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• Ms. Sykes official site
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Tavis: I am pleased to welcome Wanda Sykes to this program. I've been waiting for her to get here. The talented comedian and Emmy award-winner is out with a new book called 'Yeah, I said it.' I love that title, and I love the cover. Next week, if a book isn't keeping her busy enough, she has a new TV project that premieres on Comedy Central. It's called 'Wanda Does It.' Here's a scene from 'Wanda Does It.'

Wanda: You should let me show him how to do this.

Man: Come on in, Wanda. Come in.

Wanda: Oh, you don't think I can do--you see that?!

Man: Come on in, Wanda.

Second man: I'd like to see that.

Wanda: Oh, you'd like to see that? OK. Watch and learn. How much y'all chargin' to get up in here?

Man: 50 bucks each.

Tavis: 75 tonight, people. No cell phones in the club, all right? You got a cell phone? No cell phones. Oh, you got--see, why did you lie? You said you ain't had no cell phone. All right, you know what? You go in and have a good time. Wanda Sykes, you know what cracks me up about you?

Wanda Sykes: What's that?

Tavis: You ain't nothin' but a little bit, just a pint-sized, just a pint-sized, little bit and everything about you is so brash. 'Yeah, I said it.' 'Wanda Does It.' Where you get all that at? What is all of that?

Wanda: I got a big mouth for a little body, huh? Well, you see, I fight dirty. See, that's it. Growing up, I watched wrestling and everything with my grandpa, so I fight dirty, so I can back it up, you know. You not lookin', I throw some dirt in your eye.

Tavis: I love the book.

Wanda: Hit your head with a chair.

Tavis: I love the book.

Wanda: Oh, thank you.

Tavis: Funny stuff.

Wanda: Thank you for giving me a quote on the back. I appreciate that.

Tavis: I laughed all the way through it, as did Jane Fonda. I love Jane Fonda's, 'I laughed out loud all the way through.' That's good when you got Jane Fonda laughing.

Wanda: Yeah, exactly.

Tavis: That's pretty good.

Wanda: Jane Fonda, she seen a lot in her day.

Tavis: Yes, she has.

Wanda: So, to make her laugh, you know, that says a lot.

Tavis: And 'all the way through,' she said. All right. We had a show a couple of weeks ago here celebrating my turning 40, and I invited a bunch of my friends to come on, Blair Underwood, Jasmine Guy, Wren Brown, my producer Neil Kendall. We invited you. You were on the book tour somewhere and couldn't make it, but you turned 40 this year, too.

Wanda: I sure did.

Tavis: How you dealing with it?

Wanda: You know what? At first, I was, like, stressing over it, like, 'Ooh, 40, that's big,' but I'm finding out that the older I get, the less I care. I am so quick to tell people I don't give a... I'm so quick. I'm so quick. I don't care. I have very low tolerance for nonsense, you know? People say something, 'Ah, shut up! Don't want to hear it.' I could be in church: 'Ah, ah, move it along. Move it along. We all heard that one before. Next.'

Tavis: One of my friends told me when I turned 40, there is--I like the way that you phrased it--but his phraseology was there's a certain liberty that comes with aging, and you have the freedom and liberty just to say, 'People, shut up.'

Wanda: When I get 60, I'm just gonna be smacking people.

Tavis: That's the scary part about you: you got nerve already, with your little pint-sized, little bit self, and now you're 40. You tellin' people to shut up. At 60, I'm not sure I want to be around you.

Wanda: I know. I might start packing at 60. Just shoot people in the feet, you know? Just, 'What's that--what you said?' Pow! Pow! 'I'm 60!'

Tavis: When did you know you were funny?

Wanda: Wow, I guess I knew I was funny when I got into junior high school and high school, but I always knew I had a big mouth ever since I was a little kid because it got to a point where my parents, they would like, send me off to my grandparents whenever they had guests 'cause they had no idea what I was would say, what was gonna come outta my mouth, so, they would just like, 'We gotta keep some friends. You got to go,' or like, relatives or friends that had owed my parents money. I would just say stuff: 'When are you gonna give my daddy back his $50?' They were like, 'Oh, Lord,' so that would get me out of the house.

Tavis: Have you ever--and this is just me and you talking--have you ever tanked?

Wanda: Oh, man, yeah.

Tavis: Tell me your worst tank story.

Wanda: I bombed so--and this was in the first year I started doing stand-up and I was getting all cocky and everything 'cause I was like--

Tavis: Not you! Not Miss 'Yeah-I-said-it!' Not Miss 'Wanda-Does-it.'

Wanda: I was having some good shows. I would invite my parents and everybody. I invited all my relatives and my parents and my brother and everything, and I got on stage. I mean, it was like, at first, they were--not laughing--they were just being quiet, and then I started getting on their nerves because I kept going, so then, you just heard people, 'Oh, Lord. Why don't she get off the stage? Come on.' I mean, it got to a point where I looked out, people had actually turned their chairs around the other way, a card game broke out in the corner. I was just so shell-shocked, I couldn't get off the stage, so I just kept going, just kept going.

Tavis: It got worse and worse.

Wanda: And I was like, 'Thank you.' Like, nothin'.

Tavis: When people turn their chairs and start playing cards, I guess that qualifies as tanking.

Wanda: Yeah, that's tanking. My mother was like, 'That's all right, baby. You got a good government job. Don't you worry about it. These people don't know you. Don't worry about it.'

Tavis: What did you learn from that experience?

Wanda: That actually, I learned that I really want to do stand-up because it's my love...

Tavis: Wait, wait, wait, wait. You tanked, but out of that experience you learned that you really wanted to do this? Explain.

