You're listening to Comedy Central. Our guest tonight is a Tony Award winning actor and comedian who stars in the new film The American Society of Magical Negroes.
Please please welcome David Allan gerre.
H hold On.
We are big fans of yours, as is everyone in this audience.
Thank you.
We're very excited to talk to you about this film. But before we get into that, we have to talk about the last very cool job that you just had last week. You were what was that the Voice of God at the Academy Awards.
Yes, yes, I was. It was really fun. I mean I never I can't tell you who did it before me. I never was, Like the voiceover guy was amazing. So Jimmy Kimmel's an old friend. He texted me and he asked me, did I want to do it? And I said, being the hord that I am, of course. How many tickets? It was really fun though. It was really got to take my daughter, who was sixteen.
So was she over the moon?
Yes, she really was.
She walked the carpet with me and it was great. When she was a little kid, she told me that she wanted to go to the Oscars, and I was like, sure, honey, but inside I'm like so, I was glad to make good on that promise.
This film, I'm calling it the new Satirical Film starring David Allen Greek because I'm afraid to say the word negroes.
Oh shit, I just said it, you know.
But tell me a little bit about this.
Yeah.
Well wait, it's so strange to me that I call negro the other dword, you know, But that's.
Why I'm afraid to say it.
It's really not.
I mean, it's amazing that people are afraid to say negro but not afraid to say so that's the word. You should be worried about that. Negro's fine. Don't worry about Negro. It's all right.
This film is it threads the needle perfectly of hilarious and informative and sentimental.
Was that a concern of yours? When you read the script? We no?
I mean, I just you know, when I read a script, I just want to be surprised. I mean, the worst script is when you read you know what's gonna happen ten pages before they're gonna fall in love, someone's gonna trip and die.
They are exactly with that.
But so this really took me by surprise. It's quirky, different. It was a great read because most of them aren't.
So the premise of the film, that's very true, by the way, not that I get sent very many.
Scripts, well you will have today.
The premise of the film was inspired by the trope that we often see where a black character exclusively exists for the sole purpose of affirming a white lead.
And also, you know, magical negroes have a strange array of knowledge, you know, like they can fix. They can fix like spaceships, golf swing, you know, soud wars. But they have no family, no home. They just appear.
I saw this film, I said, shit, I have to throw away my legend of Backer vants vhs.
Well, actually, you know, most of my younger career I auditioned for those roles, man, because those are the ones where everybody they would get nominated. Oh the you know, this black character is so sympathetic it made me cry, you know, driving Miss Daisy and stuff like that. I never got them because I was too crazy or something. They were like, David, you're not magical negro material.
So speaking roles that you auditioned for, I heard that you auditioned for the original version of The Color Purple. I did and did not get it at that time.
No, I did not.
You did. Just in this recent I did, but.
I auditioned for Harpo okay, and I did not get a callback, and I was devastated. I thought, this is the last movie, the last part. And then when the musical came, I auditioned again and I still didn't get it. So this time I was determined to get into it. So I just called my whole team. I said, I'll do it anything, and I finally got in thirty years later.
One final question before we let you go. You have so many fans of you because of in Living Color Reboot reunion?
Could that ever happen?
We can't do it this time. Everybody asked for that. The world has changed. You can't be doing that crazy stuff we did. I mean, we barely got away the last time. Because when the Living Color was originally on, you could call the station to complain, You could write a letter snail mail, or you could do the latest technology at the time, which was facts. There was no social media. No, we could not do the show as it was now.
So that's just the way it is maybe new version that wouldn't.
Be the show because we were wild back many buck Wow, you can't do men on film today.
We turned it on once in the Costa Family Household, and my mom after two minutes was like, yeah, yah, yeah, yeah, yah yeah.
You are our favorite fan base, because, like I thought, when I was on the show, it would be like it would go off and then I would go back to audition for Magical Negroes. I've met so many people who were kids either and snuck and watched in living color, or they started the next generation. They watched on reruns and it just kept going. I mean, I don't know where it's on now, but I never thought it would last as long. I didn't.
Well, this movie is incredible. You're phenomenal in it. Everyone should go see.
It's really funny and.
Gray in theaters March. David Allen, Everyone.
