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
The document. Jock never on it.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
No, I remember watching that, I think, and I don't
recall that in the document he's freestyling.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
No, no, no, like that was.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
He pitched it in the day, right, Roy, You were like, yeah,
because both the property brothers.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Yeah, that's what happened with our whole thing.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
So for the people who know, the White House Correspondence
Association gives us a list of the confirmed guest but
you don't know who's going to show up or not.
And we were told from the jump there would only
be one property brother, only one property brother. So the
initial opening line was greetings, distinguished members of the media,
our greatest leaders, and a property brother. And then I
(13:45):
go down to COVID testing that morning, I fucking see
the other property brother and I'm like, you gotta be
shitting me. What the fuck are we got? How do
we like?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah, So we started trying to figure out a new
and that's what we ended up coming up with, and
that ended up being way funnier then the Property Brother line.
Then I find out from one of our other writers,
Matt Naggering, that Doctor Fauci was there, because you all
are at the table or whatever, just checking Twitter and
looking at stuff, and they're sending me jokes in real time.
(14:19):
At the table, they go, Fauci's here, and I go, oh, perfect,
We'll sneak him in behind the Property Brother joke and
just fucking go from there. So it's a pleasure to
be here, Amoss. Our country's greatest leaders distinguished media organizations,
both Property Brothers and Doctor Fauci. If you see Faucher
(14:40):
tak a picture with them that showed new booster shots
all right, after the break, I guess we should talk
more about the actual night and the jokes and the people,
And I guess I should tell y'all, Oh, I'll tell
you who loves me. Now, I'll tell.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
You that I'm saying after the break not.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You will not guess this person fucking loves me. You
don't even get understand. It's beyond the scenes. We'll be
right back. Beyond the scenes. We are back. We're talking
about the White House Correspondence dinner, which I had the
honor of being a part of and we're here with
some of the writers and head writer from that evening.
(15:23):
Before we do anything else, let's just go into a
quick clip of some of the best jokes from that evening,
and then I want to come back and get y'all's opinion.
I'm gonna go around the horn and find out which
joke that y'all think was gonna bomb. One of them
did bomb? They ain't hating another, right first to clip
(15:43):
the untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job. Now, Okay,
some people celebrate it, But to Tucker's staff, I want
you to know that I know what you're feeling. I
work at the Daily Show, so I too have been
blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a
fake news program. But can we just all acknowledge? Can
(16:07):
we just all be honest and just say that the
Trump arrests didn't hit like we thought it was gonna hit.
What's so desensitized the scandals now that Trump arrest it
didn't do what I thought it was gonna do. The
Trump arrest was like a pop brownie, you ate four
hours ago and you are do I feel justice? This
gonna feel like justice. Let me try one of them
(16:29):
Georgia or Raymond brownies. Maybe that'll hit lookod that one's
lask got some kick too. I think Republicans y'all would
be surprised. Man if y'all would just be real about
what CRT is, that you can be surprised. Some black
folks might meet your halfway. But you gotta tell the truth.
You can't lie to black people. Call it what it is.
Anti CRT policies are an attack on black history and
(16:53):
an attempt to erase the contributions of black people from
the history bus.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
That's what it is.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
You are trying to erase black people, and a lot
of black people wouldn't mind some of that erasure as
long as that black person is Clarence Thomas. Okay, all right,
So a lot of good jokes in there. Thank y'all
for the assistance. Oh and also shout out shout out
to Matt Nager and Lily Bumpkin. We're talking Khalia. What's
Kalia's last name? I write as assistant. And so of
(17:30):
all of the jokes that we did, the joke that
I thought would get a laugh or a clap and
it got neither was the joke about this is America.
We don't make laws. We make a promise to pass
the law, then we don't do anything. I thought that
would get something.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
It got something in the Clubroy, I did.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
If there's one person that could use the scandal, it's
Ron DeSantis. That boy is just running around just passing
every controversial law he can think of, thinking that's gonna
activate voters. That's not how you activate voters in this country.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Ron.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Everybody know how you do politics, and this is America.
We don't pass laws. You make a promise to voters
and then you don't do it. That's what the great
leaders in this room understand. You know how to make
things not happen.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
I want to say.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I was like, runn then the line. Then the line was,
that's what you all understand. Y'all are the best at
not making things happen. Yes, And do you remember the
original line, Christiana, because that was the softer version. The
original line was that's why you're all in this room.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Because you're the best line, and I was like, Roy,
you can't.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Say that, but saying you're the best not making it?
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Wow, that was.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
It got nothing. It got nothing, And like in my
head as soon as it came out of my mouth,
I was like, fuck her. She was right.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
But you know what, you know what I realized as
a comic, you thought, because when I read it, I
was like, oh, this is hilarious. Because my brain can
only see me performing that joke and c and making
it work. It didn't cross my mind that this wasn't
a room that you were going to be able to
with a facial expression or a change in tone. You
weren't going to be able to make it work because
(19:31):
they were focused on what you were saying more than
how you were saying it, which I'm not used to that.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Also, they're like Hilton, they're like five drinks in right,
so like those typeel like really nuanced.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Like I think by the time it landed, we can't
be bother to laugh. Let me ask some that was it?
