Kamau

On making TV that matters. On being vulnerable on screen. On doing the actual work.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do I start. Welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to start.
This is comedian W Kamal Bell. We met years ago
at the beginning of both of our careers. I think
I bombed a couple of volunteer events. Yeah, you bombed
a little bit and I got to see bombs. I
love this guy. Look at him bombing like a pro. Yeah,
it's great and uh and yeah, it's been wild that

(00:20):
our careers have gone in these crazy trajectories and now
we reunited to discuss Fred Rogers today come Out has
a CNN show called United Shades of America where he
travels around the US talking to people about what's wrong
with this country. And I wanted to talk with him
because he did something really interesting with that show. He
sat down with some of the most hateful people I

(00:41):
can think of, and he had a conversation. I'm Carvel
Wallace and this is Finding Fred, a podcast about Fred
Rogers from I Heeart Media and Fatherly in partnership with
Transmitter Media Early and I think it was the first season.

(01:11):
You talked with some white nationalists, uh, and some pretty
heavy movers in that. I imagine you've got a lot
of pushback from people about giving the people platform given,
how did you make sense? Why did you decide to
do that, and what did you learn in that experience.
I believe, and you know, platforming Richard Spencer or any

(01:32):
of these people would be tonight in the United Shades,
I'm going to take the night off and let Richard
Spencer run the show. To me, that's platforming. That's normalizing.
Sitting out and talking to Richard Spencer about what he
believes in all of his white nationalists beliefs in the
middle of an episode that is highlighting the importance of
immigration and refugees in this country. To me, it's not platforming.

(01:55):
I also think when Trump was first selected, the fear
of platforming and normalizing is I think we're really buzzwords
at the left held onto in lieu of doing the
actual work, Like you know, no, we I feel like
looking at it in the face is actually helpful to
me to go how serious is this? Not looking at
it in the face? To me, is is sort of
a way to sort of like just pretend like you
can still go to yoga class and and uh in

(02:17):
the farmer's market. Because I think the reason why we
have Trumpet office right now is because a lot of
people on the left were wanting to look at him,
you know, they weren't willing to really like is this possible. No,
it's not possible because I've been doing a chance in
the morning. So for me, it's the fact is it's
like if we've if we if we've learned anything in
this current air of America that we got to look
at the stuff in the face, you know what I mean.

(02:39):
So for me, you know, it's the it's sunlight's the
best disinfectant. Like I believe that. Did you find Richard Spencer,
uh intimidating who's probably a foot shorter than you. Yeah,
he's not as short as most whites spread. I think
that's why he was the leader. He was like, uh,
did you play in the NBA. After you go in there,

(03:00):
you do realize everybody's like five four and like, and
they would sort of trying to like walk up to me,
a couple of them trying to get me to a
flinch or just sort of like and it was like,
also six four, man, I'm not, I'm not. I just
sort of like it became fun to me to sort
of like look comfortable, you know. And so by the
time I sat down and talked to him. It was
really fine. We are here to talk about Mr Rogers,
And that's good because I was like, man, this is
really not what I prepared. Know. I tend to approach

(03:23):
things from like a um And Uh, the reason I'm
asking about your experiences with Richard Spencer's because I've been
really stuck on this this sort of ethical position that
Fred Rogers took, which is that it's it's you I like,
I like you just the way you are, Uh, that
kind of thing. And I wonder how that squares with

(03:46):
people who were like Richard Spencer. Could Fred Rogers say
I like you just the way you are? And I
know you can't speak for him, So I'm going to
ask you to speak for you. Did you when you
look at him, see anything that you felt compared fashion
forward when you talked with Richard Spencer or some of
these other white nationalists. So, Uh, the thing is when

(04:06):
I think about that, I like you just where you are.
When you sit down with people individually, a lot of
times all that stuff, a lot of the bluster goes away.
Like when I talked to the clan and uh, in
was it in Kentucky? It became very clear to me
after a while, like, Oh, you guys have come from
a community where there's no jobs, there's no opportunity, your
educational system isn't good, and you're just mad, and you

(04:31):
have bought a bill of goods from somebody that is
black people's fault. Like that's the problem is that that
you went from, Like I want more opportunity and more
jobs of my community too, it's got to be somebody's fault.
And then somebody sold you can we talk to you
about black people? They handed you the it's black people
of fault plans. And so for me, when I take
away the when I look at that part, I go,
that's the part I could have empathy with. You know,

(04:52):
these people are not the billionaire people who are sort
of running this country and using tools of white supremacy
to keep things going. These are people who are got
sold a bill of goods based on being vulnerable. A
few years ago, I was in Michigan reporting a story.

