Latest news with #LonelyFlowers
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
These Are The 21 Best Stand-Up Specials You Can Stream On Hulu Right Now
In case you missed it, at the end of 2024, Hulu announced its newest stand-up comedy brand: Hularious. Starting in November 2024, Hulu began releasing a new comedy special every month, and so far everything really has been hularious. Here's a look at Hulu's newest collection of original stand-up specials you can watch right now: Gaffigan: The Skinny (2024) Lane: The Al Dente Special (2025) Okatsuka: Father (2025) Burr: Drop Dead Years (2025) Wood Jr.: Lonely Flowers (2025) Glazer: Human Magic (2024) Distefano: It's Just Unfortunate (2025) Kirson: I'm the Man (2025) In addition to their original specials, Hularious has also launched a curated collection of licensed stand-up specials ranging from iconic comedy specials to recent releases. Here's a look at some of the other specials you can watch on Hulu right now: Sykes: Tongue Untied (2003) Nanjiani: Beta Male (2013) Pharoah: Can I Be Me? (2015) McHale: Live From Pyongyang (2019) Morgan: So Yummy (2018) Black: Thanks for Risking Your Life (2020) Berlant: Cinnamon in the Wind (2022) Brady: Power & Chaos (2022) Kondabolu: Vacation Baby (2023) Zamata: The First Woman (2023) Live with Daphnique Springs (2025) Cook: Mark Your Territory (2025) Live with Ken Flores (2025) You can check out the rest of Hulu's collection of stand-up comedy specials on their Hularious hub, here!
New York Times
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Comedian Looking for Something All of America Can Laugh At
Partway through his latest special, 'Lonely Flowers,' the comedian Roy Wood Jr. tells the story of the time he accidentally hired a white photographer. Or, as he corrects himself, he hired a photographer who he did not think would be white until he showed up. Whenever he travels to a city for a gig, he explains, artists who live there reach out to him to offer their services. He respects their hustle and sometimes accepts those offers, like the one he got from a guy who wanted to take some pictures of him. 'Come on take the pictures,' Wood wrote back. 'I'll see you next week, Deon!' Wood drops Deon's name casually, letting the audience pick up on the joke before he has to explain it. As they start to lose it, Wood joins them in astonishment. Pitching his body forward, throwing his arms out and bugging his eyes, he yells: 'You see what I'm saying? I don't know no white Deons either! Never met one!' Deon ends up being a bald, unimaginably chiseled military veteran with menacing tattoos consisting of 'an animal, a death threat then a Bible verse' decorating his arms, the kind of white man that a Black person might not want to be left alone with. Wood is terrified of him — he makes sure to pay him up front — but he finds him unexpectedly sympathetic. It turns out that after returning from service abroad, Deon feels intensely isolated, and photography gives him a sense of purpose. Onstage, Wood is unhurried, an amiable man who, despite being 46, has the countenance of a churchgoing grandfather who still starches his Sunday suit. He is a master of the leisurely, even comforting, story that plays to his audience's expectations of what is good, kind and virtuous, only to foil those expectations with a well-timed word or mischievous glance. When I first watched 'Lonely Flowers,' I could feel this story about Deon teetering toward the saccharine: Maybe we can all get along, or at least get along better, if we just listen to one another. But then Wood lets us in on a disturbing detail: 'I like the camera,' Deon told him, ' 'cause, you know, I get to look down the crosshair and still shoot people.' Wood's look of earnest sympathy dissolves, and we're left wondering how to feel about Deon after all. Then the joke rounds yet another corner: Wood turns serious again, recalling how sincerely Deon thanked him in the greenroom, shaking his hand firmly and looking him right in the eye. 'I was like, Wooowww,' Wood says, his voice dropping to a stage whisper, seemingly humbled by the interaction. But then we reach the other side of his pause: 'He was about to kill some people.' Wood imagines Deon at home, cleaning his rifle right up to the moment Wood contacts him. 'We'll never know how many lives I saved,' Wood says triumphantly, 'because I took a chance on a white man!' The story is typical of the special, a civic-minded cri de coeur on social atomization and the degradation of communal life in America, though it's a lot funnier than that makes it sound. Wood's complaint comes from a roguish sensibility that was shaped by his unique artistic trajectory: He got his start on the Black Southern comedy circuit and eventually made his way onto Trevor Noah's iteration of 'The Daily Show,' where he filtered contemporary social issues through his downbeat, absurdist logic. His humor now straddles those worlds: the bawdy, contrarian style of Black comedy institutions like 'Comic View' and 'Def Comedy Jam,' with its love for life's vulgar, politically murky particulars, and the bien-pensant liberal comedy popularized by 'The Daily Show' and its descendants. Though he became famous for his 'Daily Show' work, the Black vernacular is his bread and butter. You see it in the exaggerated physicality he adopts in the Deon story, the way he thrusts his head out and stares down the audience with an expression reminiscent of Bernie Mac; or in the distinctly Southern phrasing he'll