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Keegan-Michael Talks ‘History of Sketch Comedy’ Podcast on Audible Plus | SWAY’S UNIVERSE
Feb 2, 2021
Keegan-Michael Key will dole out a broad historical review of sketch comedy going back hundreds of years — through the lens of his experience as a performer — in a new audio series produced exclusively for Audible.
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Keegan-Michael Talks ‘History of Sketch Comedy’ Podcast on Audible Plus | SWAY’S UNIVERSE https://youtu.be/64ad7MiHcQM
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0:00
this is keegan michael key as long as
0:02
there's been human communication
0:04
there have been stories and as long as
0:06
there have been stories
0:07
there's been sketch three of the
0:09
foundational tools for building a sketch
0:11
are the concepts of who what and where
0:14
you've got who
0:15
jay kwellen is jay quillen here the what
0:17
is what's happening in the scene
0:19
that makes you laugh you see this suit
0:21
three years old
0:23
see the pockets brand new and where
0:26
this is that's real they did that every
0:30
day
0:31
ahead of us is a colorful and
0:34
enlightening journey
0:35
through the world of sketch comedy i'm
0:37
not wearing any pants
0:38
film at 11.
0:44
i don't know what it is about this guy
0:46
boy i tell you when i hear his voice i
0:48
smile when i see his face
0:50
i'm elated man we can't he cannot be
0:52
shortchanged
0:53
m-e-n-p body-winning classically-trained
0:57
actor writer and producer this is a clip
1:00
from his new podcast the history of
1:02
sketch comedy available on audible
1:03
please give it up for our good friend
1:05
the one and
1:06
only keegan michael key hey
1:11
good morning good morning good morning
1:14
oh great man how you been how you been
1:17
i've been good i've been good i always
1:19
like to hear a what up though that makes
1:20
me so happy being from detroit that's
1:22
okay
1:25
love it i love it i love it no i've been
1:28
good i've been good i mean it's cold
1:29
it's cold but i'm good you know it's
1:31
cold got a lot of shrinkage huh
1:34
yeah a little bit yeah yeah yeah more
1:35
triggers than usual
1:38
that's when you really gotta you gotta
1:40
keep the blood pumping you know when it
1:41
gets up in the negatives you
1:42
talking about that zero two zero one
1:45
uh windshield situation you know yeah i
1:48
totally get it man i love we don't we
1:50
have to go into that though we don't
1:51
have to go into that
1:52
you know what well you you know you took
1:54
it further than i wanted to go that
1:55
happens and
1:56
you know i did i extrapolated that was
1:58
me that was the improviser in me i did
2:00
that yeah
2:01
yeah all that who's lying is it anyway
2:03
all that's that sketch comedy
2:05
you know that just comes out of you this
2:07
is an interesting podcast it was
2:08
developed and written by you and your
2:10
wife
2:10
how how is that when you guys come
2:12
together and work
2:14
well it is it's actually it's very
2:16
magical i mean
2:17
to be honest this whole thing the whole
2:19
podcast is really just a beautiful
2:22
and touching love letter from my wife to
2:24
me
2:25
and and also to both of our live lives
2:28
our loves
2:28
uh for sketch comedy and so you know my
2:31
wife's name is elle and she's been my
2:33
my business partner for five years we
2:35
write together we we produce together
2:37
and the interesting thing is she's not
2:40
really she's not only my biggest fan
2:42
she also happens to be a really
2:44
brilliant writer and director
2:46
and she did a phenomenal job of creating
2:48
this really kind of
2:50
layered path for me to be able to
2:53
share sketches and weave in personal
2:55
stories
2:56
and along the way educate and inspire
2:59
people about
3:00
about the art form of sketch comedy so
3:02
we really enjoy working together
3:04
i mean it's it's kind of how we came
3:05
together we came together professionally
3:06
first and then
3:08
and then all the romantic stuff followed
3:10
huh
3:12
did anyone look you know it's so crazy
3:14
that you say that keegan because we have
3:15
been talking about earlier
3:17
