DRESS Quine Li, EARRINGS Alexis Bittar, RINGS Uniform Object
Ziwe daringly reinvented the American interview as we know it, and for that, she’s a national treasure. “I believe that I have to pick my flowers myself; no one’s going to give me them,” Ziwe tells Tidal. “And similarly, the way that I pioneered this interview show in 2016—and it was a YouTube show that turned into an Instagram Live show that turned into a TV show—I have always been really focused on being the agent of my own change.”
The media personality, comedian, and writer is just three months separated from the release of her wry debut book, Black Friend: Essays, when she chats via Zoom from New York City. A massive upset was felt among Ziwe devotees upon the cancellation of her former eponymous Showtime talk show—but she insists that there aren’t any hard feelings; just a nudge for her to land elsewhere.
“I don’t know if I would say I put too much faith in institutions. They are what they are and they offer what they offer: a great platform for me to disseminate my comedy and my art,” she says. “That was cool and everything has an end and it’s over, but I’m not over and I continue to move forward with my work. [Ziwe doesn’t] disappear from my oeuvre just because they’ve terminated [it], it’s like, Okay I did that. What’s next?”
Fittingly, Ziwe’s next act was the 181-page Black Friend, where she combs through her life experiences and thoroughly revisits its most surreal moments. Between the lines, there’s bites of humor, sometimes self-deprecating, when she explores the unsteady relationship with her hard-to- please Nigerian mother, confronts her trauma head-on with a comical disposition, and lets readers in on the joke of her “baited” interview evolution. In Black Friend, Ziwe doesn’t idealize the past but rather meditates on how it defined her. But first, Black Friend needed inspiration, which came in the form of a 1963 literary masterpiece written by writer, social critic, and aesthete James Baldwin.
“James Baldwin’s ‘The Fire Next Time’ is one of the most influential books to me in American discourse. It’s just like a really compelling book, and it’s nonfiction, and it’s just fantastic,” Ziwe says. “It’s also like a hundred pages. So that definitely was something that I thought, if I could capture my American experience one-tenth, one one-hundredth of the way that James Baldwin captured his, that would be a solid book.”
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She continues, “He is one of the best American writers, and what’s interesting is that he captured American living so poignantly, literally forty, fifty years ago—I guess more now—and it still finds itself to be applicable today. So he’s sort of a vanguard in that sense.”
Another touchstone was bell hooks’ critical 1999 examination of radical intimacy and its unbounded dimensions, All About Love, which gave Ziwe permission to include anecdotes in Black Friend as personal touches to illustrate her theory. On any given page, you can peruse her hilarious quips about cancel culture and—more extremely—the discomfort of her feet being critiqued by an online fetish forum. But the overarching motif is Ziwe challenging the misconceptions and, often, underestimations of herself within her personal life and the larger pop cultural sphere.
“I’m not a political scientist—and I hate science—so all I hope that I can do is be really honest and clear about my specific experience as an American woman, and I hope that people can take my lessons in the future. Not just in 2024, but in 2054,” she says.
The media that Ziwe habitually consumes, not limited to Real Housewives reruns and Vulture show recaps, are essential to her satirical métier, for which she’s occasionally scolded by critics who use social media as their soapbox. At the time of our interview, it’s been less than a month since she controversially sat down with former U.S. congressman George Santos and faced backlash for not putting him deep enough in the hot seat. Privy to the diatribe, Ziwe defends her platform and “iconic” guests, even the most right-leaning.
“How would you define an interview with a figure that you don’t agree with? Should they exist? That seems to be the question that’s posed,” Ziwe says. “I’m really intrigued by people who I don’t politically align with. I mean, obviously, you don’t want to disseminate white nationalism. That’s not good.”
She continues, “It’s weird because people get upset with the concept of platforming. I wonder how you can platform a United States congressman, but, hey, I think that you’d have to ask the critics.”
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Pointing to her “Mount Rushmore of Satire,” which, in no particular order, includes Zach Galifianakis, Sacha Baron Cohen, Nathan Fielder, Eric André, and Stephen Colbert, Ziwe frankly seeks to entertain, even when some don’t quite get her approach.
“All I can do is put my work out there, and if my art prompts criticism and thought, then I think that’s a successful turn, right?” she explains. “Art that is easily digestible and easily processed is not inherently art to me. I like the idea that it is imperfect and sparks discourse; I think that’s probably the hardest element to it, but something I’m really, really thankful for.”
“So if I’m guilty of exploring controversies in American culture then I don’t know. I think that’s an exploration of satire—should satire exist? But I’d like to think that I offer a really interesting perspective into this comedically and artistically.”
Considering our interview a safe space to ask Ziwe about the deactivation of her X account on the heels of the vitriol she faced after inviting Nicki Minaj onto her show, I’m rebuffed. “Oh gosh, who knows? That, we will never know until we ever know,” Ziwe says. I’m shut down again, this time by a publicist who’s also on the Zoom call. Taking the hint, I also take a page out of Black Friend on gracefully moving forward in times of setbacks.
So I look ahead, asking Ziwe if she envisions having a media company inclusive of other ‘Black Friends,’ similar to the production companies of Issa Rae, Jordan Peele, and Donald Glover. In usual Ziwe je ne sais quoi, she responds in jest. “I think under the Bill of Rights, I have to say it’s an equal opportunity employer. Otherwise, I would get sued,” she cackles. “I’m not as concerned with the back- of-the-house demographics as I am concerned with the messaging and what the company actually does and what it creates.”
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However, she recognizes the trials that her journalism contemporaries are up against. “Media is in a really, really dark place right now. It seems like it’s sort of collapsing. Every single day you read a story about how hundreds, if not thousands, of people are being laid off at the respective publication.”
She continues, “So if you’re asking what my media company would look like, it would be profitable, and the respective employees have a job. It would make media that I would hope would be a positive influence on the American landscape, and not sort of disseminate something toxic at the expense of society but for the bottom line.”
Although Ziwe wants to continue funneling satirical projects like her own, she’s seen the best journalists of her generation become TV writers, a near-dystopian reality. But her sights are set on ultimately providing a launchpad for profoundly interesting storytellers.
“You hope that you open doors for people who’ve never had the opportunity to be in positions of power before. That’s something that I think is sort of essential to running a company: allowing people opportunity. I tried to do that with my show,” she says.
The show isn’t over for Ziwe, a brilliant and necessary mind among modern entertainment luminaries. For now, there’s no end in sight to Ziwe examining pop culture through her inquisitive lens; her garden is still flourishing.
“I think that my impact is happening in real time, and only after a long career will I be able to step back and place my finger on all of the differ- ent shifts that I’ve made,” she concludes. “But I see them, I definitely see them. Now, whether or not I’ll get flowers for them, who knows? But again, I choose to pick my flowers myself.” ❤
DRESS Quine Li, EARRINGS Alexis Bittar, RINGS Uniform Object
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