The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Roy Wood Jr.

Episode Date: March 23, 2021

Comedian and actor Roy Wood Jr. talks with Andy about growing up in the South as a latchkey kid, the unique challenge of raising children who are just like you, and reflections on his career working in show business and at Subway.

hello everyone uh andy richter here with another episode of the three questions and today i am posing those questions to a very funny man uh who bridges the gap between current events and comedy. And who after this is going to get a root canal. Is that right? No, extraction. An extraction. Yeah, we're coming back one less tooth, baby. Oh, wow.

And is it in the front? Because that'll hurt your career. No, it's back right. I don't think I said your name. It's Roy Wood Jr. here. Yes. How are you? I'm i'm i'm good man i'm not even scared of the root of the the wisdom tooth i had back in the day this is how hard you have to work i had two wisdom teeth pulled the same day and i went back to work the next day in radio because i was that afraid of losing my job at the time. Also, I was 24. So you got a little bounce back in you. Precisely. Yeah, no, there's shit you can do.

There's shit you can do when you're young that I just like, I used to do Pratt Falls for fun. Like I used to be able to literally fall down a flight of stairs and just kind of like taught myself, you know, like how to protect yourself, you know. I mean, they'd have to be carpeted stairs. I wouldn't do it, you know. But I mean, I started doing it when I was a kid. Like we had a narrow stairway that you could kind of slow your speed by pushing the walls, but you could still make it funny.

And I, you know, like just pratfalls for fun, get laughs at parties. just pratfalls for fun to get laughs at parties and then uh i i was doing a bit once for just like somebody's video where i was i was in the yard and i was like falling but catching my my fall with my elbows and i fucked up my elbow for like six months you know and i was like i can't do this shit anymore this is it was funny at one point but now my fucking elbow hurts for a long it hurt for a long time bro there were some days on the road when i started and i started at 19 where my record is birmingham alabama to buffalo new york 15 and a half hours i only got out of the car three times. Jesus Christ. And then I performed when I got there. Wow. Like now I don't think I could drive more than three hours.

Yeah. Yeah. Without some degree of drowsy highway hypnosis. And I put in half a million miles on the odometers over the years. So I feel like I've earned the right to just cower when it's a three-hour drive i just go yeah i don't want to do it and say you take over yeah also too i couldn't i couldn't i would i have to pee i you know being so much as you get older too oh no man you just reuse that gatorade bottle that's from the gatorade you drank at the last, like, that's how you. No, I know.

Use, reuse. I had to do that in fucking LA traffic. Like, living in LA. Like, just, especially if it's, like, it's something, you know, if there's, like, a morning trip. And it's always the morning because of the coffee. And it's, like, if I have to go to Santa Monica in the morning, I feel like I better have some kind of container with a cap on it because I'm stuck in the goddamn traffic. I might have to relieve myself. Well, now, so, okay, well, let's get back to this extraction.

It's a wisdom tooth. Is it your last one? Tooth number 17. I thought that I'd gotten them all. I've been here before. I ain't panicked. This is one. We've been here before. I ain't panicked. Yeah. This is one, you know, we'll, we'll figure it out. How'd you talk on the radio with two teeth missing after one day?

The next day. There was a little bit of slouch. Yeah. I call it slop mouth. My mouth was a little juicy, you know, full of cotton. But I wasn't hosting, thankfully. I was like the comedic. I was fourth chair on that show at the time. So I'm the pop in here and there guy.

I'm just going, hey, fellas. Now y'all know y'all shouldn't be doing that. Anyway, let's look at the next call. Like I was that guy. I didn't carry whole breaks, thank God. No, I'm familiar. I'm familiar with having a job where you're talking on TV, but you can pick your shots.

You know, like if it's, if there's a day, you know, I mean, there's been plenty of day. I used to in the old days, just because it would depend on how the bits were laid out on the Conan

show, where I would say to somebody like, if I play my cards, right, I won't have to say a word tonight just because you know i wouldn't be in the in the first bit and i wouldn't be in the second bit and when you talk to people like because he and i mean we've joked about it but like there are have been times when you know like i'll fuck with him a little bit where if like there's an interview that's like

not going so great you know most of the time i'll try and like pitch in and help, but there's some times where I just sit there and like. Just let them. Yeah. Have fun over there. I'm over here. I'm over here quiet. I'm just watching. You want to know something funny, Andy Richter?

What's that? We do the same shit on The Daily Show. There's days. There's days when you come in as a correspondent and you've just done three days on the road in some shit town to cover something meaningful but you're exhausted those are like you know it's a long day when you're out shooting and you come back in the office on a work day and then our producer jen flan she'll just come yeah you may be on the show tonight they're still deciding in the writer's room so you may want to go over and talk to this writer and that writer

and see it. And in the back of my head, I'm like, please let it get cut from the show. Please let it get cut. I just want to go in my office and hide and just scroll CNN to look for the next story. I don't want to turn my brain on today. And I'm for sure on the show. And then Trump would do something goofy around 2.30 in the afternoon. Hey, we're going to hold your segment for tomorrow. And we're going to address this Trump thing and add that to Act 2. So you don't have to do anything today. And then you have to act sad for 10 minutes. I've always, even out here doing sitcom sitcoms i will hear stories people tell me

and i mean specific stories about specific people people say i was on this show and i was doing real well and i had all the you know and i was really killing we went away for rewrite all my jokes ended up in the coming out of the mouth of the number one on the call sheet. Like the person, the star of the show stole all the funny lines and left me with nothing. And to me, that's always like, or people get mad when they get their lines cut. I'm like, you know, there's plenty to go around. And also, it's like, I'll be fine. You know, words are work in our line of work.

