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Geoff Bennett on his new book and the 'golden age' of Black sitcoms
00:30:01
What sparked the explosion of Black sitcoms in the 1990s, and why didn't it last? Those are some of the questions PBS News Hour co-anchor Geoff Bennett explores in his new book, "Black Out Loud: The Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from Vaudevil...
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- [00:00]
Amna Nawaz
Hey, everyone, it's om. Now. We have a very special episode of Settle in for you. Today. I spoke with my NewsHour Co anchor and my friend Jeff Bennett about his new book called Black Out Loud, the Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from vaudeville to 90s sitcoms. So in the 1990s, a remarkable wave of black sitcoms and sketch comedy reshaped American television shows like In Living Color and Living Single, A Different World and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It's often called the golden age of black sitcoms. So Jeff and I talked about the conditions that allowed for those shows to flourish, the long history of black comedians who made that moment possible, and why those sitcoms still matter today, three decades later. So settle in and enjoy my conversation with Jeff Bennett. Jeff Bennett, welcome to Settle In.
- [00:55]
Jeff Bennett
I'm the Nawaz to find you here.
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Amna Nawaz
This is kind of nice. We should just come here and hang out more often.
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Jeff Bennett
Not as if we don't talk to each other during the day at all. Right. But with microphones in front of our faces. It makes it more official.
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Amna Nawaz
Congratulations on the book.
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Jeff Bennett
Thank you.
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Amna Nawaz
I know it's been a huge labor of love for you. Everyone out there is going to love reading it. But just tell us a little bit about it. What made you want to write this book?
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Jeff Bennett
So I am a child of the 80s, really, but the 90s were, for me, formative, as they were for you.
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Amna Nawaz
Absolutely.
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Jeff Bennett
And when I knew I had this incredible opportunity to write a book, I had to think about what I wanted to write about. And there's always, there's been this saying, write what you know. And I knew I didn't want to write about politics because it occupies enough of our brain space, truly. And I knew I wanted to focus on something cultural. And the question that I had been kicking around for at least a decade is what was it about the 1990s that allowed these really landmark sitcoms, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Fresh Martin and Living Color, which was a sketch comedy, Living Single, to all exist on the air at the same time. It wasn't as if there was a single breakout hit. These shows were all on the airwave simultaneously. They were competing, they were cross pollinating. How did that happen? And then ultimately, how did it all fall apart? So that was really the genesis of this. And I approached it with the instincts of a journalist, but with the heart of a fan. So we are now at the end of the four year process process of writing and research and interviews and trying to catch people as we're walking off the set from the NewsHour, getting a phone call back and ducking into a room and doing an interview, putting this all together. So it's great to have it out in the world.
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Amna Nawaz
So as you talk to all these people who were so pivotal at this time, why focus on the 90s in particular? What was it about that moment that made it so special?
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Jeff Bennett
It was this rare convergence of culture and a business opportunity. So I spoke with Barry Diller, the media titan who launched Fox Broadcasting Network. And he had said that he knew that when he launched Fox, he wanted it to be fundamentally different from the big three. Abc, NBC, cbs, because in his view, they were all indistinguishable in terms of what they were putting on TV at night, in terms of primetime sitcoms. So the first pilot he greenlit, the title of it was not the Cosby Show, a little on the nose. But the producers who got word of this and were sending him pilots knew that it was. It had to be different from the Cosby Show. That show went on to become Married With Children.
- [03:18]
Erika Alexander
Wow.
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Jeff Bennett
The subversive sitcom that hit television.
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Amna Nawaz
Yeah.
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Jeff Bennett
That then created the formula for everything that followed. That's how you get Keenan Ivory Wayans having the agency and the budget to basically put his entire family on television. And so it was those conversations with the performers and the producers and the creative minds behind at that era that really informed the.
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Amna Nawaz
When you look back at the 90s, outside of entertainment and comedy, what was it about that time that allowed all of these shows to flourish at the same time?
