Matt Katz: You're listening to The Takeaway. I'm Matt Katz in for Tanzina. Almost exactly one year ago, several weeks into nationwide lockdowns, I was in the guest host chair for The Takeaway. During that time of panic and uncertainty, we checked in with several comedians to see how they were adapting to life without live stand-up shows, and to find out where they were finding space for humor amid all of the grim news. One year later, we wanted to check back in with one of those guests.

Roy Wood Jr: Hello, I'm Roy Wood Jr, a correspondent with The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Matt Katz: During the pandemic, Roy has been churning out segments for The Daily Show from home. Here he is talking with Trevor Noah right after the November election about whether we'll ever trust pollsters again.

Roy Wood Jr: I will try to predict elections again, only now I will be using more reliable predictions, like astrology or reading the trails of a guinea pig, or on the night of a full moon, going outside, urinating and seeing if my pee make any type of words or letters I can read, something like Ouija board.

Trevor Noah: Another option is you could always just try and talk to people of different communities and try and suss out their perspective of the world.

Roy Wood Jr: Yes, I said, talk to astrologist. That's what I said, you're not listening.

Matt Katz: Now, while it's been a full year since he performed for an in-person audience, Roy is planning to do stand-up once again as early as this summer, but the excitement of getting back on the road is also bringing him some mixed emotions.

Roy Wood Jr: Comedy is an addiction, period, point-blank. It is an addiction to adrenaline. My buddy, Neal Brennan, said this and I have never agreed with it more. "There's got to be something wrong with your brain to walk into a room full of strangers, and basically walk on the stage and go, "Everybody be quiet, I've got something important to say."" I love it. It's the rawest form of expression, but what makes me nervous about getting back out there is, number one, you have all these thoughts and opinions and jokes and perspectives that you want to delve into, but comedians don't have the luxury-- We're the one entertainment discipline that's created in front of the consumer. You see our failures.

When you have a joke that's juggling dynamite in terms of the type of topics that you want to discuss, those failures in public now come at a potential penalty, and that was already in place before COVID.

Matt Katz: Sure.

Roy Wood Jr: Now, add on top of that, an audience of 50% capacity-- Not in Texas, if you're packing them in, but coupled with that, audience is a little more spread out. People are a little more paranoid. A cough in a room being the same as a gunshot. I'm very curious to see what people are thinking and feeling. My approach to this is the same as when you go into the ocean, you dip your toes in, so that's a few rooftop shows and outdoor shows in the city, just to get the muscle of performing back.

Then maybe you do one or two shows in the tri-state somewhere. Hopefully by, I don't know, summer or fall, depending on how this vaccine moves nationally-- That's another thing I might turn to, the rollout. Then you start trying to get on the road a little bit and figure out air travel. Am I going to take the train everywhere? Am I only going to perform in train cities? What are the logistics of just sitting on an Amtrak and sleeper car every day? I don't know. How to do it is as important as just going out and doing it. At some point, I've got to get back out there because that's still the essence of who I am because stand-up is the one thing they cannot take from me. I can't get notes on it. You can't tell me it's over. All the comedians that are respected, died with dates on the books, that's where-- You can't stop. It is an addiction.

Matt Katz: Is part of the draw that brings you back every night to go back on stage hearing the laughter? Because that's something you literally haven't heard live in a year. Even The Daily Show. Making jokes, telling funny stories, doing amazing bits, and there's no studio audience. Is that something you really miss, just hearing like strangers laughing?

Roy Wood Jr: I miss people. I really do. I've done Zoom shows and the online shows. Those are cool, but it's not the same. It's just not the same as seeing and connecting with people. At the end of the day, we're just all out here trying to make sure that we're not alone and feeling the way we feel. That's why we consume most media because it touches us in some way. Whether it's music or comedy or a concert or a film or whatever, I just think we're looking to satiate the need to feel. We all have a need to feel something, and comedy does that for me. To do it one way for 23 years, and then in the 24th year, "Yes, there's not going to be any people--" It's like "No." I've got to get back out there at some point.

