ZIWE FUMUDOH DOES NOT LIKE TO BE INTERVIEWED. She prefers to be in control, to play the director or the dominatrix. Over the last decade or so, the American comedian, writer, and performer has made a neon-pink mononym for herself by needling high-profile people with intentionally awkward questions about race, the point being that if she can't ignore the uncomfortable ways it organises her life, then they shouldn't be let off the hook either. Guests on her interview show are by no means mono-racial (Fran Lebowitz and Chet Hanks shared the same chaise longue as the playwright Jeremy O. Harris or the activist-influencer DeRay Mckesson), but these playfully antagonistic inquisitions tend to work best when they expose the many ways that white people, too, can be coloured: pink, amber, scarlet red.

Race is a farce, a prefab trap; she mines humour from its absurdity. But outside of the fuchsia FTF drag of her impish, confrontational persona, Fumudoh would rather you didn't pry. The fur-clad executioner doesn't field questions from the cancelled or the condemned. Privacy, after all, is a Nigerian value! "My New Year's resolution was to speak less," she told me in early February. "This interview is in direct conflict with the woman I want to become!"

The woman she has already been is likely familiar to those with social media accounts, HBO subscriptions, "four to five" black friends, and a decent threshold for secondhand embarrassment. Fumudoh came to prominence as a mischievous Anansi amid the tense climate of our glorious year of alleged racial reckoning, when well-meaning liberal types were reading their way out of being implicated in racial violence (shout out Robin DiAngelo!), posting powerful black squares to Instagram (#blacklivesmatter), and passionately "uplifting” and “amplifying" Black voices (remember Shaun King?).

On her Instagram Live show, she recalibrated her subject for the discourses of the 2020 moment and took aim at that cracked façade of white liberal allyship—a contemporary genre of performance that establishes a safe, naive psychic distance from, say, a police officer, or at least the kind of person who calls the cops on a Black kid for selling lemonade without a permit. People revelled in the schadenfreude of watching her ask Caroline Calloway whether her family owned slaves, or what, qualitatively, Alison Roman likes about Black people. ("Um, I love that they... Their food almost always tastes better than mine... They're way better dancers...") If the promise of the talk-show host is to put guest, audience, and viewer at ease, her goal has been to undermine the whole enterprise. On Fumudoh's show, she is God, just like RuPaul, and you're accountable to her laws. To participate is almost always to lose the game.

The glossy, A24-produced version of Ziwe that aired on Showtime was cancelled after two seasons in 2023, and Fumudoh migrated back to YouTube. The current iteration of the show now sits somewhere between a wacky, highly produced variety show and the YouTube series Baited! that birthed it in 2017. The gambit isn't always perfect. The problem with being known as an agent provocateur is that the strategy is already established, and if you're well-known enough to land a show on a network, then your guests might be wise enough to see the traps before they snap shut. Somebody with no sense of shame at all, for example, like the disgraced former mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, is fundamentally impervious to embarrassment. When she asks him to play a game of "Fuck, Marry, Kill" and he responds that he would “marry capitalism, Israel”, the strange Freudian slip doesn't register as being particularly high stakes: the ass has already shown his ass before, and failed his way into a $2.5m fortune. But Fumudoh insists that she isn't really out to get anyone. Her guests are less her enemies than they are her co-conspirators. All she wants is to direct the funniest scene. All she wants is to make you laugh.

CONNOR GAREL Congratulations on being cast in Barbershop. Have you always wanted to be an actor?

ZIWE FUMUDOH I think so. I remember watching this one iconic Black American comedy that has since been cancelled, and thinking, "Oh my gosh, I want to be an obstetrician.” And then, only decades later did I realise, “No, I just want to be a funny person on TV." That's what I was connecting to. So, I think I've always wanted to be an actor, but I would describe my profession as a little more complicated than just that, although it's a very fulfilling career. I like to do everything and anything. I love acting as much as I love writing, producing, and directing.

CG Do you think people are born funny?

ZF I think it's nature versus nurture. Some people are probably born funny, and some use humour as a coping mechanism through what's probably a turbulent life.

