Comedian ziwe chats with cmxvalentine on her live show, Showtime series, and transmuting pain into art.
There’s a palpable buzz in the air surrounding Ziwé, as the comedian runs around the Music Hall of Williamsburg one hot Saturday afternoon in June, prepping for one of her sold-out POP variety shows. Clad in a blood-red Kappa velour set with a pair of rectangular black sunglasses perched low on her nose, Ziwé is running the show in every sense of the word. One moment she’s doing a mic check on stage, with a massive projection of her mononym behind her.
During the pandemic, Ziwé’s Instagram live “Baited” shows became one of the few sources of pleasure in an almost pathologically bland entertainment landscape. At the height of 2020’s cultural racial reckoning, putting people on the spot became her forté, as she asked guests — many of whom had experienced some form of so-called cancellation — impossible questions that were designed to entrap. Her viral fame turned into her very own show,from 2018 to 2020.
The POP Show is drenched in the aesthetics of, naturally, pop culture. There’s a PowerPoint presentation where Ziwé catalogs the perks of being a pop star — which include fame, fortune, paparazzi, haters, and fedoras — and another in which she laments the low rating she has on the infamous celebrity foot fetish website, wikiFeet.
It’s also a return to Ziwé’s roots as both a stand-up and an improviser. “Doing live shows prepares you for doing any show,” she says. “Live shows are like the gutter; it’s grassroots.” She notes the hard work of putting on a live performance prepared her for creating her own show for Showtime. “You’re calling people yourself. You see me prepping and talking to sound, and you realize how many teams are involved in creating a live production. It taught me how to book talent.
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