Matt Katz: When you get back out there, are you going to miss Donald Trump at all? I mean the political landscape is different now. No more Trump jokes or-- I guess you could still talk about Trump, but the relevancy is gone. I read in Vulture that you think Trump was good for comedy. Why and what happens now?

Roy Wood Jr: I felt that Trump was good for comedy in the sense of pushing comedians to deeper places to talk about. Most of the Trump jokes are obvious, or were obvious. I felt like that put us in a place of a creative boom. Of course, there's more things to laugh about because we're all connected and we're all looking at this crazy thing.

Trump is literally like a second sun coming up over the horizon, you cannot ignore that. We must have discussions about that. For the people who choose not to, you had to immediately come up with more things, and you have to be more in-depth in terms of your content than what you were discussing because the Trump jokes, a lot of that, it's surface, and it's also something that everyone has an opinion on. I think it became more and more difficult with Trump to have a unique take on him that was long-lasting, that could outlive his new cycle. I felt like it's good in the sense that, as a comic, you now have to figure out something.

The only analogy I can make is that, in late-night television, and this is including our program as well, it's day-to-day, we're following what happened today, or in the last 48 hours. A lot of those jokes are about the weather, whereas to me, good stand-up is about the climate. With Trump, it was difficult to find jokes about the climate because you were still in the middle of the hurricane, but the comics who could, I think you get rewarded. It's something that's more touching.

That's also why I love being a correspondent because Trevor can carry the weather just fine, he can give you new prisms through which to look at these things that are currently happening and give you the prognostication of the future. Whereas a correspondent, I get to go out and talk to the people who are ultimately affected by a lot of these policies that are discussed in the weather.

Matt Katz: Interesting. Part of the climate, particularly right now, and always in America, racial justice and the uprisings that we saw last year, you were back home in Alabama during that, involved in tending some protests. What was that experience like? Did you take some time away from finding whatever the satire that can be gleaned from it, and just give a moment to think about the gravity of where we were and where we are in America right now?

Roy Wood Jr: That's what I went and I expected, but for me the thing that really struck me was, and I can only speak to Birmingham, but what really struck me was how many people still care about one another across races. The richest zip code Mountain Brook, Alabama, which is the richest zip code in the state of Alabama. It's our Beverly Hills, if you will. Those people showed up. George Floyd protesting, taking knees with Black people. That's not something that would happen in a place like Birmingham, hell, four years ago, let alone 2019.

There were a lot of moments, there were a lot of people that came in with the riff-raff and vandalized a lot of buildings downtown. Birmingham was no different than most cities when things got unruly at night, but the next day, it was white people and Black people coming together to clean up those respective businesses. It wasn't just Black people. You're out there because you're angry, but then you cannot deny the facts when you see that people actually care about one another. It's like, "Wow," and it left me with a sense of hope for what could be because hopelessness is the default, more often than not, especially if you're a Black. You've got to dig deep to find that hope every day. It was really cool to just see it in action while I was down there.

Matt Katz: Also down in Alabama, you were raising money early in the quarantine for StarDome Comedy Club and you were doing these Instagram fundraisers. What happened to StarDome? How's the club doing?

Roy Wood Jr: The club is still there. They were able to weather the storm. I can't speak to whether or not they took a PPE loan or not, but I know that they got crafty. This sounds odd to say, but I think part of what helped the StarDome is that they were in Alabama, and a lot of the shutdown orders came down much later in that state. I think that's also part of why a lot of states in the south are the ones that are coming back. "We're open again." You weren't closed as long as everybody else, so you still have a decent entertainment infrastructure there. With a couple of the PPE loans like that, I think, really helped them, but there's been a lot of good comedy clubs that bit the dust nationally.

With what Mike Birbiglia and I were doing at the time, with the whole Tip Your Waitstaff thing, we were just trying to raise money for the waitresses who got laid off. We never thought the club would close. Even within COVID in those early days, in that April window. "Oh, the club is closed for the summer," and the staff is laid off. "Oh, get the staff a couple of bucks till the club opens back up in August." Even within COVID. As a rainstorm's coming in, we still didn't know that it was a cat five hurricane but a cat eight hurricane coming behind that. We did everything we could for a number of clubs. I think it was close to $250,000. I know we touched $200,000.