- [03:50]
Jeff Bennett
It was the end of the Cold War. You had a growing black middle class, you had a booming Clinton economy. And really, for the first time, you had advertisers who were looking at black audiences who at the time were over represented in terms of their television watching as a demographic that was really courted for the first time. And again, with Barry Diller making this decision that he wanted for Fox Broadcasting, the network, which we should say is different than Fox News. People hear Fox and think it's one and the same, but at the time, it wasn't. That's what opened the floodgates. So you had Keenan Ivory Wayans in Living Color. And we should just stop there for a second, because that show. What I came to realize in doing the research was that he had to basically create an entire pipeline, a talent pipeline, because the talent pipeline for television sketch at the time was really built around snl. So he had to go out and find David Alan Grier. He had to go out and find Jim Carrey, David Spade auditioned for In Living Color, and they said, you're not quite the right fit. And when David Spade saw Jim Carrey's audition was like, yeah, now I can understand why I wasn't the right fit. Rosie Perez started really within Living Color. She had done some work for Spike Lee and then went to In Living Color, and then she cast Jennifer Lopez, who we all obviously now know as
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Amna Nawaz
one of the original Fly Girls.
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Jeff Bennett
Yeah, that's right. So all of these household names came from that show. And that show existed because you had, in that case, a young black comedian who was given the agency and the budget to do what he wanted. And, you know, Barry Diller and the executives at the time gave him the money, the freedom, and backed out of the way until that show got on the air. And then they had some fights with, you know, Standards and Practices and the network execs because they were really pushing
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Amna Nawaz
the envelope, but they fought for what they believed in. I mean, that show was really true to its core throughout. That's why it was so groundbreaking. Was the intention Mass Appeal? Like, did they think this will resonate with everyone?
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Jeff Bennett
No, the intention was to be as funny and as specific and authentic as they could possibly be. And there's a lesson in that, too, because you would think, you know, if I'm living in the middle of the country and I don't know any black folks, why would I watch a show like In Living Color or Fresh Prince or Martin? But that's not actually how it turned out to be. It was that the. That the specificity and those stories in being so specific and authentic, they were universally appealing because, remember, these shows, obviously they had a serious black viewership base, but they were also resonant, just across the board, cross racially. And so for years, you know, Cosby show was number one, Cheers was number two. A Different World was number three. And that's how it was for a very long time.
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Amna Nawaz
Reading the characters and your interviews in the book, it's like a trip down memory lane for me. It will be for so many people. I want to ask you about some of them. Specifically Karen Parsons, who played Hilary Banks on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. She's the really stylish, kind of brash, outspoken older cousin. At that time, her character was really seen as sort of ditzy, not that smart, really entitled and spoiled. How did that change over time?
- [06:53]
Jeff Bennett
At the time, it would have been easy to write that character off, as you say, ditzy and superficial. But over time, and in speaking with Karen Parsons, she said, that when younger audiences encounter that show, they see her as fully possessed and fully self possessed. And that was not the case when that show was on the air.
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Karyn Parsons
I cannot tell you how, how, how much I love what, how she ended up being ingested by especially this younger generation. When, when I was doing Hillary, it was a far more. And this is not just my performance, but people at the time, I think, were looking at her a lot more like she was shallow and, and she was, you know, it's just light, like, oh, she's ditzy. I hear people, I hear people a lot say, you know, stuff about her being ditzy and, and the, the younger generations didn't see her that way. And I love that they love that she was unapologetic about what she wanted, about her beauty, about, you know, all of her ambitions. And if you watch the show, you watch her arc and you go, whoa, she, she really gets it done. You know, it, her, her dad did give her, you know, smothered her with whatever she wanted. Probably first girl they got, you know, they got money and gave a little girl everything she wanted. But she also was given a lot along the way. I think she received a lot of confidence. And so she just, she, she felt like, you know, I want this, I'm going to take this, I'm going to do this. You know, she kind of went into the world that way. And for a lot of young women watching, what's been reflected back to me is how much they look at her as a role model because she went out there and she went after what she wanted. She had no problem saying, this is who I am and I'm beautiful and I'm gonna do this. And no holding back, no trying to make nicer people or try to make people comfortable, not never being small. And I, I think part of what I loved about playing her was some of that because I had been raised as a good girl. And if you don't have anything nice to say, you don't say anything at all, which is not Hillary's motto at all. And so it was fun for me and enlivening for me to be able to be this person. And what's really great is that so many young women have looked at her and appreciated those, those qualities and taken that, you know, taken them on as. And I love that I could actually have been doing that without realizing it, but that they see that.
