Life is not black and white for comedienne
Wanda Sykes
Jan. 17 at 8 p. m. | River Rock Casino Resort
Tickets: $ 49.50-$ 59.50, at ticketmaster. ca
Regarded by her peers as one of the funniest standup comediennes in the business, Wanda Sykes is a frequent and frequently hilarious talk- show guest, a regular on Curb Your Enthusiasm and, recently, the host of Herlarious, a sketch comedy special on the Oprah Winfrey Network ( OWN). Her past credits include The Chris Rock Show, her own sitcom and late- night talk show, various comedy specials, the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine, and voice work for animated features like Ice Age: Continental Drift. The 49- yearold from Portsmouth, Va., now lives in Los Angeles, where she is raising twin daughters with her wife, Alex Sykes. We talked to Sykes about tracing her family tree, working at the NSA, and one of her first and greatest movie roles — Biggie Shorty in the 2001 cult classic, Pootie Tang. Q : First can I just say it’s an honour to be talking to one of the stars of one of the all- time great movie comedies —
A : Pootie Tang.
Q : Do you hear that a lot?
A : Whenever someone prefaces a question like that, it’s always about Pootie Tang.
Q : What do you remember about making it?
A : I was in the best shape of my life. When I saw the wardrobe, I thought uhoh. I forget what I did, I think I stopped drinking. So I was having fun but I was also angry ( laughs). And the guy who played Pootie Tang, Lance Crouther, he’s one of my best friends. So it was like recess at The Chris Rock Show, with Louis ( C. K., who wrote and directed the movie) and Chris and all of us. It was like our after- school gig. It was also this thing of looking at each other in ridiculous costumes. We all knew either this was going to be the greatest thing ever, or it’s going be a laughingstock. We knew a few people would be crazy about the movie.
Q : What’s Lance up to these days?
A : He just worked with me on the thing I did for OWN, Herlarious. He wrote on that. I work with him a lot. I love working with him, he’s such a good writer. Q : Is it hard to find writers who can write for you? Is your standup all written by you?
A : It’s all me. But if I’m doing a special, I’ll bring Lance in like a month before. He’ll look at my show and help me polish it. He gets me, so I like whatever advice he gives me. A lot of it sometimes is just segues or a tag line here and there. But yeah, we work well together.
Q : Having worked with Louis C. K. years ago, did you think he would eventually find his audience, like he has with his FX series Louie?
A : I’m so happy for him, that he’s found his thing, and it’s in total Louis fashion. But, yeah, I thought Louis would be living under an overpass right now. I really did. So good for him. He’s Louis, it’s like Pootie Tang — either it’s going to work and it’s going to catch on or it’s going to fail miserably.
Q : When you’re on a tour like the one bringing you to Vancouver, do you do any local material?
A : Only if something strikes me funny, or I pick up something while I’m there. I’ll watch the local news and see what’s going on. Usually I have a game plan as far as what I want to talk about. I’m sure I might make fun of the Toronto mayor, but I would talk about him anywhere. But something has to really stand out for me to comment on the city itself. Right now the material I’m doing now is so relatable.
Q : Some of it comes from working at the NSA ( Sykes worked there after college for five years).
A : Oh yeah. It just makes me laugh that people are so outraged, like, ‘ Oh I can’t believe the government, they listen in on my conversations, they read my emails.’ Dude, you’re taking pictures of your food and putting it on Instagram. I know what you ate. You check in everywhere you go, I can tell you every place you’ve been today. You’re worried about the government? You’re telling everyone your business.
Q : The discovery about your paternal ninth greatgrandmother must have rocked your world. ( In 2012, genealogists traced Sykes’ family back to the 17th century and a free white woman who was punished for having sex with a slave). Did it change the way you look at your country?
A : Not really. It just became personal. What I walked away with was, OK, three out of my four grandparents came from slaves, and we couldn’t go back further than maybe one more generation, and that was it — there was no more information, they were just property. No names, nothing. Just property. Then I had this one grandmother where we can go back nine generations, and it’s because they were free Negroes, and it was all because of this one white woman. They think maybe she was from Scotland, and she was this indentured servant who had sex with a Negro slave, got pregnant and had a baby, and that started, in my family, the free Negroes. But she suffered for it. She was charged, she got something like 30 lashes, she had to pay the equivalent of hundreds of pounds of tobacco so her service was prolonged. It was ugly. But it was also, wow, look at this, because of this one little thing, freedom, I can go back. Most white people can do that in this country, but black people can’t, because most of our descendants are from slaves. The surprising part was that we could go back. I will say this about the slavery thing. Coming from this white woman and these free Negroes, it explains why I’m so uppity.