by bill biss“Make them laugh…make them laugh. Don’t you know everyone wants to laugh.”
Those lyrics could easily be Wanda Sykes’ mantra. The comedian, actress and author has taken her perspective on life, LGBT rights, and the current issues at hand and turned it into comedy gold.
The out activist and mother of two twins is coming to the Starlight Theatre at Pala Casino on Friday, August 27.
The Rage Monthly thought it would give you the heads up early, as her show is sure to be a sell-out.
Here, Wanda Sykes shares a bit of her own brand of humor, her take on LGBT rights and charity work and just why she became a comedian in the first place.
The Rage Monthly: You have a comedic gift for bringing light to a situation. Your original take on gay marriage, for instance, really makes sense in a comedic way. How would you describe your style of comedy writing and what subjects draw you in to talk about on your current tour?
Wanda Sykes: Oh boy. I guess my style is grounded in reality. I always like to start some place where it’s either something that’s going on socially or personally, current events or whatever and start there.
It’s even better if there is a bit of hypocrisy going on (laughter). I really love that, especially with politicians or the people in power to bring down. Yeah.
Rage: I love your performance in Monster-In-Law.
WS: Thank you. Oh, thank you.
Rage: Are you familiar with the actress of the 1950s and 1960s known as Thelma Ritter? There is a touch of her in your character.
WS: Oh yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I love Thelma Ritter. I can see that comparison.
Rage: Your work for charity…Equality California and the likes, that really strikes home for LGBT people. Can you explain your passion for doing this?
WS: I think as I’ve grown as a person and as a performer, the work in the LGBT community has been even more important to me. Especially now, that I got married and I started a family, those rights…they touch home, especially for my children.
The more I got comfortable with being myself and being out, it gave me the strength and the passion to fight for rights not just for myself but for the community.
Rage: I was lucky to be in that window of gay marriage. I got married on October 18 of 2008.
WS: Oh great. A week before I did.
Rage: One interesting aspect of your talk show was that you imbibed on air. Was this an idea of yours to go with the flow and make the discussions more relaxed?
WS: Oh yeah, that was mandatory (laughter). When I got the show, I wanted it to be like people coming over to my place and hanging out, very relaxed. We drink at my house. My friends come over and we have drinks, so that’s what I wanted to do on the show.
Rage: Yeah. We have a Sunday garden chat where that’s pretty much the routine.
WS: Oh nice! Tea parties…uh huh (laughter). I’m surprised you can get the conversation out with all that loud music behind it. [Wanda does her best beat box sounds).
Rage: Yeah. I’m in charge of the music and they are always telling me to turn it down. When you are at home with your wife, do you both watch the same television shows together?
WS: We do and especially this last year, we had such a limited time of when we were able to watch TV together. So, we’d pick the show and say, “Okay. This is going to be the show that we watch.”
Amazing Race is one of our things. You really don’t have to follow anything or think…you just watch it and enjoy. We laugh and try and put ourselves in that position as to who would screw up that challenge.
We also started following Flash Forward and of course, it gets cancelled (laughter). We try to pick a few shows and just TiVo it and stick with that. If not that and the TV is on, we are watching the news or HGTV. We watch a lot of that.
Rage: My housemate, Tim wanted to ask, “From your heart, what was it like to meet President Obama and his wife, Michelle?”
WS: It was incredible! They have this ability to really connect with you in a short amount of time, even when they’re surrounded by
hundreds of people. We met them at a reception before the dinner.
There had to be about 800 people in this room but when he saw me, he made direct eye contact and he was like, “Hey. There’s one of my favorite comedians right there.” We talked and he had these people draped around him trying to get his attention.
The first lady too…they are able to connect. They’re really there in that moment with you. It’s not looking around to see “Oh. There’s Tom Cruise. Let me go say ‘hi’ to him.” They are just amazing,
amazing people.
amazing people.
Rage: You’ve managed to create such a potpourri of entertainment with television, stand-up, films and your book. I think that’s phenomenal. Do you have any plans after your tour to create another book?
WS: I’m not ruling it out. I have a few ideas I’m knocking around so…we’ll see. I really feel like I need something major to happen. Like maybe I’ll go into rehab for something (laughter). I need something to sell it. So, I’m thinking something like a good rehab…who knows?
Rage: I’m really sorry about no new New Adventures of Old Christine. Will you share a bit of the experience of working with Julia Louis-Dreyfus?
WS: She is amazing and just incredibly talented. I love how she just enjoyed doing the work…sweet, funny, sincere, gracious and just a professional. She enjoyed showing up.
She enjoyed rehearsing. She wants to try things…whatever to make it funnier. She was just great to work with, I’m really gonna miss all of them.
Rage: What motivated you to start doing stand-up comedy and how do you feel that you have grown over the years with your current tour?
WS: I was always into doing something with comedy but I went to school and got a marketing degree. Pretty much followed the path that most people take…especially growing up in the Maryland, D.C. area who work for the government.
But, I was just bored and I knew there was something else that I was supposed to be doing.
One night I was looking through my high school yearbook and people just wrote everything about how funny I was, how I need to be on stage and blah, blah, blah.
So, I heard about a talent show and comedy was one of the categories. I went down and auditioned and took that and everything just made sense to me. It was like “Okay. I know how to write jokes.”
Rage: You sure as heck do.
WS: I think the first three or four years, I was just doing what I thought a comedian should do. I was doing more of an impersonation of a comic. It really wasn’t anything personal or my point of view. It was just how I’d seen other comics do it.
It wasn’t until I just got older and wiser and more confident that I sort of put myself out there more, instead of putting the jokes out first. I became more personalized.
I think that’s just how it goes…the more comfortable you are with yourself, the easier it is to open up and dig a little deeper to give a point of view. Yeah. I think that’s how I evolved.
Wanda Sykes
Friday, August 27
Starlight Theater at Pala Casino and Resort
Palacasino.com