Our guest tonight is a Tony Award winning actor and singer who stars in the comedy series Girls five Evan now on Netflix.
Lease Well the Renee at least Goldsbery all Right.
You are a Tony Award winning Broadway star of musical The Lion King, Rent, The Color Purple.
No big deal, A big deal.
Hamilton, miss Hamilton's show My Mom, but you missed it, we missed it?
And Girls by Beva season three dropping now today today.
It drops today on Network.
This show is honestly one of my favorite comedy shows of all time. It is so so funny. There are so many jokes per minute. You almost have to watch each episode multiple times to try to catch everything. And your character is so funny. She's like the total standout.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's easy to say when I'm here by myself, but thank you so much.
Everyone, and is very talented, but you have some of the funniest lines.
Thank the entire show.
The show is very dense. We call it JPM dense jokes per minute. We showed that clip that you just saw at the premiere and everyone missed the third joke because they were laughing at the first one.
That's just how funny is.
You have to watch it several times, which is good because it's streaming. Yes, it's really a dream come true of a job. We laugh hysterically. I just spent the entire night putting together my BTS reel to post on Instagram because now I can and I just remembered.
It's how much joy we have. It's so fun.
The season three is coming out now, but you've done you did season one, season two before that. Tell people if they didn't catch it when it first came out, what it's about. What is the show about?
You to know?
Girls five EVA is about a one hit wonder group pop group from the nineties who discovers in present day that their one hit has been sampled by a rap star, and so they decide that they are back. In the first season, in the first season, they decide they're going to stay together. In the second season, they make an album called Raternity, and in the third season they go on tour. That's that's what's Hot and New. All three seasons are on Netflix, but the third season is Hot
and New. You find us in Fort Worth, Texas. We've written a song. We've written a song. It's called Tap into Your part Worth. We do it because we discover it.
Tony right, that's the Tony right there. No, we basically discovered there's a hole in the market.
It's like the biggest city that doesn't have a song about it.
Yeah, I wonder.
If we make a song called Happened to your fort Worth and you find us in the beginning of season three killing in fort Worth.
She was also in Hamilton.
I wanted to ask you because the show is frustratingly funny and seems at ease. However, how are you reading the jokes in the script and then saying here's what I'm going to bring to it. I mean, is it the actors adding things?
Or is that all in the script?
I mean, there's so many jokes in this thing and makes me angry.
Now, so is that you? Is it the script? Is it all? Is it everybody working together? Is it improvising? What is?
It? Starts with well, you, actually, it's funny that you mentioned Hamilton, because it reminds me of that.
You were in Hamilton.
I was. Yeah, I say, I say it is as often as I possibly can. No, it's it's sometimes you find yourself in a perfect storm. The writers are brilliant there. It's it's Meredith Scardino and Tina Feates, It's anybody like thirty w Off anyone ever, it's that team of writers and producers. There's the greatest just design team, the great we have all these wonderful songs.
Let me tell you about the cast, Sarah Burrellis, Paula Pell, Busy Phillips.
We have there's a lot of flashbacks between the nineties and today so that we can just kind of figure out what went wrong. There was a lot that kind of went wrong in the nineties that we weren't aware of. Sometimes it's fun to just kind of tap into the misogyny of these pop groups in the nineties.
Blame No, It's true, and you do touch on all of that women. When you look back on how female pop stars were treated in the nineties and the early adds, it's like it's atrocious.
I actually was.
That, and I was definitely in my twenties and the nineties trying to be a pop star. I didn't even have one hit, So I'm actually kind of proud of this group, But.
I do I had no idea. I used to be in.
A group that was trying to get signed, and we had a song called oh yes you can, Yes you can find you a good man, But when you do, you gotta treat a right. Make sure you love is out a skite now now, I.
Mean, come on, guys, yes you're loving, you're claughing.
But in reality, like there are so many songs we could write about something other than finding a good man.
Yeah, that's yeah, that's what we get to do on the show.
Sarah Burrellis plays the character Dawn, and we know that she's a brilliant Grammy Award winning songwriter, but it's fun to watch her try to figure out how to write songs badly.
On this.
Your character is so f She's so incredibly confident and really demands the attention of everyone in the room, almost to the point where where she's sort of a little uh araction, almost arranged.
