♪ I put prescription in Dior frames ♪
♪ Sunshine ♪
- I do hate police brutality,
but I have to talk about other issues.
♪ Now who are you ♪
- So you can't solve one thing,
but you're going to solve everything?
- So, Woke is a show about a black cartoonist,
who's kind of walking the middle of the line,
politically, socially.
He just wants to keep his head down
and draw his boring cartoons,
and his cartoon strips,
and just make silly jokes, and that's it.
You know, he wants to have his little conventions,
and have his fan base, and hang out with his friends.
That's pretty much what he wants.
Until, one day, you know,
he has an encounter with the police,
and it's an aggressive one.
- Don't move.
Central we have the suspect in question.
- Suspect? What? - Stick your hands up!
- You've got the wrong guy!
(gun fires)
- It rattles him.
It rattles him so much, that he has this form of PTSD,
where he starts to see things.
And he starts to,
where his comic strips start to come to life,
and talk to him.
And then you notice a change,
where his comic strips take on a more militant tone.
And you don't know if he's crazy.
You don't know if this is just his form of expression.
And it's his group of friends
that kind of help him along the way,
and they help him deal with it.
And the whole point is that he can become something of this.
Something is to come of this.
This isn't just going to be a situation that happened
and he's just going to be bitter.
He's got to turn it into something,
and activism is what he thinks he should do.
And now he has the microscope
and he has the microphone.
So, it's what do you do now?
And then that takes us into season two.
So what happens when that microscope is on you?
You know what I mean?
What happens?
You know, and then it's, you know, it's that line,
it's that fine line that you walk between activism
and enjoying the fruits of your labor.
- You wanted to be a big name activist, right?
Congratulations, you did that.
- So Laura Salgado is a very successful venture capitalist.
She's self-made.
She built a company up from scratch,
sold it for a bajillion dollars.
And now she can just very comfortably write checks
for $250,000.
She comes into the show,
as a platform of broadness and mass.
So, what does happen when you get what you ask for?
You talk the big talk, of wanting to help the masses,
what happens when you get a massive,
see what I did there, check,
and are you able to really maintain that pure activism?
Right?
Can activism and capitalism go hand in hand?
Can you be grassroot and corporate, simultaneously?
So, that's where she comes in, and you know,
y'all just are going to have to watch season two,
to see if it's possible to do both.
- A bigger platform comes with a bigger microscope.
And if you try to start expanding out of what you know,
it's going to get complicated, quick.
And activists are vicious.
- Ayana was kind of the person who knew everything,
the one who was analyzing everything,
and helping everyone out in the first season.
Second season, she's unraveling a bit.
(laughing) She's the one who actually needs a lot of help.
Her business is not doing great.
Her home situation is not doing great.
Her money situation is not doing great.
And it's really hard for her to ask for help.
But these fellas provide a lot of help
that she has been seeking for a long time.
- The beginning of season two,
you found out that Clovis now has abs.
And Clovis wants everybody to know.
I'm trying to hit the club.
Introduce the ladies to these new abs.
Ab-raham Lincoln, Kareem Ab-dul Jabbar.
I think Clovis is just happy that he's in shape now.
And it's another tool that he can use to, you know,
get women.
- I told you I got this.
- Don't get so caught up in the cause,
that you forget what is going on right in front of you.
- You know, going into season two,
now the microscope is on him.
He wasn't an activist.
Now he is.
I was just an actor,
and then I find myself, you know,
speaking, being on a show that involves this stuff.
So I'm doing interviews that I have to talk about.
I'm doing political interviews,
and political press and things like that.
And I am, you know, being activated in certain parts of,
you know, where people need it.
You know what I mean?
In certain neighborhoods and communities,
and that's not where I thought I would be,
that's not where I thought my life would be.
And then, season two,
our character now has this microscope on him.
And then, here we are, doing press for season two,
and people are like,
"Yo, what are you doing now at, politically?"
And I'm like, "I don't know."
I'm still an actor,
I'm trying, I'm trying to figure it out.
And it's difficult, but it is,
it is a mirror.
It is a mirror, not just to this character,
and to my life, but to society as well.
The things that are, you know,
that people are going through.
The people who want to be allies.
There are characters on our show,
Blake Anderson wants to be an ally so bad.
He doesn't know what to do.
That's a lot of my friends, they're like,
"I'm trying here, brother,
what do you, what do you need me to do?"
And I go, "I don't know.
I don't. Nothing, you know?
And sometimes that's okay."
You know?
And I think that's what would gravitate people
towards this show,
is that it is a 100% mirror.
And you'll find yourself in some part of that reflection.