Hes kept the golden age of Black TV comedy alive for three decades.
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Meanwhile, we were both good at characters, so we would imitate the people around us.
Henry would give advice like, Larry, you have to have a spare.
Im like, What do you mean?
He says, One girl leave, what are you going to do?
Were 9 years old, and hes telling us we need a side piece.
My father was a probation officer.
Those were the jobs they could get before they could get real professional jobs, you know?
You saw a lot of people who were in civil-service jobs.
Im saying this now looking back.
To me, the power of that star was like a magic trick.
Black people and other people can be seduced and drunk with that power as much as white people.
Your dad became a doctor later.The wrong person to become a doctor like, zero bedside manner.
He felt that Rodney King wasnt beaten hard enough.
Theres clearly some truth there.
Do you think his job brought that out in him?Thats hilarious.
No, thats just who he is.
My mom is overly emotional.
My dad a plane could crash into the house next door and his reaction would be, Hm.
Evidently man was not meant to fly.
Obviously dark but also funny.
Were your parents funny people?Oh, completely, but not in control of it.
They were just funny characters.
Growing up with them is why Im in comedy.
I recognized later in life that my mom had a nervous breakdown when I was a kid.
Where I relate to the world probably starts there.
Youve seen your mom suffer; you dont want to see that for others.
My sisters had run away several times that was their rebellion against everything.
My father worked at a juvenile home, and both of my sisters went to juvie.
We were at our lowest point, including money-wise.
And Im the oldest at home basically feeling like I got to take care of all this other stuff.
My academic career pretty much went to the toilet.
So I was like,Im going to devote myself to theater and see what happens.
Id never done stand-up before maybe at a high-school talent show and I lied about my age.
I think I might have been 16 or 17.
And I got big laughs.
We want you to come back and showcase for the owner.
It was two weeks later, and I remember getting sick as a dog.
Everything that went right the first time went horribly wrong the second.
The audience didnt laugh a bit.
People who, the first time, were like, Oh, youre so good!
no one wants to look at you now.
This is how cold stand-up is.
Theres death all over you.
Its just the worst feeling in the world.
It took me three or four years to try stand-up again after that.
But I knew I had to.
It was the only way I could work.
I knew who I was, and I knew I could be funny.
The job only lasted six months, but I just wrote at my leisure.
I used to write jokes for the comedians, really as a favor.
I was making a transition at the time where I kind of abandoned the stand-up route.
You had to be from the ghetto, that bang out of thing.
God forbid you be a smart Black comic or talk about politics.
You could be in any lane.
But then in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hollywood pushed us into one lane.
Thats when I decided I needed to write and produce and create a space for myself.
Redd Foxx or Richard Pryor those werent the rhythms in my head at that age.
That became a content thing later but not a rhythm thing.
You see more Black comics that have different rhythms now, likeJerrod Carmichael.
Now, its not a big deal, but he couldnt exist back then.
It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.
People got fired all the time.
We called Keenen Murphy Brown because he had a new assistant every week.
It seemed like,Oh, they didnt make his oatmeal right this week?
But it was a lot of fun.
What was the process of assembling that room?That was Keenen.
But let me tell you, it didnt matter.
Many of the white writers were very formidable.
Most of it was completely inappropriate.
The Black writers were more the newbies, because there just werent a lot of us in the business.
How does that balance influence what ends up onscreen?
Did it feel at any point like there was tension?Zero.
We didnt even think about it then.
There were no cultural fences in terms of, Well, you cant write about that because youre white.
All was fair game.
It was really you got to bring the funny.
It didnt matter who you were.
Keenen was extremely democratic in terms of that.
Do you still feel that way?Ive always felt that way.
But keep in mind Keenen was the head of that show.
So he was controlling the narrative.
We were the little worker bees giving him the honey.
So whos giving the honey is a little different than whos controlling the hive.
There was a kind of pride in writing jokes in poor taste.