- [09:29]
Amna Nawaz
All right, Erika Alexander is another actor you talked to. She played Maxine Shaw, attorney at law, in the comedy Living Single. And she said she's seen a different kind of impact from playing that character. What did she tell you?
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Jeff Bennett
So, Maxine Shaw Attorney at LAW There is this thing called the Maxine Shaw effect. And it basically quantifies the number of women of color, black women in particular, who sought out high powered professions, whether it was in the legal realm or in politics. And I say that because Kamala Harris, Ayanna Pressley, Stacey Abrams have all said, according to Erica Alexander, that they were in some way inspired to pursue their chosen professions because of, because of her character, because of her character on tv. Because until that point you had not seen a black woman, and to be specific about it, a dark skinned black woman with braids in that sort of role, in a high powered, playing a high powered attorney who also, by the way, had relationship issues that played out on screen. It was a full depiction of her humanity that had not existed on television previously.
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Erika Alexander
I think it was maybe 20 years later. I mean, we're like 32 years in 20, 25 years in later, maybe 20 years. These amazing people started coming up to me saying they went into law, they went to executive positions, they went into education, leadership positions, because they were very inspired by Maxine Shaw Attorney at Law People like Stacey Abrams and Ayanna Pressley, Marilyn Mosby, judges, educators, C suite people were really very adamant that it meant not just a little bit to them, but a lot. And I knew that representation mattered, but there was proof positive they had actually done the things that Maxine Shaw was purporting to have done. I had graduated from high school, I didn't go to college, and it was really great, very satisfying to see what they had achieved. They were always going to be achievers, but if they saw a version, she was an avatar of the future, then I'm very blessed and glad to have been a part of that.
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Amna Nawaz
You know, one thing they both told you that stuck with me was that after the shows ended, what came next seemed to surprise them. Hollywood wasn't ready for them. What did they say?
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Jeff Bennett
Erica Alexander described this in such a way where it really stuck with me. She said that Hollywood was not prepared to absorb her or frankly any of her colleagues, that there was so much respect and love for what they did when they were on tv, but there was no preparation for what to do with them. And after those shows ended, there's many
- [12:07]
Erika Alexander
people who never got their flowers or what they really deserved, whether it was the honor of, say, Eldon Award, Emmy, Golden Globe, any of that. But you get it from the people. The people are the True representation of where. Where your work hits and lives. And after that experience, many of us weren't. We weren't offered anything after that in terms of another, you know, based off of the work that we'd done. It was kind of like going to the drawing board. I know Taraji talks about this. Certainly Monique has. You know, there's an issue in Hollywood overall that has difficulty absorbing the success of the stars that it makes. I can speak to that and say that that's just showbiz, but. But if you are a star of color and. Or black or black female, it's like saying, oh, great, you're amazing. You know, getting all the props and then crickets. And it's more than depressing, it's disheartening. You can be encouraged to death, literally. There's nowhere to put that heartbreak. Where do you speak to it? What do you do with it? I taught myself different skill sets. Learned how to direct, produce and write and also campaign to be an advocate for the marginalized community and strong women inside of political spaces. But a lot of people don't know where that goes. And so it needs to be discussed. And people need to know that though you may be a veteran, you also need the support and the mental capacity, the mental sort of, well, support to move forward. It's very difficult to be in this business over a long time, partly because, you know, no one may want what you're, what you represent or what you're selling, but you have to know who you are. You have to know how big the world is and how American culture is just the tip of the iceberg. We have a global conversation happening now, so it's really wonderful to hear people give us our props. And certainly me, my props. I get a lot of love out there and support. I'll always be grateful, but it's a very difficult space to be in hard industry.
