The new CNN show United Shades of America begins with host W. Kamau Bell driving down a country road late at night for a rendezvous with an imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Given that Bell is black, this seems like a bad idea. But if the comedian is afraid, he does a good job of faking his cool — even when the man in the pointy robe finds out Bell is married to a white woman and declares the union an “abomination.”
“On the list of sins, where’s interracial marriage?” Bell asks the man, barely concealing a smirk. “There’s murder, and is interracial marriage equal to that, or …?”
If pointing out hypocrisy is a sport, Bell’s an unassuming champion in the pilot of CNN’s newest installment of infotainment on Sundays at 10 p.m.
The series is the latest in CNN President Jeff Zucker’s push for news-adjacent original programming, shows that wouldn’t be out of place on HBO, alongside Bill Maher and John Oliver, or on Comedy Central. Since taking over in 2013, Zucker has aired Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Morgan Spurlock’s Inside Man and Mike Rowe: Somebody’s Gotta Do It, among others.
There’s a dash of George Plimpton’s participatory journalism in these comedic documentary series that send hosts to unfamiliar places, and the formula apparently works. In a recent memo to his staff, Zucker said that CNN has been enjoying its best ratings since 2008 and the network is gaining on Fox News. (Of course, a presidential election starring The Donald certainly helps viewership.)
But since Bell was wading into CNN’s already busy pool of counter-programming, a fresh angle was in order. And that’s how he came up with the Klan idea.
“We were sitting around pitching the pilot, and I was the one who said the KKK,” he said recently over the phone from his home in Berkeley, Calif. “And people were like, ‘ha ha ha,’ but then I just kept saying it.”
Because if he was going to enter into the universe of Bourdain, Spurlock and Rowe, he had to focus on doing something those guys couldn’t.
So off he went to Arkansas and Kentucky to meet with Klan members and even witness a cross burning — “I mean lighting. I don’t want to be politically incorrect,” Bell joked. And then the comedian moved on to other cities and subcultures. He visited San Quentin, where he got to know some of the inmates, and traveled to Portland, Ore., where he focused on the people who were pushed out by the hipster influx. He learned about new police tactics in Camden, N.J., and the changing demographics in Barrow, Alaska, where a majority of the population is Iñupiat Eskimo, but probably not for long.
And all the while, Bell stays cool, a demeanor that really sets the show apart. A teddy bear of a guy, he’s relentlessly easygoing, whether he’s meeting with a white supremacist or a professional cuddler (yes, that’s a thing — in Portland, of course). He punctuates his wry observations with a big booming laugh. There’s none of the incredulous rage that was the hallmark of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, and his descendants. Bell doesn’t wince when he’s told that his race is inferior or that his marriage is a sin; he takes it all in stride.
“Some people have asked why I don’t argue with them,” he said of the KKK episode. “That’s not the point. I already know I don’t agree with them. The point is to have them spell out their theories as clearly as possible so we can actually know how insidious and crazy this is.”
The world is clearly mad when a comedian plays the straight man.
Although each episode covers a different subject, some common threads have emerged. Most of the stories deal with people who feel powerless about being pushed to the margins.
“In every episode, you could sort of see people’s concerns and fears about losing their identity,” he said.
One story he couldn’t tell was about biker gangs. The episode was scuttled after negotiations broke down for reasons he still doesn’t understand.
Instead, he went to Camden, which he said was more relevant anyway. The New Jersey city was once a bustling hub of middle-class black families. But then, like Detroit, jobs disappeared and crime skyrocketed.
“It was supposed to be a show about the police force, and it is in large part, but it ended up being a lot about falling in love with the city and feeling the pain of the people who live there,” Bell said. “That was — I think? — the only episode I cried in.”
He added: “It’s a comedy show, but sometimes things aren’t that funny.”