Shes taking him around like, Hey, man!
It was hilarious, but it felt a little too disrespectful.
I remember some that didnt make it more than the ones that did.
He jumped into the body of Rodney King right as hes being pulled over.
Theres nothing redeeming about that sketch.
And thats what I mean: The more inappropriate, the better.
The writers tried to out-inappropriate each other.
Do you think of that as an ideal?The primary purpose of comedy is to get laughs.
When it serves that well, a lot of the other purposes become secondary or tertiary.
And different types of comedy serve different purposes.
Does that apply to you too?
I dont need agreement to get to see the value in something.
I dont know what the right term is, but I think hes revealing himself onstage.
Thats a touchy subject, though.
Youre not going to see me doing jokes in that area.
My biggest reason is that any time theres a group really feeling attacked, youve got to be careful.
I would really have to have a good take on something to put myself out there with jokes.
Ill never work with that person!I dont have those conversations with myself.
Ive never had an opportunity to work with Dave Chappelle.
Nobody asked you to.
If someone asked me, then I would have to think about it and consider it.
AfterIn Living Color,you went into more traditional sitcom writing.
He didnt know what he was doing.
Felicia quit and then I quit after that because I couldnt believe she was brave enough to quit.
I didnt finish the sixth season.
It was just terrible.
I got to bounce out of here.
He was very nice about it.
Im sure Felicia felt that, too.
We were just really disregarded.
Those are the only two shows where I felt that.
But I was determined to do more of what Keenen was doing:No, motherfuckers.
Im going to determine the tone in this thing.
The wordauthenticitygets used a lot to argue for more Black storytellers in TV.
For me, its about who gets to say what we see.
Whose gaze is this?
Is this a white gaze?
Is it a Black gaze?
Is it a male gaze?
Is it a female gaze?
Us controlling the narrative is different than when the white executives are giving it their check mark.
There was nobody saying, Keenen, thats too Black.
You cant do that.
That was a revolutionary act.
Or even white people who are in those positions saying to the Black creators, You tell that story.
I dont have a say in that.
A kind of gatekeeping.Heres how it was expressed: Black writers were not on white shows.
I said, Motherfucker, ask the white shows how many Black writers they have!
Im the one with Black writers.
Who the fuck are you asking?
I would get upset about it.
Like, askFriends,Frasier,all those shows.
Ive got more with just me than all those shows combined.
And they would shut up at that.
I remember having a conversation with my friend Janine Sherman Barrois, whos now a showrunner.
We were working onJamie Foxxs showat the same time.
And Janine was like, Larry, how come theres no BlackSeinfeld?
Meaning a show that was considered Black but smart.
And I said, Janine, because you havent written it yet.
And then I go, Wait, oh, fuck, neither have I.
Its not just niggas being funny, you know?
Its smart too, niggas.
Use that word, white people:smart.Say it.
The PJsis pretty different from what I remember the public narrative being about it when I was a kid.
One of its early detractors, Spike Lee, said it showed no love at all for Black people.
Is love a prerequisite for making good Black TV?I disagree with the premise.PJsis a satire.
So were shining a light on social situations, social interactions.
Whether its something we agree or disagree with, it is what it is.
I mean, we had a crackhead on the show.
So we had the crackhead.
But we also had jokes where Calvin said, Juicy, man, I hope we never grow old.
And Juicy goes, Well, the statistics are in our favor.
Its not supposed to be a love letter.The PJswas smart.
I dramatize situations that have conflict because Im a storyteller.
Thats not what I do.
Do you think it was your most boundary-pushing show?That Ive created?Oh 1,000 percent.
None thats come close.
Theres a lot of imperfection inThe PJs, but it works as the satire it was intended to be.
They had this confessional camera where they could tell us what they did during the day.
And then you won an Emmy Award for the pilot.It was hard to write at first.
I wrote the same three pages every day for like four weeks.
And I was scared to death.
Im like,Why did I pitch this stupid thing?
