Buress busier than ever after Cosby takedown
Standup comic balancing road show with movie and television roles
Earlier this year, comedian Hannibal Buress agreed to do some Midwestern shows with his friend Eric Andre.
He was doing them as a favour, which meant he wasn’t really getting paid. So he wanted to save the new material for his own headlining shows.
In Milwaukee, he began doing a joke about playing blackjack, which is one of his favourite bits.
“Some dude yelled out: ‘You did that last year!’ ” says Buress with a laugh. “‘Yeah, I know I did it last year. I’m doing it again! You want to see me, come through when I’m getting way more money to perform!’ Yeah, I was pretty obnoxious.”
Buress is telling the story in response to a question about fans’ expectations and how they may be changing. Is he expected to riff on certain topics, or people, that he has become known for talking about? Apparently not.
“People want the hits from bands and rappers and musicians,” he says. “With comedians, they want to hear what is happening now and what you are thinking about now. Because, ultimately, comedy is about the element of surprise. You can’t be surprised if you already heard the joke. It’s good to have that as the standard, because it challenges you just to work and dig and be more creative and find different angles that keep your mind working and thinking about the world.”
But Buress may be more burdened than most when it comes to expectations about what he should talk about — he was the comedian who set into motion Bill Cosby’s epic downfall.
In 2014, Buress was doing a bit about Cosby’s holier-than-thou attitude regarding young African-American men and said, ‘Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby. So turn the crazy down a couple notches.” When the crowd gasped, he challenged them to Google “Bill Cosby rape.”
The bit went viral, and now Cosby is facing sexual assault charges. His career, legacy and reputation is in tatters.
It’s not that Buress has avoided the topic. In his Netflix special Hannibal Buress: Comedy Camisado, which began streaming earlier this year, he addressed the fallout of the Cosby joke. Granted, most of it revolved around many stories describing him as the “unknown comedian” who took down Cosby. “Homeless comedian Hannibal Buress took the stage in Philly, covered in rags,” he says at one point, before putting the whole thing to rest by saying the scandal led to him having “consensual sex” with women across the country.
“The Camisado thing was me ... I mean, I had to address it,” he says. “And that’s that for me.”
The thing is, Buress was already an up-and-coming star before the Cosby joke made him a household name.
The 33-year-old Chicago native’s career began in 2009. By 2010, he’d written for Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock and released his first comedy album. His second comedy album, Hannibal Buress: Animal Furnace, was turned into a special on Comedy Central in 2012. He worked the late-night television circuit and guest-starred on shows including Louie, The Mindy Project and 30 Rock.
Today he balances roles in cult hits such as Broad City and The Eric Andre Show with mainstream fare such as the upcoming SpiderMan: Homecoming and animated The Secret Life of Pets.
So what can we expect from a live Buress show nowadays? “It’s no different if people have seen my other hours. It’s just me giving different perspectives and talking about where my life is and processing that and talking about travelling and dealing with people. It’s mostly me talking about people and how they react to me in certain situations.”