Wanda: Because to get back on stage after going through that, that was like, the most humiliating--I couldn't sleep for a week, I couldn't eat. It just tore me up, but I realized, 'OK, this is what I want to do, you know, and I just stayed with it.'

Tavis: What's the difference, if there is one, and I suspect there is, between making black folk laugh and making other folk laugh?

Wanda: Making black folk laugh, it has to be some real stuff. It has to be real, and it has to be, when they laugh, they'll give it up, you know? Black people don't chuckle. Black people--

Tavis: That is not a black word. I'm glad you said that. 'Chuckle' is not a black word.

Wanda: White people, their chuckles are like laughs.

They're like, 'Ha ha ha ha ha. She's funny,' but black folks don't chuckle. Black folks go, 'Pshaw,' you know? And that means, that's like, 'It wasn't funny, but I see where you're going with it.' It's like, 'Pshaw.' But when you make black people laugh, you know, OK, 'yeah, that's funny. That is bona fide funny right there.'

Tavis: 'Chuckle' is not in the black lexicon.

Wanda: No. We don't chuckle.

Tavis: That's oxymoronic for black people. I got you. Um, I loved you on 'Inside the NFL' with Bob Costas.

Wanda: Oh, thank you.

Tavis: I heard there's a funny story, interesting story, about how you actually got that gig. Is it true you straight bum-rushed Bob Costas?

Wanda: I sure did. I did. We went to--one of my friends, Lance Crowden, who's also working on my new show, we're, like, producing partners--he was working on Bob Costas' show as a writer, and they had their wrap party. And, you know, it was open bar so I was like, 'I'm going with you,' you know. So I bum-rushed up in the party. I'm having some drinks or whatever and I see Bob Costas, so I just lay into him. I was like, 'Bob, you know, I really appreciate you and I think you're very intelligent, but you know, sometimes people don't want to hear your comments on every single thing.'

Tavis: You told this to Bob Costas?

Wanda: I did. I said, 'You know what would be interesting? If every now and then somebody asked you something, you go, ‘I don't know.'' I said, 'I would love that. That would be refreshing, you know, because you--'

Tavis: Ha ha ha ha!

Wanda: 'Cause even if he doesn't know something, he'll try to, like, worm his way back. 'Well, OK, I don't know about in '86, but I know in '89 the Red Sox did--' no, no. Just say you don't know, man.

Tavis: Ha ha ha ha! You told this to arguably, well, from my point of view, he's the best guy on tele--Bob Costas is the man.

Wanda: He is.

Tavis: And you straight walked up to Bob Costas and just gave him some unsolicited advice.

Wanda: I sure did. Yeah.

Tavis: And how did Bob respond to this? You got a job out of it.

Wanda: I got a job. Yeah. The executive producers of HBO Sports, they were there and they were like, 'Oh, OK.' 'Cause I was ripping up everybody in the room, you know. And, uh, and they said, 'Who is this crazy woman?' And then, like, a couple months later they gave me a call, said, 'You want to be--you want to do some stuff on ‘Inside the NFL'?'

Tavis: I'm a fast learner. I see how you did this. Jonathan, right here, yeah. Bob...

Wanda: Ha ha ha ha ha!

Tavis: Couple things I've been wanting to tell you... Just kidding. Uh, if it worked for Wanda, heck, it might work for--I can get off PBS and get to HBO or something. I don't know. No, I love the people at PBS. Just kidding, just kidding. Um, I think a lot of people came to know you through your relationship, friendship, working with Chris Rock.

Wanda: Oh, yeah.

Tavis: I've always loved you, and I've felt good about having, in my own world, discovered you before you did the Chris Rock thing. But what was that experience like for you? When you look back years from now, when you're 60 and you packin' and shootin' people in the knees, what will you remember about that opportunity in terms of developing your career?

Wanda: That opportunity is by far is what I think what really launched me, what put me on the map, you know? Uh, granted I was-- When the opportunity came I was prepared. Chris thought I was funny when he asked me if I wanted to be a part of the show. So--but it was, like, it was invaluable the experience I got on that show, just not from in front of the camera, but we would write our pieces, go out and produce 'em, you know. And then we got to go into the edit room and edit these pieces. So, I mean--so when I came out of there, of course, I mean-- 'Yeah, I said it,' and everything else, because I thought, you know, I got it. I got this. I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing.

Tavis: How have you enjoyed the book tour? This is your first book.

Wanda: My first book.

Tavis: How you liking--

Wanda: Probably my last book.

Tavis: Ha ha ha ha! You say it with such confidence, 'My first and my last.' Now tell me why you say that?

Wanda: It was just so hard, man.

Tavis: Hard writing it or hard doing the tour?

Wanda: Uh, both, hard writing it. The tour part was cool, 'cause you get to go out and meet the people and everything, and I didn't mind that part. But, you know, like, sometimes you get into the city, like, in New York and, you know, uptown and everything, and it's, like, you're signing and people are like, 'What's your name?' 'Sheenawika.' 'All right, what's that again?' 'Uh, Sheenawika.' I'm like, I don't even say, 'How you spell it?' Like I can't hear it. I go 'What? What was that?' You know, you should just spell it. I can hear letters better than, you know. When you get to Atlanta you get good old names: Paula. I got Paula. Yeah. I can do Paula. Kim.

Tavis: She can do anything she wants to do. She's doing TV, she does movies, she does books. 'Yeah, I Said It' is the new book from Wanda Sykes, and the TV show coming soon next week, 'Wanda Does It.' She's doing it. Wanda, nice to see you.

Wanda: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Tavis: I like that color on you, by the way. You gonna sign this for me before you leave?

Wanda: Of course.

Tavis: Hold on to that. We'll get you to sign that for just a second. That's our show for tonight. As always you can catch me on the radio on NPR. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A. Thanks for watching, and keep the faith.