(05:12):
I was at the gym and I looked up and
saw Kamal's face on the TV screen. This was several
months after the election, and the alt right was feeling
definitely emboldened, so much so in fact, that they were
white supremacists marching in downtown Berkeley, of all places, which
happened to be where Kamal lived. He had just spoken

(05:32):
at a counter protest and on Fox News they were
playing his speech and calling him a radical black separatist,
and suddenly Kamal had become a target of white supremacists.
That was when I got streets got hot for me
for a second, exactly the streets got hot for you,
And all of a sudden, I was I had a

(05:53):
lot of feelings seen that, actually, dude, Like on the
one hand, I was like, this is absurd, but then
in the other hand, it kind of struck a little
bit of fear my heart because I thought, God, if
you can call comal, or if you can get like
like the Confederate flag waivers income ou as a black separty,
what who among us is safe? Like this is the
most integrated dude I've ever met. And uh and um.

(06:17):
I was just really amazed by that, and I thought
a lot about it, and I guess I want to
ask you what that experience was like for you to
be targeted in that way, and how you made sense
of that, like how you navigated that was that scary
at all, Like it only became because you had kids
at that point. Yeah, it became scary because over the
next week or so, its like I became the like
the the deep intern dark web, intern hinterland Internet all

(06:41):
right target, Like I was just the person on the
summer Jam screen. So like like so all these memes
start going up, and you know, we were in downtown Berkeley,
so people see me walking into my house, you know,
and also we're right down where all the alt right
rallies are. It was scary. It was like the first
time I felt like that my thing deal on TV
is can affect my family, like in a way that

(07:03):
it feels like we have to sort of like think
about our security protocols and think about like where we
send our kids to school as opposed to like oh yeah,
you know, and all these sorts of things that sort
of that that we weren't thinking in that way before.
Doesn't that kind of make you hate people like they're
putting your family in jeopardy and putting you in the
situation where you feel like, I mean, doesn't that like

(07:24):
trigger rage and hating you know, it triggers, like I'd say,
it triggers like Papa Bear, protect your family. You know.
It triggers like don't do anything stupid. The people who
are doing this I already wasn't a fan of anyway
like this has. Yeah, I sort of knew this, you know.
And also the history of black people in this country
is that, you know, you can't know the history of
our people without knowing that, like, you know, we get

(07:46):
taken out regularly. Now. I don't think I'm not trying
to be some sort of martyr or something, but it's
just like, if I choose to do this work and
I choose to be public about it, It's not that
I'm like ready to die or any of that nonsense.
You know, I got too children to die right now.
But I do feel like this is a part of
the gig. I mean, my wife talked about that, like,
and I think about like people like Dick Gregory as

(08:07):
far as like he actually gave up comedy to be
an activist at one point in his life. And so
this is the work I want to do, and it
feels right now in this country, feels like it's necessary.
If anything, I feel bad, but I'm not doing more
of it. I think more about that, like what more
can I do or how can I do this better
than I think about the people who who have enmity
towards me. And also the thing is most of them
don't even They're just blah blah blah, like they're gonna
move on to the next person. We'll be right back.

(09:02):
What's your first earliest memory of seeing Fred Rogers or
seeing a show? Did you watch it growing up? I
watched you growing up, so I don't have like, h
I don't have the time. My mom sat me down.
We didn't have cable, so maybe cable. Uh, And so
you know, I'm talking about like Sesame Street, Mr Rogers,
the Electric Company, three to one contact for my old
heads out there lane right now. Yeah, So for me,

(09:26):
like Mr. Rogers is just one of the things that
I watched on TV. And then for me, the weird
part is like even when I got older, every now
again you flip past and go, let me just watch
a few minutes. Why what is what? What did that
bring to you? I think there's something the greatest of
kids programming, there's something so pure about it that it's
doing anything wants to do that adults watch it too, Like,

(09:47):
I think that's true when it's not pure when it's
really about like you just want my kid to buy
this thing, don't you. Then it's like it becomes too
self conscious of like the things that's trying to do.
But Mr Rogers is super pure. It's just like this
is one person statement being supported by the team of
people around him and somebody who works in TV. That's
hard to do. Yeah. I was going to ask you
about that, like as it has your understanding of what

