How do you process the news without making art? At least from my perspective, it helps me understand the world that I exist in and cope with it.” Writing songs like “Stop Being Poor” helps the comedian “process the news. Wade, and it adds a solemnity to the otherwise absurd show. The day before the show, the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. “It’s really honestly very cathartic to write these songs,” she says. Ziwé’s speaking in the language of her audience, who eat up every moment of the show, but it’s for her, too. The show opens with a clip of Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” and includes fully choreographed renditions of Ziwé originals “Am I Gay?” and “Stop Being Poor.” There’s a PowerPoint presentation where Ziwé catalogs the perks of being a pop star - which include fame, fortune, paparazzi, haters, and fedoras - and another in which she laments the low rating she has on the infamous celebrity foot fetish website, wikiFeet. The POP Show is drenched in the aesthetics of, naturally, pop culture.
#Stand up shout it out series#
(Clips of their interview sent the internet into a tailspin earlier this year.) But the series is as much about its host as it is about the conversations, and it highlights Ziwé’s unflappable air of authority as a gateway to pure jokes. Now halfway through its second season, the one-woman talk show retains much of that original cringe comedy, raising the stakes with irredeemably problematic guests like Chet Hanks. Her viral fame turned into her very own show, Ziwé, on Showtime, where she also got her start as a writer on the beloved Desus & Mero from 2018 to 2020. At the height of 2020’s cultural racial reckoning, putting people on the spot became her forté, as she asked guests - many of whom had experienced some form of so-called cancellation - impossible questions that were designed to entrap. Ziwé is more than able to provide.ĭuring the pandemic, Ziwé’s Instagram live “Baited” shows became one of the few sources of pleasure in an almost pathologically bland entertainment landscape. As she’ll tell the packed audience at her show later that night, “I like a horny show, and I like to emblemize that horniness.” Given that it’s Pride weekend, there’s a thirstier vibe than normal as New York City emerged from an abnormally long winter (and super short spring) in search of a good time this summer. She upstages the cumbersome construction in front of the Music Hall as she poses mid-traffic, and a white guy on a scooter passes by, making sure we all hear him say, “So fine, goddamn!” Fans are beginning to line up outside, and as they spot their star, their eyes widen as they shout out praise. In front of the venue on busy North 6th Street, Ziwé’s presence immediately commands attention. As we head outside to grab a few pre-show pictures in the fading Brooklyn sunlight, we pass two assistants blowing up a massive inflatable rainbow unicorn for the show later that night. The next she’s leading her stunning black Chow Chow - named Celine Dion, she tells me - upstairs backstage to the greenroom, where her frequent collaborator, the artist Jen Goma, lounges in a matching two-piece bandeau tracksuit. One moment she’s doing a mic check on stage, with a massive projection of her mononym behind her.
Clad in a blood-red Kappa velour set with a pair of rectangular black sunglasses perched low on her nose, Ziwé is running the show in every sense of the word. There’s a palpable buzz in the air surrounding Ziwé, as the comedian runs around the Music Hall of Williamsburg one hot Saturday afternoon in June, prepping for one of her sold-out POP variety shows.
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