Zhubin Parang: One thing I also like about CP time is the specificity of the CP time character. You usually don’t see that level of like… This is not just like a segment apparently like a Black Civic. There’s a very specific type of black character of a certain generation and a certain type of public TV that we can have a lot of fun with. And some of the base we have about like, what is this character’s like marital status? What does this Roy Wood Jr CP time, what trouble is he in with his children? And I think you usually don’t see a level of drilling down into the specific aspects and the specific types of black culture that our show is able to do, and I really liked that aspect of CP time.
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah. The note that they told me was that… I think Zhubin said it. He said that this show is the only thing that’s going right in this guy’s life. Between each little topic within the vignettes, you can see cracks in his armor of his marriage or his relationship with his son or he’s in debt to a bookie. And that’s really what’s on his mind right now. But I first need to tell you about Lonnie who invented the Supersoaker. It’s that type of specificity.
Josh Johnson: I also like how, the longer CP time goes on… Because with things that progress, especially in a show or segment that’s in a rotation and continuing to evolve, usually see improvements in a character’s life. But somehow Roy is always poor, every segment like he was in the previous segment, like something else has gone wrong.
Kat Radley: I feel like we would play with how old he was like that was always flexible. We were writing something like in the 20s we maybe made a joke about like, “Oh, I got my moonshine in the 20s from this person” and we’d be like, “How old is he? Don’t worry about it”.
Geri Cole: That’s [inaudible 00:21:06]… He’s however old you need him to be. Also I really love that it’s like taking the term CP time to something positive. Now when I hear CP time come, I’m like let’s hear some facts, right? We’re gonna be two hours behind.
Roy Wood Jr.: Every blue moon a white Daily Show viewer will tweet me and ask me what it means. And I just won’t answer. I love the mystery of it. And usually someone in the comment in the thread will jump in and give them, but you’re not going to get the answer from me. I want you to wonder.
Zhubin Parang: What’s the name of the show?
Kat Radley: I do love Excite. When I was a teacher I’d think like, I wish I had this because I would have [inaudible 00:21:43] high school, I would have shown this to my class. It gives historical information, but it’s entertaining. I can only imagine there’s going to be social studies and history teachers who hopefully do and could use these segments.
Roy Wood Jr.: I’m sure it’ll be banned very soon by [crosstalk 00:21:59]…
Geri Cole: I mean, that’s the wonderful thing about the Daily Show. It’s like, you are getting actual news and history. Even though it’s always through a comedic lens. And actually speaking of, how do you choose the topics you want to cover with CP time?
Kat Radley: I would say this is a time to give a shout out to our deep dive department too. Because we have a whole department dedicated to research, and we call it deep dive because they dive really deep into these topics and comb through, I don’t even know what kind of articles and resources and actual real books sometimes, to find this information. And then they create a giant file for us as the writers to read and go through and kind of pick out and see okay, well what’s funny? What’s the important stuff that we want to make sure we cover? Sometimes it’s too much. I mean, you can’t do it all. We don’t want to bore our viewers. We pick out like, what are the important things that we can’t leave out? What are things we could kind of group together? What is good fodder for jokes and making fun of it. So the deep dive department is amazing. And they present us with all the information and then it’s up to us to kind of comb through and see what’s going to be the comedic segment that comes out of this.
Roy Wood Jr.: I think it boils back down to, I think one of the bigger tenements of daily show segments in general. What is funny versus what we think you need to know. And if there’s anything that checks both boxes concurrently, then that’s getting moved to the top of the pile of consideration for air. And so there’s things that are funny and interesting that breed great jokes, but the nugget of knowledge from it isn’t necessarily worth it. And the thing that also I think, that a lot of people forget about is that, a lot of these people that we talk about in these segments are still alive. They are still around, and still able to sometimes email me and say, “Hey, thank you. We appreciate that.” That with the whole Supersoaker thing, not only family reached out. I don’t know how they found me, they found me. We just had a segment on this month for Black History Month, which also to your point about how we choose these topics, sometimes we parallel them to things that are already happening.
So right now, we’re in the middle of the Winter Olympics, so let’s talk about black people in the Winter Olympics. Who did what? Who are the black people into? So that was one that our deep dive team has to have the foresight back in November in December to start doing the digging to create a document to send to the writers who polish it up when we get back from Christmas break so that there’s a script ready by the time we’re ready to start shooting needs to have it ready in time for the Winter Olympics.
Geri Cole: Do you try and do two months out sometimes for [inaudible 00:24:48]? How far back do you have to go for the research?