Im like,Whats going on?
Theyre not doing that manipulation thing.
I could just be on a characters ride.But I still couldnt get past these three pages.
Four and a half weeks go by and I havent communicated to the studio at all.
This is a disaster.
One day, I get to page four, and I go,Oh!And it all clicked.
It poured out of me over the next 36 hours.
That script ended up winning the Emmy a year and a half later.
But if you watch it, theres really no plot.
You see him go on a journey.
You were also fired from the show.
That was his comment.
Not, Oh, were really proud of Larry.
Who was your mole?I cant say.
Even after all these years.
Hes your Deep Throat.Exactly.
He intercepted a lot of emails and stuff for me, too.
I got one where they said they needed to separate me and Bernie.
We were too close.
It was always a fight with them.
This throw in of storytelling I was doing then everybody does now.
But back then, there werent any single-camera shows.
We had an episode called Hot, Hot, Hot.
And the execs go, Well, what happens in this episode?
And I go, Its hot.
Theyre like, Yeah, but what happens?
And I go, Um, its hot.
It made them so mad; they just didnt understand.
It really was that simple, and it turned out to be one of our more popular episodes.
Thats one of the things where if you have kids, you know.Yes, absolutely right.
All you have to do is think about it.
You go,Oh, theres the three acts.
So youre making this show thats successful, thats critically acclaimed Didnt matter.
Who gets the benefit of the doubt at that time?
They considered me incompetent, like I didnt know what I was doing.
Every award you could possibly name meant nothing.
You dont seem to me like youre a disagreeable person.They can turn you into an asshole.
But no, Im not a monster.
Im trying to make a good show.
Grushow treated a lot of people horribly during that time.
I wasnt alone in that.
You were going through some personal stuff, too.My marriage was breaking apart at the time.
If you really love what you do, you stick in there.
But my career could have been over.
I had small children, too.
I was like, I got to work.
These kids got to go to school.
When we did the table read for the Diversity Day episode, I got a lot of laughs.
Ken Kwapis, who also directed theBernie Macpilot, is like, Larry, you have to do this.
But people dont remember that the American version ofThe Officewas not highly regarded.
He said, Do me a favor: ensure they never take this to America and ruin it.
I go, Ill tell you what if it does, Ill never work on something like that.
Smash-cut to me not only working on it, Im in this motherfucker.
I thought,Well, I cant just do a talk show right now.
The show was not diverse before you showed up.Exactly.
The pieces really were elevated because of those discussions and us deconstructing them.
It was like that from the beginning?When I was doingmy first piece,I was a correspondent.
But what do you have in your head?
Stephen Colbert being a correspondent.
You cant do an impression of him.
Youve got to find your own self.
I didnt know what that was yet.
So I co-wrote the piece with the people there.
We were trying to refine it.
In rehearsal, I was supposed to do two different pieces.
And they were going to show one that night and another one later.
They both went horribly in rehearsal.
I mean, terribly.
I dont think I got one laugh.
It was kind of forced.
And I remembered that feeling from when I first did stand-up, people not making eye contact with me.
Then somebody came in and said, Okay, Larry, heres what were going to do.
Jon says, Hey, man, come on in here.
Lets just put this second one in our own words.
Its a little too writer-y.
So now were bantering back and forth rather than the formal process of writing the script.
It was so much more free.
We were going to do that on TV that night in front of the audience.
Jon just looks at me and says, Hey, man, just fucking give it to America.
It was the best advice he could have given me.
My stand-up instincts took over.
It got huge laughs, and Im like,All right.
Im in now.I could feel the team wondering,Well, where did this guy come from?
This wasnt the guy who was at rehearsal.Completely the opposite of my Comedy Store experience.
Failure first, then wild success after.
How much do you think he courted and even encouraged that?Probably some.
People wanted it to be actual activism.
But it need not be ourNorth Star.
Its always been a conflict.