adopt when playing one of his many characters. The cross-pollination yields a brand of comedy whose values are clear but that never loses sight of life's unpredictability. Where so much of contemporary comedy is steeped in certainty, trading jokes for smart points, Wood is interested in the moments that leave us humbled and confused. With 'Lonely Flowers,' Wood is taking that sensibility to a national audience now mired in a politics of mutually assured destruction. He is wearied but stays firm in the notion that his job isn't to badger and demean the half of the country that disagrees with him. He isn't necessarily hopeful. The special turns on a shouted refrain: 'We ain't gonna make it!' There's an unspoken question at the special's heart, though: In the meantime, as we meander toward whatever it is that awaits us, how are we going to live together? In person, Wood is funny but sedate, speaking in a deadpan carried along by a prankish undercurrent. Last fall we met in Midtown Manhattan, where he was preparing to tape an episode of 'Have I Got News for You,' a CNN political game show that he hosts alongside the comedians Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black. After makeup and a haircut, he ran downstairs for a late lunch before returning to his dressing room, where he strategized with writers about how to introduce the day's guest: the former Republican Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger. The problem was how to make Kinzinger's career trajectory — following a vote to impeach Donald Trump, he resigned from the House of Representatives in 2021 rather than run for re-election — funny. 'He's the former Republican congressman who once tried …' he muttered before stopping, his voice rising into an exploratory vaudevillian shout. 'Who once voted to impeach Trump. He lost his job, and now he's stuck doing shows like this!' Without pausing, he wondered if it was all right to wade into self-deprecating humor and searched for the precise turn of phrase that might make the audience giggle rather than groan at a political tragedy. 'Have I Got News for You,' an adaptation of a long-running British show, is Wood's first television project since he left 'The Daily Show' in the fall of 2023. As a correspondent, he became beloved for his irreverent takes on the racial politics of the Black Lives Matter era. His set at the 2023 White House Correspondents' Dinner combined an earnest defense of journalists and their profession with piercing humor. (After a joke falls flat, he quips that the reaction doesn't faze him. 'I'm like Mitch McConnell: I ain't got no soul.') The dinner created a groundswell of popular support, with critics and fans casting him as a favorite to succeed Noah on 'The Daily Show.' But as the process dragged on and Comedy Central's intentions remained unclear, Wood was anxious that he would miss the window to have his own show. Wood was careful in speaking about why he left 'The Daily Show.' 'That is the great inevitability of every job: Sooner or later you leave,' Wood told me. 'Thinking about what's next after eight years was not a premature thought.' If he was going to secure another hosting gig, he decided, he had to make his move before the 2024 presidential election got into full swing. Wood isn't one to let an opportunity slip through his fingers. 'I ain't from the land of dreams,' he told me this past fall. He was raised in Memphis, Tenn., and Birmingham, Ala., and his father was Roy Wood Sr., a radio-journalism pioneer who reported on Black platoons in Vietnam, South African apartheid and the civil rights movement for the Black Chicago radio station WVON before helping found the National Black Network, the first Black-owned radio news service, where he was the news director. His mother, Joyce Dugan, was a respected teacher. Though his parents were highly regarded in the community, Wood's childhood was sometimes shaped by a sense of scarcity and limitation. 'We were raised by people who were fortunate to be able to vote, to drink from the same water fountain,' Wood said. 'They were so exhausted from that battle that all they wanted was a house and a fair wage. The idea of dreaming beyond that was not commonplace, and in a lot of instances it was frowned upon. In the South, you dare to dream beyond the horizon.' His father's work presented one model for how Wood might dare to dream. When he enrolled at Florida A&M University in 1996, he decided he wanted to work in broadcast journalism, a major that required he take classes in public speaking. He discovered that every time he spoke in front of his classmates, he got laughs without even trying. Wood liked the feeling those laughs gave him, and he started studying the acts of comedians like Adele Givens, Sinbad, Chris Rock and D.L. Hughley. George Carlin, he says, was canon for the fearlessness of his topics and concision with which he expressed opinions that audiences might otherwise find outré. 