Kat Radley: Two to three months sounds right if we know it’s a timely thing.
Josh Johnson: Yeah, or sometimes you’ll plant the seed and so you don’t even know when it’s going to happen, but you’ve been in a sense working on it. That’s what Roy was talking about having your hands on a lot of pies, is that there’s this passion piece that you don’t know what it’s going… It might be eight months from now but it’s going to happen eventually. The research thing comes together, the writing comes together, and then the timing comes together and then it’s on. But day to day, things can get pushed for something that’s a bit more pressing or something…. I think that’s a great thing about the show now is that, I think that us not being confined to each month and each topic and just doing things in time with when the rest of the world’s talking about it, and we talk about what we want to talk about when we feel like it.
I think that that also opens the door for, if there’s a CB time in there that we think is really important but it’s February 28th, we’re not like, “Well, I guess 2023 is going to be a good year for… You know what I mean? It’s more like, “Alright, well, maybe it does need another little bit to cook and then air.”
Roy Wood Jr.: Did not happen Zhubin with the Halloween one? We had one about the history of black people in horror movies that I know was originally set for Halloween. Well, if we had shot it, and then I don’t know what news broke or whatever. But we ended up airing it on the other side of Halloween and it still played because it’s still black history.
Zhubin Parang: Yeah, it was something that we actually initially meant for it to air, I think it was on the release of a Jordan Peele movie. It was-
Josh Johnson: Was it yet out?
Zhubin Parang: I know, it was soon.
Kat Radley: We did that Candyman.
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah, New Candyman. Yeah.
Zhubin Parang: That was yes. Then it ended up being like, well, we can push a little bit later because it’s flexible enough that we can put it out there on the other side of Halloween. So yeah, a lot of it depends on… Obviously, there’s only so much real estate you have on a television show and if news happens that day, which, during the Trump administration, every other day was some major Def Con One news event occur. But now we’ve had the luxury of having a bit more… The cycle have slowed down a bit and so we have a bit more luxury in terms of picking what stories actually we want to say instead of what stories are being shoved down our throat by the national and global media. So that allows for a lot more flexibility, a lot more decision making on our own part about what we want to talk about, and not about what country Trump has just insulted the secretary of state of and now we got to go to war and all this kind of thing.
Geri Cole: Sounds funny, sounds like a joke but-
Zhubin Parang: No, that wasn’t a joke at all.
Geri Cole: Not a joke. Since you’re talking about the timeline and how things are so fluid, what is your process like and trying to come up with a new segment? How do you know when it has legs?
Zhubin Parang: Like we were saying earlier, if anybody has an idea, they just come to them and can pitch one, we usually try to put up almost any segment that seems a little interesting and we just see through the process how far it’ll go. We usually never dismiss an idea just because we trust the writers. I think just like a couple of months ago, Kat pitched segments about doing stories relating to courts and to trials in a segment called Court where we just all, whether it is occurring in a courtroom, and Trevor is adjudicating whatever the story is and the correspondents are lawyers trying to argue for one side or the other. I think Kat, you pitched that almost out of whole close, and you’re like, “This is a great idea. Let’s try it.” I think it had a couple of tweaks here and there as we went through the process of putting it up on it for the first time but-
Kat Radley: You can always find some tweaks.
Zhubin Parang: The writers always have glaring flaws in their thinking that read through [crosstalk 00:28:29], but once that happens-
Josh Johnson: Is to the point now where when I write something and said to this Zhubin if he doesn’t have a bunch of notes, I assume he didn’t read it yet. So then when he’s like, “Hey, this looks good, can you fill in these two things I put?” Because it happened with Kat and I, we wrote us something, and then Zhubin only had two notes and we were like, “He must not be the one reading it then.”
Zhubin Parang: No, it was good to go. I was as surprised as you guys were. No, it’s very easy with the writers that we have, we trust them to be funny. So when they pitch ideas, especially in segment ideas, there’s very little reason not to put it up and just see how it does. So a lot of times things don’t play on screen they do on the page, but a lot of times, that’s something that you have to discover in the process of saying the lines and doing that, but if you hire good people you can trust the stuff they put out is good. So we generally trust the segment ideas.
Kat Radley: I spent quarantine binging The Good Wife and the Good Fight, so I always have court on the brain. So I was ready for it.
