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Cancellation, Conspiracies, Cocaine: Jamie Foxx, Sarah Silverman, Seth Meyers Let Loose on THR’s Stand-Up Comedy Roundtable
Cancellation, Conspiracies, Cocaine: Jamie Foxx, Sarah Silverman, Seth Meyers Let Loose on THR’s Stand-Up Comedy Roundtable
Their latest specials tackle themes of death (Sarah Silverman), loneliness (Roy Wood Jr.) and a stroke that nearly ended Jamie Foxx‘s life. But gather this sextet — which also includes Chelsea Handler, Hasan Minhaj and Seth Meyers — around a table with a few old-fashioneds, and the mood is anything but bleak. Over the course of an hour, the Stand-Up Emmy Roundtable covered everything from clones to cocaine to cancellation.
Looking back, what was your most combative or hilarious post-joke encounter?
JAMIE FOXX (NETFLIX’S WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS …) I did an Oprah joke …
CHELSEA HANDLER (NETFLIX’S THE FEELING) That didn’t go well?
FOXX No, it was great. When we did Ray, my management, they’re from Oakland, but those motherfuckers started talking in English accents, like, “Well, we’ve won the Oscar now …” But I wanted to go back to doing stand-up, and there was this rumor that me and Oprah were dating, and I thought, “Well, that’s a perfect joke.” The lady on my management team says, “Don’t do the joke.” I said, “I have to.” So, I’m at Madison Square Garden, and I say, “Since I won the Oscar, everybody’s saying I’m dating everybody. So, I’m laying in bed with Oprah …” (Pantomimes crowd hissing.) “And I lean over to Gayle and say, ‘Ain’t this shit crazy?’ ” (More hissing.) “Stedman, get us some juice!” And Gayle is in the audience!
SARAH SILVERMAN (NETFLIX’S POSTMORTEM) She didn’t like it?
FOXX She loved it. (In King’s voice.) “That was so funny, Jamie.”
SETH MEYERS (HBO’S SETH MEYERS: DAD MAN WALKING) Hardest I’ve ever bombed was at Madison Square Garden. It was that concert for Hurricane Sandy, and they’d asked me and Bill Hader to do a Stefon thing [from Saturday Night Live], and Bill wisely said, “I’m not going to do it.” Then they said, “What about Bobby Moynihan as Drunk Uncle?” So, we’d written this thing, and Chris Rock saw us backstage in costume and he goes, “You’re going to follow The Who with sketches?!” All of the confidence drained out of our faces, and sure enough, we went out and they were so angry.
FOXX Was I there that night?
MEYERS I don’t know, were you?
FOXX The Who performed, right?
MEYERS The Who, Arcade Fire … it’s weird that you don’t remember us. (Laughter.)
ROY WOOD JR. (HULU’S LONELY FLOWERS) Politics gets me in trouble sometimes.
How so?
WOOD It’s not so much a political joke as it is the early inclinations of the joke, where you haven’t figured out all the live wires. I remember being in San Francisco, this was week two of Russia versus Ukraine, and the premise of what I was trying to say was essentially that we spend money to support other wars but not wars in Black neighborhoods. But it came across as anti-Ukraine — [judging] from the email I got from the Ukrainian table that walked out. And you do finally get the joke together later. In hindsight, it’s probably one of those I should have done in New York on a Tuesday night.
HASAN MINHAJ (NETFLIX’S OFF WITH HIS HEAD) Work it out at a club, yeah.
WOOD Where nobody cares.
MINHAJ Sometimes you got to let the take cook, too.
SILVERMAN It’s always funny when some people are like, “I’m a political comic,” but then their jokes are like, “Donald Trump eats pussy like this.” (Wags her head back and forth with her tongue out.)
MEYERS You hadn’t quite worked that one out …
SILVERMAN I was working it out. (Laughter.)
Nikki Glaser said, “So many of us feel pressure to reinvent ourselves or to get more honest or reveal more about ourselves.” Who here feels that pressure?
SILVERMAN I have a full-length bush right now. (Whispers.) Please like me.
MEYERS Floor-length?
SILVERMAN It’s not floor-length. I don’t think I could grow it floor-length.
HANDLER You don’t know yet.
MEYERS Dare to dream.
SILVERMAN Well, Chelsea saw me once in a bathtub. Remember you came over and I was in my bathtub? It was the first time anyone ever saw my vagina from that angle, including myself.
FOXX My goodness!
