Comedian W. Kamau Bell is hitting it big on the new series United Shades of America, currently running on CNN. Before that many watched him on Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.
He has been featured on many podcasts and publications over the years. Bell made his first comedy album, One Night Only, in 2007 and his follow-up, Full of Flour, was named one of the Top 10 Best Comedy Albums of the year by iTunes and Punchline Magazine.
His Showtime special, W. Kamau Bell: Semi-Prominent Negro, met with success on the cable channel this year.
Bell is returning to Chicago bringing his stand-up skills to a fundraiser for Housing Forward, an agency in Cook County helping displaced individuals and families find homes.
Windy City Times: Hi, Kamau. First off, why did you drop the Walter from your name?
W. Kamau Bell: Walter was my dad's name and always sounded like an insurance salesman, which was what he did. Every single Walter on television was never a cool dude. Walter White became Heisenberg on Breaking Bad. On the Cosby show Theo's best friend was called Cockroach even though his name was Walter. Cockroach was better than that name!
I have always gone by Kamau. I have used the W since I was 11 years old because I thought it was cooler, and it has stuck with me until this day.
WCT: Where is your original hometown?
WKB: I was born in Palo Alto [California], but I don't remember it. Afterward I moved to Indiana with my mom, then moved to Austin until I was 12. We went to Chicago but I hated it, so I went live in Alabama with my dad. I moved back to Chicago as sophomore and stayed through high school. I went to college in Philadelphia, dropped out because I hated it then went back to Chicago to Columbia College. I took classes at Second City and, after that, I moved to California in 1997.
WCT: Sounds like a long history with Chicago.
WKB: Yes; for the first 10 years I lived in the Bay Area, I was the Chicago guy. It didn't work any longer when I lived in California longer than I ever did in Chicago.
I love going back to Chicago. My best friend—who I am doing the benefit with and for—lives in Oak Park. My heart rate feels the best in California. It makes sense for me. I didn't know that until I moved out here. Northern California is where I was born, so it is in my DNA.
WCT: You are coming back for a benefit?
WKB: For Housing Forward, an organization for helping homeless people find sustainable housing so they can live in their own domiciles and not the street. It helps them find jobs, also.
My friend Jason Smith told me years ago that he was working for a homeless charity and wanted me to help out if I got famous enough. I told him that United Shades is coming out in February and might be the peak of my fame. We will see if my career gets better than that. We decided to go all in!
WCT: I read your show is in the Merle Reskin Theater in DePaul so there could be a lot of students.
WKB: Even though the organization is from Oak Park we decided to put it in the city proper to pull people in who know my work and who are fans. It is a central location. I tour colleges all the time so I have a fan base of students.
My friend Hari Kondabolu will also be performing in the show. He was on Totally Biased with me and we don't perform together that often, so it is rare for us to do a show like this.
WCT: What is this show shaping up to be?
WKB: Lots of stand-up, like my recent Showtime special. There is so much going on right now since I talk about politics, cultural movements and racism—thank you, Donald Trump!
WCT: Is it tough to balance humor with serious subjects?
WKB: I think being a comedian is a tough thing to do. Every comic struggles to find humor. To me when something is obviously funny it is harder to write new jokes about it because everyone is already writing jokes about it. Thanks to Facebook and social media, everyone thinks they are hilarious now. They think they are a comic genius because they retweet a George Carlin meme!
To write about areas that people don't find humor in is more fun. It is more meaningful. All the comedians I like do that. I like Bill Hicks, Dick Gregory and David Chappelle. That is the style I have always gravitated toward.
It is fun to try goofy things in these intense charged areas.
WCT: Maybe lightens the mood?
WKB: Yes, and I think humor helps people find a way out of the darkness. There is less weight on them when it is a dark situation, now back to the suffering.
WCT: How did you get involved with the CNN show?
WKB: After Totally Biased I thought my career was over, but people started reaching out to me. They were mainly news organizations. People always want things to be funnier and they knew I knew how to do that. I met with CNN on a general meeting. The president of CNN Jeff Zucker gave me a news quiz and luckily I passed it.
WCT: That sounds tough.
WKB: It was actually pretty easy. If you watched CNN for fifteen minutes you would have passed the news quiz. I keep up with the news. I look at my phone and watch my apps. It didn't have questions like "How would you solve the problems of Israel?" It wasn't at that level.
WCT: So Shades is filmed all over the place?
WKB: We started with the Ku Klux Klan and now we are here to paraphrase Drake. Every episode is me going to a place where you wouldn't expect me to go. In a couple of weeks, we do a retirement home in Florida for spring break. Because I talk about race, that is always a part of it. I'm always wondering why there are no Black people there or why there are so many!
I would love to do something in Chicago. I would like to tell my story of Chicago and where it is now.
WCT: You could go out to the gay bars and film a segment.
WKB: Absolutely. The first gay bar I went to was in Chicago. I used to live on Pine Grove and Irving [Park], which is right outside of Boystown. I was 21 years old and didn't know one openly gay person. I rode my bike down Halsted to get home; it was a Friday night, and the area was hopping. I remember having the feeling of what would happen to me: "Will I be okay?" It was a great lesson in life. Everything that was happening was in my head. All the fear and anxiety was only them looking at me like a weird dude that was insane. ( "Why does that dude look so paranoid?" )
When I went to a gay bar with my friends, nothing happened. No one even offered to buy me a drink. This was a clear reminder that everything was just in my head.
I hope we can do something. If we get to the next season it will be a whole lot more fun. I would like to do something LGBT—certainly with transgender and everything happening with that. It is on the plate and people have reached out to me about it.
Season two I could have a lot more control. This season there was negotiation on what we could or couldn't do. I also want it to not only be fun but not exploitative. It is very easy to show a gay bar on a Saturday and just say, "Look at all of this!" I want to have a story behind it.
WCT: Do you get a lot of positive feedback from Shades?
WKB Thanks to social media, we do. Overwhelmingly, the reaction has been good.
Every week there is more anxiety for me because it is a new community that I could piss off. We did the Klan, East LA and prison. This week is cops. Every week we don't know how people will feel about it. I still stay anxious.
Watch Bell bring it on Friday, May 20, at 7 p.m. for $30 at DePaul's Merle Reskin Theatre, 60 E. Balbo Dr. Visit www.housingforward.org to buy tickets and for more information .