That's what I felt it was.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And at that point in the night, they were already
getting their orders from the CIA for the tomorrow's broadcast,
you know what they needed to say, so they were distracted.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Although you did it.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
You did that joke in the club worked in the club.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
When I called them the best liars in the club,
it was great.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Because it wasn't about them, that audience. Yeah, the constituents
jo the people like that you said it to them
about them, and they were like, well, isn't that part
of the isn't that part of the balance.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Though, you're playing to the room, but you're also keenly
aware that the constituents are watching this, right, and you're
trying to make the room feel But the clips that
are going viral aren't necessarily the ones that killed in
the room. It's the ones that the constituents connected with
the most, are the ones that they're repeated, right, Yeah,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
I want to hear what your jokes were, like, I'm
glad you said that, think.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It's funny, but I don't even know that was one
of them, the one that you just mentioned that I
was heavily that my fingerprints were on. I really was not.
I wasn't sure specifically, because I knew that the BMF
and the power lines were verious it to a particular demographic,
and I didn't think that was a room full of
that demographic.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
But I also thought the people who watch BMF and
power are very dedicated. But it is not that.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
But I also but but that was my my thinking
was the same way that room won't get the BMF reference.
The people who watch BMF won't get the succession reference,
and that's the issue there. But I knew that somebody
who there would be one, one power viewer, one BMF
watcher who will go, hey man. They mentioned Big Beach
(21:31):
and that that was all I wanted.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I felt like you.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
I felt like you reached out to me specifically for
that joke. He was like, put something real, specifically blackness
only going to be for them, seventeen people, and that's
what we did.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So right after a van pump.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Seventeen people, which turned it into one point seven million people, seventeen.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Don't forget fifty to seventeen.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Oh yeah, that's what we need.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
But here's the thing. The thing with that, though, was
that even with fifty cent right reposted that part of
the joke because he's an executive producer and co creator
on those two series. The line after about Biden we
got to replace Chuck Across and the millions of Americans
don't know why they hate you, and then they cut
to Biden's face. I never saw that. Yeah, I remember,
(22:23):
I'm gonna say I don't see the cutaway shots. I
don't see any of that. So Biden's reaction to the
joke was almost like a punch up tag to the joke,
like in and of itself, because I didn't know. He
had this surprise look on his face, like, what the
fuck did you just see? Tucker got caught up? Got
caught up like that dude from Vanda Punk Rules text
(22:47):
message shuff. I don't know what Vanda Punk Rules is about.
I'm just watching it a couple of times. My friends
told me it's like BMF but for white people. Or
is that secession? No, secession is power for white people. No,
Tucker crossing is power for white people. No, that's white power.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Never mind, don't worry about that. But no, don't worry
about that. We got to get Tucker back on the air,
mister presidentcause right now there's millions of Americans that don't
even know why they hate you.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
That was an ANGELI, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
He didn't move for like two seconds.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You sorry, And I knew Biden would be bewildered when
he said his name, so I kind of I kind
of worked it in.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
That was part of the architecture, all right, What about
you give me, give me one.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
I was trying to look because I forget. But the
the I thought everything was, I expected kind of everything
to work because we went through it. I think the
school shooting one was the most, like, the biggest question
mark about how they'd respond.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Who gave me the Kanye joke that I didn't do
because I just didn't want that heat.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I didn't give it to you.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
That a blend of that was a blend of myself
and Lily was about to get me. And then Lily
was like, maybe you shouldn't do it.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
It worked in the clubs. It worked in the clubs.
It was coming off of the BT joke. Mark. I'm
not sure if you were on board yet by the
time we dropped the Kanye jokes, which is probably for
the best because you would have tagged it and made
it work more, maybe even more. Can Yeah, but the
(24:42):
joke was about it was come off of BT. BT
Tyler Perry is sinking about buying BT and that's how
broke these companies are. They're thinking about giving be et
back to black people. And then the tag was Roy, don't.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
Say the joke, not not don't say the joke.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Let me, let me navigate as a white ally, let
me navigate this.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
The joke.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Generally speaking, generally speaking, it was you know, it was
a joke about Kanye in his in his anti Semitism
which was in the news, and how like he says,
you know that you all were familiar that the Jews
run the media. That was the Kanye thing, and so
the joke was about how they were selling it to
a black person and that didn't fit with Kanye's.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Proving Kanye's theories were wrong. Yeah, yeah, see, thank you.
