Residents of Birmingham turned on their radios in the year 2001, and there was Roy Wood Jr. The future stand up comedian got his start making prank phone calls for the Buck Wild morning show. He's come a long way since then, first there was success and stand up then eight years on "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah." He's currently on the CNN panel show. "Have I Got News for You?" And now, Roy Wood Jr. is an author. Here's part of our discussion.
PAT DUGGINS-- In your book, "The Man of Many Fathers," you talk about your relationship to your dad. I mean, Roy Wood, Sr. was a noted journalist during the Civil Rights Movement, a famous radio personality, and one story that you told the really kind of sticks with me is how he actually mentored Don Cornelius, who would go on to host the TV show Soul Train. But for all those accolades, did that make up for you the fact that he was an absentee father.
ROY WOOD, JUNIOR-- It's interesting because I feel like absentee is too much of a generality, and I think that's part of the confliction. I think it was I feel like my dad was many things to many people, and many things to to America, and all meaningful. But I wouldn't say absentee as much as I would just say, an inattentive waiter. You know, you have a waiter that's not quite always checking on you, but definitely buy it from time to time. But you can't say you didn't have any service. That would be a lie. But did you have service as good as you would have hoped? No. And if the question is, though, just in the broader sense, if his accolades cancel out what I wish I'd have gotten, I'd say no, like I think every kid at the end of the day, you want your pops, and you want to be able to reflect on the relationship you had with him and think that it was net positive instead of, you know, a push or net negative. I'm still not sure which one I would say. I wouldn't say net positive, but, you know, it doesn't also but, and I have to be very careful in this book, because my experience with a person is not to detract from someone else's experience or the contributions they made to the world, which is why I tried to make sure that I presented some balance in that but you know, this entire book is about lessons and guidance I got from men other than Him. So clearly, it wasn't as good as it could have been. And also, my pops died when I was 16. Who knows, he could have gotten older. I could have gotten older. I started asking better questions. We mend all the fences. But that didn't happen, you know. So I think that's just kind of one of those, as they say, it is what it is type situations. But no, in no way would I ever want to undermine anything that my father did professionally. I was at the White House Correspondents dinner a few years ago, and there were a table full of white journalists, and after the dinner, a lot of them came up to me and told me stories about working for my dad, or interning for my dad, or advice that he gave him, and like he was a mentor to so many other Black Storytellers that, you know, I'm not gonna just write a book and just go, these are false idle you should. I think the mistake we make is trying to make other people share the opinion we have of a person. I'm not here to sway your opinion, and it's just, just telling you what happened to me.
PAT-- Your book goes into just how tough it is to get established as a comedian, to actually make it and do audience members, are they surprised when you tell them that surprised?
WOOD-- No, I don't think, I don't think they're surprised. I think that everybody knows that it's hard, it's just okay, well, what's your version? What's your version of hard? And then it said, Oh, okay, well, we didn't know that. I think that part of it, I think I don't think anyone's ever surprised. They're still shocked. Hey, I did a show they tried to pay us in cocaine and pulled guns on us when we wouldn't accept the cocaine. Like, wow. Okay, but that's also probably not even in the top AP, top 25 of wildest comedy road stories that any could. Comedian has I know comedians that have been paid by the promoter then robbed at gunpoint hours later by the same promoter. It's just a wild job. There's just the promoter, like I learned a long time ago. Never get the never get the room that the never stay in the hotel room that the promoter booked for you because it's in his name, which means he has a key, which means they can come in and rob you if they wanted to. They could come in and take your stuff while you're at the show.
PAT-- Again, not to give away anything from the book, but you write about two specific comics, Michael Roof and Spanky D., and I never realized how tough it was to become a comedian and get established, but you write about how that actually sort of informed your decision to eventually leave "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah", which we haven't talked about a lot up to this point. Can you talk about your thought thoughts going into that?
WOOD-- I think that that wasn't until I started considering thinking about it, you know, without getting into all of it. I mean, people can Google the arc of Michael Roof and know, you know the tragedy that it was, but having interacted with him a couple of times, and, you know, I think what I learned from both of those men was that comedy is an arc. There's peaks and valleys, and you have to be able to survive the valleys to get through to the next peak. You know, I think that neither of them, for differing reasons, were completely happy with where they were, career wise. And I think that once you're not happy when you leave the house for the thing that provides food for your family, it's a slippery slope that can lead to a lot of other, you know, choices one way or the other. It made me feel like I was starting to go down a similar path. If I stay at this show longer than I feel like I'm supposed to be.
PAT-- Join me and Birmingham's own Roy Wood Jr. tonight on APR notebook At 7pm. I'm Pat Duggins. I'll see you then.
