The team behind The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore – the show that replaces The Colbert Report next week – has expressed a desire to create a show that digs into issues and subjects ignored by other late-night programmes.
Host Larry Wilmore, executive producers Rory Albanese and Amy Ozols, and head writer Robin Thede set out their plan for Comedy Central’s new late-night offering at a meet-and-greet session on the set of the new show, painting a picture of a provocative programme that will tackle highly charged issues in a comedic way.
Wilmore – who worked as a writer on shows such as The Bernie Mac Show and The PJs and was The Daily Show’s “senior black correspondent” – described the show as what would happen “if The Daily Show and Politically Incorrect had a kid”. He explained that the idea came after a conversation with Daily Show host Jon Stewart, who thought there was a gap in late night for a show with more diverse views that tackled issues other programmes avoided or struggled with.
“Everyone talks about how ‘we need to start having that conversation and have that dialogue’. Jon and I have talked about it for a long time, and I thought it would be awesome to have a show where you could sit down and have a dialogue and some fun as well,” said Wilmore.
The Nightly Show launches on Monday and will start with Wilmore talking about issues in the first act – on Martin Luther King Jr Day, the focus will be protest – before opening out the discussion to a panel who will thrash out the arguments.
“My image is: this is my barber shop where we’re having these conversations,” he said. “No matter how heated it gets, we’re all in the barber shop, we’re all having fun, but your point of view is going to get challenged.”
Ozols, a former executive producer of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, said: “We’re going to take the piece of the story that nobody cares about and we’re going to dig into that, and by definition, we’re doing the thing that no one else is paying attention to but should be.”
She also spoke about the need for the show to have a life on the internet, following Jimmy Fallon’s lead in creating shareable “viral” clips.
“That’s very important to us because: a) it’s a crowded late-night landscape; and b) people don’t really sit on their couch and watch late-night TV any more,” she said. “TV is a 24-hour experience that just happens to appear on a little box in the corner of their living room. The rest of the day it’s everywhere else, so we know we need to create a show that fits in.”
Guests booked to appear on the show in the first few weeks include rapper Talib Kweli, who recently attended the Ferguson protests; New Jersey senator and former mayor of Newark Cory Booker; comedian Bill Burr, former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett; and actor John Leguizamo.
The team says the focus isn’t on “glamour bookings”, but instead on landing guests who the staff finds interesting and who can contribute compelling, genuine arguments about a subject or news story.
Head writer Robin Thede, who worked on The Queen Latifah Show and Real Husbands of Hollywood, said the writer’s room is diverse, too, with staff coming from all walks of life.
“We didn’t need people who are just going to write monologues. We wanted people from a journalistic background, entertainment background, sketch and improv,” she said.
“We’ve got people who were turned away by other late-night shows because they were told they were too old – this is someone with 15 years’ experience. But on this show, that’s not an issue. Other shows don’t want or need it; they just need a really funny Hillary Clinton joke.”
Wilmore’s show is the first new late-night offering to launch in 2015, a year that will see seismic shifts during the post-11.30pm time slots.
Comedy Central’s former late-night host Stephen Colbert takes over from David Letterman in September, after the veteran broadcaster steps down in May, following 20 years at CBS. British actor James Corden’s new show starts on 23 March, when he takes over from Craig Ferguson, who left the Late Late Show in December. Other channels are trying to make an impact, too, with National Geographic hiring astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson for a late-night version of his successful podcast Star Talk.