(10:07):
he was able to do change now that you are
a maker of television. Yes, great, thank you, goodnight everyone. Yeah. No,
I mean it's like it's hard to get everybody on
you if you have everybody on the same page that
they're all in service of of Mr Rogers. I still
call Mr Rogers, you say Fred because you know him
like that. But I've been called that only by black

(10:27):
people on the show. I just want to point that out.
White people have been like Fred, Red Fred. And then
I had viewing and she was like, you know him
like that exactly, Fred Rogers. Excuse me? Are you a
son that I didn't know? Uh? Mr Rogers? Is that
it's clear that like everybody was on the same page,
or at least I knew that this was this is

(10:49):
the voice I'm following. That's not that's not case nine
percent the TV that's ever been made. That's not the
case that they're not listening to one. For even some
of the TV we like, it was like it was
a nightmare back there, but when it happens, you can
feel it. So for me, there's not much difference between Mr.
Rogers and Atlanta. With Donald Glover, you could feel it
like there's not much on that show that Donald Glover

(11:10):
hasn't been like, check, it's funny, it's the Atlanta is
a really interesting comparison, one that I had never made um,
but that rings true for me, partially for what you
said about the creative process, but also because both of
those shows make a lot of use of space and silence,
and they do this thing where they train the listeners
to sit still long enough to start to feel and

(11:30):
experience more subtle levels of what's going on. And they've
built a lot of trust with the audience. So even
if you're like, where's this going, he was like, I'm
gonna sit here and see. And I think that's the
important thing too, is that this that you when you
build that trust with the audience, and that comes from
the audience knowing I trust that, uh Mr Rogers or
Mr Glover, I trust that these people have a plan

(11:52):
because so many times you watch a lot of TV
and it's like there's no plan. They just had to
get this done. They just had to turn this in
and there was a way which Mr Rogers did. There
something that feels like we're here for one purpose. We're
all pulling together and we're not trying to do something
that is cooler, hip or trendy. We want to create
an experience and have you joined us today and come
back the next time. Also, I think talk, I mean

(12:14):
I think against this from Mr Rogers. I think the
reason why I respond to Mr Rogers because the way
my mom treated me talking to your kids like their people,
you know, like talking not talking to them like their kids. Like.
Certainly Mr Rodgers as slows down because he's trying to
makes you understand, but you feel like he's a friend
of yours. And I think and for me as a parent,
when you feel like you're like I'm the I'm your friend.

(12:35):
I mean, I'm the friend who pays the rent so
every now and again to make some decisions. But really,
I would rather us be friends. I would rather us
talk through these problems instead of like, instead of me
saying because I said, so, yeah, you know, it's interesting
you bring up your mom and I met your mom
and read her book, and um, she's a person with
a very strong black identity, which is part of the
way you were raised. And um, and I wonder when

(12:58):
I talk to people about Fred Rogers. A lot of times, Uh,
they'll they'll bring up in some way, depending on their race,
a question about how I feel about him as a
black man. In other words, the question I was actually
talking with, of all people, Well, I'm not gonna name drop,
but I was talking with someone I don't know. I
was talking with someone in Cape God randomly that i'd

(13:19):
run into, who is a known historian, And I said,
I'm doing this thing in Fred Rogers. And he immediately
said he was a white guy. He immediately said, how
do black people feel about Fred Rogers? Just like sir.
That's why I'm not gonna name drop, because I don't
want to. I don't want to kill his book sales
because this book is very important. But um, but that's
the first thing he said, And uh, whatever, I stumbled
through the answer also kind of annoyed and then excuse myself.

(13:40):
But it did make me think about this inherent belief
that somehow what Fred Rogers did was like doesn't work
for blackness, or there is misaligned and like you know
that's been I mean, in the famous Eddie Murphy sketch,
that's sort of the premise of that joke is that
if you did Fred Rogers in the black neighborhood, it
might look like this. But I want to hear you
talk a little bit about how people in this so funny.