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Karyn Parsons
It's true. You know, you're on the show for Fresh Prince for six years and you feel like you're doing your job well, and it's well received. It's not a complete surprise that I was incredibly typecast. There were times I tried to get in the room and I couldn't to films for certain films, because people, the response that I received was, no, no, no, we know what she does. No, no, no, we know what she does. And they were just insistent that that's who I was. I mean, people thought that that's who I was. Great. It's a compliment, and I get it. More doors open for me, ultimately, in Life than were closed ultimately. But I will say, as an actor, once we left the show and you. It's hard when you've been working so regular regularly on a show that's popular. And yeah, it's interesting. There wasn't anywhere after that, really. I mean, there were. It's not that there weren't parts out there. I always joke around that when I was trying. When I was out there and trying to get movies, that so was hallelujah. Dumb luck, man. That was rough times. You're like, mine, mine. But, you know, it was. I mean, I look back at it and there are a lot of things I would. I should have done. It's at easy Monday morning quarterbacking. But other places I could have put my attention that would have run really, really helpful for me as an actor. Beyond the whole careerist stuff that everyone's filling your heads with, oh, you need to do this and you need to do that. And so you're rushing to try to get all these. Basically, they're going to be Halle Berry movies, but you're rushing out to try to get all these things. When I could have been doing. I could have. I would have probably been received better if I had pursued more theater. If, you know, I think there would have been probably a better appreciation of a character actor, for instance. Although, you know, in the time, there just weren't as many parts for black women, period. So it's nice now to look around and see so much activity and see so much going on. It's exciting. It's so different from when I was coming up.
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Amna Nawaz
Okay, so beyond some of those folks, I know you talk to so many people who are responsible for what you've called this golden age, right, of black sitcoms in the 90s. Actors and writers and executives, we're talking about it now with the context of history, we can look back and say it was so transformative. Did it feel that way at the
- [17:13]
Jeff Bennett
time to them speaking to the showrunners and some of the actors connected to those shows? No. I mean, two things you have to remember. One, they were in their late 20s, early 30s, almost to a number, all of them, and they were working on tight deadlines, in some cases tight budgets. And the shows had to be funny. They had to operate at that level first and foremost. And so that was always at the forefront of the work that they were doing. And for In Living Color, for instance, Kenan Ivory Wayans, because he grew up in a funny family, as he put it, he would tell his writers room, this is not a Dictatorship, or this is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship. And that he had to be the one laughing before any of those jokes or sketches got on the air. So that was what they were focused on, was just having a show that was resonant and engaging with week after week. It wasn't until 20, 30 years on that you look back at the totality of it and get a real sense of the cultural import and the imprint, really.
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Amna Nawaz
I mean, one of the things creators or anyone who's in a space where they are in the minority sometimes talks about is like, the pressure of the institution to push back on things that are funny to you, are true to you, but they don't necessarily feel are comfortable with putting out there or will resonate with everyone. Did any of the artists or showrunners or creators talk about institutional pressure to numb their voices or to kind of round the edges of what they were doing? Did they feel that?
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Jeff Bennett
So Yvette Lee Bowser, who was a writer on A Different World and then created Living Single, told me that she got pushback on the Maxine Shaw character, that the network execs didn't see the importance of that character and thought that she was superfluous and wasn't really necessary. And Yvette fought to keep that character. And we talked about, obviously, why that ended up being important. But the other important thing about the 90s, again, was that because there were so many of these shows on the air at once, and there were so many different visions and versions of black life, what it did was it removed from any one show the burden of having to present the fullness of the black experience. I use that sort of in air quotes because that's also a cross to bear, too, especially when you're either the first or the only on the air. And because they were all there together, it meant that you could have the chaos of a Martin Lawrence and you could have the aspiration of a Will Smith or the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and you could have a professional, professional life that was depicted for the four women in Brooklyn living single. And all of that could exist together at once.
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Amna Nawaz
And I have to ask you about the role the Cosby show played as sort of a precursor to all this. It was popular leading up to the early 90s. Right. And then created the spinoff of A Different World, which was hugely popular. And all of this is deeply complicated. But what's the legacy when you talk to people now? What's the legacy of that show of a different world today? And how did all of the revelations about the Cosby abuse, change or temper that at all.
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Jeff Bennett
To talk about Bill Cosby and to talk about the Cosby Show. And I grappled with this in the book because I really had to. In one way, you have to separate the art from the artist, but in another way, you have to hold two truths at once. Was that he did real harm, significant harm. And that show that he created is, in so many ways foundational. It's foundational to the culture, and it's certainly foundational to what we saw in. In the 90s. You would not have had a different world had it not been his idea to spin off what was supposed to be a star vehicle for Lisa Bonet. And there's a whole history there about how the first season of that show didn't work. And Phylicia Rashad went to Bill Cosby and said, you have to bring in my sister to overhaul the show. And that's how we got seasons two.
