John Leguizamo on Trump, Dirty Jokes, and Whitewashing Latinx History
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2020
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Actor, activist, author and educator John Leguizamo loves that his comedy makes people feel angry. In his 2018 one-man Broadway show, Latin History for Morons, the 55-year-old star splices jokes with history about the genocide of Native American people, his experience being racially profiled in the United States, and a welter of statistics about the underrepresentation of Latinx people in American media. Born in Colombia and raised in Queens, New York, Leguizamo grew up seeing negative portrayals of Latinx people in Hollywood and in the pages of the New York Times. This feeling of being an outsider, of not belonging, was a power that he eventually came to value—and harness as fuel for his comedy and acting career.
In January, Leguizamo sat down with Mother Jones’s DC Bureau Chief David Corn onstage at the Comedy Cellar, the historic New York City stand-up venue, to talk about his work, ego, process, and his favorite subject: Latinx history.
Corn’s interview with Leguizamo is one in a series of several notable guests featured over the next three episodes. It’s a special summer interview series with a very “2020” origin story: Earlier this year, the coronavirus pandemic stalled work on a new podcast, co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, but not before three fascinating guests joined Corn for in-depth interviews about art, politics, comedy, and the philosophies that infuse their work. These chats were too good to simply shelve; in the coming week’s you’ll also hear from music icon Debbie Harry, and talkshow host Samantha Bee.
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| 0:00.0 | This special limited series of the Mother Jones podcast is brought to you by our presenting partner Raycon. |
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| 0:17.8 | slash mojo pod. |
| 0:19.8 | Hey, it's Jimmy King, host of the Mother Jones Podcast. I've got a special treat for you. |
| 0:28.0 | For the next three weeks my colleague David Corn, Washington DC Bureau Chief at Mother Jones, |
| 0:38.9 | has something special in store. David, what's this about? |
| 0:47.4 | What are you taking over the show for? |
| 0:48.4 | Well, several months ago I was preparing to bring you and everybody else a new podcast called Let's Go There. |
| 0:54.8 | It was being produced jointly by Mother Jones and the comedy cellar, which is the historic |
| 0:59.6 | comedy club in New York City and the idea was to do an interview every week or so with an artist, writer, musician, |
| 1:05.8 | actor, comedian, or anyone else that I find fascinating. |
| 1:09.7 | And we would get smart takes, personal stories about culture, politics, and their own work. |
| 1:14.3 | And it was really neat. |
| 1:15.2 | We were recording these, and the intention was to record them, on stage at the comedy cellar |
| 1:20.1 | itself, without an audience, but still with all the vibes and all the grime of the years of sweat and comedy that came out of that club. |
| 1:29.0 | That was the goal. |
| 1:31.0 | And then let me guess. |
| 1:34.0 | Something interrupted your plans. |
| 1:36.0 | Well, as with many of us, well-made plans got put aside when the coronavirus pandemic hit. Now we had to put the project on hold, but before that happened, |
| 1:48.7 | before our world changed, I did record interviews with several cultural heroes for this new podcast. |
| 1:57.0 | Like who? |
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