Roy Wood Jr.: I think also to this field hybrid side that we’re drifting into, as well, within the show where every correspondent interview doesn’t necessarily have to be outside of New York City. We’ve been working on a new segment called Black in Business where it’s essentially like a CNBC style financial parody but it’s about black businesses and black owned businesses and black business owners and what they are doing right now and how they’ve fiscally pivoted and how are you making your money? So that’s something that it has to be interesting it has to be bookable, and it also still has to be funny. I think that’s the thing that we always have to make sure that we don’t lose sight of we’re coming up with new ideas, is that, is it funny? You can make it as interesting… The people need to hear this. But you got to get to make it fun. That’s why I love the fact, and I don’t know if this is by design Zhubin.
I don’t know if y’all do this on purpose but the fact that Ronny Chang handles a lot of the environmental stuff. There’s an arrogance to Ronnie, performative arrogance. I know he’s going to see this and someone’s going to try and twist. But it’s comedic attitude is perfect for something that is as essential but mundane as climate change. So I think that part of it as well plays a role.
Josh Johnson: Absolutely. Yeah. Because I think for new ideas, especially, what also makes it sometimes even easy for us as writers is that we have at our disposal a list of correspondents that can handle a bunch of different topics that come from different experiences. Like I pitched a new segment for Ronnie towards the end of last year of just WTF America, and it’s like, instead of just taking the things that America does and like, “Why do you do this?” In a very serious sense, it’s all silly stuff. It’s all like, “Why do you all love peanut butter? That’s not normal.” When you go to other countries, that’s nasty. You all just got mashed peanuts in a jar and you eat it on bread. But we don’t know because America is so centered around its own story that it’s telling itself all the time that, sure there are stories that creep out about our military or our foreign policy it’s like that.
Things that are very serious that you can do jokes about and have a twist on how self centered we are sometimes, but then there’s also just things that honestly, I don’t know if there’s any other country in the world where a nickels bigger than a dime. We do weird stuff here, and then people come here and we treat foreign people like they don’t know what’s going on, or like they don’t have good sense. It’s like, “Why did you make less money bigger? Why did you do that?” I think someone like Ronnie speaks that perfectly. So sometimes even the show makes it easy on us as writers that we can keep churning out things because of who we have at our disposal.
Geri Cole: I do want to talk about correspondence in general because it’s the legacy of correspondence in Daily Show, it’s like its own institution. But I do want to talk about these new segments. One particularly also that Roy you do with Michael Kosta which is this new sports segment. That also feels like a bit of a departure for The Daily Show which always generally covered news and politics. I guess the other question is trying to write it with is the evolution of the show since Trevor has taken over, which is also, spoiler alert, feels more black. But also, like you’re going into [inaudible 00:33:06].
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah, that segment, traditionally, the show… Sports has to somehow intersect with politics. For it to really get on the radar at the show. We’re not going to just talk about sports news because sports news. Yeah. The Super Bowl and move on to Super Bowl. We’re more likely to talk about something that happened during the halftime show. Like Beyonce SuperBowl halftime show probably stands out. That was an easy one to get across in the pitch, because everybody at Fox News was mad because I don’t know it was too black of a… So that’s the type of story that’s more likely to get on air. But I think that I’d say that under Trevor, the show has definitely taken an identity of creating content that is parallel to the way people are already consuming and watching news which is why the show also got more digital. Which is why that was something that was very important to Trevor and building the show and eventually we got an Emmy because of that. We get nominated at the Yin Yang because of what people in our expansion department do.
I think that the sport segments are really just an extension of that. Trevor is a fan of sports. This is a man who during game seven of the World Series, I’m a Cubs fan, I’m a huge Cubs fan. I came to… Game seven was on a workday and Trevor said, “You must leave here at once.” He made me leave… I wanted to go but this is my job. I haven’t even been there a year yet. I’m not going to screw up my job to go see the Cubs, he’s like, “No, go, you must go see.” So he has a love and appreciation for sports. I think that is what comes through on the show. But I think ultimately, like Zhubin said, there’s only so much real estate and we know what we’re here to do in the bigger scheme of things, and it is about issues and topics that affect us as a whole.
So whatever is happening in sports has to be connected to something larger, no matter how bad, I still want to get the story approved, about why black colleges have predominantly white baseball teams, and I think it’s a relevant story, and it was approved to go out the door, then Trump got elected two weeks later, and we still haven’t revisited that story Zhubin but I’m cleared.
Geri Cole: Also what? Black colleges have white baseball teams? Is that true?
Roy Wood Jr.: Most black colleges have majority white baseball teams. The reason is because of the lack of baseball in the hood, because of the funding, because people are getting priced out of baseball the same as skiing and tennis, and it’s a real issue but nobody cares about baseball. It doesn’t connect to something large, you get what I’m saying? So that’s where the show has to-
Zhubin Parang: I just keep missing these emails you just keeps sending me Roy. Because I don’t know what is going on.
