For Roy Wood Jr., comedy is a way to better understand the human condition.
Junior, got his start in media in Tallahassee while he was enrolled as a student and Florida A&M University. Since then he's worked as a correspondent on The Daily Show, headlined the White House Correspondents Dinner and released several comedy specials, including Lonely Flowers, which interrogates the impact of isolation on our society.
Wood recently joined Speaking of host Josh Johnson to talk about his career, what he's learned and how comedy has given him the opportunity to connect with people who would otherwise be strangers.
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Below is an excerpt from their conversation, edited for clarity and brevity. You can also hear the full discussion on Speaking Of!
Josh Johnson: I really am a fan of you. I love your stand up and how you dive through it. And I've said this before I even heard you say the joke, but you just made it funny, the cashier is sometimes the last line of defense for a person who may be struggling in their personal life.
Roy Wood Jr.: Correct, That's your last friend. Yeah. Crazy people only got the cashier, or they might have a server if they're regular at a restaurant and they only sit in that person's section. Which is what was interesting about the special I just did for Hulu, Lonely Flowers.
That became essentially a dissertation on loneliness and connection, [or] the lack thereof. I didn't start like that. I was just writing jokes. And the more I started looking, there was a commonality to a lot of the jokes. I had about 30 minutes on how you don't have a cashier, gas is pay at the pump. There used to be a buddy come out to the pump, talk to you.
Johnson: But then I like how you reversed that and said, but for Black folks, we have a different problem, because sometimes we can't lose the person in the store because they follow somebody, follow you around.
Wood: They care so much they would just follow us. Even if we didn't want them to follow, they would just follow us.
Wood: Yeah. So, you have like, 30 minutes on it, and then I just start talking to myself, like, 'all right, well, what do I feel about loneliness? What do I feel about connection? Okay, well, you seen the problem. How do you fix it?' And so that's kind of what that special is. If you look at it in three acts, it's essentially: we are lonely, here are ways we can all try to connect, and here's what happened when I tried one of those ways.
Johnson: Do you see your work as being the last line of defense for somebody? Because just like that cashier maybe, you know, there's somebody who's watching you right now who's going through the worst part of their life. Do you ever think about that, that you're reaching people that you never know? And does that give any comfort to the work, or are you just doing your thing?
Wood: I'm conscious of it, but I don't let that be the driving star. I don't think any one joke is going to fix anything for anybody, but if it gets you to today...I've got some very, very kind DMs from people who watched the special who are legitimately going through some tough stuff on isolation. So that's cool.
It doesn't happen often and not anymore, but in the early days when like the first 5 or 6 years in my career, every now and then after a show, somebody would come up and shake my hand. “Had a good show today. I enjoyed the show. I'm suffering from insert tragedy here..I just came from the funeral of the...I just found out from my doctor that I got the thing,” whatever it was.
They would be kind enough to come up and say “hey”. And so, I figure fir every person that shakes my hand, that probably represents, you know, 40 or 50 people who don't.
