- You know my next guest from "Black-ish,"
"Grown-ish," and his very funny comedy special,
"Cole Hearted," which is now streaming on Netflix.
Let's get him on in here, Deon Cole,
can you hear me?
Yes. - What's up, girl?
- Hi, Deon, how ya doing?
- I'm good, how you doing?
- I'm good.
I don't know if I saw your arms last time on the show.
I like your tats, your artwork.
- Oh thanks, man.
Yeah, probably was covered up with my jacket.
- Yes, and your beard game is on point.
I like it.
- Yeah, man.
This quarantine beard. (laughs)
- The quarantine beard.
That will be the fashion of 2020.
(laughing)
I hear you've really taken advantage of quarantine
by adding DJ to your resume, explain?
- Yeah, so I've been DJing.
I always had equipment for a long time,
but I just never used it.
But now I started using my equipment
and it's been great, man.
Every Sunday, man, 11 a.m.,
West Coast time.
We get it in,
straight disco,
disco, disco, disco, man.
- That's fun, I love it!
And it's like, what a cool...
I think there's a lot of us that buy things in hopes
of things we wanna do but we never get to do,
so that's really cool that you actually got in the cabinet,
got it out and did it. (laughs)
- Yeah, absolutely!
I mean when you go in...
I mean us bein' in this quarantine
and you cannot come outta this not having a new skill,
or accomplishing something.
You should know Spanish,
you should know French.
(laughs)
You should know all kinda languages.
- Or you're just lazy.
- Just something, you gotta come out of this with something.
Yeah, yeah, right. (laughs)
- All right, well on Instagram you've been posting videos,
looking for a new assistant,
so what are your requirements?
We wanna help you.
- My requirements are:
I need someone to remind me to call my mother,
I also need to be reminded
to stop taking pictures with people
who don't think I'm worthy enough
to be posted on their page.
- Oh, Amen.
- Also, need to be outta the clubs
once we start going back to the clubs,
I don't need to shut the club down.
I'm always helping them clean up at the end of the night,
so I need to leave 40 minutes earlier, please.
(laughs)
And yeah, yeah,
those are my requirements.
- You want someone helping you be
the best version of yourself.
- I gotta be the best version of me.
Just, and my clothes are expensive,
I have to really still be a nice person.
(laughing)
- I love that you need someone to remind you.
- It's these requirements!
Yeah, I have to know this.
If I'm at the grocery store,
who's job is it to put the divider down,
mine, or the person behind me?
I need an assistant to help me with these things y'all.
- God, I love you.
Well, I mean I know that there is a lot going on now,
I mean not only just the pandemic,
but now not even just now,
it's been happening for awhile;
Black Lives Matter and generations
of trying to help this change actually happen.
And people are starting to have the conversation
about what's going on in America,
and I know a lot of people already knew that,
but a lot of people haven't,
and are listening at this point
that maybe weren't listening before.
You guys, y'all been doing that on "Black-ish"
for a while now, right?
Just that conversation.
- Yeah, we on the show "Black-ish" that we do man,
we've always pushed the envelope
when it comes to race and situations,
and we try to inform people
as much as possible about certain things.
I think some people think it was just funny,
but it's real situations.
We had one episode where it was just
a little white girl on the elevator by herself and we,
the whole episode was why we didn't get on.
You're not getting on that elevator with her. (laughs)
It might sound cruel but we like,
look, I don't wanna be the guy
that something happened to her,
I'm the person?
But we think like that.
We live in a world right now where it's like
we walk around--
- And the fact that that's normalized is not good,
that's not good.
- No listen, listen,
we're in a world where we walk around as a black man,
and black women,
we walk around fearful all day long.
Imagine this,
walking around being,
feeling fear but being feared.
It's like it's weird.
It's like I'm being feared,
but you have no idea,
I'm just as scared as you are (chuckles)
and you don't even realize that.
- You're scared of the assumptions,
you're scared of the stereotyping.
- The assumptions you have, yeah, yeah.
So we tackle a lot of problems like that, man.
We always have and we just got renewed for season seven
so I know this new season is gonna be insane
with everything that's going on and everything, so yeah.
- Well I think what's important is
because y'all have and because there are other shows too
that address that,
and even though it comes in a comedic way,
there's a seriousness there and I think because that exists,
maybe it empowered people to go,
"You know what, it's funny, but it's not."
- Yeah, I mean,
yeah, and see our mentality in America is so different,
I remember one time I was at the,
I left the Emmy's and went to this bar and I was outside,
and I used to smoke cigarettes at the time.
I was smoking a cigarette and I had a tuxedo on
and I was reflecting like,
"Wow, I am from the South Side of Chicago
"and I'm at the Emmy's!"
And this white woman walked up to me and was like,
doin' this in my face,
and it was her valet ticket.
- Ahhh!
- She was like, "Here!"
And I was like this, "What?"
And I just was like,
wow, that's crazy.
- I'm sorry.
- Then I thought about it,
I shoulda took the ticket and took her car.
(laughing)
- You were handing it out.
- I missed my blessing, Kelly.
That was my blessing.
The Lord tried to bless me with a Mercedes
and I didn't take it, Kelly.
- No, I'm sorry.
It's not only a hard thing to experience,
I can only imagine.
But having kids,
and I know your son,
he's 17-years-old,
I mean what are you say?
I mean I try and educate my children as much as I can
with the age appropriate information obviously,
but you try and it's like some things you're like,
"God, I can't believe I have
"to have this conversation with my kid?"
- Yeah, absolutely.
- I can't imagine you having to tell your boy like,
"Hey, this is how it is."
That's not what you wanna tell your kid.
- Yeah, I tell my son all the time, man.
And it's not a good conversation but it has to be had.
I just always tell him,
"Man, police ever mess with you or whatever,
"Just do what they say," and that's it.
I mean you're right,
you have the right to say and do whatever you want to,
but realistically we want you to come home.
Just comply,
do what you gotta do and come home.
Don't say nothin'-- - That's sad.
- Say the least that you hafta say and that's it.
And they might be doin' wrong to him.
I still tell him,
just do what he has to do or whatever in order to come home.
Because there's a lot of heroes that aren't here.
And so I mean I want him to stand up
for how he feels or whatever,
but when he's by his self, at night,
and it's four police officers,
I need for you to come home.
And then you come get me and then we go deal with it.
So I hafta let him know to just do what he got to do
in order to get back to me, basically--
- I'm sorry you even have to have that conversation.
- Yeah, but it's like I said,
it's a conversation that's been going on for all our lives.
My uncles and my grandfather taught me
and their uncles and their grandfathers taught them,
so it's just this mentality
that goes down and goes down or whatever.
But I tell ya this much,
white people are nice as hell lately boy, woo!
They've been nice as hell.
I was at the grocery store and I had two customer services.
I was like, this is... (laughs)
I was like this is all right, boy I like this.