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Amna Nawaz
Really?
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Jeff Bennett
Yeah. Yeah, we can get into that. But, yeah, no, what Bill Cosby is accused of and what he served time for is monstrous. Period. End of sentence.
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Amna Nawaz
Yeah. You know, you look around now in popular culture, and I wonder how you, as a fan of all this, too, see the fact that a lot of these different world characters and characters from these 90s sitcoms are sort of having a resurgence right now, popping up in commercials. What does that say to you about the staying power?
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Jeff Bennett
Why are the 90s so resident resonant? Because that was the last time we had a monoculture. That was the last time we had shared reference points. You see it now with tentpole events like the super bowl or the Oscars or the Golden Globes. But you have to remember, and we should say for people who are of a certain age and were not born yet, there was a time when after school, you would go home, you would sit at the table, have dinner as a family, and then you would sort of take to the living room, turn on the tv.
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Amna Nawaz
I love the way you're explaining it. It was like in the 1900s, this is how we lived.
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Jeff Bennett
There were four networks. If you wanted to change the channel, you'd have to get up and go to the TV and change the channel before the remote controls. But my point is, tens of millions of people would sit and watch these shows night after night. And that's why it's culturally resonant. And that's why for so many of us who grew up in that era, we think and look back on it fondly now, everyone's sort of in their own silos. Everybody has a phone. There's something to be said about the democratizing of content creation and storytelling. But the other side of that is there are 8 billion people on the planet. There are 8 billion stories. No one's really having the same conversation about any one thing. Whereas back then we did. I remember when Crisscross. Remember Crisscross?
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Amna Nawaz
Of course I remember. How dare you? Of course I remember crisscross.
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Jeff Bennett
Well, you know, they were the performers on. And their whole thing was that they would wear their clothes backers.
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Amna Nawaz
And then you jumped off.
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Jeff Bennett
Yeah, that's right.
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Amna Nawaz
Yes.
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Jeff Bennett
Next day, go to school. Everybody has their clothes on backers. Not me, because I was wearing sweater vests and button downs back then, but. And I went to a diverse school. And I'm looking around like, where are all these kids with their clothes on backwards? But it was because everybody had watched them the previous night on In Living Color. That's the kind of thing that we're missing.
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Amna Nawaz
By the way. This is the point in the conversation where we put up a picture of you from middle school in your sweater vest dying.
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Jeff Bennett
I do. I went back and looked at some of those pictures, the school pictures from the 90s, and more than a few. I'm wearing a sweater vest.
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Amna Nawaz
I would expect nothing less, by the way, from Jeffrey.
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Jeff Bennett
But that can I say, that's why Family Matters is included in this book. I wasn't gonna include Family Matters.
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Amna Nawaz
Is it Urkel?
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Jeff Bennett
Yes.
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Amna Nawaz
Please say more.
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Jeff Bennett
Okay. So if you were a black man child of a certain age in this country and you were smart or you wore button downs and sweater vests, you were probably called Urkerla when you were in school and not in a good way. Yeah, so that was my experience. And so my editor said, I see no mention of Family Matters. And it wasn't because of that. It was just. It just didn't strike me as a black sitcom because that wasn't necessarily the point of view that that show had. It was farcical. And there's a whole story in this book about how this show was never supposed to be built around Steve Urkel, but because he was such a fan favorite, that's how it ended up. And the seasoned veteran actors on that show who played the mother and father were not happy about that. And there was a lot of behind the scenes tension. But I forgot my larger point.
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Amna Nawaz
I'm coming back to the sweater vest. And you went middle school again.
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Jeff Bennett
Oh. So there's this whole. It's usually mostly in academic circles. There's this Whole criticism around Steve Urkel, comparing him to sort of like a modern day buffoon or like a modern day Sambo character because he was smart and asexual and weird, which I don't think. I think that's a misreading of the show. But Jaleel White, when he was at usc, was in a class and a professor was making that argument and did not know that he was in the class.
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Amna Nawaz
Stop it.
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Jeff Bennett
Yes. Yeah. So what did he say?