'I used to listen to 'You Are All Diseased' once a week, listening to the wordplay and the inflections. It was just perfect. Then I would immediately throw on some Master P.' In 1998, Wood was arrested after buying clothing with stolen credit cards and was suspended indefinitely from Florida A&M. This youthful indiscretion yielded an unexpected blessing: Wood still received the financial aid he would have used for his tuition, and that money — along with a job as a server at the buffet restaurant Golden Corral in Tallahassee — bankrolled his fledgling comedy career. He took buses across the South, sleeping in bus stations between gigs. When he returned to Birmingham to perform at an open mic at the Stardome, one of his mother's students saw him and told her about it. She was infuriated and insisted that he focus on getting back in school. Wood eventually did, and even graduated, but he didn't quit stand-up. Instead he drove out — in a car his mother bought — to cities like Charlotte, sleeping in the passenger seat when he had to. Sometimes, when venues canceled on him, he would take day-labor jobs on construction sites to pay for gas. Wood's style was molded by the difficulty of finding his voice in Black clubs across the South. His own middle-class experience of Blackness wasn't necessarily aligned with his audience's, and his early jokes — routines about the annoyance of a roommate's eating your food, for example — didn't always land. Working those rooms taught him how to craft observational humor in a way that would resonate for everyone from older Black professionals to gang members. But he also learned not to talk down to people. 'A Black audience will go with you anywhere on any journey,' he said, 'if you make it funny.' He learned to embrace his off-kilter humor without condescending. 'That's what I know about,' he said. 'I don't know about selling weed. That's not my experience, and my job as a comedian is to present to you my experience. And mine is a weird one.' Eventually he found himself in front of increasingly diverse audiences, too. 'One night I'm performing for drug dealers, the next night I'm performing for coal miners in eastern Kentucky — what are the unifiers?' he recalled. His task, as he saw it, was to find the joke that would make both groups laugh. One of his best jokes from those days, he told me, was about being pulled over by the police and figuring out whether or not you're going to jail based on how long it takes for an officer to get back to you after he runs your ID. It was a perfect bit, he said, because it could unify the room. 'White people got friends that go to jail!' he said. 'Especially rednecks. Poor white people deal with the same stuff that Black people do.' Wood's focus on social issues was a natural outgrowth of that comedic approach, which he hones to perfection in 'Lonely Flowers.' Early on, he riffs on the absurdity of shopping at stores where it's impossible to find someone who works there. 'Only time you see an employee at the grocery store is when you do self-checkout wrong,' he jokes before launching into a chorus of voices: the checkout machine telling you that you made a mistake, the tottering and elderly employee overseeing the checkout stations, the grocery-store cashiers who provide some of the only social interaction for lonely and unstable people. This morphs into a bit about pharmacies where everything is under lock and key and you have to fend off other customers after you find an employee to unlock all the merchandise. 'When you find an employee in the store, you got to hold they hand,' he says, holding a phantom hand, strutting, warning off phantom rival suitors with a possessive stare. Wood's critique — the way technology has left us prone to dysfunctional loneliness — is trenchant, but his approach is fundamentally goofy. There's a strange way, too, in which the goofiness reinforces the melancholy at the heart of his joke, a yearning for an entire range of interactions that have fallen to the wayside in a world that doesn't have use for them. When I called Wood in late January, he was midway through a mini-tour through Wyoming, Colorado and Oklahoma, driving to six Air Force bases in nine days. Before that, he attended the premiere of 'Love, Brooklyn,' in which he has a supporting role, at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. A few days after the mini-tour, he would visit his alma mater in Tallahassee and continue to New York to begin the new season of 'Have I Got News for You.' I wondered why a comedian of his stature would submit himself to such a grueling run. 'It feels familiar, it keeps me grounded,' he told me. Those trips reminded him of his early life on the road, when he would perform at the Comedy Zone in Ozark, a small town near an Army base in southern Alabama. Those days put him in touch with the profound weirdness of America. In Ozark, he said, 'the town is troops and foreigners. Wherever you got deployed, you came home with a wife of that race, so it's one of the most diverse cities in Alabama — Asians and Indians and Arabs, and they all sound like they're from Alabama because they came over here, didn't speak English, and the English that they learned was Alabama English.' From Ozark, he would move on to audiences of college students at Fort Walton Beach, Fla., and retirees in Biloxi, Miss. 'And then Tuesday I'm in Atlanta at Uptown with Earthquake and Nard Holston' — two popular Black comics — 'and a couple strippers in the club, booing me.' Contemporary comedy, he said, doesn't necessitate that kind of encounter. Social media, podcasting and platforms like YouTube have changed the landscape, allowing comedians to target audiences that will be most responsive to their humor and make substantial money doing it. In a world where you can earn half a million dollars off a podcast, he said, why would you go to Ozark for $150? For him, though, refining his act in front of all sorts of audiences grounds him in a specific ethos. 'I spent the first decade of my career meeting Americans where they were, figuring out what was important to them and figuring out how to make those things funny,' he told me. 'Every armpit, every factory town, every we-used-to-make-something-here city — I've done it. So you start realizing that a lot of people are all individuals, and to a degree most are harmless.' People are only dangerous, he believes, when they allow their selfishness and ideological rigidity to blind them to the suffering of others. His touring feels like a shield against that selfishness, an investment in a connection with his fellow Americans.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Comedian Roy Wood Jr. shares personal experiences, take on DEI during FAMU event