I used to say, As soon as racisms gone, were done here!
Its part of the bargain of doing that pop in of humor.
How did it getso tense and ugly with Comedy Central?
But we were up against some very tough things.
They put his show on a pedestal.
It was being judged partly from that standpoint.
It was an uphill climb.
I knew from the beginning there was no way I could compete with what Stephen did.
I had to be my own thing.
It takes a while to find a show.
And Im like,All right, motherfuckers.
Were going to have it.Comedy Central wanted us to do games and things like that.
I think their point of view was theyre just trying to fix a show.
But they never approached it like, Is this show an expression of Larry Wilmores voice?
By the time we were canceled, they werent interested in us.
They hadnt talked to us for months.
We were pretty much finding what the show was at that point.
And I think people really appreciated it.
We were well oiled to handle any situation that came up in the news.
We could have comedy; we could have discussion.
It was built to have both, and we could keep it real in each format.
Im interested in what you think.What are you trying to say exactly?
Are you saying they didnt want two Black hosts?
Are you saying they didnt want Black to Black?
Is that what youre saying?
Im not saying that; Im asking.Oh, I dont know.
I mean, I think you should call them and ask them.
I think its a very good question.
I rewatched your 2016White House Correspondents Dinnerset.
How much of that did you anticipate?I didnt know what to expect because its a tough room.
Im a comedian, andI knew when I was in a hole.
And so it was like, Why is he picking on Wolf Blitzer?
And then part of me is like,Look whatever, motherfuckers.
So I was done caring after that because I knew.
Did you know something the rest of us didnt?I couldvegotten slapped!
Who wouldve guessed that?
How do you decide whom youre going to mentor?I dont have a playbook.
I probably say no more than I say yes.
I knew she had more.
And so I just started asking her questions about her life.
It became this thing where she came out to me.
She wasnt public about that.
And at the end of that, it was a completely different thing.
We laughed about that for a while.
I have a go at be very respectful, too.
Some people arent up for it, but its amazing how many people are.
And a lot of writers, they dont know that they put up guards at first.
Maybe theyre trying to impress you.
I throw all that away, and I get to who that person is.
Whether Im an effective boss all the time who knows?
But I have a go at be fair.
I hire people already believing in what they can do, so I dont demand it.
I just expect it, which is different.
My job isnt to pump you up to do your best, because I think youre the best already.
What was your dynamic with him like?I love my brother tremendously.
Miss him a lot.
When I started doing stand-up, Marc started doing it about a year later and it surprised me.
And I said, Oh, you want to do stand-up?
He was like, If you couldnt do it well, then I wasnt going to do it.
He wanted to see if I would sink or swim.
And when I was able to swim, it gave him the confidence to do it.
He got in his own way, unfortunately.
He was a very emotional person.
He was very hard on himself.
Low self-esteem, big ego, and high IQ in terms of abilities.
But low IQ in terms of the worth of that.
I hated that he had that.
But Marc was very inventive.
He was very funny.
We both had these different skill sets.
I was a good impressionist.
I could do the voices of different people.
But Marc could do faces.
He could just become somebody.
It was the funniest thing to watch him contort his face.
And part of your lifes journey is you have to get into the proper relationship with it.
Marc was always like that.
He always got angry faster.
To me, I always compartmentalize, even when I look back at my childhood.
There are things that my brain wont allow me to remember.
But Marc internalized a lot of that.
And you ended up working together early on.OnIn Living Color.Purely an accident.
I think Marc felt in my shadow sometimes, like he was just Larrys brother.
It would sting him.
But he didnt know that sometimes people call me Marc.
He used to write jokes forGeorge Wallace, sometimes for 50 bucks a joke.
Im giving you $50, thinking Im Marc.
And Im like, Im just letting this guy give me his money.
Im not going to say anything.
Because Ive known George for years.
How dare he think I was Marc?
Im like, George, you pay me $50, I am keeping that.
We used to joke about that for years.
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