So, you know, I don't mind not working. What I figured out, and I learned this in my TBS days on Sullivan & Son, because I was ninth. We had a 10-person cast. Yeah, Jesus, that show was huge. You were on our slot, right? Yeah, we were like across the lot. Yeah, yeah. What I learned on that show was how to get laughs without having lines.

Yeah. It's probably the reaction faces and how to act against your scene partners and stuff to the point where now if I don't have lines in my head, I'm still going, oh, I'm in the scene. Okay, well, let me figure out what I can do instead. Right, right. And I get a little happy about it. But yeah, there's people that want all the glory but don't want to do all the work. That's why I don't even know what you want to talk to me about in this podcast today.

But I'm going to tell you this quick Steve Carell story. Okay. We were working on Space Force. Yeah. And he is probably the only actor I've seen who's literally

in pretty much every page of that pilot episode. Yeah. He's in every page. And every scene, this dude was on and then performing the stuff five like you know like normally you just this is how i'm gonna do it when i get there and this is the way i'm gonna do it steve carell would do it eight different ways yeah like every page eight different ways god bless who has to edit it but like his level of just being present

but then also constantly recreating and altering yeah giving them choices you know that's that's i always look at because i do the same thing in voiceovers it's giving choices you know like you know like i'll do four takes of it's you know in cartoons and shit do it four different ways just to give them choices you know like you know and then you know it it's it feels uh generous so but anyway sorry to interrupt no that's it man he's a good actor that's all i was trying to say yeah no he's he's pretty amazing and a pretty sweet guy too i mean unless you know something i don't no he was cool man he was cool there's a quiet um no one talks about it i don't talk about it often but there's a very very quiet like for and i know why it's quiet because the institutions haven't been around the same amount of time but for all of the talk about snl and the way

snl graduates commiserate with one another and there's this fraternal thing that never leaves because you both worked in that same space at some point in your careers yeah the daily show is very similar in that capacity i can see that now because it's fewer the cast is smaller and people say so the dynamics are of course different we're not churning out will ferrells and tina faze every single year like that you know it's more of a time release thing but for to not know me steve carell couldn't have been nicer. And to also have that day, I give you a perfect example. I don't know John Oliver. I was in New York. I had been working on a daily show all of two weeks maybe. And I was just out getting a burger from a place and he

was in there and he just walks up and starts talking to me as if we've known each other for years and just breaking down the job and this and this and this and it was all a seven eight minutes but so much was already understood yeah before the conversation even started and yeah i think that's the one thing about The Daily Show that, you know, I'm really appreciative of. You know, Jason Jones has always shown me love, you know, put me in the detour when I was in TBS. You know, Sam Bee has been, Sam Bee, yo, the night of Trevor's first night, it was old correspondence up and down the fucking hall. Yeah. Just showing support and love.

Like, I don't know. It was weird, man. Yeah. Just showing support and love. Like, I don't know. It was weird, man. It was like, I don't know if they do this where you are, where you grew up. But in Birmingham, they do this thing on the first day of school where Black men, there's a group of Black men that, you know, promote positivity and learning.

And, you know, they're just Black men who give a damn about the youth. They show up to all of the area city schools on the first day of school and they form like a welcome line. And as the kids come into school for the first day of school, they give them a high five. Yeah. I've seen video of that. That's where it felt like the first day of the Daily Show. Yeah. That's where it felt like the first night of The Daily Show. Yeah, yeah. It's just Oliver and Bea and Will Moore just straight down the hall. Yeah, yeah.

High five, high five, high five, high five. Yeah, no, that's great. And that's like, you know, and that's one of the best things about doing this kind of work is that collegial feeling. You know, it's like you got, you know, they're, they're not exactly friends and they're not exactly family, but you do have something shared and there is an instant understanding, you know, there's like, there's like you, you understand each other, you know, talking to this person, you're already like 60% of the way there, as opposed to if you were starting off cold with a stranger. Yes. and it's always so disappointing to meet a person like a comedy person who doesn't give you anything bad

you know who like you meet a minute they're like you know they're not interested in like sort of that shared experience they're just kind of you know just no fun it's like shit that's all if you're not gonna have fun doing this stuff I don't understand why you do it. You know, because it's. There's a lot of insecurity that comes in that. Yeah. And tons of rejection and all kinds of shit. Yeah.

Now, you said you were raised in Birmingham. You were born there, right? You were born in New York City. Yeah, I was born in New York. Somewhere around like one year old. You know, they started the down south sojourn. Uh-huh. I was born in New York, somewhere around like one year old. You know, they started the down south sojourn. Uh-huh. You know, my dad, what it was, my mom was getting a master's at Memphis, at the time Memphis State, now known as the University of Memphis.

So we went down to Memphis while my dad wrapped up things in New York. And during that time, he got a job offer in Birmingham. And so we kind of split time between Memphis and Birmingham until my mom got out of grad school. So that was kind of like, bi-coastal isn't the word, but you know what I'm trying to say, up and down Highway 78 for three hours. Yeah, bi-coastal isn't the word, but you know what I'm trying to say. Up and down Highway 78 for three hours. Yeah, bi-southern. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, all of my cognitive life has been a southern experience.

