-Our next guest is a very funny comedian and actor
who you know from "The Carmichael Show"
and films such as "Neighbors"
and "Transformers: The Last Knight."
His latest special, "Rothaniel," is streaming on HBO Max.
Let's take a look.
-You can't talk about sex with your parents.
Not that anybody really wants to, but you just can't.
And you're -- you're only here because your parents [bleep].
Isn't that kind of funny?
[ Laughter ]
Your dad [bleep] in your mom, and...
[ Laughter ]
...and you're here.
But you got, like -- Have you ever been --
You ever been watching a movie with your parents
and, like, a sex scene came on,
and you just got to be like, "Nope. No, it's not."
[ Laughter ]
Things that exist but don't exist.
It's things that, like,
are right there, hiding in plain sight.
-Please welcome back to the show our good friend
Jerrod Carmichael, everybody!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome back.
-Thank you very much. -You were --
I saw you last Thursday.
I stopped by in your dressing room before you hosted "SNL."
You did a wonderful job.
Is it weird to be back in the building...
-Thank you. [ Cheers and applause ]
Thank you. -...so soon after?
-Yeah. I was saying on the elevator,
it feels like coming back
to your old high school a week after you graduate.
-Yeah. -And it's like I was going
to say hi, but I'm afraid of everyone being like,
"What is he doing here?" -Right.
They might think, "I think he doesn't understand
how it works." -Yeah, yeah.
"It's over. It's over, bro."
-They have moved on. -I kind of miss it, though.
Like, I would go back this week, honestly, like,
because it's like you spend a week and it's a whirlwind
and you figure it out and, you know...
You try to figure it out,
and it's really fun and exciting.
It's like the best group of people.
Like, I understand everyone's sincere goodbyes
at the end of "SNL."
Like, people are like, "Oh, it's like
the best week of my life."
And you're like, "Oh, I get it."
It's like a lot of, like, incredible professionals
and, like, brilliant writers and excellent cast,
and it was a beautiful experience.
-Yeah, and everybody -- you know,
the goal is to take care of you, the host, and it's really --
-Yeah. -Even when I went back,
I'm like, "Oh, this is really lovely.
Everybody's thinking way more about me now
than when I worked here."
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, that's nice.
Yeah. Yeah, that is nice.
It's what I imagine, like, the, you know, the first week of,
like, foster care feels like.
[ Laughter ]
It's all, like, you know, spaghetti and...
[ Laughs ] -But it's fast, right?
So you don't have a lot of time to think about "SNL,"
but you do have a lot of time to think about a special.
And this is such a brilliant special,
and it's obviously so personal.
And I want to ask, because you've done specials before
and you're going to do this one, what are the --
Because, you know, the headline of the special
is you come out as gay in this special.
-Yeah. -And what is the --
When you embark on this special,
what is the decision-making process to be like,
"This is what this one's going to be about"?
-I couldn't think of anything else.
I mean, that was like...
[ Laughter ]
I'm so gay, I just couldn't...
[ Laughter ]
Like, what else? No, don't clap.
I -- I actually --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Please, thank you very -- thank you very much.
I have to -- I keep saying I'm gay in New York
and people keep clapping, and it was so nice.
-Yeah. -But it's like, all right.
-Yeah, because you've been -- do you realize, you're like,
"Oh, you can't bank it when you go somewhere else"?
-Yeah, yeah.
Y'all are just building me up, and I can't --
Like, life doesn't work like that for the rest of it.
It's very kind.
I'm learning how to receive love, and I actually need that.
I joke about it because it's a --
it's a thing I'm learning now, like, in life as a man.
And it's definitely --
I need it to, like, supplement...
I think there's kind of a little bit of a rift
with me and my family,
and, like, you know, that kind of core tribe.
So, like, I've been receiving love from strangers...
sexually and nonsexually.
[ Laughter ] -It's nice to have a balance.
-But it's been -- it's been really nice.
I had a crazy, crazy drive here.
Like, a crazy drive here.
I talked to my parents for the first time.
-Oh, now this, I'm fascinated by this
because you talk especially about the fact that, you know,
you did not come out to your mom in the special.
You'd come out to her before.
-Yeah, well, kind of.
I have to renew it.
Like, if -- [ Chuckles ]
Like, my mom practices a lot of cognitive dissonance with it,
and so it's like -- or denial, rather,
and so I have to come out, like, every other conversation.
[ Laughter ]
-So how did the conversation go?
-Uh...
I don't know.
I'm trying to -- what's the television version of it?
[ Laughter ]
You know, I called in the car.
I was nervous. She called.
Today's my birthday, and -- -Happy birthday, buddy.
-Oh, thank you. [ Cheers and applause ]
[ Indistinct ] See, that's too much.
That's already so much.
-Now, I will notice that was, like, twice as much applause
that they gave you for being gay.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maybe it's more my birthday than gay I am.
Bad sentence. Anyway, um...
I was nervous because it was a lot in the special,
a lot of things that I was afraid to say to her.
And I said it in the special, and so she called,
and I was nervous because...
my mom and my family can be very polite,
and we can kind of, like, smile.
I don't know if any of your families are like that,
but, like, just kind of smile through things
and not talk about things.
There's a lot of elephants in the room.
I think my family lives inside an elephant, actually.
[ Laughter ]
I think the elephant is the room.
And we're great performers.
[ Chuckles ]
And I was afraid that the call would just be
about my birthday...
when I feel like there's obviously more pressing matters.
And it was an emotional call, and she expressed a lot of love.
So did my dad.
