TV star and stand-up comic Jerrod Carmichael sat down with
GQ recently, to model some t-shirts and talk about his new comedy special, his hit sitcom, and why he loves pushing boundaries so much.
Between telling the style mag why he wears a replica of MLK’s watch and why he’s still single, he gave some insight on
The Carmichael Show and his new special,
8, which was directed by fellow comic Bo Burnham.
“I wanted Spike Lee for the first [special] because I looked at it like a documentary. This one is based off of a couple years of conversations with Bo talking about stand-up and emotion and vulnerability,” Carmichael says.
GQ also highlights the hard-to-find quality that makes Carmichael so unique: being the world’s nicest guy can make even the craziest ideas sound okay. They break down his “typical joke progression” as:
- Alienate the audience.
- Win them over.
- Make them agree with your alienating premise.
And they’re not wrong – between making an argument about Bill Cosby appealing to primetime viewers to diffusing racial tension with jokes about how we’re all
a little racist, Carmichael walks the line between sweetheart and shit-starter, and there’s nobody else quite like him.
