‘2 Dope Queens’ reach HBO stage – and budget
The stars of WNYC’s popular comedy podcast 2 Dope Queens now have a series of four weekly HBO specials (Friday, 11:30 ET/PT). And they want them to be a safe space for everyone, including hwhite (their jokey pronunciation) fans.
Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson, black comedians and best friends, host four comedy specials that feature the same energy as their beloved podcast, but on a bigger budget compared with their usual streamed stand-up comedy show. (“Got that HBO money ... for our hair,” Williams jokes from the lavishly decorated Kings Theatre in Brooklyn.)
Topics range from sex to New York City pizza and man buns, and the specials include guests Jon Stewart (Williams’ former Daily Show boss) and Sarah Jessica Parker (both ladies love Sex and the City). In the four stand-up shows, the duo candidly banter onstage, which makes for effective commentary, particularly about race.
A bit with Parker shows Williams and Robinson want to connect fans of different backgrounds: They encourage Parker to ask them about their hair.
“She needs white people to step up. Admit what you don’t know,” says Williams, who has a big, bouffant hairstyle next to Robinson’s temporary blond bangs.
So Parker asks about how the hosts get “so much dimension” and “mixed media” in their manes. Someone in the audience cackles, but Williams and Robinson defend their guest.
“She’s our friend!” Williams says. “This sounds like a New York Times art critic’s review. ... We are art.”
“That’s one of my favorite white ladies,” Robinson says about Parker.
Williams and Parker explain to Stewart what a “Cocoa Khaleesi” is (“Game of Thrones, and then we’re cocoa because we’re black,” Robinson says) and make fun of their white boyfriends. “Each time his finger goes back (to fix my hair), it does feel a little like reparations,” Williams says. “Are you picking the cotton now or me?”
They also air some race-fueled grievances.
“I know a handful of hwhite people who can apologize to me,” Robinson says. “The guy in Southwest (Airlines) who didn’t think I was in group No. 1, even though I was in group No. 1.”
“The white guy at the bar who’s like, ‘I love chocolate’ (and) maybe Thomas Jefferson,” Williams says.
Robinson adds that the white Starbucks barista should also apologize for assuming her her name, Phoebe, was spelled F-I-B-I.
Williams can relate, but she realizes that, despite their laughter, not all of her “majority white-people” audience can.
That’s when she tells the crowd, “You should thank your lucky stars that you’re able to see us be (vulnerable) in front of you guys.”