The Hollywood Reporter began to wrap up its “Close Up with the Hollywood Reporter” roundtable series with an intimate conversation with the showrunners, focusing on comedy. The panel included Emmy nominees Alec Berg (“Silicon Valley” and “Barry”) and Amy Sherman-Palladino (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel“), in addition to Pamela Adlon (“Better Things”), Whitney Cummings (“Roseanne”), Michael Schur (“The Good Place”), and Justin Simien (“Dear White People”). Interestingly, the roundtable was shot before Cummings announced her departure as showrunner, which happened even before the cancellation of “Roseanne” earlier last month.
The conversation covers a number of topics but specifically focuses in on the place of comedy within the current political and social environment. The always outspoken Amy Sherman-Palladino believes, “If we start not being able to do stories viewed through the lens of #MeToo or if you can’t have anyone have an apolitical position or [must be] thinking about the message that it’s sending out, there is no comedy. Comedy is over, it’s dead.”
She continues, “And, unfortunately, comedy, at its core, is a tool that is aimed at oppression and sadness and the worst in human nature, not the best. You don’t get comedy off of great fun, happy, delightful people.”
The online reactions that many of these showrunners have gotten has caused Berg to lament, “It feels like there is this thing that’s like outrage is a recreational activity now.”
Simien agrees, noting, “The thing about doing a ‘black show’ is that, within my community, there’s all this representation stuff. You cannot cast a black show, let me tell you, without thinking of all of these things – like, that your skin tones are evenly matched and what are you saying about light-skinned people. And on one side of it, I feel like black people and women, for instance, all of us have the right to feel a lot of outrage, but then there is an addiction to it that, at a certain point, is no longer productive.”
The entire conversation tackles a number of other interesting topics, with Cummings discussing her working relationship with Roseanne Barr. As she says, “There was all this feedback like, ‘This show is part of the problem.’ And I’m just like, ‘He got elected before this show came back.’ Like, her Twitter feed is her Twitter feed. But everyone just needs something to blame right now. And it’s such a scary time and we’re all so full of fear”, which takes on a different significance in light of Roseanne’s firing and show’s rebranding as “The Conners.”
Check out the entire hour-long discussion below. Next week will see the last roundtable for Emmy award season, focusing on the dramatic showrunners.