You know, we started out in Memphis. I spent every summer in Clarksdale, Mississippi with my mother's side of the family. Like, those were my babysitters every weekend while my mom studied. You know, I got, I would get out of school at two o'clock on a friday by four i'm eating rice and sugar bread on my grandma's front porch you know in mississippi um watching the mosquito truck come by i tried to explain that to somebody that the way they still in some cities fight mosquitoes yeah it's to just drive a fucking truck down the street shooting chemicals into the air you'll be fine kitties they did it i they did it when i was a kid it happened a couple times when i was a kid

um yeah just pesticide fog and it smelled great though that's what they don't tell you that's why i never wanted to go inside this shit smelled amazing it was fragrant yeah yeah is there not now that you're out you know like in show business is there like a kinship among southern among people with a shared southern background and Do you find a big difference between Southerners and Yankees? Ooh. In entertainment? Yes. All right, here's the difference, because I'm trying to make sure I'm honest, and I

actually aren't. New Yorkers rock with you once they know that you're serious about your craft. Yeah. Period. Once I see that you are invested and that you're someone who's actually trying and you're just not some half ass. Yeah. We're good. In the South, the assumption is that we are good first.

And then you discover that I'm a half-ass and now you have to decide what to do with this friendship and what to do with this interaction. I do think that because the conversation around the South circles so many negative things, when you meet someone whose stated goal at the top of meeting them is to do something that is progressive and changing and to hopefully change the conversation around, you know, perceptions of people in the South, you can't do anything but to try and, you know, take them at face value. And sometimes you get burned. But there's definitely an instant kinship because there's so few of us so that part of it becomes something dope so i shot a pilot for comedy central in birmingham two years ago and with the idea being all right we get to show the city and this

is a different character of a place a small big, big town, a big, small town, whatever you want to call Birmingham. And I started getting connected to this network of filmmakers that are from the state who I never knew existed. Yeah. And then you start talking to this person and this person and this person. And, you know, when I was there doing radio, I was just a road comic. You know, that's a whole different fraternity. Yeah. Because you and me drive to the same place.

So we are both, we've both, we connect through our struggles. I don't know if that's the best way for humans to always interact. Yeah, yeah. But you suffered the same thing I suffered. Let's have a beer we both know something that sucks yeah yeah it's so that's a different thing but with the film and television thing it was dope meeting all of these people that are trying to do something that you know is unprecedented in terms of just trying to create opportunities and build awareness that these opportunities exist for people in this region, because that's what connects us.

I wanted to do comedy at 14. I couldn't do it till I was 19 because that was the first time I heard of a comedy club. And there was a legendary club in Birmingham that had been there there since the 80s i just didn't know about it yeah i don't watch the channels they advertise on i didn't listen to those radio stations so i was just oblivious to it so yeah no it's uh you know if you're not the kind of if you're not the kind of person that is like a natural sort of detective out there kind of like sniffing around to find, you know, like to find out where the comedy is. I was just talking to somebody the other day and they were talking to me about how like I started doing improv in Chicago and they were kind of stunned that like, you know, I called Second City because I'd heard of Second City,

but I never saw a show at Second City. I mean, like I went to Second City at a touring company that would kind of like do stuff in high school gyms. And I saw that once or twice, but I don't think I tried to. I think somebody was like, it might, you know, my parents might've just been, come on, we're going to see this. But I never, you know, I didn't, it's the same thing. I didn't seek it out. I just, I don't know. I just kind of was like, I went where I was told in a lot of ways, you know. Yeah.

You know it. Yeah. And then in Alabama, it's even worse because you're told to believe that that dream is unattainable. You live here. That's some LA stuff, boy. Don't you get your mind wrapped up in that? Get you a good job and get you a wife, boy, and just go on, go to church. And that worked for the generation before us. But what if you want something different and

more for yourself? How do you get to that? And who could help you? So it's just about being as much of a beacon as you can for people from that region, because people in that region are often told that they ain't got shit or they don't have the resources. They don't even know. One of my biggest vices is replying to emails, advice emails more specifically. You mean you do reply to them or you don't? Yeah. It's time consuming. I need a form page, but that just feels dickish.

I need just a reply all page. Here's the answers to the frequently asked 20 questions of Roy if you're from Alabama. Read through these and if your answer isn't there, then email me. You get this.

Yeah, no. And I'm sure that there's 20 questions of what it's like to be a Daily Show correspondent or what it's like to be a Roy. Yeah, how do I get on TV? How do I start comedy? It's like those are base level 101s that I just- Yeah, yeah. But you took the initiative to ask.