Geri Cole: A weird hole. So I do also want to talk about success. Because I feel like success is an elusive animal. I’m curious as to you having to work at this pace and feel, I would imagine responsible to a certain degree of what you’re putting out to the world because of how connected it is to what’s happening in our country and in politics. I feel like whenever people say politics I’m always like, “Politics is people.” It’s always like, it’s not some separate crazy thing, is like politics is people. So I’m curious as to how you guys define success for yourself and how that has evolved over time.
Zhubin Parang: I would say that you can’t define success, at least from my point of view is anything that’s not what is in your control to do. So I think I’ve always thought of the show as being successful if we put out a show that made us have a lot of fun producing it. If our day was just full of joy coming up with the material, and putting it together and presenting it, then I think, at the end of day, that was success. That’s not a low bar for success because it’s hard to come up with material that you are satisfied with, that you think is funny and pointed and makes you laugh thinking about it again and again, and then presenting it in a way that you think is the best it could be. But that’s ultimately all you have any control over. So that’s all you can really, for your own mental health, all you really can judge yourself by. So in my mind, the show is successful when we’ve had a joyful day bringing it out and we are proud of the comedy behind it and the satire behind it.
Kat Radley: Mine is getting minimal notes from Zhubin.
Zhubin Parang: But then I don’t feel like I’ve been successful so there’s very much contention on there.
Kat Radley: But I agree with Zhubin that the joy is at the heart of it. Trevor doesn’t want us to do anything that isn’t fun. He’s making a comedy show, we should be able to enjoy life, have fun, like sending Roy to the Cubs game. He’s all about the work life balance. So it’s just knowing that we did the best we could, we put out our ideas, even if they do bomb and you know that you did your best and luckily, you have a chance to do it again tomorrow.
Roy Wood Jr.: I think that there’s also a measurement that I think that the show, as much as the objective is comedy, I think it is cool when from time to time you can look at the body of work and know that we’ve at least maybe incited someone to take action, and maybe incite somebody to do something different or move differently within the world. We did all types of sponsorships during the lockdown and we’ve raised almost like $3 million to just a myriad of charitable causes from just a mention at the end of an episode or just selling Christmas sweaters that benefit the EJI. I think you cannot measure the success of a show through award and nominations, though it is nice. You can’t necessarily measure it that way. But the weirdest thing about the Daily Show that I had to adjust to was as a comedian, and I’m not speaking as a comic that gets recognized a lot. But when I did, it was, “You’re funny. Hey, I like your whatever.”
I started the Daily Show and the difference was that people will come up to me and say thank you. We say thank you for what you do, and they would go into their reasons why, and then I’d asked him for $20. But they would go into the reasons why and it was so wholesome, it was so holistic and it was so beautiful that to know that anything we’re doing is activating people to feel like that from time to time. I don’t know if you can ask for much more than that on the day to day. Is that success? I don’t know. But it’s definitely damn dope.
Josh Johnson: Yeah, I definitely think that and Kat and Roy can correct me, and Zhubin on their own, personal journeys with it. But I think when you do stand up, you’re such a loner and you’re just such an out for yourself trying to get success, trying to get noticed, trying to prove to people that you’re funny, I think that the community that the show fosters makes me ask different questions on myself than I ever did before I came to the show. So now instead of, well, am I funny? Did my jokes get on? Did get all the jokes I wanted on? Did I get the jokes that I pitched get picked? Or whatever. It’s more like, “Man, did I make my co workers laugh today? Then like, when I go out, do people enjoy the thing that I am a part of that I helped with? I think that those are definitely new markers for success that also make it… It doesn’t just make life a little bit easier, because you take so much pressure off of yourself for a singular success, but it makes it more fun because now, it’s not completely up to you or it’s not completely ego driven.
I think that with stand up, it’s just a world where you’re up there by yourself. So then every joke has to be fire, and it has been you and yours and you’re trying to like, give me, give me, give me, all that stuff. So I think that it’s definitely taught me writing for the show, writing the topics that I have to learn about as opposed to just whatever I want to talk about. I think that those things have also taught me to be more giving in my pursuit of making people laugh and of telling stories.
Geri Cole: Man, you guys all in a way touched on the idea of, this feeling of success is how it affects your relationship with your community and that’s a beautiful thing. So this is going to be… I apologize in advance for this question.
Josh Johnson: What are you guys credit card numbers?