From insights on what life is like in the media industry to thoughts on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), comedian and political commentator Roy Wood Jr. paid Florida A&M University a visit for a well-rounded chat on ... well, a little bit of everything. FAMU held a Black History Month Fireside Conversation Monday evening in the Lee Hall Auditorium on campus with Wood, a proud 2001 FAMU alumnus who has made a nationally acclaimed name for himself in the world of media. 'To me, it's important to always represent this university and to let people know about it because a lot of great people and great things have come from here,' said 46-year-old Wood, who earned his bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism from FAMU in 2001. 'For the students that are here, they need to know what's possible.' The Birmingham, Alabama native's successes include his recently released comedy special on Hulu called 'Lonely Flowers,' his current role as host of CNN's 'Have I Got News for You,' and being a former correspondent on Comedy Central's Emmy-winning "The Daily Show.' But the road to the plethora of accomplishments was not a linear one. During the Monday conversation, Wood explained his struggles of getting arrested for stealing credit cards, getting suspended from FAMU for a semester and being on probation until individuals like the late James Hawkins – a former dean of the university's School of Journalism and Graphic Communication (SJGC) – gave him the push he needed. 'That's another thing about a Black college,' Wood said. 'Students, y'all need to know that y'all are surrounded by people who see you for what you could be – not for who you are. Because of that, they're going to push you sometimes because they see something that you don't see. Dr. Hawkins stayed on top of me and gave me that push.' Other FAMU news: Fundraising, business skills ideal qualities of next president, FAMU panel suggests Pursuing a career in the media business brought along another round of challenges for Wood, such as figuring out how to address controversial topics in a strategic way as a comedian to get a message across to his audience. In addition, the transition in Wood's career when leaving 'The Daily Show' as a correspondent amid the show's search for a permanent host to replace Trevor Noah was another challenging task he faced in his career, where the wait made it difficult for him to plan future endeavors. "A lot of these jobs are not safe, and none of it is promised,' Wood said. 'I can either jump out of the plane, or I can get pushed. That's just how I view employment. You can be gainfully employed, but be careful about allowing that to make you complacent.' Wood gained international exposure as host of the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2023, and in 2024 he became host of 'Have I Got News for You." The CNN show's new episodes begin Saturday with the premiere of a second season – all while Wood is also currently a semifinalist of the game show "Celebrity Jeopardy!" Given Wood's wide range of experience and words of wisdom, several audience members took advantage of a Q&A session that followed the evening's fireside chat moderated by FAMU interim President Timothy Beard and the university's Vice President of Marketing and Communications Alonda Thomas. FAMU alumnus Alfred Williams II, CEO of Capital City Cultural Community Outreach, asked Wood for advice on how to maneuver conversations related to Juneteenth – which celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S. – with the presence of DEI laws. Williams is also founder of Tallahassee's annual Juneteenth Empowerment Day Festival. 'I think the conversation around diversity, Blackness, being proud to be Black and quarterbacking those situations is going to come down to how angry you want to be,' Wood said, 'and how much you'll allow telling the truth to help you or obstruct you from achieving your goal.' While on the subject matter, Wood took the time to shine light on the outcomes of DEI rules, such as the way many DEI position titles have been changed in the workforce ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's election. 'I wouldn't even be surprised also... if Trump doesn't have a Juneteenth celebration this year,' Wood said. 'I just think you have to be tactful in the ways you engage conversations around diversity with people who are extremely uninformed but hold a lot of power.' DEI programs have long been a particular target for Gov. Ron DeSantis and a critical concern in Florida as activities related to it have been dismantled from colleges and universities across the state, which led to several protests on the campuses. Related news: FSU, FAMU give campus communities guidance after Trump's orders on DEI funds, immigration But on a national scale, Trump's executive orders since Jan. 20 introduced a wave of governmental changes, which include 'Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.' 