There's so many shows, whether it's 'Last Week Tonight' or 'The Daily Show' or 'Full Frontal' or 'Late Night With Seth Meyers,' that are really doing great stuff talking about what's going on in the world and what's going on with the president, and those stories that everyone winds up talking about, whether on social media or in their jobs.
I just started the way most comics start, doing open mic shows around Sacramento and San Francisco, and eventually, I moved to L.A. After about four or five years in L.A., I got the call to join the 'The Daily Show.'
Right now I'm doing four shows at a time, trying to read four outlines every week, four scripts every week, and watching four rough cuts; it's a lot of good work. It's fun to do it, but it does wear you out.
'Grease' was my Broadway debut. That was eye-opening. At the same time, it was very familiar. It was a Broadway show, but it's kind of the same as doing a show in Minnesota. It's the same type of rehearsal process. You are doing 8 shows a week, but I worked at a theatre in Minnesota that did 11 shows a week.
It takes a week to do a sitcom in Hollywood. I do a show a day in my studio, three or four shows a week.
The thing about how that process works is that it's more about the editing and time for judging the ideas. Most pieces I publish each week have been around for months. This is a response to the beginning of the strip, when I was making them so quickly. I would just conceive a piece, finish it, and then the next day see it in the paper. That was when I was doing dailies four days a week.
When I start to think about all the things, I'm doing sometimes I just have to thank the man upstairs. Because I'm doing the morning show here in Chicago 5 days a week, and I have the syndicated radio show that's been going on now for several years. In addition we are in the midst of taping 13 episodes of a television show-The Legends of Jazz: The Masters of jazz on PBS-TV.
Around shows, when we're doing really strenuous stuff on my hair - styling with heat, adding things, braiding things, pinning things - I like to give my scalp and my hair a rest. We usually have a show once a week or so, so I try to deep condition with Pantene Daily 3 Minute Miracle Deep Conditioner once a week.
The Daily Show is one of the lowest-rated shows in the state of Alabama, so we decided to reach across the aisle and do a collection of field pieces about Alabama - to increase awareness of the show there, but also to learn about the politics, culture, and religion in Alabama.
When the Seinfeld show said it was going to be a show about nothing, everybody said it couldn't - wouldn't work. It did. Thor is about something, about that character finding his destiny, but it's not doing what was expected... and yet it's doing very well.
When the 'Seinfeld' show said it was going to be a show about nothing, everybody said it couldn't - wouldn't work. It did. 'Thor' is about something, about that character finding his destiny, but it's not doing what was expected... and yet it's doing very well.
Even at its height, 'The Daily Show' would do one great show a week, one pretty good show a week, and then two 'meh' ones. It was filler.
The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up.
The thing about 'Popworld' is it became such a luxury to be doing this great show every week, and to have people stop you in the street and say it's good.
I come from making money in the streets. The streets all I know. All my family is still in the streets. So, it's going to be hard to pull me right back into that. When I ain't doing no shows four days out of the week, I may be in my hood or at my grandma's house in the hood. But yes, I got a kid. I got to get more serious about the music so he don't get dragged into that life.
The thing about the four-camera shows is that it's kind of a great combo of theater and film. You have an audience, but you have a camera to capture things, so that's a great thing, too.