- And this next gentleman coming to the stage,
quote unquote stage, also has a very busy schedule.
If you don't know, you better ask somebody.
He's two shows on the air right now and he just don't care
Sherman's Showcase and South Side too.
Who am I talking about?
Diallo.
- I thought you were gonna go with Diallo.
- You know what I saw Diallo coming.
From a mile away.
I was like, "He's not about to say Diallo."
- He did.
- But I did.
- And it makes it all the better.
I appreciate it, man.
Thanks for having me here, man.
It's an honor and a privilege, thank you.
- Yes, as it is for me.
Obviously, I'm a big fan of yours.
I'm a fan of all the different shows
that you have worked on and acted in.
By yourself and also with your writing partner Bashir.
So, we're talking about the power of community right now.
But I kinda wanted to talk to you
a little bit about what that means to you,
especially in the genesis of your career.
If I'm correct, I believe you
and Bashir met at Harvard, am I correct?
- [Diallo] A tight-knit community.
- [Bashir] All six of y'all.
- The name Gerald Custer comes to mind.
Surrounded on all sides.
- It's kinda crazy how many black people I knew
that went to Harvard.
I actually started following Alexis Wilkinson,
who was the first black female editor-in-chief
of Lampoon, when she was at Harvard.
- Oh, that's dope!
It's also sad that there are people who are our age
and are still the first black anything in Harvard.
- Oh, she's way younger than us, Diallo.
- That's what I'm saying, man, it's like...
You know, we did a (mumbles) Sherman's Showcase
black kids at the white school, which was obviously
a (mumbles) on our experiences at a HWCU.
(everyone laughing)
- Ain't nobody wearing that sweatshirt.
- One of the lyrics I like the most is,
"When the dude who integrated your school is still alive."
- [Host] That's what I mean.
You kind of met at Harvard, you had a tight-knit community,
and you and Bashir have not only known each other
for a long time and worked together,
but I feel like both of you, even individually,
have done a lot of work to create this community of
medians, writers, producers, and actors.
At lot of which we get to see
on both South Side and Sherman's Showcase.
- Well, the really quick answer to that is
that Bashir and I both come from really large families.
I'm one of six, he's one of eight.
- [Host] Damn!
- Yeah, I'm usually the person who has the weirdo parents
who have all the kids, but somehow he had to one up me.
You know, what I would say about the way that relates
to the genesis of not just South Side
and Sherman's Showcase, but almost everything we do,
is when we get in the writer's room...
He was actually an actor at Harvard
and I was a non-fiction writer.
Like a serious like Kennedy School politics writer
when we met, but I'd say that our careers
took off as writers, primarily.
And to this day, our writer's room always has
a lot of black people in it.
A lot of men and women, but just a lot of black people.
And that's really our attempt to imitate
where we got our true comedic roots,
which is the black dinner table.
If you're in the black dinner table in a large table full
of black people, everybody's trying to be funny.
You know, I'm one of six.
My parents are still married.
So that means there's eight black people at table
all trying to be the funniest.
Everybody's competing, everybody's trying
to get the best joke.
And at Bashir's table, there's two more than that.
So, our writer's rooms is always an attempt
to try to mimic that because we feel like
that's where the best material, the best dialogue.
It's not all black, we always have our minority higher.
I guess our majority higher, I don't know.
- Either way works.
- By the way, that dude earned his spot.
You gotta be real funny to be, I digress.
What I'm saying is that,
that's where our best materials comes from.
So if I'm looking at Will Miles or Langston Kerman
or some of our Sherman's Showcase writers, Zuri Salahuddin.
We hire a lot of family members, that's not nepotism,
that's just because we comes from some funny, funny people.
My nephew does animations on Sherman's,
and Bashir's brother's the star of South Side.
We keep it in the family not because we're trying
to increase the pot, but because we feel
like the apples don't fall that far from the tree,
and we have a lot of funny people who make us laugh,
and now they're making America laugh.