Roy Wood, Jr. has come a long way from Birmingham. He launched his comedy career making prank phone calls for a local radio station in the Magic City in 2001. Along with his current success as a stand up comic, Wood is host of CNN's panel show "Have I Got News For You." That followed eight years as a correspondent on "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah." Wood is also out with a new book titled "The Man of Many Fathers. It's a memoir focusing on his relationship with his dad, civil rights era journalist and radio show host Roy Wood, Sr, All of that's coming up on APR Notebook.
PAT DUGGINS: Birmingham's own Roy Wood, Jr., he's host of the CNN comedy news program. "Have I Got News For You?", formerly of "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" and the author of the new book, "The Man of Many Fathers," Roy Wood Jr. Thank you so much for talking to me.
ROY WOOD, JUNIOR-- How you doing, Pat, thank you for having me, brother.
PAT-- Great to have you on. You know in your book, you introduced the world to your mother, and to kind of get our conversation started. I would like to briefly mention mine. She's no longer with us, but, but growing up, I had a ringside seat to her never ending, all encompassing love of the Chicago Cubs, and I understand that she's not alone. How did your fandom of the Cubbies get going?
WOOD--My pops is a Chicago guy, you know, he moved to Chicago when he was four years old, and worked his way up through the radio ranks. There interviewed. A lot of them ended up doing a radio show, but cubs great Ernie Banks for a while, for a couple of seasons, and that's kind of part of where it started. And you know, also, when we moved to Birmingham, I grew up watching baseball. The cubs came on during the day, and I didn't have to fight my dad for the remote at night to watch the Braves. So the cubs were the more convenient team as well. You know, that was on WGI, I wish, yeah and the Superstation. Yeah, in the olden days, young people, there used to be one channel that just showed baseball to knowing nothing else, the WGN show, cubs, baseball, Bozo the Clown, and Chicago News at Nine. That was it.
PAT-- Oh, that was, that was the theory around my house. Because it's like, as soon as WGN showed up, Mom almost started talking like Vin Scully, because, like, little kids would walk up to her and ask her about, you know, this certain player, that player, and, you know, silver hair up in a bun, she would knit. She could, she could rattle off stats with the best of them, and I'm just sitting there, like as a teenager, in awe.
WOOD-- Yeah, it's one of those things that I think every child should have something they root for, even if it's not sports. If there's a character, there's a person, there's a show, there's just something to attach yourself to, to give yourself a little bit of joy and then also learn the pain of rejection of failure. I think that's what sports has taught me most Pat is that more than likely it's not gonna go your way, so it's best you don't put money on it.
PAT-- So when they (the Cubs) actually finally won that World Series, was that a downer for you? Or is it kind of like, oh my gosh, finally.
WOOD-- That was good time, man. I was at game seven, cubs, Indians, probably the best money I've ever spent as an adult. Was going to that game. I would say, yeah, yeah. I could say that with with a lot of clarity and hindsight. I don't have a lot of jewelry. I don't have a lot of I don't know, like cars and none of that stuff. But every now and then I'll spend money on a on a Cubs ticket to a World Series cost me $2,000 to sit 10 rows back in the outfield. Worth It!
PAT—And, if I mentioned this or not, but Mrs. Duggins and I never miss “Have I Got News for you?” on CNN, and most recent episode we saw you were out there with the first pitch out of Wrigley Field. How was that?
WOOD-- Yeah, oh, that's fun. That's fun. I mean, a lot of these, a lot of these baseball stadiums, the big problem is shout out to the Cubs. They let you warm up before you throw your first pitch. And I think that's a very important part of the equation, because they nine times out of 10, they don't want you like looking good. They wanted to go viral. They want you to two hop into the backstop. Or was it 50 Cent? No, it wasn't 50 Cent, but somebody threw a ball and hit a photographer in the crotch. Yeah, it was it was fun, it was exhilarating, but there is a lot of pressure when there's 38,000 people watching you attempt to do something that you could do so easily your entire life, and then you put people on the big stage, and they blow it.
PAT-- So between your show with CNN, your comedy, your comedy gigs now, your book tour coming up, how often do you get actually, to take in a game?