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Amna Nawaz
He must say.
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Jeff Bennett
He didn't say anything about it.
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Amna Nawaz
He didn't say anything.
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Jeff Bennett
Not in the moment. He didn't say anything in the moment. But he wrote about it and said how distressing and offensive it was, but that he didn't understand how that show could have been read through that lens, seen through that lens. That it was a misreading of what they sought to do with that show.
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Amna Nawaz
All right, so you've given us a little insight with the sweater vest situation. But for you personally, I mean, I can't imagine what would have been. You watched all these characters growing up. You were a fan of these shows. Now, as a journalist, as an anchor, as an adult, going back and revisiting all of that, what was that personally like for you? Was it exciting? Was it kind of weird? Was it.
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Jeff Bennett
It was exciting. Part. Part of it was just seeing if my memory of those shows really conformed to what those shows actually were. And I will admit, I mean, people have. One criticism I've received is that I'm romanticizing the 90s. Guilty as charged. I absolutely am. I think it was the best decade in terms of cultural creation, especially Black cultural creation. 90s R&B is unmatched. 90s fashion. You had Carl Kanai cross colors in Nietzsche. The list goes on. 90s film, that could be the next book. I don't know. 90s TV we're talking about. So in some ways, going back and doing the research, it sort of affirmed what I thought to be true. But then talking to so many of these people like Sinbad and Karen Parsons and Yvette Lee Bowser and Larry Wilmore, the thing that really struck me was they, again, they were just doing the work. They were just doing the work, but they were doing it in concert, unknowingly. And that. That's really how the culture moves. It's not one voice here and there. It really is a chorus of voices. And that's what really pushes the culture forward. And it does it in a way that is more durable and more enduring than politics, let's say. I mean, we Just saw the last few years how affirmative action and diversity policy has been unwound and dismantled. But the importance of, as we were talking about these shows being beamed into tens of millions of houses, homes around the country the way that they were in the 90s, I think that can't be undone, that can't be dismantled. So there is a durability to culture that does not exist in our politics.
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Amna Nawaz
Can I ask you something I've been dying to ask?
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Jeff Bennett
Sure.
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Amna Nawaz
But I wanted to wait until the stress of the book was mostly behind you. Where did you find the time? Like this job that we do is a lot. It takes up a lot of time. It demands a lot of your mental and emotional resources. What was the process of writing this book like for you?
- [27:38]
Jeff Bennett
So, as you know Scott Simon, who is, I think, one of the most brilliant voices in broadcasting, I spent a lot of time working on his show as a producer and editor. He's the host of Weekend Edition Saturday. And Scott is prolific and he's written, I don't know, what, 37 books by now, but Scott always wrote in the middle of the night from like 1 to 3am still does. And I've always had that in the back of my head. I was like, well, if he could do it, I could do it. Well, guess what? No. But I also knew I didn't want to take book leave and we should say sometimes when people in these jobs write a book, they disappear for two or three months and they just focus on writing the book. You can't do that in this job. So it was a lot of weekends, it was a lot of early mornings, a lot of late nights. Again, a lot of this was interviews. So DMing, celebrity XYZ reaching out to you. Yeah. And then calling contacts and do you know so and so. Or I'd be out in LA and just happened to see somebody who knows somebody and then finding time to go over to their house or meet in the coffee shop and do these interviews. It was four years of that. And really, I mean, I remember the day that I signed the contract to write this book. The very next day I started the process of reaching out to people because I knew I wanted it to really be an oral history and to be as to the extent that it could be a real first person narrative, talking to a lot of these folks and capturing their stories.
- [29:02]
Amna Nawaz
Well, I'll say it again, for everyone here on this team who loves and respects you so much, it's so impressive. We're so proud of you. We can't say Congratulations enough.
- [29:12]
Jeff Bennett
Thank you.
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Amna Nawaz
It's been a real labor of love, and I'm sure everyone out there is going to love reading it.
- [29:16]
Jeff Bennett
So I deeply appreciate it. I appreciate the support from you, of course, and everyone at the NewsHour who's been so helpful in getting this book across the finish line. I deeply appreciate it.
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Amna Nawaz
Congratulations, my friend.
- [29:26]
Jeff Bennett
Thank you.