W. Kamau Bell: How Do We Talk About Cosby?
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Higher Ground
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2022
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Comedian and documentary host W. Kamau Bell has built a career out of having difficult conversations. Today, he returns to the show with his latest project, the four-part docuseries We Need to Talk About Cosby.
We begin with Kamau's reluctance to talk about Bill Cosby (7:35), whose legacy became something he decided to publicly grapple with (8:30) and examine chronologically through this piece (10:17). Kamau speaks on his approach to the series (13:10), the integral women who helped create it (14:40), and a formative United Shades of America moment that transformed the way he encounters and tells painful stories (16:24).
On the back half, we unpack Cosby’s impact on Black history and representation (24:00), how he changed the stunt industry (27:53), a philosophy on truth that became embedded in the documentary (34:38), and how the project permanently altered Kamau’s course (35:04).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm Sam by comedian and filmmaker W. Kamal Bell. |
| 0:47.0 | Kamal first came on our show back in 2016. |
| 0:50.6 | Since then, he's moved a little bit away from stand-up comedy and into documentary filmmaking. |
| 0:57.0 | He's the creator and host of a great program on CNN called United Shades of America. |
| 1:03.0 | The premise of the show is simple enough. |
| 1:06.0 | In each episode, Kamau travels to a different part of the country |
| 1:09.0 | to sit with a particular issue inside that region. He's gone to the South to speak with the Ku Klux |
| 1:15.6 | clan. He's visited inmates in the San Quentin prison, a Muslim community in Michigan, |
| 1:21.7 | indigenous people in the Dakotas. |
| 1:24.0 | As Kamau says, he's focused on having these difficult but necessary conversations, |
| 1:30.4 | even when we may not want to have them. |
| 1:33.0 | And it's that mission statement |
| 1:35.0 | that Brock Kamau to his latest project. |
| 1:38.0 | We need to talk about Cosby, |
| 1:39.0 | a four-part docuaries that recently premiered on Showtime. |
| 1:43.7 | Here's a clip from the trailer. |
| 1:45.0 | Do not edit this. |
| 1:47.0 | A lot of people knew. |
| 1:49.5 | Because you can't do what he did unless you have other people supporting what you're doing. |
| 1:55.6 | Spanish Fly, the girl would drink it and hello American. |
| 2:00.3 | Bill Cosby had been one of my heroes. I'm a black man, stand-up comic, I was |
| 2:08.7 | born in the 70s. But this? |
... |
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