WOOD-- Probably about twice a year. Is probably the average of when I get to see a baseball game in some organized capacity. It may not always be the Cubs I've tried to it's become kind of an unintentional tradition now, probably the last three, four years to go to a baseball game with my son every summer, like last year in Birmingham, we did the the tribute to Negro Leagues at Rickwood field. So that was our game that year. It wasn't the Cubs, but same difference, you know. But yeah, probably about about two, three games a year is usually the norm.
PAT-- So is he a Cubby fan, or is he kind of like, ‘Ah, I'm gonna strike out on my own and go for these guys.’
WOOD-- Hey, man, I'm raising a city kid. Man, that boy is a Mets fan to no end, like a Mets fan 1,000,000% and there's nothing I can do to change that. So yeah, but you've got that occasion, the only occasional World Series thing going on, so I guess they have that comment. Well, he has pain, and that's all that I want them to learn. It's pain, and you're not going to learn that as a Yankees fan, Yankees you're a Yankees fan, you learn entitlement. It's like being a Bama fan versus an Auburn fan, Bama has the expectation of winning. Auburn is always surprised. Oh, what you looking at? We're good. Well, all right, and I say that as a staunch UAB fan, that way you can't hate me. Now, I learned that real early in Birmingham. You just claim UAB, nobody knows what to say to you. It's like voting independent. They're just all confused. I am Green Party.
PAT—We talked earlier about the WGN connection and your father and fighting for the TV remote and all that sort of stuff. In your book, The man of many fathers, you talk about your relationship to your dad. I mean, Roy Wood, Senior was a noted journalist during the Civil Rights Movement, a famous radio personality, and one story that you told that really kind of sticks with me is how we 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?
WOOD-- It's, it's, 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 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 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. 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. I mean, 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, he's a 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-- I get from your book, though, that it was, the time that you spent with him, that's actually what got your interest in journalism going?
WOOD--- Yeah. Well, yeah, because I was shadowing him all the time, and, you know, I would go with him to this event or that event, or sit with him in a in the radio station, you know, sit at his feet and things of that nature. So, yeah, that's, that's a great a large part of it, absolutely.
PAT-- So, I mean, comedy, obviously, you're going great guns on that, but if in a different reality of comedy had not worked out, could you see in yourself being a journalist full time as a career?
WOOD-- Yeah, I mean, that's what I went to school for. I wanted, but, but not like what my dad did? You know, for context, you know, my pops was covering the civil rights movement, and, you know, embedding himself with presidential campaign candidates, and, you know, stuff like that. There was a run where I really wanted to be Jeanne Moos from CNN Headline News, and she's always had these fun and quirky stories as well. You know, I just, I just wanted to have fun with my storytelling. I think that was the main thing that I really looked at, you know, more than anything else.
PAT-- So is that the appeal when they came to you with the idea of, “Have I Got News For You?
WOOD-- Yeah, a little bit. What I enjoy about our show on CNN is that we're essentially a How can I put it? We're a remake of a British show that's been on for 30 years. So we already have a legacy and a pedigree, but the show is essentially a fake game show. It's a fake quiz show about current events of that week. What what's very difficult about the Daily Show, and what makes the job of correspondence so hard is that you really have to dial in and focus on what it is you're trying to do and finding the hurt and the pain in the solutions to these problems you're reporting on, whereas with our show, it's more of a hey, here's what happened last week now, getting to the bottom of it and digging deeper. That's not the job of this particular show. So it gives you a place to be a little bit more fun, a little bit more quick with it. You know, all of the above.
PAT-- So did you spend a lot of time watching the British show, or is it kind of like, no, no, we're just gonna strike out on our own and do our own thing?
WOOD-- No, we still have the same British producer, same creators. There's a lot of the creative footprint on actually, the assembly line of how the show is produced each week. I've gone over and co hosted the British version a couple of times already, so that I've been very I've been very fortunate to but no, I like that's not a show that came on over here. I almost didn't take the job because it was a panel show. And panel shows haven't done well in the States for a while, but I do think that what we're doing will probably be to some degree, I don't want to say the future of late night, but there's definitely going to be something that has to happen that's cheaper than what is currently happening with Kimmel and Fallon and everyone else. And I just think between now in 2028 we're going to see late night transition into something that's a lot more group chit chatty, because it's cheaper, and people are cheap.