They made very strong calls for peace.
So it sounds like news about Ukraine.
Like, "We just want peace, son."
Like, that's what -- they're just, like, praying for peace
and, you know...
And it was almost very nice.
It was very dramatic.
I was going by billboards of me, like, as the call was going,
and like sirens are going off.
It was really weird.
And it was -- it was almost very nice
until, you know, my mom said, like, you know,
"I just -- these sins are tearing the family apart."
And it just speaks to the...
kind of the core of the problem, you know, that there's this...
insurmountable mountain that we can't really get over.
[ Chuckles ]
And it was real dramatic.
And then the driver was like,
"All right, it's time to come out,"
and then I got out of the car, and now I'm here.
[ Laughter ]
So that's where I'm at.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-What's up with y'all, though?
Y'all good? Everybody cool, though?
[ Chuckles ] I'm all right.
I'm all right, I'm good. [ Applause ]
My bad for bringing...this.
-You mentioned about not having --
in the special, in the body of the special,
about not having sort of had that breakthrough with your mom.
But you did mention near the end of it
you knew she would watch it.
-Yeah. -I thought that was --
that was a really lovely thing to hear
because obviously it seems like
you might feel, like, some emotional limbo,
but you also knew she loved you enough
she wasn't going to not watch the special.
Is that something -- has she always engaged
with your work like that as a fan?
-Yeah, well, that and they're all signed into my HBO Max.
So... -Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
So it's like, "Continue watching."
-It was on "Up next."
[ Laughter ]
Uh, yeah, like, you know, obviously just having a son
on television, you know, means --
I told her I was getting out a car coming here.
It's all kind of odd and surreal because it's playing out like...
she'll watch this.
You know, this is -- You know, it's all...
You know.
-It's also thematically...
It seemed like the way you approached it
was there was no way to do this special
telling half or 75% or 80% of the truth --
and not just your own truth, but a lot of --
you know, again, if there's a theme being, like, secrets,
there were other secrets about people in your family.
How have they responded to that element of it?
-Um...
Measured slowly.
I got a really great text from my dad, um, uh...
just really saying
that he wanted to take responsibility
for trauma he caused.
He apologized for a lot of the chaos.
Like, "I'm sorry for the chaos."
My dad speaks very dramatically.
It's nice, though.
[ Chuckles ]
And, uh...
He -- He's responded.
I don't think it's things that he's ever said out loud.
It's odd. It's like...
I was, um...
I think kind of speaking for my family,
in many ways, just...
trying to free myself, at least, and hopefully my father.
Not to sound like Odysseus, you know, but --
but, like, just trying to...
Yeah. Yeah, just -- they --
They've responded, like...
It's slowly coming in.
It's slowly coming in, I think.
-I also was fascinated...
Not to ask a process question, but, you know,
I often think of stand-up specials
as different tracks on an album,
whereas this seemed like one piece of music.
-Yeah. -And I was wondering, like,
how did you even work it on stage?
Because it almost felt like it always had to be a whole.
And I should note that, you know,
it's an hour, like most specials.
It went by very quickly for me,
even though it was really intense and far weightier
than what you expect from a stand-up special.
But because it had this real lyric quality,
which I think is both a credit to you and Bo Burnham,
who did a beautiful job directing it.
So how did you ever work on it?
Or was this a piece of comedy that you didn't work
as much as maybe previous specials?
-I actually -- it's odd.
It happened faster than my previous specials, in a way.
This happened from December, like right before Christmas.
I was staying with Bo, and I was actually sad
because this dude didn't text me back,
and so then I threw myself in to work, so...
Thanks, I guess. -Yeah. Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
-And just started going up and just talking about things
I hadn't talked about before.
And, at first, they came out very free associative,
but kind of the same rule in my work now
that I have in therapy is just, like, you know, don't lie.
It would be a waste of time.
And so it kind of came together quickly.
Like, the narrative and the arc and the story of it
just kind of started making sense as I was saying it.
But it happened -- it happened --
I went to various cities,
Atlanta and San Francisco and Austin,
and worked it out and just me alone on stage,
and audiences kind of everywhere,
kind of would chime in and, like, react in a way
that I had never felt before as a performer.
-Yeah, but there's moments where the audience sort of
asks you questions that are very thoughtful.
So it's like the opposite of heckling, right?
-Yeah. -They are actually --
In a weird way, I felt like, "Oh, they're channeling
exactly what I'm thinking at this moment,"
and then you're responding to them.
Did that happen everywhere you did it?
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In most places, it would be just moments where, um...
I would get these thoughtful --
I felt like I was giving the audiences
the truth and all of me.
There was always this wall.
I used to kind of present this brash persona as a comic,
and I --
I had to accept how much I needed the audience,
like, how important it is.
Like, I'm asking you to share this with me,
and I'm sharing more of myself with audiences,
and I feel like they responded in kind, and it was beautiful.
It's been very beautiful, and it makes me want to perform more.
And, uh...yeah. Yeah.
-Well, it is -- it's really something to watch.
I also want to say, for anybody who hasn't seen yet,
the payoff at the end completely caught me off guard.
I am so ashamed that I did not see the last joke coming.
-Really? -Yeah! I can't believe it.
-Really? -It made me laugh so hard.
-That'll be -- [ Laughs ] Bo will like that.
I'll tell him. [ Laughs ]
-And, yeah, it's really something to see,
and thank you so much for making time for us today.
-Thanks for having me. Thank you, guys.
-You guys, that's Jerrod Carmichael.
"Rothaniel," streaming now on HBO Max.