Wyatt enters late night game
Goal of the show ‘Problem Areas’, he says, is to spend time exploring less familiar stories
It may not seem like television can currently accommodate one more topical late-night comedy show, but Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas is ready to make the case.
Problem Areas, which is streaming on osnplay. osn.com, has a laid-back energy that’s very different from other late-night programmes, but will be familiar to those who
recognise the subdued Cenac, an alumnus of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and a star of People of Earth.
A test episode screened for reporters had no studio audience and no canned laughter. There was just Cenac, 41, alone on a set resembling a groovy 1970s rec room, holding forth on topics like the interstellar aspirations of Elon Musk, the SpaceX chief executive, and the scientific uses of human excrement.
The show will also feature longer field pieces reported by Cenac, and will spend multiple episodes of its debut season delving into policing in America and the many issues it brings up.
The goal of the new programme, he said, is to spend time exploring less familiar stories, rather than running down the headlines of a given evening.
In an interview, Cenac talked about his vision for Problem Areas and why its focus matters so much to him.
It’s immediately evident that the aesthetic of Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas is different from other late-night shows. How did you arrive at it?
At The Daily Show ,we were satirising a news programme. You put somebody in a suit, you put ‘em behind a desk, and they become an authority figure. What you’ve seen since are other shows in a similar mould. If the idea of my show is to be a little more curious about things, it felt like stepping away from that newsy look would be key. I don’t know if I convey that same sort of gravitas. For me, it was like, lean into what you are, which is a sleepeyed guy who rambles.
Why did you want to cover the subject of policing throughout the entire season?
We thought, let’s do something easy. [Laughs] We could talk about Trump and the presidency. But a lot of people do that. Policing is one of those things that you see — a man got shot and killed in Crown Heights the other day. These stories keep happening... It would be very easy to just stay in New York and tell these stories, but the problems of New York aren’t necessarily the problems of Ferguson, aren’t necessarily the problems of Miami. To really tell this story, it was good for us to go to all these different places.
Do you feel a personal stake in this topic?
My cousin’s been to jail. My little brother got arrested over parking and traffic tickets, driving through one of those small towns in Texas where they just make revenue. I was arrested when I was 19, for inciting a riot. And you’ll ask, what entailed inciting a riot? It was [uttering a vulgar phrase to a mall cop]. That was it. And I got arrested, thrown in cuffs and everything. And had to get it all expunged from my record. Every time I see a story [about police misconduct], it creates a touchstone to an aspect of my life.
In the weeks to come, other Daily Show personalities, including Michelle Wolf and Hasan Minhaj, are getting their own topical comedy shows. Is it starting to feel like the market is oversaturated?
There’s definitely a bubble, but it also feels like it’s a content boom... you can make a movie like Moonlight and you can make a movie like Black Panther. Those two things can exist in the same world, and there is an appreciation of both.