CG There's a story in your book of essays, Black Friend, about when you performed a comedy routine in the fifth grade after a teacher prompted you to do a presentation on your "perspective". The routine involved you repeating all the nicknames you have in class, like "darkie" and "Africa". It seems quite illustrative of the way you use comedy.

ZF Why do you say that?

CG Well, you talked about comedy as a strategy for moving through uncomfortable or unsavoury situations. This is one way you seemed to do that as a young person. I'm curious about what was going through your head.

ZF I was a child! What's going through any child's head? It's almost, like, [a reaction]. I didn't really have the tools to process why I thought certain things were funny, and why I felt compelled to express these funny moments that, upon reflection and my teacher's immediate observation ("That is sad"), were deeply problematic. I think my lifelong journey with comedy is finding out what I find funny, and why I feel compelled to work through that publicly.

CG As a teenager, you went to Phillips Academy Andover, a private boarding school in Massachusetts—one whose graduates include George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, five Nobel laureates, members of the Kennedy and Washington families, and several other figures from the American political elite. How did that environment influence your comedy?

ZF I grew up with such a rigid sense of identity, [instilled by] my parents. They were very strict. To then go to this prep school that was only a few miles away from my home—it was so different, and the world just really opened up to me, and I realised that no perspective was right or wrong or should be taken as law. It's just a very large world with a lot of people in it, and that really shaped my perspective in turn and helped me to become an interviewer today. Whenever I'm interviewing my guests, I try to come from a place of non-judgement, but whenever I say that, people reject the idea. But I truly believe that, when I'm interviewing, my guests are my scene partners, and we're creating a scene together. We're improvising and making something funny. I'm just going to ask an absolutely wild question, and you give me your most honest response, and we go from there, and I have no expectations. I think that comes from having a childhood that was really strict, and then opening up to see how many different players there are in the world.

CG Do you find that, more often, your scene partners confirm how you already felt about them, or do they surprise you?

ZF They all surprise me. Even if you have strong opinions about someone, if you spend an hour with them, maybe your opinions are confirmed, but they might be confirmed in ways you didn't expect. I can interview a block of wood, and I would be gagged by what the block of wood had to say.

CG Are you confrontational in your daily life?

ZF I wouldn't say so. I'm slow to anger, which can be good and bad, depending on whether people are intentionally trying to push buttons. But I can be very direct, which, again, is a characteristic of having Nigerian parents. It's a really direct culture, almost to the point of rudeness, so that was just how I was raised. As I've gotten older, I've learned to hold my tongue, and to be a little more sparing with my direct thoughts.

CG Do you ever watch your interviews back and feel awkward yourself?

ZF I'm in the edit, so I've watched every interview 20 times before it goes out. What I like about the interviews is they have replayability. They don't just go out into the ether. It's like, this can stand as a piece of comedy that you can reference and come back to. Because I'm writing, performing, editing, and then distributing—which, like, talk about integration—there are things that I pick up on later that I wasn't fully aware of as I was performing and directing in the moment.

CG What would you ask Nicki Minaj?

ZF I think she would be an iconic guest. I've been cancelled for that statement once before. But, as a former Barb, I just don't understand why she feels the need to spread hate. I don't understand her. But she would be an iconic guest.

CG Sydney Sweeney?

ZF [Shrugs.]

CG Doesn't speak to you?

ZF I think she's really compelling. I watched The Housemaid. My friend directed her in Anyone But You. I think she's a really compelling American figure. She would also be an iconic guest.

CG You've worked on a lot of shows as a writer over the course of your professional life. Is there any one in particular that was really helpful in sharpening the voice you've arrived at?

ZF I am a culmination of everything I've ever done. You can really see my influences with The Colbert Report. But then you think about Desus & Mero. I remember listening to their podcast, Bodega Boys, and being so energised by these two guys from the Bronx speaking about bodegas and different cultural pieces that I could relate to, that I thought were too insider. But they created a world of their own, and I really connected with that job. My first internship was at Comedy Central. I did a rotational programme, which is where I learned you could be a professional creative. At The Onion, I learned that you have to write all of the time, even if you don't feel like it, and that it's a skill set you have to train constantly.

CG How did you make money before doing comedy?