um off the story from pamela anderson
3:19
marrying her
3:20
bodyguard and just wondering sway i pose
3:23
this question
3:24
if it's ethical to marry someone that
3:26
you hire
3:27
did you guys get any like weird looks or
3:30
things of that nature when you guys
3:32
started working together but then
3:34
started doing other things together no
3:37
actually we didn't get that we didn't
3:39
get that i think it was
3:40
for most of people that we were
3:42
associated with in our business life
3:44
they thought it was a perfect match
3:46
they would they thought it was a perfect
3:47
match i think one of our agencies even
3:48
it was like it's about time
3:50
it's about time and so they felt they
3:54
felt that it was really natural that we
3:55
did it
3:56
and another thing is because we weren't
3:58
in a
3:59
um we weren't in an employer employee
4:01
dynamic
4:02
we were in an equal dynamic so and i
4:05
think most of what it came from was just
4:06
us
4:07
noticing and recognizing each other's
4:09
skill sets
4:10
and uh we were when we when we first
4:12
started meeting to work on stuff
4:14
together it was interesting because
4:15
one time we were trying to figure out
4:16
what we could work on what we could do
4:18
together
4:18
and my wife is like a good die-hard
4:22
old-fashioned born in the bronx new york
4:25
jew
4:25
and so she knows every jewish joke
4:28
you've ever heard
4:29
and we were talking we were figuring out
4:30
how to work together and she was telling
4:32
me jewish jokes i think the first
4:33
one of the first jokes she ever told me
4:35
when she said there was oh there's an
4:36
old lady
4:37
and she yells down downstairs to her
4:39
husband she goes morty why don't you
4:40
come upstairs and make love to me and
4:42
then morty says
4:43
fine but i can't do both and i would
4:53
never on the back side and hit me on the
4:54
back of the head i cracked them and i'm
4:56
laughing
4:57
okay i was laughing so hard and she's
4:59
looking at me and she's like
5:01
well you really really find that funny
5:03
i'm like hey i'm a black boy from
5:04
detroit i don't know these jokes
5:06
it's all new for me and so that's how it
5:10
really started
5:11
we started noticing that we shared a
5:13
sense of humor and we spent time during
5:15
that meeting
5:16
actually also i love the science of a
5:18
joke
5:19
the setup of a joke what makes it work
5:22
when the turn
5:23
comes how the punch line is executed and
5:26
she does too
5:27
and so we kind of found this common
5:29
ground about what we like comedically
5:31
and then it went from there then years
5:32
later we find ourselves in this pandemic
5:34
and she said to me she said you know
5:36
what you know more about sketch comedy
5:38
than anybody i know
5:39
what if we did a history of sketch
5:40
comedy thing and i was like oh
5:42
okay that sounds good and we can you
5:43
know that's great because we can put it
5:44
together and then we can
5:45
we can do like clips of uh sketch famous
5:48
sketches from the past my girl was like
5:49
oh no
5:50
no no no no we're not using any footage
5:52
for this you're going to perform
5:53
all the characters in all the sketches
5:56
and i was like i'm sorry what what now
5:57
what are we doing
5:58
[Laughter]
6:03
and then next thing you know we've got
6:05
we've got this audible series
6:07
oh man this is incredible and you know
6:09
it's interesting because i'm listening
6:10
you know when i started listening to the
6:12
first episode i really like your voice
6:15
yeah you know oh thanks yeah man i
6:17
really
6:18
you have a very engaging voice and you
6:20
really tell great stories and i could
6:21
tell when you would jump into
6:22
personal stories like driving across
6:24
country with your family or
6:26
you first came to new york um and but
6:28
the history of sketch comedy is so
6:31
interesting to me because when i think
6:33
of sketch comedy some of the first shows
6:35
i grew up watching with my
6:36
my grandparents and my great auntie and
6:38
uncle were the richard pryor show
6:40
yep uh wilson
6:44
uh geraldine remember geraldine um
6:55
you know and then if you move up and
6:57
live in color and
6:58
