There’s a price to pay for comic brilliance. For Wanda Sykes, it means she will forever have people yelling to her about her ass.
Her rant about Larry David’s alleged ass obsession on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm was one of the funniest things on a relentlessly funny show. After David unthinkingly yells out to her from his car while she’s jogging—”Id recognize that ass anywhere!”—she lays into him. Choice lines include “Oh, you know who I am, ok. I thought I would have to turn around and show you my big ass” and “You been scrounging around, looking for ass?”
The whole show is basically improvised from a skeletal plot outline, and Sykes says there was a sense on set of how classic those scenes would become.
“Larry is always the first one to break,” she says in an interview by phone from her home in Los Angeles. “Larry laughs and then everybody else breaks up.” Now, of course, she has years of call-outs on the street to look forward to, and she’s already gotten plenty.
“Oh, of course,” she says matter-of-factly. “All the time. ‘Hey, I’d recognize that ass anywhere!'”
Curb fans will be happy to know she’s already filmed an episode for the new season. Though her Fox show was cancelled this year (her second ill-fated outing with the network), she can also be seen on The New Adventures of Old Christine. Her latest HBO special, I’ma Be Me, is out on DVD and was nominated for two primetime Emmys. She also won a GLAAD award this year recognizing an openly lesbian or gay media figure who’s made a significant contribution to LGBT rights.
Sykes has definitely done that. Her riffs on gay marriage are—like a good portion of Sykes’ comedy—a mix of common sense, politics and absurdity, as she and I discuss the amount of money spent selling the California electorate on Prop. 8, especially by the Mormons. “It’s just ridiculous,” she tells me. “We have food banks that are empty, but you’d rather keep two people from being together? It’s not like you have to attend the wedding!”
Then, on the Latter-Day Saints: “I don’t get it. You would think the Mormons would want to be kind of quiet—guys, don’t you have your own problems?” Sykes’ humor, though, never seems as divisive as one might think, maybe because she’s willing to go after stupidity she sees on both sides of the political spectrum. She’s become so known for her political material now that she says she actually feels pressure to always have some on hand. Which means her writing skills have to be at their sharpest.
“Political humor is the worst when it’s not funny,” she says. “‘Cause now I’m just up here preaching.”
WANDA SYKES performs Saturday, Oct. 2 at Mountain Winery in Saratoga at 7:30pm.