SILVERMAN You go, “You shave it, and then you end there?” And I was like, “I don’t know, can you take a picture? I need to see it.”
MEYERS Seeing it through someone else’s eyes must be fascinating.
FOXX The fact that y’all are talking about your pussies is amazing.
HANDLER For me, comedy is very personal. I’m airing my personal grievances, my dirty laundry, the things that are embarrassing.
Is that pressure internal or external?
HANDLER I think it’s your choice as a creative. It’s like, what kind of comedy are you doing? Are you telling personal stories or are you telling jokes? And for each of us, it’s probably a little different.
MINHAJ We’re like musicians in that way. We have a relationship with our audience, so the expectation is different. Like when someone sees Jamie or Seth …
MEYERS Oh, when I saw Jamie’s [special], the amount I wished I’d almost died … (Laughter.)
FOXX I had a special deal for a long time, but I had nothing to talk about. What was I going to talk about? I was rich. I was behind my gates. I remember seeing Eddie Murphy at his house, this was around Coming 2 America, and he says he’s going to try to go do stand-up. I say to him, “You can’t.” He says, “Why?” I say, “This ain’t funny. Your house is too nice. Whatever that scent is …” He had a scent. You know, the shit that pumps through the house.
MEYERS Like a hotel?
FOXX Yeah. I said, “What is that smell?” He said, “It’s pomegranate.” I said, “The fact that you know that shit lets me know that you ain’t funny, bro.” It was too perfect. And that was me. I was living in that, so I didn’t have anything to talk about. Then this stroke happened, and I’m like, “Oh, this is a platform.” But I don’t want to have to have another stroke, even though we have [a deal for] another hour.
HANDLER You will if you have to …
WOOD I also feel like comedians have to go inward now because there’s such a glut of opinions out there.
SILVERMAN Yeah, your hot take on something in the world is still valid, but while you’re honing it over months to shoot a special, 1,800 people have recorded something in their car, and immediacy is where it’s at.
HANDLER That’s why it can be beneficial to be telling personal stories because there is no hot take on that — those are your stories. But Sarah, you set up premises and tell jokes. I don’t find your comedy particularly personal — you have a personal style, but you’re not revealing so much of yourself.
SILVERMAN Except this special is completely about my parents dying and everything in it is true. But you’re right, it was a real turn.
MEYERS Did it feel different?
SILVERMAN Yeah.
HANDLER At the time of this taping, Sarah’s special has not been released. Let’s put that out there!
Sarah, there is a moment in the middle of your hour where you stop and insert a masturbation joke …
SILVERMAN I talk about burying my parents and that I am not religious, but I’ve realized that grief has a lot of DNA as religion. We’re trying to find meaning in something that we don’t necessarily have a handle on, so I do feel like our loved ones are watching over us — maybe not all the time, but at least when we’re masturbating. And then I go, “I think I needed to think that in order to cum.” (Laughter.)
MEYERS Reinvention, for myself, would be a giant mistake, I would imagine, whereas refining …
SILVERMAN Oh, I think you should consider reinvention.
MEYERS And you’re alone with that? Or do a lot of people say that behind my back?
SILVERMAN Just good friends. (Laughter.)
MEYERS But based on that story, you might be talking about personal stuff, but that’s still a Sarah Silverman joke. So, it’s more like refining.
WOOD I also enjoy consuming that type of stand-up because I’m learning more new and interesting things. I’m not anti-topical humor, but my palate has changed. Hasan went through something extremely unique in terms of character assassination, so what are the jokes that come from that? [A 2023 New Yorker profile alleging that he fabricated or exaggerated elements of stories he tells in his stand-up.]
MINHAJ Yeah, I had to go through a comedy audit by TurboTax, which is its own thing. Make sure you file, everybody, and bring your receipts. (Laughter.) But also there’s a critique aspect to it that’s very new. That just comes with what we do now. The art form is ubiquitous and on the internet. It used to be something you could do in the West Village, and now everybody around the world can see it, and so you’ve just got to be aware of that.
At what point did you see the comedic potential in that experience?
MINHAJ One of the first jokes that came to me was when I called a buddy, and I was like, “How bad is it?” And he was like, “The article is bad, but the photos are good.” I was like, “That’s fucking hilarious.” It’s also very funny to fail so bad that you bring back Jon Stewart. That’s objectively funny.
WOOD That’s right! You lost the [Daily Show hosting] gig.
MINHAJ It’d be like you (to Meyers) dying and bringing back the ghost of Johnny Carson. Like, that’s pretty awesome.
