W. Kamau Bell isn't backing down on keeping politics in his act

Boston Globe

21-05-2025

'I still think that professionally, everything I'm doing is built on the operating system of being a stand-up comedian,' said Bell, on the phone from his Oakland home ahead of a tour stop Friday at The Wilbur. 'Even if I'm directing or hosting, I'm a stand-up who also knows how to direct or write or produce: 'I know how to handle this difficult situation, because I've done standup comedy forever.''
Not quite forever, but for most of his adult life. Now 52, Bell lived in Mattapan for a time during his childhood with his single mother, the scholar and author Janet Cheatham Bell. As a young man, he performed comedy around the Bay Area for several years before Chris Rock helped him land his first TV show, 'Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell,' on FX in 2012.
Advertisement
Bell's first comedy special, bearing the evocative title 'Semi-Prominent Negro,' aired on Showtime in 2016. The following year he published his first book, with even more precision in the title: 'The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6'4, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian.'
Advertisement
He's become known as a comedian who speaks bluntly about the forces that divide us as Americans, and the difficulties in overcoming them. Famously, he once
'I think because of the 21st century media landscape, comedians are a lot more like bands than we used to be,' Bell explained. 'Every crowd is different. If I'm playing Kill Tony's crowd' – that would be Tony Hinchcliffe, the insult comic who
This type of Balkanization, Bell said, is 'great for comedy. It's not a monolithic audience anymore. It used to be whoever watched [David] Letterman, that's the audience.'
In addition to his various creative projects, Bell has occasionally found himself at the center of the news cycle for unwanted reasons. In 2015, he was ejected from the patio of a Bay Area restaurant after stopping to say hello to his wife, Melissa (who is white), and her friends. The incident sparked
Last February, Bell made news again when he became the
Advertisement
Bell was boarding a plane to D.C. when he learned the news, he recalled. Rather than cancel his appearance, he chose to follow through with it.
'Trump said, 'I had to take it over because it had gotten too woke,'' Bell said. To which the comedian had a visceral reaction: 'You thought it was woke-y before, well, I'm going to have a woke-fest.' He joked that the W in his name stands for 'Wokey.' (It's actually Walter.)
'To me, it was an opportunity,' Bell said. 'I'm going to show up and look this right in the face. Is the National Guard going to be there? Is Trump going to be there?'
In the end, Bell's friend and longtime opening act, Dwayne Kennedy took the stage and said, 'This is the last time you're gonna see two Black guys in the Kennedy Center.'
'The crowd exploded,' Bell remembered. 'The crowd needed it, too.'
'Mr. Bell tore into the president!' the comedian recalled from the Times review. 'Mission accomplished. That was the best quote. I'd rather that than 'he was funny.''
Since February,
Advertisement
'The great thing about being a comedian is you literally can speak truth to power,' Bell said. 'Whereas if you're a violinist, it's not the same. If you're doing 'Hamilton,' it's not the same.'
At the Kennedy Center, he said, he did his best to stand 'in the giant footsteps' of comedians such as George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, and Dick Gregory.
'This is what we do,' he said.
Is it harder to ridicule Trump now than it was during his first term in office?
'You can still make fun of him,' Bell replied. 'I joke that my New Year's resolution was to be more petty.'
The president is still surrounded by 'bumbling fools,' Bell said, 'but they are bumbling fools that could turn us into North Korea West.
'That's not a joke,' he continued. 'The reason you make fun of it is so that we don't give away all our power to them. The more we can look them in the eye, it gives you the juice to figure out a way to go out there and hopefully save the country.'
As a Black man, Bell said, he understands that the fight against injustice is not new. Case in point: the Trump administration's threat to habeas corpus – the guarantee of unlawful detainment without due process.
'Black people have dealt with that since we got here,' Bell said. 'I don't want it to be thrown away, but let's not act like this country has never sunk to that level before.'
Advertisement
Laughing in the face of dire threats, he continued, 'is the tradition of my people. If we didn't turn this pain into art, we wouldn't still be here.'
By now, Bell's audience fully expects him to address all of the elephants in the room.
'If I were to say 'I'm not gonna talk about political events or the state of world,' I might get booed offstage,' he said.
If only he could be a benign, non-confrontational comedian, he said.
'I would love to be
'I'm just saying I feel compelled to do what I'm doing. And also, if you don't like what I'm doing, Brian Regan is right over there, at a bigger venue that's probably sold out.'
W. KAMAU BELL: WHO'S WITH ME?
7:30 p.m. Friday at The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston. Tickets $35-59.
James Sullivan can be reached at
.