This is the Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and today we are

flashing back to the interview I did with the great stand-up comedian and daily show correspondent

Roy Wood Jr. When I spoke to Roy this past March, he talked about how Dave Chappelle

changed the game by releasing his 846 special on YouTube, just days after he filmed it in his hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Now, Roy has done it himself on an even bigger scale, premiering his new hour-long special Imperfect Messenger on Comedy Central this Friday night, less than two weeks

after he taped it at the Gothic Theater in Denver, Colorado. In this conversation, Roy and I

discussed how his previous special tackled the issue of trans identity in a very different way

from Chappelle. We also got into the many ways in which the Daily Show is continuing to evolve

post-Trump and a lot more. So I hope you enjoy this talk and we'll be back next week with an all-new

episode. But for now, here's me with Roy Wood Jr. I wanted to actually start by thanking you

for, you know, people listening don't know this,

but about a year ago when the pandemic started, you really did me a solid and helped me out

finding comedians to talk about what life was like at the beginning of the pandemic for a piece

that I wrote for The Daily Beast. And you were just instrumental in connecting me with people for that.

And it was at this time when,

when this podcast was kind of on hiatus,

because we still didn't know how we were going to tape it,

not in a studio.

I didn't even have this microphone yet.

We were,

we were figuring it out.

So I was basically just calling up,

...