So I can't not, I can't ignore you because if I ignore you, who's going to, we can assume no one's replying to these emails. Yeah. Somebody ought to do it. Well, that's, I mean, that's great that you do that. I'm not as good at that i mean i'll get i mean i don't get a lot of emails but uh like dms from people you know asking about like how do i make it in comedy and i mean i don't have anything to well i don't have anything to tell them i mean anything you know because you know i've always joked like when people say like how do you do it how do you make it show business

well become a sidekick on a talk show uh that replaces David Letterman because I just know the way that I did it you know if you're asking instead of doing you're already hindering yourself yeah there was some guy who messaged me about where do I find open mics I'm like all right bro just google comedians from your city and ask them that yeah yeah or google open fucking mics yeah yeah you know but they want but they're not what they're really doing though they're not asking a question they're seeking encouragement yeah because there's fear in making that leap especially the older you are the more you're risking yeah because you got less time on the backside to figure out a plan B. And if you got a wife

and kids and all that stuff, but this shit is hard, man. Most people aren't going to believe in you because they're scared of their own goals. So they project their fears onto you because they're too pussy to fucking

take the leap to do what they really want to do. So they try to talk you out of doing what they want to do. Can't you tell my loves are growing? Your dad was a renowned journalist. Your mom's an educator, correct? Yeah. Did that create like a little microculture of, you know, feeling the pressure to achieve?

Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God, bro. This is, I'll tell you a story. Everybody's got their Bitcoin story. Yeah. I don't. I don't even, I still don't know what it is. Well, their Bitcoin stock story. I had a chance to buy stock in Netflix when it was still DVD.

So I worked at Subway in high school. It's one of many places I worked, but that was probably the longest tenure job was Subway. places I worked, but that was probably the longest tenure job was Subway. And I made it up to Shift Leader and you start counting down register, and now it's kind of opening up the books a little bit. And I started doing the math on the Subway franchise. And I peeped that my owner was probably pulling down about a quarter mil a year in profit from this particular location. And I peeped that my owner was probably pulling down about a quarter mil a year in profit from this particular location. And he just opened a second location. And I did the math. We bounced between both stores as employees. And I do the math on that store and he's pulling down 300 at the time in the 90s subway was not in black neighborhoods subway was considered to a degree it was more upward like if you brought in it was like chipotle it was new

yeah it was new so that was the cool thing to have and if you had that people were somehow oddly impressed yeah like oh you had chipotle really kind of like panera 10 years ago yeah yeah some shit i go to my mom and i go yo i've done the research i'd called the company i wrote a letter to yomar foods incorporated in connecticut to figure out the franchising costs and all of that and the number is 70 000 70 000 is the buy-in to own a subway sandwich shop in 1996 and which isn't like it's not a ton of money you know it's not a ton of money yeah now we're not rolling and doing at least we're middle middle class you know if my mom wanted to you know move the mortgage and freak some numbers and nip and tuck here and there and

i bust my ass we could have found seventy thousand dollars yeah you could have found a building done done it up nice. And I'm telling her, I go, this sandwich shop does not exist. And this entire, like a third of the city is without a subway. I'm telling you, Joyce, this is going to be the thing. Yeah. We will eat forever. All we have to do is own it for a couple of years and then sell it. Quarter meal, ma. Yeah.

Boy, you think I sent you to all them damn testing ACT LSAT books for you to be making sandwiches? You going to school. I go, just let me take a year off. Not knowing what it is now. I was asking for a gap year to start a business. Yeah, yeah. And my mom was not with it, bro, I was asking for a gap year to start a business. Yeah, yeah. And my mom was not with it, bro. She was not with it.

You need to go to college. And I get it because her generation fought and got beat on for us to have the right to do XYZ. So, damn it, you're going to go do what I marched for. And in her estimation, at her age, people, you know, when she was your your age people were making sandwiches because they had to correct because they chose to correct understanding and seeing the tarot cards of which way the food winds were blowing you know you're not gonna and at this point we're talking about a woman with a law degree we're well past the masters now yeah at this point my mom has a law degree working on ph and she's teaching higher education and i come you know what really get us money

sandwiches cold cuts i'm telling you joyce these sandwiches so i go off i go to college i come back home after my first year um at florida a&m and at this point there's three subway sandwich shops on the west side of Birmingham and the lines are out the door and this is a true story my mom will never admit this but this is a true story my first day when I got home from college my mom walks into my room she goes hey go get me a sandwich from Subway and you can't say it but in in my head, I'm like, you motherfucker. You knew. You knew this was going to be the shit. And now look at you. You're a customer at a place that you could have been an owner.

Yeah. Do you think she was fucking with you when she told you to get that sandwich? Oh, no. She was saying, Subway is delicious. Subway's was amazing. I know. That's how you age yourself when you defend Subway. And like, you gouge. I know that's how you age yourself when you defend Subway and like the U-Gouch.

They used to cut a little divot in the set and lay the meat down inside the little divot. Same way with Red Lobster. Red Lobster used to have to make reservations to eat at Red Lobster. And nobody believes me when I say that either. No, Red Lobster, that was where you went like for prom when i was 100 that's where i went yeah me too me too that was that was like the fancy prom dinner you know no man my parents were very much higher ed you're going to school read this read that you could play the sports but the moment the grades fall off we're taking the baseball bats and the basketballs and you'll sit at home and do nothing until you learn more,

which is a good thing. I think the thing that I picked up kind of subliminally, I would say from my parents was a sense of pride in black culture, from my parents was a sense of pride in black culture you know because my father you know a lot of his work was rooted in civil rights not just in america but you know overseas you know suedo right didn't he yeah from suedo yeah and so he's in like where they oh they shooting over there cool let me get my tape recorder oh wow and what just he was embedded with black platoons in vietnam and shit like just wild shit just recording on racism and so was it radio reporting or print yeah radio yeah yeah and so you know i would spend you know some days with him on speaking engagements where he would speak about a lot of issues, you know, that were relevant to the Black community. It still are to this time,

but it just, it gave me this sense of, you know, get that knowledge in school, but you need to be prepared to move differently in this world. And here's the things you need to be aware of, you know? And like my mom was more get the knowledge. And my mom was book knowledge. My dad was knowledge of self and, you know, a little bit of street knowledge, you know, to a degree. Yeah. But it was mainly your mom that was kind of like about the pressure about achieving as opposed to knowing. Yeah.