um you know you can key and peel you
7:01
know the dave chappelle show
7:03
and while in out while i don't know yes
7:06
would you
7:06
yeah let's talk about wilding out and
7:09
and where does it fit in the scheme of
7:11
things
7:12
so what's so interesting about wild now
7:14
is that it fits in because it's actually
7:17
improvisation which is which now the
7:19
thing about improvisation
7:20
improvisation is often more often than
7:22
not
7:23
is a tool that's used to write sketches
7:27
now i came up in the second city in
7:28
chicago and that's what we would often
7:30
use but there was a big argument in that
7:32
community
7:33
the the the the big contention in that
7:35
community was always
7:36
is improvisation a tool or is it an art
7:39
form in and of itself and so wild mouth
7:41
decided to move into that second camp
7:43
they wanted to make a show
7:45
where you were coming up with things off
7:47
the dome right there
7:48
and that would be the actual
7:50
entertainment and so
7:51
um what would happen is that falls
7:55
under the the category of sketch comedy
7:59
it's just it's an interesting uh how
8:00
shall i say it's like a hybrid or it's
8:02
like a
8:02
a sub genre of it and that's why there's
8:05
a whole episode
8:06
in the in the audible series where i i
8:08
spend a whole episode talking about
8:10
the places that you can train to learn
8:12
how to write sketch comedy and
8:14
produce and create scratch comedy and a
8:16
lot of it is about improvisation
8:19
um even like you heard in the intro that
8:20
you played earlier and
8:22
it was something i originally when i was
8:23
talking about the history i was like
8:24
we're just going to do the history of it
8:25
just to the history and it was l
8:27
who said i think you should as you since
8:29
you're telling personal stories anyway
8:31
and you love improv tell the stories
8:33
about how you trained
8:35
where the training came from what the
8:37
systems were like that people learned in
8:39
because you have the second city you've
8:40
got the upright citizens brigade they're
8:42
here in new york
8:43
and it's also interesting jordan said
8:45
years ago
8:46
if i may jordan said it's interesting in
8:48
the black community
8:49
we don't off we don't often see
8:51
african-american improvisers
8:53
and the reason we don't and i thought
8:55
this was so brilliant of him to say it
8:56
is because
8:57
they are improvising they just improvise
9:00
under the guise of hip-hop
9:02
when you're freestyling you're
9:04
improvising when you're freestyling
9:06
you're
9:06
you're you're creating something in the
9:08
moment you're it's like you're writing
9:10
lyrics or a poem or a play in the moment
9:13
and i was like i never thought of it
9:14
that way but that's
9:15
that's it's true it's true hmm
9:19
what i'm thinking as you say this and um
9:21
and we mentioned dave chappelle and you
9:23
brought up jordan and i was
9:24
i was curious this is kind of a slight
9:26
pivot because i know david went public
9:28
when he spoke about not getting paid
9:29
fairly for the chappelle show and i
9:31
just dawned on me that you guys were
9:33
there too
9:34
uh what was your contracts like do you
9:36
feel like you guys
9:37
were paid fairly or could you relate to
9:40
what he was saying i
9:42
my feeling my feeling always was my
9:44
feeling always was
9:45
in the very beginning and i don't know
9:46
if dave felt this way because dave had
9:48
been doing stand-up prior to that but
9:50
jordan and i had come from the same
9:51
place so i felt
9:53
that the money that we were making was
9:56
um was commensurate for what we were
9:59
doing they were
10:00
i felt they were giving us a chance
10:02
right and
10:03
and so and and the other thing is we
10:06
always say
10:06
bet on yourself in success so i thought
10:09
maybe the thing to do is to bet on
10:11
ourselves in success that down the road
10:13
it may not be in the paycheck for this
10:15
show
10:16
but this show and this opportunity will
10:18
manifest more work
10:20
down the road and it and it has so for
10:22
me i feel
10:23
that the the you have to look you have
10:26
to look forward toward the future and go
