Montreal Just For Laughs: Wyatt Cenac Is No Freedom Fighter, Just a Furry Dumb Fighter

interview wyatt cenac montreal just for laughs

We Interviewed Wyatt Cenac for Montreal Just For Laughs Festival

You probably recognize Wyatt Cenac from The Daily Show. Most people do. He was a standout correspondent on the show from 2008-2012, earning 2 Emmys and a WGA award along the way. But Wyatt is also an accomplished stand-up comedian, whose tone and subject matter certainly helped him land the gig, but go well beyond fake news stories pointing out the hilarious hypocrisy of political candidates or the actual news. The full spectrum of Cenac will be on display this week at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, as he performs a solo show called Furry Dumb Fighter at Cafe Cleopatra July 20-14.

We caught up with Cenac during the early morning “blur between switching time zones and doing laundry” to discuss his feelings of responsibility in comedy, even though he is definitely not a Freedom Fighter.

The IBang: This is the earliest I’ve ever gotten a comedian to do anything, are you a morning person?

Wyatt Cenac: No, I’m not really at all. I just got back from California, I have a limited amount of time before I go back out on the road, so I’ve got to run some errands and do my laundry and get all my stuff done so I can repack my bag and get ready to go again. Waking up early is not by choice.

The IBang: Is that pretty much your life now, just on the road and only home for 24-48 hours here and there?

Wyatt Cenac: It’s a mix. I’m usually just on the road for a chunk and then here for another chunk, but this summer, everything is kind of hitting all at once. It’s a little rare, but it’s welcome.

The IBang: When you are in town, you have an awesome show at Littlefield. How do you decide on the comedians you want to showcase there?

Wyatt Cenac: Well, thank you. I have the benefit of having a very talented person producing the show and doing a lot of the heavy lifting as far as booking comedians, Marianne Ways. Whenever we talk about the show, the biggest thing for us has always been we obviously want people who are funny and there’s definitely been a push for us to try to keep the lineups as diverse as possible. Just keeping them not a show that’s, “ok, here’s five white guys,” and that’s no disrespect to white guys, I just think that there are a broader range of voices in comedy and if we can showcase those voices to what people would typically describe as comedy nerds, then let’s do that.

The IBang: I feel like that’s a conversation that happens a lot in comedy, but do you see actual change happening?

Wyatt Cenac: To be perfectly honest, I don’t know. I’m in the unique position of, when I get to do shows, I don’t necessarily do all the shows in a city anymore. When I was starting out, I would take any show that would have me on stage and if I couldn’t get up, I would go see that show, I was living and breathing comedy. So I was much more aware of that stuff because I would see whether I was the one minority in the lineup or, in LA when I was there, you saw shows that were broken down by ethnicity like Refried Fridays for Latinos and Mo Better Mondays, which was the black show at The Improv. When I’d do the Latin shows, I would see that the crowd was resistant to people who weren’t Latino, but I could kind of skate under the radar because nobody was sure if I was maybe Dominican. And I say all that to say, having come up in shows that were just white guys or just aimed at a certain group, now I feel like I have a responsibility as somebody who has a show to try to do something with it that’s a little different. If that’s changing in other shows, I don’t know, I can only speak for myself and what I feel is my responsibility.

The IBang: This is your first time at JFL, have you been to Montreal to do comedy before?

Wyatt Cenac: No, I’ve never been to Montreal. I’m looking forward to it, I keep hearing nice things. I was supposed to go in 2008, I had gotten on Variety’s Comics to Watch list, but I was working at The Daily Show and I had just started the job and I thought it would be a little rude of me to dip out. “Oh yeah, thanks for giving me this opportunity that probably helped get me on this Comics To Watch List, now I’m gonna go celebrate, have fun working!” It’s very rare that you get a dream gig, I didn’t want to blow it in the first month or two!

The IBang: There’s probably going to be people that come see you who only know you from The Daily Show, what do you think will surprise them the most about your act?

Wyatt Cenac: Probably that I’m not rolling clips from the news? I always have people who come and they know me from The Daily Show, or recently I had someone come because they had heard me on This American Life, and they come to the show with an expectation and your hope is you can still be entertaining even when you’re not giving them that exact thing. It’s very flattering when someone comes up afterwards and tells you, “Oh we loved you in this thing!” or “What aren’t you doing that thing anymore?” but there’s also something a little insulting about it. It seems to suggest, “We only like you as this thing, go back to doing that thing!” It always equates to me as if somebody walked up to you and said, “Oh, we really loved you so much when you were in high school, why won’t you go back to high school?”

The IBang: Or they just selfishly really enjoyed it and just want more of it.

Wyatt Cenac: Oh sure, but I think there’s an element of, “Oh you’re doing things in your life, you’re growing and changing and moving on” and that makes them reflect on their own life and the changes that may or may not be happening there. So if you keep on doing what you’re doing, there’s a fake security in that.

The IBang: Where did the name of your show (Furry Dumb Fighter) come from?

Wyatt Cenac: It kind of came from what we were just talking about. because of The Daily Show, people have a bit of an expectation and they often will come up and say, “What you do is so important!” and there’s a real responsibility they want to place on me as a comedian. Even when I do stuff on stage, I still talk about current events and topical things, so you get received in this way. And it feels like the things you would say to somebody who is a Freedom Fighter and I don’t feel that that is me. I am by no means a Freedom Fighter. I may be speaking some sort of truth that resonates, but I’m also couching it in jokes because I don’t want the responsibility of that. “Furry Dumb Fighter,” if you say it fast enough, it sounds like “Freedom Fighter” and that’s me. I’m not a Freedom Fighter but it might seem close to that because you were just thinking about it, but I’m more a Furry Dumb Fighter.

The IBang: Is this hour going to end up being your next special?

Wyatt Cenac: I hope so. I feel like it’s there, or it’s close to feeling that way. So, yeah, I’d like to put this together as the next thing and maybe even put it out there before the end of the year.

Check out Wyatt Cenac at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal this week with Furry Dumb Fighter at Cafe Cleopatra July 20-14. Go to hahaha.com for tickets.

 

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Amy E Hawthorne is a New York by way of LA comedy journalist and founder of ComedyGroupie.com. She's also a produced numerous stand-up shows, got a paycheck and a drinking problem from The Comedy Store and is convinced that the Big Avocado lobby are the ones who really pull the strings in this country.
Amy Hawthorne
Amy Hawthorne
Amy E Hawthorne is a New York by way of LA comedy journalist and founder of ComedyGroupie.com. She's also a produced numerous stand-up shows, got a paycheck and a drinking problem from The Comedy Store and is convinced that the Big Avocado lobby are the ones who really pull the strings in this country.