I don't think my dad ever went to a parent-teacher conference. Really? He didn't give a fuck about that. Yeah, yeah. Joe Escoe did. Check on the boy. Yeah. That school was calling the day.

Like, my dad would tell my mom the school called. Like, it was a message for her. Yeah. Well, I could tell. I'm not both of y'all's child it's it's a huge it's a huge difference from like i mean my parents were divorced when i was four so my dad wasn't really in the picture but my mom i don't feel like i feel like she was like school's your business you know what i mean like what goes on between you and that teacher that's your guys's stuff i don't need to know

about that and she'd go to like a parent teacher conference but no way the level of engagement that there is now and i kind of like inherited that and i know i got i got divorced last year and i had been i had been skating on like just kind of letting my ex-wife handle all of those details you know like there's something going on at school and all this shit and now it's like i gotta fucking pay attention on like just kind of letting my ex-wife handle all of those details you know like there's something going on at school and all this shit and now it's like i gotta fucking pay attention you know because i you know now that you know now that we're separate entities it's like i can't be like that's your thing like it doesn't work that way like i gotta I got to read emails now. And that's hard for me because I got real bad attention shit. So the school, and it's my fault because I gave the school, when we first applied to this fucking school for my son, and they asked for my email address.

Anytime somebody asks for my email address, you don't give them the good one. Yeah, no shit. Yeah, give them the side one. So i gave them the fuck off aol email these motherfuckers send real emails that need to be read and it's my fault and yeah they sent they and me trying to be the i'm the man of the house that i'll handle the lunch so covet hits so. So they're doing the prepackaged. We send the lunches to the school already. And you just, it's TV dinners, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you pay monthly. And I just missed an email. And the school called me at like 12.05, five minutes into lunch. Yes, Mr. Wood, Henry does not have food. Did you see the email? I'm like, y'all could have just gave him one of them extra TV dinners and then just charge me on the backside. Like when I come to pick my son up, just go, you have a balance.

Before we give you your child pay for the tv dinner yeah so yeah they got collateral they got your boy yeah i think i'm not gonna give you four dollars but they straight up didn't feed that they didn't send a meal i don't say they didn't feed them but they literally count it down to the child and it is what it is. But yeah, there's this, this definitely, I definitely came up in a house where, you know,

it was some gender rolling going on. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was a lot of that old school ideology. So my mom was, my mom was school. That was,

that was her thing. What do you know? What do you not know? I'm buying you books and worksheets and lesson plans, and I'm going to keep you ahead of everybody. Yeah. Well, that also, you know, I think that it is only natural that within any partnership, there's going to be a division of labor. Like there's, you know, like there is going to be like that's's, but you gotta be, everybody's kind of involved in every department, but some departments you're the head of and some departments you're, you know,

you're, you're, you're like just an employee in that department. My ex-wife at one point was like, she goes like, I kind of get the feeling. She's like that you don't really care about the kids schooling that much. And I was like, yeah, you kind of got me. Yeah, you're kind of right. Sorry. And because she was always like, she was an A student, you know, and she was a, you know, student council president and very much, you know, scholastic and always a good student. And I just kind of, you know, I was like getting by on B's just because I could kind of, you know,

I was a good listener at least, you know, in class, and I kind of got the gist of things, but I didn't push it. You know, I didn't work hard. Is there pressure about having somebody else's name being a junior? Don't you have – do you have a half-brother who's Roy Wood Jr. too? I got a gang of half-brothers, but, yeah, I got one that's Roy Wood. He's Roy Wood Jr. too? I got a gang of half-brothers, but yeah, I got one that's Roy Wood. He's Roy Elwood. So legally,

he's, legally I'm a junior, but everyone in the family calls him Roy Jr. because he was born first. So I get it. There's no beef, per se. But is it weird to have a dad named two, two people after himself?

I've ever said, dad, you're an egomaniac. I don't know. Ask George Foreman. I know George. Well, that's, he's the, you know, he's the top of the mountain on that one. At least Deion Sanders gave each kid a variation. Deion, Deandre, DeAndre, whatever. Yeah, that's at least something.

That's why I didn't name my son after me. I didn't want him to be a third. Yeah. You know, go do your own thing, bro. That's the way I don't have any. I wouldn't want that. I wouldn't want it like. You want to cash in the family name coupon

if it comes in handy at some point in your life fine be roy's kid yeah yeah don't be roy no i always because to me it is it's like i don't know my feeling with kids is it's not about me it's about them you know and so it's like yeah shit go do what you want, be what you want. Just be happy, you know? Yeah. I've just tried to, with my son, the only thing that I'm trying from my childhood to not do to him is influence his interests, but instead expose him to everything. Yeah. But that takes a long time. The thing we do now, Saturday morning, I try to find a new sport for us to watch. You know, we'll have breakfast and we'll sit on the couch, you know, sit on the floor,

do a puzzle. And it might be figure skating. It might be, you know know we discovered roller derby we finally that's how far down the rabbit hole we are now we're into roller derby because we watched demolition derby and the people crashing and i's like yeah more bring it on so you know when we're when we are outside which is usually when we're down south when there's a little bit of space you know we try you know baseball football bicycle frisbee and just everything touch everything and it's weird because you can still see children gravitate towards certain things.

