“I’ve been in this business 20 years and I’ve just forged a lot of relationships behind the scenes with folks, so I’m lucky in that way.
Plenty of A-list talent has stopped by too, like Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine, Khandi Alexander, Laverne Cox, Lil Rey Howery, Jesse Williams, Lena Waithe and Ava DuVernay. Rae has made several appearances in sketches, as has Brown, Amber Riley ( Glee) and David Allan Grier. “If we’re not specific to the culture, what are we doing?”īesides an extraordinarily talented ensemble that includes Black, Gabrielle Dennis, Skye Townsend, Laci Mosley and Thede herself, the show has fast become the go-to stop for Black actors and comedians on TV. “It’s called A Black Lady Sketch Show,” Thede says. Look no further than sketches like the ‘Black Lady Courtroom’, with guest star Yvette Nicole Brown presiding over an all-Black court, and cast member Ashley Nicole Black as Trinity, a spy who can go undercover anywhere because-as she’s so painfully aware-no one pays attention to a Black woman like herself. Though Thede’s goal is to make the show universally funny and relatable, the cultural specificity remains paramount. So, she said, ‘Bring it to HBO.’ We were on the air nine months later.” (Rae is also an executive producer.) This is opening the world for you to create your next thing.’ She really kicked me in the pants, so I said, ‘I’ve got this sketch show but I just don’t think the money’s gonna be right.’ It wasn’t quite where I needed it to be because I wanted to make a super narrative sketch show. What are we doing together?’ I was like, ‘Geez, way to have sympathy on my hard day.’ She said, ‘I don’t give a f*ck. But then her high-profile gig got canceled in 2018, so friend Issa Rae gave Thede a tough-love call she didn’t know she needed. Thede sold a sketch show to another network while she was hosting her late-night show for HBO. How A Black Lady Sketch Show Became a Reality “I was being a dutiful daughter who got into the best journalism school in the country, so I picked the major that allowed me to be on television.” “I never had any intentions on being a journalist by trade,” says Thede. Two years later, she launched her own late-night show on HBO called The Rundown with Robin Thede. Here, Deadline checked in with multi-hyphenates about their start in Hollywood and how they made their visions a reality.Īfter majoring in broadcast journalism at Northwestern University to keep her parents happy -“I was going to move to Los Angeles to pursue comedy professionally, but my parents were so scared,”-Thede began her career by writing for shows like Clunkers, Real Husbands of Hollywood and The Queen Latifah Show before becoming the first Black woman to serve as head writer on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore in 2015. Robin Thede of A Black Lady Sketch Show and Bridget Everett of Somebody Somewhere have taken over for Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the comedy queens of HBO.
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