The Okayplayer Interview: Neal Brennan Talks Racism, Depression & Other Hilarious Shit

Robots and scientists struggle to grasp the phenomenon of human laughter but Neal Brennan has discovered the secret. Or at the very least, his new one-man show 3 Mics (currently running in New York through April 8th) is a perfect illustration of my own personal theory of what makes comedy work: whatever doesn't kill us, makes us laugh.

Walk with me for a second. Picture two early humans—hunter-gatherers, picking their way stealthily through the primordial forest in search of nuts, berries or monkey meat. Something crashes through the underbrush close by and our heroes immediately break into full saber-tooth tiger alert, scrambling frantically for cover. Three seconds later, they realize the noise was caused by a dead branch. Homo Sapiens #1 looks over and realizes his companion has pooped himself in fright...and busts out laughing. Laughter is our natural reaction to the tree that didn’t snap our necks. It’s how we release the tension, conquer our own fear at the noise that didn’t turn out to be a man-eating leopard this time.

In the concrete (and cybernetic) jungles of 2016, of course, the beasts that hunt us are the demons of public shame, racism, depression--our own failings and casual cruelty to one another. Which is precisely what makes 3 Mics—literally, a stage adorned with separate mic stands for Brennan to address One Liners, Emotional Stuff (like his own personal struggle with depression) and Stand Up (which puts both together), respectively--so damn funny. The show balances punchlines with heavy moments of personal revelation about Brennan's childhood and frequently makes some of the white people in the audience squirm with the uncomfortable self-recognition of what’s wrong with white people. In the spirit of that endeavor, the Chappelle’s Show co-creator did not hold back on the laughter or the tears in this Okayplayer Interview, openly discussing his own demons, comments that have blown up in his face within the minefield of racial micro-politics and the untimely demise of The Champs podcast. Read on for all these and other hilarious topics:

OKP: So we’re really here to talk about 3 Mics but I also wanted to ask you about The Champs podcast, since our founder Questlove was your final guest.

Neal Brennan: Oh yeah. Ahmir was probably our biggest proponent, publicly. So, we were going to do the final episode and part of it was just waiting for him to get that jet out to LAX so we could do it all together. He was such an early proponent and sort of understood what we were going for so it was kind of like the perfect celeb endorsement.

OKP: And what were you going for? Can you explain the running concept behind it?

NB: The running concept was that when we started--I think it's still true but, when we started especially--there were virtually no black people on podcasts. You know, [Marc] Maronand all these other people, just didn't know any black people [laughter] I'm not even kidding, they just didn't. So the idea was that we would start a podcast were it was just black people or, you know, at worst…non white people.

OKP: Settling for non-white.

NB: Yes. And we did have Sasha Grey at one point. The only whites we had were Sasha Grey, Chelsea Peretti, and Rif Raff.

OKP: Right.

NB: Which are all, um…all of whom transcend race. Rif Raff certainly, you see why we have Rif Raff. Chelsea was just there because she loved to see what Rif Raff was all about and Sasha was actually on with Flying Lotus so that qualifies her as black. Well, that qualified that episode.

OKP: So FlyLo was her hood pass for that. How many episodes in total?

NB: Hood pass. I think a hundred or slightly over, a hundred to a hundred and five maybe?

OKP: One the standouts in my mind was Larry Wilmore. I learned tons of stuff about Larry Wilmore that you’d never know otherwise--obviously this was way before he had The Nightly Show. What were the homerun Champs episodes in your mind?

NB: You know, they all had elements. There were only like five or six ones that I thought, That stunk. I mean I think the biggest thing was maybe we let people know about people early. Like Jerrod Carmichael was on the first episode. Trevor Noah was on three or four years ago. Roy Wood. Um. Blake Griffin was on. The fourth episode was Blake Griffin and Leslie Jones. That was like four or five years ago. So Blake was obviously an all-star but Leslie was, you know, barely making a living. And now she's a Ghost Buster.

OKP: True.

NB: That's a good episode just because if you want to know what Leslie is like, she said that Blake didn't win the dumb contest because she didn't see it on the news. If you just want to know what sort of person Leslie is. [Laughter] Um. I think that would be an indication of country-ness, if I'm not mistaken.

I think it was just getting people early, people that we thought were funny. I don't know that we helped anybody get anything, you know what I mean? I don't think it was like, I heard you on Champs and now I want you to have a show. But, you know…

OKP: Well, it definitely added context. That’s why I mentioned Wilmore, who maybe we knew as this amazingly sharp segment on Jon Stewart but didn't necessarily know. That he was the guy who did all this other stuff and had like a huge, long career.

NB: Yeah, I didn't know he wrote for Sister Sister. How the heck could I have known that?