Like I try not to let him see me doing like what we're doing right now. Like if he were home, the setup would be, hey man, I need you on this tablet doing this ABC learning. And if you do that, when I give you the signal, you can switch over to Netflix and watch Paw Patrol or whatever. But he would see the cameras and the lights and the microphone. And you kind of got to dig for it, but there's a video of me and him at the beginning of the pandemic where he just loves picking up the microphone and trying to interview me. I remember. Yeah, that's so cute. I didn't teach him that.

I never taught him the concept of how to operate a stick mic. Yeah. I just gave him the mic. I gave him some headphones, and he'll walk around the house and we'll just interview people. Yeah. And it's like, that's cool. But then it's also scary because I'm like, oh, shit, I'm raising me.

Which is, I think, the worst shit, I'm raising me. Yeah. Which is, I think, the worst. I don't want to say worst. The most challenging type of child to raise is the one that's just like you because you know everything that he's going to do. And there's nothing you can. At least it's an adventure with a child with a different personality. Yeah. But I'm literally raising me. and there's nothing I can do, even armed with 42 years of cheat sheets.

Can't you tell my loves are growing? I have two kids. I have a 20-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter. And they are like me. Like, there's the tragic ways they're like me. Like, unfortunately, my son has inherited depression. Like, you know, like chemical depression. And that sucks, you know.

But I also am kind of like you know what i'm i'm okay you know i'm not great i went through a lot of hard shit on their stuff that he goes through that i see that i'm like i oh boy i was there i understand it because the main thing especially as they get older is when you start worrying about like, just, you know, like tragedy, just, you know, like something terrible happening. And I find there's some kind of solace in at least at like those parts of them that I relate to, or that I, that I recognize as parts of me. I think, well, again, I'm okay.

And do you sort of, or is there stuff about them that bugs you that you wish you could change about your boy? I can't say I wish I could change it. I wish I could help him have a better system of dealing with it. Yeah. So he, so he has magnet tiles, right?

And he'll build whatever contraption and he wants to build it so high and so massive that more often than not, the magnet tiles collapse. Yeah. He builds a structure, barely touches it and it collapses and he gets frustratingly angry about it and so we it took a while but you know teach him about centering his breathing and taking his time and really working through the problem and i can still

see i can still see him get frustrated but i can see him take the conscious choice to choose a different, to choose an off ramp away from what he normally would have gone towards. So I hate that, that fresh, that's something that I possess. It's something that I deal with. Not being angry is a choice. Not being frustrated about things is a conscious choice that for the most part, I feel like I've mastered. I'm a pretty even keeled person and getting him from where he is now to where I am when I know that the testosterone ain't even started dripping yet. But then what I'll see him do in the midst of all of that, my son will figure out a way through those magnet tiles on how to build a support beam and to restructure his design in a way that now it doesn't collapse.

And whether he's angry or whether he's calm, he never stops trying. Now, that's the shit I'm like, yeah, that's my boy. All right. But just do it without getting angry because that's not going to help you, and you're slowing down the time to the solution. And, you know, he's young, and I have to remember that he's four and not 14. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Cause you know, I, you know, I'll be honest, bro. You know, as a,

as a black man, like I know that some, some people in my family think that I'm hard on him and, and I'm not, I'm not a drill sergeant or anything. Wow. Like that. It's just more of a barometer of what you would expect from a four-year-old versus a

five-year-old or a six-year-old, you know, he draws an eight, right? But I give you a perfect example. He'll draw an eight and you celebrate that. And then I'll draw an eight next to it and ask him if he can copy it. And that's me learning how to communicate with him rather than just going, hey, man, that eight is crooked. Try again. You know, that's bad parenting to me. Yeah.

Because I'm not here to tear him down. And that is good for an eight-year-old. But in the back of my mind, I'm going, must be better, must be better, must be better, must be better, which is what I always have on myself. And I don't want to put that on him because I don't want to raise a kid who thinks that he never did enough. Yeah. And also, that's your stuff, not his. Correct. You know what I mean?

Correct. Yeah. So, that part of it is what I learned. You want to get on some deep shit? What I really learned, and this is where my girl, man, she grew up in a more compassionate household. So, she is the softer one. She is the compassionate one. She is the one who can connect with him on a more emotional level. And I've been digging in these books on love languages know love languages and attachment styles and stuff like

that and you know my son is you know he's physically expressive he he wants a hug you know that's what he's on and so i have to remember like that's something conscious that i have to you know remember because i didn't come up like that and And it wasn't that I was unloved. Yeah. I just didn't live in a house where people hugged a lot. I said they loved each other a lot. I knew it. You know, my dad was slipping in here and there.

But like every night at the end of the night, no. Yeah. No, no. My mama hitting the door from Memphis State at 8 830 you know I'm getting into bed you know I come home I come home from school at 3 can't afford a babysitter

but also you're in kindergarten first grade and you're I want to say handling business but I'm microwaving my own hot pockets I'm doing my homework leave the homework out on the table. Yeah. I could watch some cartoons and I need to be in the bed, you know, by seven, seven thirty.

