Wanda sykes interviews with david

Though Wanda Sykes began working on “I’m an Entertainer,” her latest Netflix stand-up special, in 2019, hardly any of the material she wrote prior to March 2020 made it into the show. Instead, it was the radioactive events of the pandemic era — from COVID vaccinations to the Jan. 6 insurrection, the battle over trans rights to the murders of Black Americans like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Elijah McClain — that Sykes was drawn to.

Those deaths and the racial reckoning that followed were not obvious fodder for making people laugh. “All that stuff just kept piling on,” Sykes says, her voice softer and more tentative than the tart Southern twang she deploys on stage. “I knew I wanted to talk about it, but I just didn’t know how to make it funny. We were all just so angry.”

So the 59-year-old comedian began with herself, digging deep into her personal life for what’s funny about racial dynamics. She starts with her marriage to Alex Sykes, a Frenchwoman whose clueless white privilege Sykes tweaks with equal parts affection and exasperation.

As Sykes relays in the special, at one point in 2020, Alex sneaked into a construction site next door to their home outside Philadelphia to check out the sightlines into the couple’s bedroom, an unsettling parallel to Arbery doing something similar right before he was killed. When Sykes saw Alex waving at her from the house under construction — an objectively funny image — she realized she had her way in. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow, here it is,’” Sykes says. “Things just kept falling into place that way.”

Not every hot button topic made it into her material. Some are just too raw, like the repeal of Roe v. Wade. (“I just didn&rsquo

Comedian talks walkouts, Ellen’s interview with Kevin Hart, and the role her wife plays in her comedy career

By Chris Azzopardi

Because according to Trump’s America only white het men can exist, now would be a good time to re-introduce Wanda Sykes. She is a black person and a woman and a lesbian.

And if you go to one of her Oh Well stand-up shows this year or catch the taping of one on Netflix tentatively scheduled to stream later this year, expect a poking and probing of things affecting Americans who identity as any of those under-attack minorities. Some women who are still supporting Trump for some reason may have benefited from that very basic Wanda Sykes 101 bio above before seeing the actress-comedian-writer in New Jersey in September 2018 and walking out and then demanding a refund from the Count Basie Center for the Arts.

These are the same people who loved the 54-year-old comedian in Monster-in-Law and Evan Almighty and as the voice of an animated skunk in Over the Hedge. And the same people who then wondered what the problem was when Roseanne tweeted a racist tweet and why Sykes, who wrote for the Roseanne revival, jumped ship.

Not that the entertainer and mom-to-twins didn’t have a loaded sched, but with recurring TV roles on Broad City and Black-ish (for which she was Emmy-nominated), and several new movies out this year, Sykes has somehow found the time and energy to rattle the privileged cages of Trump supporters.

Are you unfazed by walkouts at this point in your career?

It cracks me up, really. Like, what were you expecting? What are the crazy ladies’ names? Diamond and whatever? The two African-American women. I forget their names. Diamond and Salt? Silk? (Editor’s note: It’s Diamond and Silk, vloggers known for supporting Donald Trump.) It’s like, no, that’s not me.

Or Kanye West.

Right, right, right.

At this point Trump is basi