OKP: So was time to end it for logistical reasons, because you were doing other big things or ...?

NB: No, it was time to end it because I couldn't get any people in the studio. That was it, man. I loved doing the show, I would do it every day if I could. You know? But I just couldn't get people ... People still don't really know what podcasts are and we didn't have a booker and we weren't working through publicists so it was just like literally people that I knew. Or met. But and that also felt low-rent. Like, I mentioned on the last episode, like, directing a Nike commercial and on the set being like, Hey can you do my podcast?

OKP: [Laughs] I thought you were going to say the opposite. I thought you were going to say that the black nerd movement had taken over the podcast game and you were going to hang up your cape.

NB: No, I don't even think it has. I don't feel like we're not necessary anymore because I don't think we approached it from a nerd point of view. We had the Big Daddy Kane, we had Action Bronson. Like, these are not nerds, you know?

OKP: Right.

NB: Action being another, ahem, another white person. So I never saw it as we were giving the spotlight to black nerds. It was almost more than anything, as I think Ahmir pointed out, it was the only place for black dudes to be emotional. And maybe because of doing Chappelle’s Show, I think black dudes um, uh, tend to trust me with that stuff? And talking openly about, you know, feelings and shit. I think that was it, more than anything, I felt like we were emo black.

OKP: You were the Drake of the podcast game.

NB: More than anything. We were the Drake of the podcasts. Danny Brown did a podcast. Like, there were guys that once they got it, they were down for good. But it was just a booking issue. I never felt like we were leading the movement or that movement is complete now that Obama has been elected. You know. There's no finish line. Champs never finish, man.

OKP: They just take a break. So the emotional content opens up two cans of worms which I'm going to use as a segue into 3 Mics now [cough]. First, just get this out of the way, you'll always be in the Hall of Fame as Neal Brennan, co-creator of Chappelle’s Show. Is 3 Mics and the other things you're doing right now, are we moving towards a day when we might see creator of the Neal Brennan Show? Is there an evolution happening there?

NB: [Laughter] You know, from your lips, my friend. Yeah, obviously I'd like to, like, that's the point. And the thing with Chappelle’s Show, I never felt like ... I never watched Chappelle's Show and was like, That should be me. I should be Rick James!

OKP:[Laughter]

NB: That was never even close to an issue. So...look, if I am self-legitimizing or the show legitimized me in some way, cool. I do it more as its own thing. You know? I do it more as its own end. I don't see it as me. I think part of the problem with the hall of fame thing…I realized the other day that to a lot of people, especially people in TV, it's like…you know when you meet your buddy's little sister when she's eleven?

OKP: Okay…

NB: And then you see her at a bar when she's like twenty-six? And you're like, can I…it's gonna be weird just to sleep with you.

OKP: [Laughter]

NB: I'm the little girl. I was Penny and now I'm trying to be Janet.

OKP: That actually made total sense. But in my mind you kind of have a resumé as a writer and producer and this stand up is kind of a new thing for you. But did you ever have stand up aspirations or dabble with that before Chappelle’s Show?

NB: Well, yeah. When we were doing Chappelle, I did it a little bit. But you kinda can't get any momentum going because you have to go to a day job. And then when Dave left, I'd stopped because I was afraid everyone was going to just yell about him.

OKP: Right.

NB: After that, I realized that I'd be fine. So I started in '07.

OKP: It seems people either burn out quick on stand up or they get addicted to it. Where are you at?

NB: Oh, yeah I'm addicted. Dude, I've been a gym rat. I was going to comedy clubs when I wasn't doing stand up, I used to just go with Dave and hang out, you know? So now that I can actually get on stage…?

And I've worked at a comedy club so like it's in me. It's never been a sudden means to an end. It's like I love comedy. Like I had dinner with a buddy of mine last night. We were just talking about how much we love comedy. Which is goofy as shit but, um, it's just like, we love it.

OKP: So after 3 Mics, the next step would be…World Tour? back to TV? Or what?

NB: Well I'll just tour 3 Mics and then…then probably just write another hour, I think. More than anything, the 3 Mics thing has shown me like that it's more interesting to do a show with some emotion to it and something of an arc to it, than to just to stand up and be confident for an hour. But they usually say that you don't even know what you're doing til ten years in, so…

OKP: So let’s dive into the emotional content. It gets pretty dark in the middle section…

NB: That's the idea, I had things that I felt were worth talking about publicly. And the times that I talked about it publicly, like I'd say things on the podcast, people really responded to it. And those things are depression, a sort of social climbing and, also some paternal stuff with my dad.

OKP: Which begs the question--which segment of the show is the hardest? Is it the comedy part? Or being yourself and talking about these heavy personal things?