MEYERS To be honest, a lot of people are probably really happy at how it turned out.
WOOD Can I also say from the Daily Show side, when that came out and they were like, “Yeah, Hasan’s not going to be the host,” nobody would give any details and we were all trying to figure out, “Well, if it’s not going to be Hasan, who’s it going to be? Should I stay? Well, what happened to Hasan?” It was just, “We’re going to reopen the search.” Nobody could even put into words what it was you were being accused of.
SILVERMAN Because he did not do anything!
MINHAJ But it’s like the NBA. You get traded. It happens.
FOXX What’d they tell you?
MINHAJ Oh bro, that’s the showbiz call. You’ve had the showbiz call.
FOXX No, I never got that call. I got an Oscar and a Grammy …
What’s the showbiz call?
MINHAJ It’s a very loving rejection.
SILVERMAN “We’re such fans of your work …”
HANDLER “We love you …”
MINHAJ But I think everything in life, good or bad, is fodder. I mean, Jamie almost died …
FOXX I was doing so many jokes in the hospital. That’s the only way I could get through it. I’m a comic, so even when I was heavily sedated, and they gave me OxyContin, Dilantin and morphine at the same time …
MINHAJ They gave you that Sackler special.
FOXX Yeah, it was, “This is for your pain, and this is so you don’t remember it.” So, they Men in Black-ed me, and I’m fucked up, and this isn’t funny, but I snuck in my phone because I didn’t know what the outside world was saying and I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that I had a stroke. I’m in fucking perfect shape. [I see things like,] “Puffy tried to kill me.” No, Puffy didn’t try to kill me. When they said I was a clone, that made me flip. I’m sitting in the hospital bed, like, “These bitch-ass motherfuckers are trying to clone me.” And then I saw me walk into my room, but I’m white, so I see the white me. The next morning, I said, “I know what’s up, you’re trying to clone me and make me white so I’ll sell better overseas.” The psychiatrist says, “Are you all right?” And I say, “Am I all right or am I all white? I saw you trying to get the white motherfucking Jamie Foxx and it ain’t going to happen.” He just calmly goes, “I think we’re going to lower your dosage.”
WOOD Wait, you read your conspiracy theory and you said, “Yes”?!
FOXX Bro, I was on another planet.
HANDLER Clearly!
FOXX But I think we’re over-serious-ing comedy. And it’s a little unfair sometimes — trying to do what politicians should be doing.
SILVERMAN Well, the standards comedians are held to as opposed to the standards politicians are held to is absurd.
HANDLER The pressure to constantly talk about Trump, it’s like, we’re also comedians. We’re also supposed to provide people with a reprieve from thinking about Trump for a minute, for an hour, for however long your show is, and you want to provide that.
MEYERS That’s why I also do stand-up. I’m so tired of [talking about Trump on Late Night].
HANDLER It’s like, everyone knows how I feel, I can’t just keep banging this drum.
WOOD But then it’s, “You aren’t using your platform enough to speak about the issues.”
FOXX Fuck ’em. The last shit I did, I talked about the fact that I didn’t know I had gray hairs on my nuts. And I did 30 minutes on this.
HANDLER I could’ve told you that!
FOXX I never thought to look under there. (Laughter.) But I think you should just be funny. I know sometimes the chatter gets to you. That’s why when I was trying to do my routine, I couldn’t let anybody come watch. It’s also hard because everybody thinks everything we’re saying is literal.
MINHAJ Correct.
FOXX Like, when I said I wasn’t dating white girls anymore, I didn’t really mean that.
MINHAJ This is a big admission on the record, bro.
FOXX Every Black girl was like, “Thank you, Jamie!” Then they see me with my white girl.
MINHAJ I married a brown woman, so I kept it 100 percent. Love is love, but I did my part.
What’s an unpopular opinion you hold about comedy?
WOOD It’s hard for me to go, “Well, I don’t like this or that.” It’s probably because I can’t do it. Like, I’m not good at crowd work, so yeah, I hate on it. But it’s all what the streets have chosen.
MINHAJ The art form is bigger than ever, so when people critique it, I’m like, there are more comedians doing theaters and arenas than ever, so take the good with the bad.
FOXX And it’s two worlds. There’s the 281 comments that we think is the whole world, and then there’s Jo Koy selling out fucking arenas. It’s we’re canceled here, but you’re doing stadiums there.
WOOD It’s Shane Gillis.
HANDLER It’s a medium that’s been pretty unscathed by cancel culture. You get to say whatever you want, however you want to say it — and it’s up to your audience whether they’re coming for it.