She is. She is just shyss, just shy of it. But on the paper it could read like that.
But you have a way of making her so relatable and endearing and you root for her.
How do you do that? Well? I root for her. It's funny.
I think our experience with anything is really about our perspective.
In the moment right now.
I am a woman of a certain age who would love to have a pop album, who would love wo'd.
Love to try to make it.
But I'm always looking at myself like that's a ridiculous thing to ask at this age, to be a bubblegum pop star at fifty years old.
That seems ridiculous to ask.
And I love the fact that I'm on the show where someone is trying. I love the fact that this crazy group of people gives themself the license to dream. It's really more than funny in that way. So, yeah, she's very obnoxious, she's very self centered. She's the reason why the group broke up the first time. But you know, it helps you realize, you know, no matter how bad you mess up, you have another you have an opportunity
for a second shot. And yeah, and we can understand why anybody that ambition is so strong it makes you want to root for them.
That's one of my favorite parts of these characters is they make fun of themselves, but they still dream and the aspire. And my question for you is is that you in real life as well? And how do we keep aspiring?
How do we keep aspiring?
Right?
And I had this question and other and and people said, Michael, you.
Going to ask her?
That's that silly question? And I said, I want to know how I'm going.
To keep a spy because you are a dreamer? Can I sing my song? Yes? I don't.
But they're optimistic yet doing there they are aware of their faults.
And I love it.
So, yeah, how do you keep how do you keep aspiring? First of all, I think that's the beauty. You surround yourself with people that don't laugh at you when when, or unless unless it motivates you to be laughed at, because that works. But you surround yourself by people that are trying to do what you're doing. I think that's hugely important, and you have to talk about it a lot. And what I love about the character Wiki I love
that she just has these audacious ideas. In season three of Girls by Veva, she books them a gig at Radio City Music Hall on Thanksgiving morning. Yeah, because all the money they've made to do this, it's obnoxious.
It's ridiculous.
Like you kind of need somebody out there that takes big swings because it's either going to decimate you or you're going to pull something off and move forward.
That's uh. I think that's inspiring.
Do you have situations in your own life where you meet a challenge and you have to channel your inner Wiki Roy? Because I sometimes would love to be able to channel Wiki Roy.
I put on a lot of care, I put on a lot of there it is, and I get somebody to put some eyelashes on.
No, I actually turn the show on. Believe it or not. That sounds so obnoxious, that sound not just like you know.
I feel bad today, I'm going to turn myself on television.
But I actually am.
Doing that this season because I love I just love the audacity of these women.
I think it's super funny.
We started doing the show in the middle of COVID when it was just good to be in breathing around other people. I think we gave each other a lot of crazy messaging during the last couple of years because we had to survive and that was distance means safety. I think this show proves that that's not true. And I just feel I feel when I look at these women that it's okay to have a license to dream.
I think it's okay to be ridiculously ambitious. I think it's okay to join together with your friends at any age and sing harmony and dress alike.
You talked about wanting to be a pop star and that seeming ridiculous, But you have your own album coming out.
I do. I do.
It's coming out in twenty twenty four.
It is a It's yeah.
I've been writing music for a long time. I've been a lyricist for a long time, and I've had the great privilege of being able to sing a lot of other people's lyrics like lin Manuel Mirandas and Jonathan Larsons and I was.
In Hamilta did you know so. Yeah.
But I'm excited about the audience that we have on our own at the stage of our lives. I'm excited about the fact that I actually have more followers than.
Girls five Eva, so why not to try?
But most importantly, I do believe that it's never too late to try something new. And there are women of every age that are killing it right now. I mean, look, there, there are just there are just I remember when we first started doing the show, Jennifer Lopez was doing pole dancing at the halftime show at the Super Bowl.
Yeah.
Like, I love the fact that we are we are celebrating those women right now. We should be celebrating those women because they're inspiring us that it is never too late to have a country album. Beyonce, Yes, it's never It's never too late to reinvent yourself.
That's right.
Well, you are an inspiration. You are so funny in the show. Congratulations on season three. Congratulations on the new album thank You, Thank You for being here.
Guys, We checked out all three season with girls Netflix.
Rene explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts.
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