ZF For a very long time, I taught maths and English during the summers in high school and college, mostly to middle schoolers. I briefly worked at a marketing company. But I started writing professionally at age 25.

CG When did your professional life in comedy start to feel sustainable?

ZF I don't think that it's sustainable now, really.

CG It seems like it's going well.

ZF I can't complain. I'm very, very privileged and lucky to be working as an artist in 2026 America. I would not say that I look in the mirror and say, "There she is, the picture of stability." It was never a question of whether it was tenable. I was determined, irrespective of how I was going to survive, because I am very obstinate and I don't like to be wrong. So, I just decided I was going to be a comedian. And I've made strides to make that happen! But there was no singular moment. You know, like the Scheana Shay tattoo: "It's all happening!" Every day, there are ups and downs on my path towards enlightenment.

CG As a self-described obstinate person, how do you handle bad feedback?

ZF That's a good question. It can be really, really hurtful. For me, it's best to just move on and control what you can control, but let go of what you can't. You have to understand that if you choose to make art...As a control freak, I would love to spoon-feed people the reasons why this works, and what it's about and all the different nuances. But as soon as it leaves my hands, it's up for people to contend with and work through and discuss. And that's part of my goal. It's so funny because I do get sensitive about it, even though I make intentionally provocative work. And then I'm like, "Why are you guys so provoked? I'm just a sweet young woman!” But that's part of being an artist—being particularly sensitive. I don't let it penetrate.

CG Erykah Badu says artists are sensitive about their shit.

ZF And that's what makes me a good artist, is that I feel. You know, I'm not dead inside. I'm not numb. But then you kind of just shrug, like, "Damn, they cancelled me this time!” It won't change what I do. It won't stop me. Because, again, I'm very obstinate, and I think I'm always right.

CG Have you been cancelled?

ZF People get mad at me all the time! But especially in this era, to make anything is to do so in the face of people who might have a commitment to misreading you.

CG How do you measure the success of an interview?

ZF I measure it by whether people watch it over and over again. If someone says they watched the Jinkx Monsoon interview seven times. If they say they watched the Vince Staples interview eight times. It might be crazy, but I would rather have one fan who watches my work 20 times than 20 fans who watch it once. I'm obsessed with the work. I'm literally in the edit, like, "Okay, what do we cut at this second mark? Let's use a single instead of a wide?”

CG What are your obsessions outside of comedy?

ZF I've been really preoccupied with the author Percival Everett. I read Dr. No, which I loved. Then I read James, and then The Trees, and then just decided I'll read all of his works. I'm reading Suder right now, which is his first published novel, about a baseball player who's having a slump and also descending into madness. I fall in and out of reading, and I always find I don't really commit unless it's Percival Everett.

CG Is it his humour that you respond to? His satire?

ZF No, because a lot of people are funny. I like the way he's like Toni Morrison—the way she merged Black history with her fiction. In her last book, Home, she's talking about forced sterilisation, but through the lens of this fictional character. In Beloved, it's about the Atlantic slave trade. Obviously, Percival Everett can get heavy, too: James is about this runaway slave who—spoiler alert!—realises that one of the children he has always had love for was his illegitimate child, and he's going back to save his wife and daughter from being abused. It's really heavy, but he's so comedic. It's a proper satire of, like, Huckleberry Finn. And Dr. No is a satire of those spy books. And The Trees is a satire of going down South. I love the way he weaves through genres. It works for my work. I'm writing a couple of movies right now and working on these interviews, so it's good for me to have him at the top of my mind.

CG Am I allowed to ask about the movies?

ZF I mean, they're in development, so I can't even say anything fun. The plan is for me to act in at least one. But who's to say? Development: it's a crazy, wild journey! But I'm writing two movies, and it would be my directorial debut.

CG Anything else coming up?

ZF I have three interviews I'm working on: one with Whitney Leavitt from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, one with Leslie Jones, and one with Tiffany Pollard. I just donated to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota because, as we know, Minnesota is under attack, and it's important to support people and, you know, find the helpers, as Mr Rogers said. It's important to donate to organisations who are committed to helping the immigrants in that state and around the country to be protected!