(14:00):
At the same time I was taking into Mr Rogers,
I was also watching Eddie Murphy on The Stay Night.
I never saw Eddie Murphy's Mr Robinsons Neighborhood as being
critical of Mr Rogers. His portrayal of Mr Rogers felt
like Mr Rogers, but an Eddie Murphy version of it.
And also it never occurred to me that it was
really the black version of Mr Rogers. It was just
the the the this version of blackness of Mr Rosson,

(14:22):
which is the thing white people do. That's the black version.
None of that's like the hood criminal black version Rogers. Sorry,
therefer criminal and black making news. So satists come out bell. Yeah,
so again, Tucker Carlson again. So for me, it was
just the idea that, like this is how this is

(14:43):
Eddie Murphy. It was a love letter Mr Rogers. And
when I watched Mr Rogers, I didn't watch him as
a white guy. I watched him as Mr Rogers. And
I think that's that's the thing. I think when a
white person asked that question, they understand Black people and
people of color can tell the difference between a white
guy and Mr Rogers. If that show had been made
for white kids, we would have been able to sniff

(15:03):
it through. Doesn't feel like it's talking to me, but
the fact is Mr Rogers was talking to all kids.
I've been trying to get a black person to come
on this show and say that Mr Rogers transcends race.
Can I get you? Can I put you down for
transcends race? The way that when Prince died, he transcended race.

(15:23):
Remember printed Prince dying David Bowie died, was like, no,
I said, David Bowie transcended race. Mr Rogers transcends his race. Wow,
we got it, we got it. Clip. Uh. Yeah, it's
funny because I think a lot about um. I think
a lot about this. He doesn't transcend race, he transcends

(15:44):
his race. That's so that's an interesting distinction. Tell me
more about that, just that he that he's so good
that I don't even score him down for being white,
that I don't I don't see him through through his whiteness,
which I see a lot of people through their whiteness. Yeah, yeah,
I Actually it's a really interesting point. No one had
made that quite as articulately. You're so articulate. I don't know, Uh,

(16:07):
no one's made that quite as articulately as you have.
That there was something It wasn't that he transcended sort
of the existence of race, but something about the way
he presented himself didn't allow you to think of him
just as a white guy period. And I wonder what
that is, Like, I mean, part of me thinks that
because he was trafficking in a certain kind of respect

(16:29):
and kindness that typically we don't see associated with like
your average run of the middle white person when interacting
with like the rest of the world, or your average
run of the middle kids show like there are a
lot of times they're yelling, you know, they're they're not
actually trying to connect they're trying to order, you know,
like do this now, do this? Go buy it? Like

(16:52):
it's very like shows, and he was just like he
just wanted to sit with you, and it was clear
he cared. And I mean, it's so hard to do
through the TV camera when you're looking at the camera
because he's literally looking at a camera. He's not looking
at a person. And I know that too from having
to look at camera when they say talk directly to
the camera along He's like yeah, because you're looking at
a box and you're looking at like half the camera

(17:13):
guys shoulder and you know, and you're wondering if he's
paying attention or whatever. How do you go about that?
Because I was gonna ask you about that, like about
similarities if any, that you see between Fred Rogers United Shades.
I don't know if you can find that, but but
just as you a person who has to like do
a similar kind of work, which is I need to
talk to people, need to reach people at home, how
do you go about that technically? Like how do you

(17:35):
think through that? The thing I think about his vulnerability,
like if you're vulnerable on camera and if you let
people know when you don't know or if you let
people see you uh, if if you let people see
you break, or if you let people see you like
basically sweat, you know, there's like then they connect with
you as on a human level. I'm trying to be clear,
I'm not the expert here. I'm sitting with some experts,

(17:57):
and I also don't always have the right opinion, and
sometimes I mispronounced thing, and sometimes I I will say, so,
we had a moment in a show we did last
year in Salt Lake City and I sat down with
a bunch of young people to talk about what was
like like to be Mormon and me in the LGBTQ
plus community. What's that like? And I said to one person,
I said, well, as a gay man. And the person
stops saying no, no no, no, I'm not a gay man.

(18:18):
I'm intersex. And I was like, oh sorry, and the
person was like, no, no big deal, Like basically happens
all the time. And the first edit that came back
from the production, they cut out the moment of my mistake,
because that's what you're supposed to do in TV, cut
out the mistakes. I was like, no, no, no, no, no,
that's real. That really happened. I'm not. If you cut
it out, it looks like I always know what I'm
talking about. To me, I like lean on the fact that,
like I that the audience, to the cores in the

(18:40):
show knows that I'm not trying to be the expert.
So for me, Mr Rogers feels like a person who's
making a TV show. He doesn't feel like the host
of a TV show. And I talked about that with
the United Shades. If I started to feel like I'm
hosting the TV show, We're doing something wrong. Fred Rogers
his work was very much of his time. He did
something on TV that was on the one hand, very successful.