PAT--So, are folks approaching you and saying, you know, you know, keep doing what you're doing on, you know, have I got news for you? Because it could actually morph into, you know, the Jimmy Fallon time slot?
WOOD- No, nobody's saying that. Nobody's saying that. I'm just telling you what I think is going to happen industry wise, like I'm happy at CNN. It's not like somebody's come over and going, Hey, we want to poach you and give you millions more to do that over here. I just think that we have found a good pocket, and the ratings have reflected it. On Saturday nights, we found a good pocket to talk about horrible things in a way that doesn't leave you feeling horrible on the backside. And also, we only tackle the deep, hard stuff the first 20 minutes of the show. It's an hour long show. The rest of it is weird, oddball stuff that's happening around the globe. So we're not living exclusively in the traditional, traditional American media cycle as well, you know.
PAT-- Getting back to the man of many fathers you talked earlier about all, all of the other role models that kind of, like, you know, played a part in, in helping you to become the man that you are. And, you know, before I read the book, I have to admit, I was thinking to myself, Oh, Roy Wood's gonna have a lineup like, you know, the guy. The father on the Brady Bunch. But it struck me as though some of these folks lead a little bit to the edgy side, or am I being unfair?
WOOD- No, they are. But you you get guidance wherever God puts you. So yeah, sometimes I got guidance from from some old pastor, and then sometimes it was a co worker on cocaine. All right, that both of those have meaningful things. You know, there's people in these stories that I've told. Some are dead now. Some you know, some you know, kill themselves. Some like and I would be wrong and not looking and thinking and exploring what I gleaned from anybody that set foot in my life, if the end game and the purpose of this book, if the end game is to make sure my son has a solid moral background, then Then I have to look into any and everywhere that I've learned stuff or not learned it.
PAT—I want to be super careful not to give anything away about the book. But, you know, toward the end, you you acknowledge the these people that were, that were, you know, as you say, the man of many fathers. But have you run into any of them personally? And they said I was actually a role model to you?
WOOD-- No, they don't even know I wrote about them. Nobody in the book knows they're in the book if it gets back to them, cool, if not cool, the people that I talk to regularly, they know how I feel about them and my level of appreciation for their contributions in my life. But you know, like when we talk about like, say, that drug dealer in Elizabeth,New Jersey that I talk about in the book. I don't know where he is that was 2002 I hope he's no longer selling drugs, and if he is selling drugs, I hope he's at least doing it on the internet and not in the freezing cold that I met him in 2002 but no, I haven't, you know, I just, I've been really shy about it, about it all, I guess you know.
PAT-- So talking about people who had a big influence on your life, it was back when you were, you were a student of Florida A & M, and your comedy career sort of like came to life when you were working at the Golden Corral in Tallahassee. Can you, can you talk about how that happened?
WOOD-- I think that for me, like, the Golden Corral was a place where, like, like, I'd have gotten arrested for stealing jeans in college, and I'm on probation, and I started doing stand up, and I have this great job that's given me the freedom to travel and giving me the flexibility of scheduling myself. You know, Golden Corral remains the most significant place, the most life changing place that I ever worked. It set a foundation. And I think also because you're in a restaurant and you're working around a lot of different people of a lot of different ages and backgrounds and, you know, just different archetypes of human beings. It showed me how to interact with the world. And then on top of that, you have these customers that are just an array. It was literally being a restaurant server was the anthropology on the human condition that I needed in order to be a good comedian, I essentially got to study people for each group of people for an hour, because when people are eating, they're at their most relaxed and usually their most chill state, and you can find nuances in them, and you know things of that nature.
PAT-- Well, again, I don't want to spoil any part of the book, but I have to confess that the way the storyline ended with the dishwasher, “Big Mix,” I actually caught myself going, “oh man!”