Put myself to bed. So. Wow. That level of self-sufficiency is something that I am often anxious. Insufficiency is something that I am often anxious for him to have because as a black man, I don't know how much time I got left on this earth. So I don't always feel like I have the time and the luxury to just exist in a moment with him. In my brain, it's I've got to get you prepared, bro. I've got to get you prepared.

And I'm the only one who will care enough to do it. Now, he has other men in his life and his family, of course. But in my brain, I'm going, I have the best opportunity to get him prepared and to make him feel loved and to do all these things I was talking to the homie Baron Vaughn he's been on this podcast just to drop a note Baron previous guest Baron Vaughn

and we were talking about therapy you know and going to therapy and all of this shit. And I was saying to him, I said, you know, what's really, what's fucked up about going to therapy is that you're unpacking everything that went wrong or could have been different. Or you're, as a parent especially, you're in therapy and you're evaluating everything up until now. And while at the same time, you are the purveyor of those experiences for someone else that looks up to you so you're trying to figure out where shit went wrong while concurrently trying to do that same thing correctly with someone new but at least this is happening you know and yeah and baron says some he says some wild shit man he said he said our generation we're

the cycle breakers that's what we're trying to do that's specifically as black men correct or do you think just correct i'm sure i'm sure that could still apply to anybody who's had generational lineages of people who didn't do the work on themselves and figure out why they are the way they are and why things like, of course, but as black men, especially, and it's just with this, with this constant, I am cognizant of the shadow of death. I'm not, I don't fear it or anything like that, but it's something that it sits in the back of my mind. And whenever it happens, it'll be too soon as it relates to the boy.

You know, I have a friend that has bladder cancer. And the doc gave him a year to live if he doesn't have his bladder removed. And he would have to go colostomy for the rest of his life. And he said to me, he says, I have no wife. I have no kids. I wake up alone every day in pain.

I'll text you in a few weeks and let you know what I decide. I'm kind of thinking about just riding this shit out for a year. know what I decide. I'm kind of thinking about just riding this shit out for a year. And that type of thought, I think having a child kept me from having about my own existence. Not necessarily, not suicidal in that sense, but just the concern of death is deeper now because it's like fuck i gotta teach you all this shit bro before you're fucking so i gotta fucking stay alive but who knows tragic shit happens all the time all right man look you gotta draw your eights better i'm sorry but but saying it in a way that's you know that's nice

you know but i think that's the cool thing though right like podcasts and interviews because he's also going to be the first generation that's able to dig up shit on their parents and like really get into who they were or what they were about you can like like how wild like could you imagine reading your dad's twitter page from the 50s and just seeing i know what my dad's twitter page like these white folks we got to get them oh yeah no i um Oh, yeah. No, I, yeah, that is like, and, you know, I have to think about, you know, every time I do this, I know sometimes my kids listen to this podcast.

I know sometimes they do look at my Twitter page. Generally, they don't give a shit about what i do you know like they don't they don't watch conan show and they don't if i'm in something else you know unless unless you know like i'm in a show that they want to see anyway and i kind of like glad because i have such at times i have such ambivalence about show business and how like you know you fucked up upside down priorities and yeah and that's yeah you know i mean it's just kind of like i don't know if i care that much that they you know i certainly don't want to i want my kids to think i'm nice because i'm nice you know i want them to like appreciate that i cook them, but they don't have to think of me as a comedian or anything. The irony is that I'm on a show and I'm basically barking about all the same shit my daddy was barking about, only I add a couple punchlines.

Yeah. But that was never put on me. That was never. Yeah. I found it. And, you know, if he wants to, you know, he definitely has a sense of humor. He definitely does not, not jokes. He enjoys the feeling of making someone laugh.

So I know he's, he's kind of had the first hit of the dope. So I know performance might be somewhere down the road, but I don't know if I'm going to, I'm not going to sign him up for the play. If he wants to do it. Yeah. If he finds it, you know,

let him find it the same with the microphone thing. But, you know, I'm not going to like he gets that i'm on television or as he says in the tv yeah you know he gets that you know because you know there's nights you know i'm watching daily show just to see what edits they made to a field you know i'm curious i'm still a fan of the show but i just don't want to push him towards that. A lot of my half-siblings, the aforementioned other Roy, he know, station director at numerous TV stations across the country and top 10 markets, you know, it's it in the blood, I guess.

Yeah. But the wood factory of broadcast, but, you know, it's nothing that I felt like anybody ever, you know, saw me. I was just, I just grew up around it and then maybe that was the gravitation, you know, saw me, I was just, I just grew up around it. And then maybe that was the gravitation, you know, if anything,

Stuart Scott inspired me more to be a journalist. Cause he talked about sports and crack jokes. Yeah. My dad is not funny. That shit was not funny. It was real, some real spit, but it was not funny.

So you're 16. I'm like, I'm not doing that shit man is your dad still is your dad still alive no no he passed my senior year of high school okay uh when i was when i was 16 and up until that point i wanted to be a firefighter really like that's that was the plan i was gonna be a firefighter and then my, with her get an education shit, comes in. And this is the shit my mom would do. Well, you could be a firefighter, but get the degree in chemistry.