Matt Katz: That's great.

Roy Wood Jr: I know we touched $200,000 totally for all the comedy clubs and waitstaffs that we were trying to get money for.

Matt Katz: The comedy scene is going to look a lot different, right? Once this is all said and done, if all these clubs are closed--

Roy Wood Jr: For as long as you have people who want to perform and people who want to listen to performers, the rest of it will figure itself out. I think in the smaller, B and C markets where clubs have closed, you're going to see a different type of venue for comedy. I think that'll be the main thing is that I think the places where comedy occurs might be a little different. In New York and Nashville, those places are going to be fine. When I think about a club, like the Comedy Showcase in Lansing, Michigan, that one's on the bubble. Jukebox Comedy Club in Peoria that thing is an institution going back to the early '90s, Sam Kinison touched the same stage, Richard Pryor from Peoria touched that stage.

It's those spots, and from those places, that's where your next performers are coming. That's where they learned. Comedy might have to move back to the bars. I think it's going to be a little bit more of a speakeasy situation because I think comedy is going to be in the same bucket as music, where until the larger venues open to do something, the bars that are just now coming back online are going to need a reason to get people in there. The comedians need to go to a place where there's going to be people.

That might be your happy marriage. I think we might be more dependent upon some hybrid-use facilities going forward. It's hard to say. It's definitely tougher to say now than it was in March or April when the entire country shut down, where now you have clubs, pretty much-- I call it the SEC and the big 12. Clubs down in that region, the lower half of the 48, they're going to be doing better than clubs in other parts of the country, but some of those clubs are connected to chains. Maybe they can move money around in a sexy way that helps keep things in motion.

Matt Katz: To step away from the clubs into the studio for a moment, you've got a new podcast coming out next week. Some people baked sourdough during the pandemic, everyone else got a podcast it seems. Tell us about the new show. What's it about?

Roy Wood Jr: Roy's Job Fair, the idea came when the unemployment number hit, I think it was 30 million. At one point in this country it was like 30 million Americans that were out of work. I was trying to figure out a way to have a conversation every week with real people just about their work. Originally, it was just, "All right, we're just going to talk job openings, and give people ideas of where to pivot," and that's part of the show. Ultimately, it's just sharing conversations with people who either love their boss, hate their boss, you're looking for a boss, or you're trying to be your own boss. Pretty much all of us fall into one of those four quadrants.

Honestly, and I hate to say it like this, but it's true. Work is like sex. You're either getting enough, or you need to get a little more. If you're not getting any, you're looking for it. This podcast, I think, the desire to provide and to also seek fulfillment through how you provide for yourself and for your family. I think it's something that connects us and if it connects us, there's going to be jokes. We're just having funny real conversations with people.

I'm literally just talking to random strangers, myself and my co-hosts. If you hate your job, this is the place to come. Let's talk about it. If you love your job, we'll hear that too. Hopefully, somewhere near people get ideas about where to work and what they want to do by talking to people. Not just like small business owners who are hiring, but we got people from major Fortune 500 companies that are calling in as well and just discussing career opportunities.

Matt Katz: Blue-collar jobs, white-collar jobs, everything in between, you'll touch on.

Roy Wood Jr: Literally, everything. There's a strip club in Tampa that's hiring, but there's also a rideshare company that's hiring for coders. Put them in the same episode. Let's explore that world and just find out more about people and what they do for a living and what drives them. This isn't like employment listings, the podcast. This is just a conversation about jobs. It connects us the same as food, the same as relationships.

Matt Katz: Roy Wood Jr. is a comedian and correspondent for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and his new podcast is Roy's Job Fair. Get it wherever you get your pods. Roy, thank you so much for coming back on. Hopefully, we are not speaking again a year from now because we're still on a pandemic.

Roy Wood Jr: If we are, I'll have another podcast and I'll talk about that.

Matt Katz: Great, looking forward to it.

[laughter]

Roy Wood Jr: All right. Thank you.

[00:17:41] [END OF AUDIO]

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