Former daily show correspondent Wyatt Cenac brings stand-up to Johnny D’s

Comedian Wyatt Cenac, a former writer and correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, recently starred in his second comedy special titled Wyatt Cenac: Brooklyn. Filmed at Union Hall in Brooklyn and directed by the comedian, it streamed on Netflix on Oct. 21, 2014.

On the same day, he also released 1,000 limited edition vinyl LPs of the special through his production company, Amalgamated Bear. The LPs were distributed by Other Music to record stores. The native New Yorker also embarked on a 12-city U.S. tour in support of the special. The tour began in Los Angeles, Calif., on Oct. 21, and ended its run a month later in Washington, D.C.

In a recent phone interview with the Banner, Cenac mentioned how the Brooklyn special came about piece by piece.

“It mainly came about because I was at a place where I felt like I had a bunch of stuff that I wanted to put out as far as in an album,” he said. “I got lucky when I was getting ready to record the album. I was just going do to an audio and the production company said, ‘We’d like to see this,’ and everything kind of came together like that…and I showed it to Netflix and they were like, ‘Sure, we’ll take this.’”

Netflix gave him the freedom to put it together the way that he wanted to, including directing his special for the first time.

Cenac learned a lot from the experience.

“I really enjoyed the process of putting it together, especially with a stand-up special,” he said. “When you do something like that there’s so much of yourself going into it, you want to have some say in the process, and why you want to be able to have some creative freedom with the project. In my first special, I had a really great director who always checked in with me to make sure I was happy with how things were coming. This time around I’ve taken the lessons I learned working with him, and I had a really great crew of people around to show how it all came together.”

The comic is referring to Miles Kahn, a filmmaker, writer and producer who also happens to be a senior producer for The Daily Show. Kahn directed Cenac’s first hour-long special Wyatt Cenac: Comedy Person which premiered on Comedy Central in 2011. The biggest lesson he learned from Kahn, he said, was about “finding ways not to get discouraged by the idea that something can’t happen, and really trying to figure out how to make it happen.”

Cenac says he learned that it was important not to rush the process.

“[You have to] take a moment and really sit down and think about it. You can probably accomplish most of the things you want to accomplish.”

Artistic evolution

The writer, comic and actor spent four and a half years on The Daily Show (2008-2012); during that time, he won three Emmy Awards for his contribution as a writer. His first appearance on the series was in July 2008 as part of the show’s “Indecision 2008” presidential campaign coverage. Over the four years, Cenac often skewered politics and racism in such segments as Rappers or Republicans and Slim Thug Feels the Recession. Prior to appearing on the Comedy Central late night series he spent three seasons as a writer on FOX-TV’s animated show King of the Hill.

Since leaving The Daily Show, Cenac has been hosting the weekly stand-up show Night Train at Littlefield Performance & Art Space in Brooklyn. At the weekly show, he’s not only able to see a lot of comedians perform, but he gets to be a fan as well. Hannibal Burress, Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che and Jen Kirkman have all dropped by to perform at Night Train.

“There are so many talented people of my sort of class of comedians that I enjoy watching,”

Cenac is also a fan of more established comedians like Sarah Silverman, Chris Rock, Zach Galifianakis and Dave Chappelle.

“Whenever they’re in town those are people that I will try to go see when I can,” he said.

Now that he released his second special, a vinyl LP, and supported it with a comedy tour, Cenac hopes to get back on television. Even though he feels it’s possible to create projects on your own these days, especially with advances in technology, he realizes that it may be a challenge to get back on television without the means to do so.

“I think whether it’s on the Internet, whether it’s on television, whether it’s a movie, you still need the means to make something happen,” he said. “That’s the challenge right now; just hoping and trying to find a network that would sort of give me the creative license to make something of my own and also then support it — support it so that it can find and build an audience.”