10:28
this will help us showcase our talents
10:31
and then that
10:32
money will come later that's kind of how
10:34
i always looked at it
10:35
with dave i think it was different
10:36
because he was such an enormous
10:38
phenomenon
10:39
right that that that that that that
10:42
the money the money should have been
10:44
right to what he was creating and also
10:46
remember
10:46
y'all remember back then that was dvd
10:48
sales when everyone's still watching
10:49
dvds
10:50
yeah and people were buying dvds like
10:52
crazy you could
10:53
be chappelle show dvds flying off the
10:55
shelf he should definitely have gotten a
10:58
piece of that
10:58
you know that was again like i said
11:01
commensurate to the phenomenon that was
11:03
dave chappelle
11:04
absolutely uh keegan mike and key is
11:06
here the history of sketch comedy it's a
11:08
audio podcast
11:10
and it's incredible man that's very
11:13
interesting
11:15
hb you want to jump in yeah hey keegan
11:18
what's up it's heather
11:19
how are you i'm how are you doing i'm
11:21
good i'm loving the conversation and i
11:23
was just wondering
11:25
um as artists because i consider
11:29
you an artist i mean and and the process
11:32
of working and writing
11:34
my husband always yells at me because i
11:36
have notebooks all over the place i have
11:38
him in the bed i have him in the kitchen
11:40
um how is it for you in your writing
11:42
process do you end up fighting you can
11:44
hide in notebooks under the mattress or
11:46
you just kind of
11:47
put everything in the phone like what is
11:48
your writing process like if you can
11:50
share
11:51
a little bit of it i put i put
11:54
everything in the phone
11:55
and then what i i use my notes i use my
11:58
notes program in the phone
11:59
and so that that that phone is there so
12:01
that you know that that thing's nagging
12:03
it's not that an idea is nagging you
12:05
it's when the idea hits you and you feel
12:07
that you know what i'm talking about you
12:08
feel that warm
12:09
feeling in your body you're like oh no i
12:11
gotta write it down right now
12:12
got it especially sometimes it's that 3
12:15
47
12:16
a.m in the morning thing
12:19
it pops in and and because i write with
12:22
my wife
12:22
because we write together she is a a
12:25
brilliant writer
12:26
so she'll often sometimes we'll find
12:28
ourselves up at five in the morning
12:30
and we'll be riding together
12:33
and then the next thing you know it's
12:34
like 6 30 in the morning like oh we
12:36
gotta go back to sleep now come on and
12:37
so but i very often that those those
12:41
creative periods are in the morning but
12:43
i always use the phone because it's
12:45
readily available
12:45
and also sometimes i can just talk into
12:48
the phone you know me like a voice
12:49
member
12:50
because i can't type as fast as i'm
12:52
thinking yeah
12:54
wow okay you know what i'm curious about
12:56
keane
12:57
like i remember when one of your
13:00
one of your peers he had a netflix
13:03
special
13:03
and so many people flooded their twitter
13:06
timelines saying
13:07
that it wasn't funny and as
13:11
a comic a comedian when obviously
13:14
you're trying out your jokes on other
13:16
people they're laughing
13:17
you think it's funny you have a
13:19
professional sense of humor
13:21
when you see such a big group of people
13:24
say it's not funny like do you look at
13:27
yourself differently
13:29
do you question the people around you
13:30
like if they are yes people like
13:32
how you kind of understand what went
13:34
wrong when so many people said yes
13:36
go with that joke and the audience was
13:38
like nah
13:41
i think i think that really what happens
13:43
is people
13:44
you know it is a subjective thing comedy
13:47
is a very subjective thing
13:49
so the the the the uh one of my
13:52
executive producers on key and peel
13:53
years ago he said look
13:54
all you can do is work toward your own
13:58
sensibility
13:59
all you can do is work toward what you
14:00
like and then you can't even concern
14:02
yourself with other people
14:03
you if you are being as intensely and as
14:06
specifically personal as you can be