(19:02):
On the other hand, almost no one else repeated it.
I mean, in his legacy there's a small tradition, but
for the large part, the rest of children television just
became more manic, more insane, more And so I guess
I wonder, assuming that you couldn't have that exact person
appear right now in the twenty one century, what would

(19:24):
have Fred Rogers of the century look like. You don't
want somebody to repeat, You want somebody to stand on
the shoulders of And also it means they may make
it look differently, and so I do feel like like
I think about like hair love the animated you know,
you know so so Matthew Cherry wrote a book care
Lovel about a black dad doing his daughter's hair, trying
to learn how to do his his black daughter's hair.

(19:45):
And I would say black twice just because it's possible
for people to have kids of different races. So it
just turned they turned into an animated feature. And it
is that almost sounds like science fiction to me, that
that's in a movie theater. And it's not like if
you read the book, that's all it's about. It's not
about and now we got to go fight a dragon,
you know it's and it's not about like or some

(20:06):
bad things gonna happen if I don't do your hair.
The steaks are not that high. But for me, there's
something about it that is pure. And that's what Mr
rogers legacy is is the pureness of how to sort
of like put out good content for kids in the
world that is so pure that adults are excited about it.
Given how expanse of his vision for love and acceptance
in the world was, and given how uh shitty the

(20:30):
world of the world is, do you think he was successful. Yes,
because I think that this is the thing I said
earlier about like when we're making when I'm making anything
I'm making, whether it's a podcast or writing or you know, shades,
when I'm writing it, I'm like, this is going to
change the world just because you I think you have
to feel that, have to feel that way. Every basketball

(20:52):
player thinks that they're they're like top five all time.
You have to think that, whereas why you out and
why are stepping out there? But then when you get
on the court, you just gotta make sure you're helping
win the game. Like maybe in the gym by yourself
your top five all time, or maybe when I'm home
writing on my computer or if I'm making nice shades.
I think this is going to be the thing that
is like the definitive episode on reproductive justice in America.

(21:15):
And then at the end you have to be I
hope people watch it and talk about it, and I
think Mr Rodgers one because people watched it and talked
about it have been inspired by it. You know. I
think that it's a big thing to do to make
the world a more equitable, just loving place. That's a
big task and you have to more people working on it.
You know, at the same time he was working on it,
there's a guy across town named Martin Luther King Jr.

(21:37):
Who was also working on you know what I mean.
So like and they're different ways to do this. I
don't want to call either one of them failures because
because it didn't happen. I think that I believe, and
there's not proof, right was that things move in a
more equitable and just direction. They just don't always move consistently,
and they don't always stay moving forward. Right now we're
at a point where it's starting to move back. But
I feel like in the long line of history took

(22:00):
to paraphrase Dr King who stole it from a Quaker,
the arc of history has been towards justice, but it
hasn't always been consistently towards justice. And I think that, Yeah,
I think that the fact that we're sitting here talking
about Mr Rogers, and in the fact that we're sort
of deconstructing it too, black men talking with Mr Rogers.
Mission accomplished? Do you? Um? My last question is, uh,

(22:22):
if he were here, I would be crying. And after
you composed yourself and stopped weeping and cleaned all this
snot off of your face. Bubbles bubble clear snot bubbles.
What would you ask him? What would I ask Mr Rogers?
I guess the thing you do? You feel successful? I

(22:45):
think that's the thing, because I think a lot of
times people who are in on that side of it
have very complicated things about what they've done. Sometimes it's like,
it doesn't matter what you caught, what the world tells you.
That's how do you feel inside? And so for me,
if he felt like nope, I would make me said,

(23:08):
I've been thinking about that a lot too. Was Fred successful?
Did Fred feel successful? Next time we'll explore the ways
in which he was, but also the many ways in
which he wasn't. I went up to get him to
come down to the studio and he was. He was

(23:28):
a mess. He said, why am I doing? These? Aren't
going to do any good finding Fred is produced by
Transmitter Media. Our team is Dan O'donnald, Jordan Bailey, and
Maddie Foley. Our editor is Sarah Nicks. The executive producer
for Transmitter Media is Greta Cone. Executive producers at Fatherly
are Simon Isaacs and Andrew Berman. Thanks to the team

(23:49):
at I Heart Media. Our show is mixed by Rick Kwan,
music by Blue Dot Sessions and Alison Layton Brown. I'm
Carla Wallace. Thank you for listening. The book up to bocket, Comboku,
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(24:11):
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