NB: I don't find any of it especially hard. The middle mic stuff is kind of revealing or vulnerable or whatever. But I don't find that very difficult. It’s actually in some ways easier because as a comedian I can tell a joke and it can bomb demonstrably. But if I'm telling a revealing anecdote, there's no verbal cue that it's not working. You know what I mean?

OKP: I do know and I guess the, the cliché, "what makes comedians tick" idea is that, you get hooked to it, you have to keep people laughing and always have the next joke. So when you switch modes…

NB: Yeah. I've never had that problem. I'm not like a “waka waka” guy, per se. The first transition from comedy to the revealing emotional stuff…that first jump is jarring because I open and my first line is, "I am depressed and I have depression." And people kind of like (chuckles). They like uncomfortably laugh. But after that they crave it, if that makes sense. After the first transition, then they're like, "Oh great. You're going to go to that mic now? Awesome. I love this mic." Or that's what people have told me. And there's still laughs there.

What I find is that people, what, by the end of the show, what you end up with is you sorta realize like, oh, you know, sadness and laughter are basically neighbors. It's like uh, two tastes that shouldn't go together kinda thing. Like clamato juice.

You know? Keenan Ivory Wayans one time said, "People would rather see a good movie than a funny movie."

OKP: A lot of the stand up material seems kind of like a natural evolution from Chappelle’s Show, in the sense of, It's okay to talk about racial differences. But it’s almost from the other perspective now…

NB: Yeah. But it's not really from the other point. I'm not going like, "Let me tell you what a white man thinks." I'm taking black people's side on this! It's a social justice issue. I'm not defending white people, because it's not defensible. I think it's the same point of view and I think most of the jokes I do about race, Dave [Chappelle] or Chris [Rock] could do, you know?

Like I do a joke--it's actually in the middle mic segment--where I say, uh, "Black dudes are only allowed to express sadness in public, if they do it with a saxophone."

OKP: I think that’s one of the things people have taken away from the show, you said something to the effect that you’re drawn to your black friends because of a certain cool. Not cool in the sense of style but in the sense of grace under pressure or keeping an even keel…

NB: Well that's what, that's what the saxophone thing is. Certain black people have told me they like my attitude because, they go: "Man, Neal, you don't give a fuck." And I was always like, "Well, that's because I'm sad."

OKP: [Laughs]

NB: [Laughs] I actually think my black friends knew how sad I was and they appreciated how openly I could just sort of express it, because as a black guy, you're not allowed to. It was a mutual understanding, which is the base of all friendship.

OKP: And yet on Chappelle’s Show, there was a certain moment, that realization of, It's okay to talk about this and it definitely opened up a conversation. But tt feels like there's kind of been a sea change in people's comfort level with talking about race. We're at a place right now where things feel really tense and divided there's Trump rallies happening in the background…do you feel it live?

NB: Yeah.

OKP:What's your sense of it?

NB: Uh, I think that people are trigger-happy. I mean, emotionally trigger-happy. I had a woman accuse me online of, there was an article about Jerrod Carmichael in the New York Times, and I said in the article--Jerrod connected the journalist to speak to me, so the guy called me up and I said something like, "Oh, in 2010, I we had dinner and I basically explained to him exactly what was going to happen with his career." And then I said “…but I, what I didn't account for was the ease with which he would do it.” She said it "stunk of white privilege." I was like "wait, what?" No, I'm coming from a place of experience and I know that Hollywood has one playbook for black comedians. Dave went through it and Chris went through it... Like, I just know the book. I know how it goes down."

OKP: One thing that strikes me is that so many moments which should be the starting point of a conversation become an end point. There’s become this online culture of "We're done here. Have a seat. Drops mic…”

NB: Yeah, the woman, the same woman told me to sit down on Twitter. I was like "What are you, what are you talking about?"

OKP: [Laughs].

NB: But, you know what I mean? And white people are emotionally gun-shy—I know I’m gonna get in trouble with one of these metaphors!—but white people are scared 'cause they don't know. I spoke to somebody about this the other day that we need truth and reconciliation committees. The way they had in Rwanda and South Africa after apartheid. Like, this needs to spoken about. People are so jacked up, they don't know, even the well-meaning people don't know how to approach it.

I'm grateful that people are coming down to see the show and that it is a mixed audience. Because I don't like doing racial jokes if it's only white people there, anyway. It just feels like a fucking Klan rally.

There's lots of comedy and talk shows where, like, the host or whatever talk about how tolerant they are and it's like, "Yeah but I know you don't know any black people!" Black people aren't watching your show--or brown people or non-white people. So it is gratifying [to have that feedback at the show]. It feels like it's like landing and I'm not just talking into a vacuum for white liberal kudos.

That's one of my barometers. It can't just work for white people.