14:08
then your audience will come because
14:10
they'll smell the authenticity
14:12
of they'll smell the the passion passion
14:15
they'll they'll have a sense that you
14:17
are doing something that you actually
14:19
enjoy that's
14:20
that's emanating from inside you and so
14:22
i i've tried to
14:24
i've tried to in a way kind of have
14:26
tunnel vision
14:27
you know so that i'm only concerning
14:28
myself with what i can do
14:30
and and for me really it's problem
14:32
solving same thing with elle
14:34
she's she's because she's a producer and
14:36
a writer and director uh her job our job
14:39
in all three of those areas is problem
14:41
solving that you're trying to
14:43
if there's something that comes up you
14:44
go okay i'm going to
14:46
say this line instead of that line
14:47
because i think it makes more sense
14:49
i i can't now the other thing is if
14:51
there's a group of people that don't
14:52
like it
14:53
i can't i also can't analyze where
14:55
they're coming from in their lives what
14:58
it is what their sensibilities are what
14:59
do they think is funny
15:01
so that's really what i try to do is in
15:03
a way consciously
15:05
make a tunnel for myself and go i have
15:07
to be true to myself
15:08
right here right down this lane right
15:10
here and then
15:11
you're kind of your own pied piper right
15:13
and then everybody else is just going to
15:14
follow the ones that like it are going
15:16
to follow
15:17
so then you know especially if you're
15:19
being specific that they're not yes men
15:21
that they're actually and the thing is
15:24
also i have to say this about my wife
15:25
she's she's she's got a great
15:28
sensibility because if it's not funny
15:30
she won't laugh
15:32
if it's funny she laughs then i go okay
15:33
i know it's funny because she's going to
15:34
be genuine to me
15:36
she's going to be genuine to me so
15:37
that's what that's what helps me um
15:40
that's what helps me navigate uh
15:41
navigate those people
15:43
so you know the other thing is when
15:45
you're doing a movie
15:46
if you do something and the crew laps
15:49
you're in good shape
15:50
because the crews need a bunch of people
15:52
right the crews watched and hundreds of
15:54
actors and i don't know about this
15:56
my man over here doing this and then if
15:58
you can get them to laugh
15:59
then you know you're in good shape you
16:01
know you're in good shape so then i
16:02
don't know what to tell you about the
16:03
people in the audience
16:05
yeah yeah uh that's great man keegan
16:08
michael key is here db won't you jump in
16:10
bro
16:11
yeah yeah uh it's funny because i
16:12
actually did have a question
16:14
about uh when you're doing a film as
16:16
opposed to when you're doing sketch
16:18
comedy
16:18
live in front of an audience and um
16:22
when you're on set let's say for
16:23
instance when you did dolomite you had
16:25
mike epps you had craig robinson eddie
16:28
murphy of course
16:29
when you're doing a film you're not
16:31
allowed to just
16:32
be so reactionary to other people's
16:34
jokes and because you're because you're
16:35
literally sticking to a script
16:37
sometimes you're not allowed to
16:38
improvise at all so in those
16:40
situations when you're doing a film or a
16:43
tv show
16:44
how do you know when to not be the guy
16:47
who's trying to be the funniest in the
16:48
scene
16:49
and and let everybody shine you know
16:51
what i mean
16:52
yeah i do know what you mean yeah no
16:54
that's a really good question what i try
16:55
to do
16:56
is i try to listen i try i try to um
16:59
especially because when you're shooting
17:00
scenes like that you're
17:01
they go over your shoulder to the one
17:03
person's face and then later they go
17:05
over their shoulder to your face right
17:06
and what i try to do is i try to give
17:08
the actor as much as i possible
17:15
wow did he go away yeah man maybe that
17:18
was a part of the sketch
17:23
i'm going insane all right all right
17:27
round of applause
17:28
that's a wrap ladies and gentlemen we're
17:30
gonna come back with celebrity wire with
17:32
tracy g
17:47
you
#Arts & Entertainment