See Christiana, we got through that just fine. We all got.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
But you didn't say it. Angelo did, so I was right.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
But yet we felt like we ended up putting that
for length. And then also because the audience does not
know me as a comedian. That's the other hurdle I
was dealing with, is that even if you only know
me from the day show, I know, you don't know
the stand up because my first two specials was on
the Comedy Central app and you know this is before
Paramount Plus saved us and gave us. You know, I'm
(26:10):
just being real, like, so I can't assume that you
know my heart as a comedian.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, and when you're doing all this weird political stuff
like you don't have the time to make them trust
you and what you're saying, or even before you get
to the punchline, they're gonna get tense because you know
how people have like yeah, and then they are already like, oh,
we heard this word, you know, so that they just
start doing their Pavlovian thing and it loses the room.
That's why I thought, you know, whether it's a point
(26:38):
that is good with Kanye and this and that it's
just more like I think in Christiana you agree, it
was just like it's just it was too much like
math for the room for not the payoff.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Come see me.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Loud, but you know you know what I will say,
I'm watching that. Watching that process though, was interesting for
me as a stand up because I don't think about
that while I'm doing standing. I think about whether or
not the joke will work. Is the joke funny? Is
the joke funny? And do I stand by the joke?
And so to kind of see you guys have this
insight to what will lose the room before you do
(27:14):
the joke is different from me that but but I
think you're right, like hearing the joke I'm like that
the joke is tame, that will kill in a comedy club.
But I could see how today was going to be
a bunch of he supports Kanye Western, he made the jewser,
and that would have been that would have been detrimental
to what you accomplished it.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah, yeah, because it was strategic, like what where will
we lose the room because we're gonna do that.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
You want to do it, you want to if you're what,
you want to do it for something better than that. Particularly,
that's a good joke, but that's not the one you
want to lose.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, then go in.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
The booting joke was a joke where you're like, lose,
but we're going to say it.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
That's a yeah, right.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Well, so that's the thing.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
It's that thought that we were like, we knew there
were certain moments where the room would not be behind us,
but we felt that the final twenty five percent, when
did his kumbai a thing as we started calling it,
would bring them back because then they would be like,
see that Roy is rooted in more than just like
kind of like comedy and provocative ideas he kind of
(28:20):
comes from.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
I thought that was the best of this. I thought
that was the most important moment of the ent, and
I thought it was funny. I thought it was everything.
But once I saw that version, because that wasn't the
original version I saw in the Google doc that was added.
It wasn't four or five.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So it evolved that part was that was to me
that changed.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
It was a back and forth right Roy, because initially
it was too I felt it was too long, and
I said it back to Roy with a bunch of cuts.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, that was too Emotionally, I was like, I.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Love the mom's stuff, but we need to figure out
the dad's stuff.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
But the way it was compressed came away people came
away feeling like, oh, he really really cares. And then
it tied into the broader theme of like these scandals
and the fact that you know what's going on with
the press that we're not necessarily talking about. But I
was just concerned, especially since that BT joke.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Was so up top.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
It was like one of the opening After like just agreeing,
I was like, yo, if he loses them at that point,
then you bomb. Yeah, And I'm aware that we're playing
to different constituencies, and my feeling was whatever goes viral
if the clip is a room full of people not laughing,
it's just like, yeah, you're bombing. Even if the person
(29:39):
watching it, it's like this BMF joke is hilarious, but
if no one's laughing, it's like is it funny?
Speaker 4 (29:45):
And I just didn't want that.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
And it was hard because we're constantly doing those calculations
of like, okay, we're playing to the room, and in
the room there's like this big ideological division. You know,
there's the politicians and then there's the press. Then you
got someone from vander Pump Rules and the people at home.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
I'm a brother.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Fanatic, so I was trying to get a Housewives or
vander Pump Rules in there somewhere, but like the rest
of the room don't know what the hell that is,
you know. So it was just like and we're like,
oh yeah, and then we want we want the people
in the Shade Room to have something that they laughed about.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
That was like we had a Shade room joke here initially,
Roy remember, but that we lost.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
That lost such a time, but then Shade Room picked
up the Kamlo joke. Okay, after the break, I will
wrap up this conversation with some of my wonderful wonderful
writers from the White House Correspondence Dinner and the Lovely
woll I don't even know why they call it a speech.
It's a performance. We'll be right back as we wrap
up here, because I want to hold you all up.
(30:41):
I'm going to tell you the one person who loved
the set that I was shot. But then it could
be the bridge we need to bring the Correspondence Dinner
back to being a beautiful bipartisan evening of roasting at
the CBS party Kelly Anne Conway, oh wow, oh my god.
(31:06):
And I don't know if that's success or failure.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
We don't know what she's say.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Likes a bit of color, So you know what should
I call you? See?
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Now you'll be twisted into something freaky. That's enough. Somebody
asked me this earlier. Would you do this again?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Depends on who the host is.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Yea, I would, Oh no, if it's you, yes, but
I'm not doing this again.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
No for you, Yes, I do it for you for
somebody else.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank
you so much, David Angelo, Christiana and back wait Medina,
and thank you Filonious month. Thank you all for going
beyond the scenes week you see you next time. Listen
to the Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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