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Sykes promises blunt talk on new show
Photo from FOX
The 45-year-old comic says she will be talking about everything else that made headlines during the week.
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Published: November 5, 2009
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Wanda Sykes brings her blunt, outspoken and irreverent humor to late-night television Saturday when her new talk show debuts on Fox.
Will it be political? You bet. She's ready to defend President Obama and take on conservatives.
But the 45-year-old comic says she will be talking about everything else that made headlines during the week.
"I'm your wrap-up of what happened during the week, but from my point of view," she said during a telephone news conference Wednesday.
Her show will open with a monologue, followed by a round-table discussion with fellow comics and guest panelists.
Panelists scheduled for the premiere are Mary Lynn Rajskub ("24"), Daryl "Chill" Mitchell ("Brothers") and Phil Keoghan ("The Amazing Race").
She says it will be something like "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO but there will be sketches. "It won't be as serious, not as confrontational," she said. "You want to feel like these people are on the show for a reason, that I enjoy them. It's like mingling, but they will be opinionated."
The monologue will be about what has ticked her off this week. "Like how everyone is picking on the president," she says.
She notes that Obama has "not even been on the job a year" and he came in facing all these problems. "It's like asking him to dig the Grand Canyon with a spoon."
There won't be a house band but there will be a bar. She has said that "the bar will be open and we will be having drinks during the panel discussion."
"The viewers at home will be drinking, so we should all be on the same plane," Sykes jokes.
Good luck with that, if it's not a joke.
"The Wanda Sykes Show," debuting at 11 p.m. Saturday replaces the comedy skit show "MADtv" which ran for 14 seasons.
Sykes joins a new batch of late-night talkers who are invading what has been an old white guys club. Comic Mo'Nique has a late show on BET and comic George Lopez debuts a new late-night show Monday on TBS.
Sykes shoots from the lip and is usually dead-on with her wisecracks. But some conservatives say she crossed the line during the White House Correspondents dinner last year when she took a jab at radio talk show Rush Limbaugh who has said that he hopes President Obama fails.
"You know he hopes America fails," she said, "well I hope his kidneys fail."
This brought boos from the audience and a backlash in the conservative media.
In a "Today" show interview she said that maybe she went too far, but it was a joke.
She has been performing and writing comedy since the 1980s but in recent years she has moved up the ladder toward stardom with supporting roles on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine."
She recently headlined an HBO special and made news last year when she came out as a lesbian and married her female partner, Alex, whom she met in 2006.
She says she has wanted to host a TV talk show since her stint as a regular on HBO's "Chris Rock Show" in the 1990s.
But she wasn't looking for a talk show when Fox executives approached her about this new venture.
She says during Barack Obama's presidential campaign, she wished the had an outlet where she could talk about current issues.
She says that being a black woman hosting a late-night talk show isn't as important as her personality. "These shows are driven by the hosts. David Letterman is the only one who can do the Letterman show, and that goes for all of us," she said. "It's driven more by our personalities, not just the voice of a black woman. Yeah, I'm a black woman, but I don't speak for all black women."
Reporter Walt Belcher can be reached at (81)3 259-7654.
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