WOOD-- Yeah, yeah. And you know what's wild about the big mix story. I told a version of that on Comedy Central for this is not happening, like people can go on YouTube now and see essentially three fourths of what the big mix arc was for me. But, yeah, that that's, you just look back. It was an, it was an opportunity for me to look back on these moments and just go, wow, I learned that from someone completely other than my father. And I just think it's, it's also, I think, a message for parents to know that your child is going to be raised by the village you surround them in. So we must be very, very keen about where we put our children.
PAT—Your book goes into just how tough it is to get established as a comedian, to actually make it. Do audience members….are they surprised when you tell them?
WOOD—Up surprised? 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's like, 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 pull 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 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. You know, like just little tidbits that you pick up along the way. And that's why you always say yes to going to dinner with the with the other comics and such. You know, because that's where you get the How can I say you get the game again.
PAT-- 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. So, you know, I'm not, I don't know. I don't like it. Just, it just made me feel a little 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 and so when I had the gift of being able to reflect upon other comedians why I felt like they were reaching this similar precipice in their careers. I saw fit to try to create something different for myself.
PAT-- I know your son is only like 10, but are you already kind of preparing for the possible dad talk when he comes and says, ‘Pop, you make people laugh. You're super famous. I want to do that too.’
WOOD-- I'm gonna just say ‘no,’ let's say ‘I forbid your boy.’ Also, my son can't be a good comedian. He has two parents that love him. Nobody wants to hear from a comedian with a good home.
PAT-- Well, well, if okay, if not, comedy, then, then how about the movies? I mean, beyond television shows, comedies, documentaries, you got a nice park in the movie, love Brooklyn, and I was kind of curious, how different was that for you? Because, I mean, like in comedy, you know when the jokes land and you know when the audience is tough, but with the movies, it's just the camera. So was that weird? Or what?
WOOD-- That wasn't weird? What's weird about movies is that you don't know if it was funny for like, a year until it comes out. That's a little unsettling. Whereas with stand up, you say it now, funny, now, funny, funny. Okay, funny. You. Yeah, I don't, I don't know, man, if my son wanted to act, he shows some degree of interest in producing and directing, and he likes being behind the camera. He's very interested in special effects and the mechanics of things and how things move. He's very interested in that. And so I encourage that you know, anything he wants to do, I'm here to help him get as much knowledge as he can about that thing. Right now, it's aviation, and if that pivots into something else, then that's what we gonna do. If my son tomorrow want to play a sport, we gonna go get a coach and learn all the thing and the day after that, if you want to learn how to drive construction equipment, we gonna go by John Deere, and we're gonna go down to the caterpillar factory in Peoria, Illinois and go look at all the rigs. So I'm here to support anything he wants to do. I'm not here to redirect him.
PAT-- Well, as we start to wrap up our talk, Mr. Wood, you know it, man of many fathers, is a message to your own son, is Is there anything about your father, the way that he raised you that you would pass on to him and say, this worked, this didn't. You might not want to do this. That sort of advice.
WOOD-- That's what the whole book is about. It's about taking the best parts of that man and passing that on to the boy. And I know that my father was a vessel of kindness to so many other people and a voice of mentorship to so many other people, and those people were extremely thankful, and I'm happy. I'm happy to have that same DNA encoded in me. He cared selflessly about other folks as well. I definitely possess that. So, you know, I think those are good things. Those are all good things to have. So I think I start with that, and then the rest of it I'll start piecing together later.
PAT-- Birmingham's own Roy Wood Jr. He's host of the CNN comedy news program. "Have I Got News for You," and author of the new book, "The Man of Many Fathers," Roy Wood Jr, thank you so much for talking to me.
WOOD-- Thank you.
PAT-- Is there someone you'd like to hear on APR notebook? Someone you'd like for me to track down, email me at p duggins@apr.org the student interns in the APR newsroom are Samantha Triana, Mallory Cook, Torin Daniel, Chris ALF Cooper, Townsend, Alex Schoenfeld, Lourdes, Duran Tony, Christian Ford, Emily Ahern, Logan, Fitzpatrick and Matthew Moran. The theme music for APR Notebook is sunny days. I'm Pat Duggins. We'll see you next time on APR Notebook.