'In spite of all the DEI things, a lot of it is coming from federal spaces and a lot of companies are being vocal about DEI programs, but these companies – at their core – still have to hire the best people because they need to get the job done,' Wood told the Tallahassee Democrat after the event. He said he hopes anti-DEI policies do not discourage individuals such as college students from applying for jobs and "seeking out their goals." FAMU students like freshman Rowan Mumford attended the campus event Monday and said Wood's conversation was a source of inspiration for him as a student of SJGC, commonly known as J-School. 'I've been feeling myself needing to be re-inspired, and I experienced that today by hearing someone's story and taking something from it to apply to my life,' said Mumford, a broadcast journalism major. Among the event's attendees were also FAMU alumna Kim Godwin – retired ABC News President – as well as former FAMU President Larry Robinson and his wife, Sharon Robinson. During the event, Beard and Thomas presented Wood with an orange "FAMU Rattlers" jacket, which he accepted while grinning from ear to ear. "I'm gonna wear this on the next game show I'm on," he said. Contact Tarah Jean at tjean@ or follow her on X: @tarahjean_. This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Comedian Roy Wood Jr. speaks on experiences, DEI during FAMU event
USA Today
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Comedian Roy Wood Jr. coming to FAMU for Black History Month event in Tallahassee
Comedian Roy Wood Jr. coming to FAMU for Black History Month event in Tallahassee Show Caption Hide Caption Black History Month's historical origins explained Here's why the founder Carter G. Woodson created Black History Month and how it's different today than he originally planned. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY Comedian, political commentator and Florida A&M University alumnus Roy Wood Jr. is bringing his humor to his alma mater for FAMU's celebration of Black History Month. Wood will be a part of the university's Black History Month Fireside Conversation at 7 p.m. Monday in the Lee Hall Auditorium on campus. 'We are thrilled and deeply appreciative to welcome Roy Wood Jr. back to his alma mater for this one-night-only event,' FAMU interim President Timothy Beard said in a prepared statement. Beard will moderate the event along with the university's Vice President of Marketing and Communications Alonda Thomas. 'This is an extraordinary opportunity to experience his spirited and insightful take on the world – especially at a time when we all could use a moment to reunite, reflect and rediscover joy," Beard added. The Birmingham, Alabama native started his career in comedy while studying journalism at FAMU in 1998, where he would perform stand-up at former Tallahassee venues like The Warehouse and the Cow Haus. He would also travel on the Greyhound to perform at clubs in Tampa, Jacksonville and St. Petersburg. But after years of bringing the laughs and becoming a well-known comedian, Wood's talent has led to successes such as his recently released new comedy special on Hulu called 'Lonely Flowers.' He has also been the host of CNN's 'Have I Got News for You' – an American adaptation of the longest-running UK comedy series – since September. Wood's scheduled visit comes during a time where the CNN show's new episodes begin Feb. 15 with the premiere of a second season. In addition, Wood is a current contestant on Celebrity Jeopardy! – a game show where famous contestants compete to win money for a charity of their choice – and he became a semifinalist after competing as a quarterfinalist in a Jan. 29 show. The competition's quarterfinals end March 12, but the schedule for semifinals has note yet been announced. Wood's career also consisted of serving as a correspondent on Comedy Central's Emmy-winning "The Daily Show" for eight years from 2015 to 2023. Being featured in the university's Monday event on campus will bring Wood back to where it all started, adding on to his previous Tallahassee visits. In March 2023, he traveled to the capital city to discuss Critical Race Theory with Florida lawmakers for a segment on "The Daily Show,' and he was a keynote speaker for FAMU's homecoming convocation in 2021. 'Every time I return to the highest of seven hills, it is an honor,' Wood said in a university release. 'This time is no different. I can't wait to get on stage and run my mouth and discuss the things that make us laugh, the things that make us angry and the things that make us human. I also have a few parking tickets from my undergrad days that I need to finally take care of.' In addition, the Emmy-nominated documentary producer and Writers Guild of America (WGA) nominated writer gained international attention as host of the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2023, where he performed for then-President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris. 'His unique perspective as a journalist, political commentator and comedian will undoubtedly resonate with our students, alumni and the entire community,' Beard said. FAMU's Black History Month Fireside Conversation with Wood Monday is free and open to the public, and it will also be livestreamed on the university's YouTube channel at Contact Tarah Jean at tjean@ or follow her on X: @tarahjean_.