Geri Cole: Next question, what’s your mother’s maiden name? I think of writing like math because that’s how I usually think of writing. So I’m curious if you guys have any the formula for the perfect joke? Sorry. I apologized in advance.
Zhubin Parang: No, because I feel like Geri, you and me probably have a very similar logic based approach to a joke. Because I also come from a legal type of constructing a joke and the way you do like a brief, and I think I probably agree with you. I don’t think there’s like a structure for a perfect joke but I definitely do feel that the steadily building towards a surprise, to me is a necessity for a joke. I think like any joke that builds up an idea very rigorously and then at the very end takes you to a place that it’s so absurd that you didn’t think he was going to go there. That complete collapse of that logic argument, that to me is like my favorite type of joke, very absurdist and a lot of smart building up to very stupid. That is the perfect joke for me.
Geri Cole: Again, equations, smart building up the very stupid.
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah, to me, it’s… I don’t know what’s the perfect joke, but I know the perfect entry point is to have an angle or a take that no one else has yet. Because I think you can build interest in the premise if your premise is very atypical and outside of the box, and that’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve picked up on while working at The Daily Show. That has also altered my stand up in a way where I tried to do that. Because it’s more interesting to have the weird POV and maybe a yo yo you back around to the same place where you thought I was going to be or it’s cool to get people to laugh at things that they may not necessarily agree with either. So I think that part of, it may not make the perfect joke, but it definitely to me makes the most interesting one.
Josh Johnson: Yeah, I think that whether it’s for the [inaudible 00:43:48]. I shouldn’t boil it down to just these things because it’s obviously more broad, but the three things I think that joke bottleneck in is I find people, whether for the show or in stand up for me, laugh out of surprise or recognition or agreement. So with those three main things, it is kind of to what you’ve been saying. It’s like, if you’ve ever watched like Judo or Jiu Jitsu and you’ve seen someone be flipped, so much stuff goes into flipping a person, but when you actually see someone flip and fall, it’s one of the funniest. It’s like, all the work that goes into the surprise of seeing a person flip, and sometimes even life does that. So my cousin sprained his ankle one time, but he sprained his ankle because my uncle was falling. My uncle ended up not falling, and then my cousin fell trying to help him not fall. So it’s like watching that whole thing happen is like, “This is insanity.” You can both recognize that that thing logically could happen.
But there’s a surprise of it happening. Then there’s an agreement among an audience that that’s… The person who was falling should fall. It was completely unfair. That’s so because he was almost horizontal in the way he was slipping but refused to fall, and then grabbed my cousin, and then my cousin falls and hurts himself. It’s like, that thing is the purity of what comedy is. So I think if you can stick to that, so some people find it in telling the truth, whatever that means for them, and some people find it in just trying to create the silliest surprise that they can, the most off base thing. But there’s a purity that if you can hold to and be mindful of, I don’t think you’ll go wrong. So those to me are perfect jokes.
Kat Radley: Real quick. My favorite jokes are the quick jokes. Setup punchline don’t need that much explanation or act outs or follow ups. It’s just setup punchline. I like the ones, again, that take people by surprise, but also the ones that are maybe a little dark that make people laugh, and they’re almost mad that they’re laughing at it but they can’t not. I can’t remember there’s one, it was like a Ronnie segment that we’re working on, I can’t remember what it was. But it was something about Ronnie lying about a family member being dead to get some benefit for himself. So it was really dark and makes Ronnie look like a terrible person but it was very funny. I can’t remember what it was. But things like that worth… It’s dark and makes… The correspondents are also willing to make themselves look the idiot for the joke, which is great, because those are my favorite ones to write. I’m glad that they’re all on board for that.
Geri Cole: So jokes that make you question your humanity when you laugh at them. You’re going to need to talk about this therapy. Okay, well, guys, thank you so much. This has been super fun. Thank you for doing the interview. Also, thank you for making this show. Because you’re really making an amazing show. You’re doing God’s work. Thank you for making this show. I appreciate all the work that you do.
Zhubin Parang: Thanks for having us guys.
Geri Cole: That’s it for this episode. I’m writing is a production of the Writers Guild of America East and is hosted by me, Geri Cole. This series was created and is produced by Jason Gordon. Tech production and Original Music by Taylor Bradshaw and Stock Boy Creative. Our associate producer and designer is Molly Beer. You can learn more about the Writers Guild of America East online at wgaeast.org, and you can follow the guild on all social media platforms at WGA East. If you like this podcast, please subscribe and rate us. Thank you for listening and right on.
