You can call W. Kamau Bell a stand-up comedian, a podcast and radio host, an author. He’s all of those things plus the reigning Celebrity Jeopardy! champ. But what sets Bell apart from most multi-hyphenate entertainers is his social activism. He doesn’t just joke about how messed up things are right now; he actively tries to make change.
The Emmy and Peabody Award winner will be appearing Friday night at Strathmore Music Center in North Bethesda, Maryland, riffing on current events as part of his “Who’s With Me?” tour.
“I’m terminally online. I’m an information junkie. I keep up with the state of the news,” Bell said. “I’ve been on stage and had my phone go off as news broke, and been like, ‘Did everybody else see this?'”
He said not all his jokes are derived from current events, but it is an essential component of his shows.
“I’ve developed a style and an act and a point of view and a brand that if I don’t talk about the news, people are gonna be like, ‘What happened to Kamau? Did he have a stroke?'”
Bell’s last trip to the D.C.-area was quite memorable.
“The funny thing is, I was in D.C. proper, at a place formerly known as the Kennedy Center last year, the day after Trump announced he was taking it over,” he said. “The new tenants hadn’t moved in yet, but everybody was preparing for it. And so I was, when I was there, the thing that was so interesting about that show is a lot of people were wondering if I was going to cancel it. And I did it because I was on the plane as I found out he was taking it over. And also, as a comedian, we’re in the best position to do the show in the place like that, because we can talk directly to what’s going on.”
This time around, Bell said his performance should be a more joyful occasion.
“I remember the looks on people’s faces as I left, because people were like, they were mourning for what they weren’t going to have with the Kennedy Center going away,” Bell said. “I’m happy to see those people again in a new location where we can have a good time without feeling scared about the state of that specific building.”
Bell gained widespread popularity and critical acclaim for his original series “United Shades of America,” which ran for seven seasons on CNN beginning in 2016. Bell wanted to start the series off with a bang, so he chose to meet with the Ku Klux Klan for his first episode.
“The episode where I hung out with several members of the KKK, which, let’s be clear, we shot that in 2014, it was. Donald Trump had said he was running for president, but nobody took him seriously at that point,” Bell said. “It aired in like, spring of 2016, so the election hadn’t happened yet, and at the time, people were like, ‘Why would you spend so much time talking to the Klan? Like, this is not real?’ And at the time, I was like, ‘No, it’s real.’ And then we find out how real that force is in America through everything that’s going on now.”
Fans can expect Bell’s “hit songs” and lots of other jokes too.
“It’s either funny or it’s interesting or shocking, or it’s compelling or it’s nothing,” Bell said.
When it comes to his audiences, Bell said he has a certain “type” he prefers.
“Every comedian is different. So you know, Sebastian Maniscalco is going to want a different crowd than I want, and I think that’s fine,” Bell said. “I live in the Bay Area. The Bay Area is very ethnically, racially, socioeconomically mixed. I like crowds like that because then less groupthink develops, right? And people can just sit down and laugh.”
Bell said he knows his role is to make people laugh and think and to allow them to take a break from the world.
“I would invite people who feel that the world is like attacking them from all sides, or feel like the news attacking them from all sides and feel like everybody’s yelling at them,” he said. “This is a good place. I find a lot of times people come there and they laugh, and then afterwards they just sort of hang out in the halls and hang out in the lobby and just talk to each other.”
Tickets for W. Kamau Bell at Strathmore on Friday at 7:30 p.m. are available at his website and Strathmore’s website.
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