How good are you all at predicting how your comedy will land?
SILVERMAN I’m always surprised with specials. The last two I did, the first night [we shot], you’re just excited you got it. The second night feels magical because you’re not in your head anymore. So, you go, “We’ll just use the whole second night.” Then the editor’s like, “No, I’m liking the first night.”
MEYERS Same thing happened to me. I think it’s the precision of being in your head. The butterflies actually help you focus.
FOXX I learned that when I took some enhancements to go onstage. I thought since Richard Pryor did enhancements …
HANDLER What are enhancements?
SILVERMAN Like cocaine?
FOXX Some people call it cocaine. Some people call it enhancements.
WOOD No one calls it enhancements.
FOXX I want to go on the record to say I hate cocaine. I just like how it smells. (Laughter.) Whatever it was that I did, I thought, “OK, this is going to get me over the hump.” So, I went offstage and said, “I killed that shit.” And this is when Marcus King was my manager and I said, “King, I know we recorded that, let me see.” He says, “You want to see it?” He played it back and I [did not kill it].
HANDLER Yeah, you know what doesn’t go well with comedy is cocaine.
FOXX But we’ve all had those sets where you’re maybe too loose or you take too much time …
HANDLER I always used to go, “When am I not going to be nervous?” Then you find out being nervous means you care. Being nervous and overthinking things is why you deliver an A-plus set in your first show, because you care.
FOXX I thought I was in Hollywood — I can’t believe no one’s had any enhancements! Fuck everyone at this table. (Laughter.)
HANDLER Oh, I’ve had plenty of enhancements, don’t worry.
WOOD If it makes you feel any better, I do shrooms sometimes.
FOXX OK, well goddamn … y’all are like (in a shocked voice), “Oh God. There’s coke in Hollywood?!”
WOOD Not before a performance though!
HANDLER I’m going to start calling things enhancements now.
FOXX I got some enhancements in my pocket.
Anyone get any particularly bad or misinformed advice?
WOOD I get advice after the shit has aired, which is too late. Like, Chris Rock was very complimentary of my last special.
MINHAJ That’s on you for not sending [it to him earlier].
WOOD But I can’t ask Chris Rock, “Will you watch my whole special, please?”
MINHAJ He’ll watch!
WOOD For where I am on the comedy totem pole, especially in Black comedy, I’m posing on the OGs. Like, I know I got one call a year with D.L. Hughley on a premise. With George Wallace, maybe I got two calls a year.
HANDLER I also think getting so many opinions isn’t good for you.
MINHAJ My rule is almost like lunch. The right amount of people to go, “Yo, what are we getting for lunch?” is four people. Eight? That’s how you end up at Sweetgreen.
WOOD And when do you listen to yourself and not to the people advising you?
FOXX When you get old. The execution is still good, but my hunches aren’t.
How do you know?
FOXX I did this movie in Canada, and it was a mostly white production, and I think I was by myself and they were like, “Oh Jamie! We can’t breathe [we’re laughing so hard].” And I’m thinking I’m killing this shit, right? Then when we watched the movie and Chris Spencer was like, “N—a, what the fuck is this?” I was like, “It ain’t good?” He says, “N—a, no.” I got a walking ovation. People got up and conveniently went to the bathroom.
WOOD Black folks tell you the truth.
FOXX It’s a different world. Remember the movie Set It Off?
MINHAJ The bank heist movie with Jada Pinkett Smith?
FOXX Yeah, I watched it at the premiere, a mostly white crowd. “Oh, wow, this is amazing.” And I was with them. Then I went and saw that shit at Universal with some Black people? None of that.
Are there places you fear audiences won’t go with you?
HANDLER I’m on my way to do a European tour to apologize on behalf of our country, and I hope they’re with me. But we’re all pretty known entities at this point. So, when your audience comes, they know what they’re coming for and they want it.
MEYERS But I definitely have a fear that people buy tickets for me sometimes with the expectation that it’ll be a show about politics. And hopefully the show is funny enough that if they had that expectation, they’re not let down. But I worry.
WOOD Do you read your Ticketmaster reviews?
MEYERS No. Don’t do that.
MINHAJ “The parking at the Chicago theater was horrendous. Then we walked in, $12 for beer?!”