And then you can be a fire inspector and a pyrotechnic, blah, blah, blah. Because I used to love fireworks. And this is how she got me into this. You can become an arsonist that way. You can learn how to start i got i got grounded for two weeks for lighting the bottle racket in the house one time like that was the type of pyro like i burnt gi joes yeah grill like just all types of torture to toys yeah never bled over the, thank God. But my mom would just go, oh, firefighter, that's cool.

But he is the next level. And that's what I was going to do. And then fucking Stuart Scott. It wasn't Stuart Scott alone. It was four journalists. Stuart Scott, Fred Hickman on CNNSI, Van Earl Wright on Headline Sports, and Jenny Moose. And Jenny Moose would always do these lighter side type stories. On CNN, right?

Yeah. That was OG Daily Show. It was lighter. And Fred Hickman had stature but stewart scott was funny van erl right used to just say all crazy types of shit on headline news and i'm like you can just be silly like that and still wear in a suit yeah i was like all right what the fuck is that what do i need to major in journalism okay all. I guess that's what I'm doing. Now, you have a new podcast coming out that I want to make sure to promote here.

And it's like about the workplace. It's called Job Fair? Yeah, it's Roy's Job Fair. All it is, so during COVID, and you saw like everybody was dealing with unemployment, it's still a big issue in this country. It's not a podcast to solve unemployment, and it's not a bunch of people

just rattling off job listings. I mean, there's part of that, but it's just commiserating with strangers over wild work stories, while also from time to time finding job openings around because the thing is that where jobs like there's like certain rocks you may not look under a certain pivot you may not have thought about making in a particular career field so if you hear people talking about that stuff, I feel like there's really, there's a connection with strangers because I think there's things that connect us.

And, you know, like we all need something to eat. We all need someone to love. We all need a way to provide, you know, and this is just a conversation, you know, we talk about your worst and first jobs or your scams you used to run at the job, which is something I actually enjoy talking about, running scams. That used to be my thing as a teenager. So it's fun to talk about that type of shit, man. But yeah, that's literally all it is like it's not dude what did my mom say it takes my mom because i was trying to explain this to my mom and my mom said said that this isn't verbatim it just oh so you talking to people who either love they boss, hate they boss, or need a new boss.

I was like, yeah. That covers it. I think that's, yeah. Or be your own boss. Like, those are the four quadrants of employment. Love, hate, need a new one. Be my own. Be your, yeah, be my own. Yeah.

Well, what do you want for your future? I mean, what do you say, like, what's your optimal future for you? And it doesn't mean work. It means everything. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's weird because that question is always filtered through work, right? Yeah. here's all the things I hope to achieve. And here's all the people I hope to have worked with. And here's all the younger people that I hope. Like, I just want to be a beacon to people from Alabama who think that they can't do shit.

Cause they from Alabama. Yeah. That's it. So the only way I can do that is going out and trying to kick ass and being on TV from time to time. But also being a vocal, good father, like you are too.

I think that that's that that's pretty important. I think that people, when they hear that you as a latchkey kid are as involved and have as big a stake as you do, that's progress. Cycle breakers, baby. Yeah. Fucking cycle breakers. This is the three questions, and I guess the best way to ask the last one, which is what have you learned? Like, what would you like your son to learn from you, from your experience?

Like, to look at you and what would you like him to take away from your story? The biggest thing my son could take away from my existence is that you're not the sum of your mistakes and you don't need permission from people who hate you to be a good person. opinions of others, of ourself, when the truth is that your opinion of yourself and your dedication to being a person of moral stature, that's all that matters. Not even the opinions of your family matter. Ultimately, it's just of the people who claim to love you. And if they love you, then it shouldn't matter. I think that's the main, because you're going to make mistakes and you're going to be criticized for them. And I think how we respond and react in those moments really dictates a lot of what our real trajectory could be. Yeah. You know, potholes are inevitable.

It's, you know, knowing how to get the car back on the road. Right. That's the hard part. Or how to steer around them. Yeah, that too. Recognizing them when they come. So, you know, I think that's, you know, if I could only say one thing, it would be that. Well, that's a pretty good thing to say.

And this is a pretty good place to end. That's a pretty good thing to say. And this is a pretty good place to end. This has been a really, really excellent episode of this show. And I appreciate you taking time on your big day, your wisdom tooth day. Yeah, it's time. And I got to talk to that wisdom tooth. I'm the last podcaster that will get to talk to that wisdom tooth.

Yeah, it's time. The next podcast I do. wisdom tooth. I'm the last podcaster that'll get to talk to that wisdom tooth. Yeah. It's time. The next podcast. I do. Yes. So anyway, it's the job. That podcast.

All right, Roy. Well, thank you so much. And, and good luck. And I hope to see you soon. All this. Yeah,

man. You know, I'll get back out to the West Coast. Yeah. Got to get on this vaccine waiting list. Yeah, me too. Check these websites. All right, sir.

You have a good one. And thank you, everyone, for listening to this episode of The Three Questions. And we'll be back next week. Bye-bye. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Your Wolf production. It is produced by Lane Gerbig, engineered by Marina Pice, and talent produced by Kalitza Hayek. The associate producer is Jen Samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair, and executive producers Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco,

and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Your Wolf. Make sure to rate and review The Three Questions that Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts. Can't you tell my loves are growing? This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.