WOOD Last Comic Standing made us live tweet in 2010, and you see all the worst shit about you in real time for eight straight weeks. So internet hate doesn’t bother me, but the idea of people going, “I thought he would’ve been more political,” I’m like, “Well, no, that’s the CNN thing.” [He hosts CNN’s Have I Got News for You.] But then for some shows, I’ll change the batting order of the bits, and if I got 10 minutes on politics, I’ll frontload that. Get it out the way, give you what you thought you wanted.
FOXX I don’t like to read the comments because it just fucks with your head.
SILVERMAN Try being a woman. Anything people can vote for, it’s just zero, zero, zero. It’s so stupid to even look …
MEYERS I did see one about me that made me laugh. I’m very cognizant of being a white comedian over 50, and someone wrote, “Every white comedian over 50 either becomes anti-trans or a big ol’ jar of mayonnaise.” And I will say when I was 25, I was like, “Oh God, comedians reach an age where they just start telling jokes about their kids and their family.” Then one day, you [realize], “Oh man, that’s what I am.” At least I leaned mayo. (Laughter.)
Do you all feel like Hollywood knows what to do with you, Jamie notwithstanding?
FOXX (Turns to Handler.) We need to be in some movies.
HANDLER We have to reenact 50 Cent and my love story. [Handler and 50 Cent dated.]
WOOD (To Foxx.) You as 50 in the Chelsea Handler story …
MEYERS (To Handler.) I can’t wait for you to call 50 and be like, “I’m playing me.”
FOXX I saw that [relationship] and I was like, “Wow. He made it.” Because I had G-Unit jeans.
WOOD We all did!
FOXX No, I had G-Unit jeans, G-Unit sneakers, I even broke a record at an Atlanta club by playing “In Da Club” 78 times in a row when it came out. That’s how big of a 50 fan I was, so when I heard, I was like, “Oh, wow, two of my favorite people.”
MEYERS When I first moved to L.A., I did two shifts at a sushi restaurant. (To Foxx.) Do you remember, it was on Sunset and there was karaoke?
FOXX Yeah. Every Tuesday.
MEYERS At the beginning of my shift, at 6, somebody was like, “Jamie Foxx is here doing karaoke.” I had just moved to L.A., and I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m seeing this.” Then the end of my shift, at 11, I went up and you were still onstage. Like, five hours of karaoke.
FOXX Yeah. Every Tuesday.
WOOD Why?!
FOXX Because it was the thing to do. (Laughter.) I was shooting my show, The Jamie Foxx Show, from 6 to 9 …
WOOD You had a job?!
FOXX Yeah, and I’d say, “I got to be done by 9, karaoke starts at 9:45.” Sometimes we had NSYNC members singing Backstreet Boys. Backstreet Boys singing NSYNC songs. We had Redman, Method Man. Hugh Hefner would come.
What does Hugh Hefner sing at karaoke?
FOXX No, he was just my spiritual adviser. We’d all have like 72 apple martinis, it was a moment. (To Meyers.) You were there.
MEYERS I was …
Did you get up onstage, Seth?
MEYERS No, I was working.
FOXX One night, me and Bobby Brown, we’re doing our thing, we’re fucked up, and we’re doing “Don’t Be Cruel” …
WOOD In a sushi restaurant. On a Tuesday.
FOXX At Miyagi’s.
MEYERS That’s it!
HANDLER Oh, I remember Miyagi’s.
FOXX So, we’re partying, and I say, “I got to use the bathroom.” And while I’m in the bathroom, I hear, “Now, Jamie, let me tell you something, I don’t do this for nobody. I usually get a million dollars to sing a song.” It’s Whitney Houston. But it’s not camera phone days. So, I come out and grab a …
MINHAJ Handy cam?
FOXX Yes. And Whitney Houston goes up, and she starts … (singing) “And I will always love you.” So, I film Whitney Houston singing whatever the name of that song is.
SILVERMAN “I Will Always Love You.” (Laughter.)
FOXX So now I got the tape. And I go back to my crib, we’re having a little afterparty, and all of a sudden I hear this (knock, knock). It’s Bobby Brown. He’s like, “I got to take that tape.” I said, “Bobby, I don’t have it.” “Well, I got to take something.” So, he goes in my closet, and he’s taking clothes. He’s matching outfits and shit.
WOOD As collateral?
MEYERS He had to take a million dollars.
HANDLER [Should’ve] taken the enhancements.
WOOD But you had the tape.
Wait, where’s the tape now?
FOXX I have the tape. But it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Why? YouTube.
MEYERS It would be pretty cool if I was walking through the background with a couple of trays of tempura. (Laughter.)
This story appeared in the May 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.