Robin Thede, writers achieve peak comedy the Black women’s way

The word to define Season 3 of HBO’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show” is “more” — the sketches felt bigger, the jokes flew faster, even the guest stars, something of a signature for the series, seemed to multiply.  And though speaking on Zoom from different coasts — star-creator Robin Thede sits on a couch in L.A. alongside writer Chloé Hilliard, while head writer Tracey Ashley is in New York — the buoyant emotions of these fast-talking, energetic collaborators is evident. And why not? This year, their hard work and comic ingenuity translated into five Emmy nominations, including for writing, directing and picture editing.

“We’re not a diversity pick — we’re arguably a stellar show that’s performing at the highest level,” Thede says of a series where the producers, writers, directors and stars are all Black women. “It’s specifically cast and written, but it’s universally funny.”

On this series, episodes aren’t shot, but formulated later in post-production based on which sketches go well together. How does the writers room work?

 Tracey Ashley: Like any writers room, everybody comes in daily with pitches. Sometimes you’ll know right away, like, “That’s it!”

 Give an example of a “That’s it!” pitch.

Chloé Hilliard: What about “Didn’t figures”?

 [group laughter]

 Robin Thede: That was Shenovia Large’s pitch. “It’s [Black female scientist film] ‘Hidden Figures,’ but the worst version of them.”

Hilliard:  You know how you say, “I’m going to smack you into next week”? That’s something we all grew up hearing. So [three scientists] figure out time travel by backhanding each other.

[group laughter]

Ashley: That was solid from the start. We could all see it.

  Is anything off limits?

Thede: There’s more do’s than don’ts.

Ashley: We don’t do body shaming.

 Thede: Or ableism. No sketch over five pages. We don’t want Black women being catty toward each other. Can they be aggressive or murderous? Absolutely. But catty?  No. The biggest no-no is to not be funny. We don’t want a straight man. We see that in sitcoms. Like the husband is super funny and the wife is a stick-in-the-mud. I just don’t subscribe to it. Also, with most sketch shows, every third line is a joke, which is high joke density. But we try to make almost every line a joke. That’s hard.

 Were these considerations of yours when you devised the show?

 Thede: The whole purpose of me creating the show was to create a narrative, cinematic sketch series for Black women, a grounded experience in a magical reality. I’ve said this a million times, but it’s true. That’s why our fans know everything about our recurring characters, about their lives. We want the characters to be three dimensional, not just so our cast can play really meaty characters. But also for our guest stars.

 Angela Bassett. Gabrielle Union. Wanda Sykes. Patti LaBelle. What’s your secret when it comes to getting big names to appear in sketches?

Thede: People are always like, “How do you get so many guest stars?” And I’m like, “It’s HBO. I know a lot of very famous people.  I’m very old and have been in this business for a long time.”  But also they want to do the show. Black people don’t really have a space where they can drop in for a day and play in a free sort of way in roles written specifically for people like us. Three of our guest stars have been nominated for Emmys and hopefully more in the future.

 Each time the series returns, the writers room is primarily filled with new hires. Is that about not running out of ideas?

 Thede: What you have to remember is that for all of us, Black women, it’s the only time we’ve ever been in a room that looks like this. It’s not like, if they’ve written on a bunch of other shows, that they’ve used up all their ideas. Those ideas have never been asked for. There’s a treasure trove of untapped ideas. So coming here, they’re like, “I have a thousand ideas.” We tell them to show up on Day 1 with a hundred ideas — and they all do it.

 Hilliard: For many of the writers, this is the first time in a room with all Black women — from showrunner to writers. There’s a sisterhood, a support, that comes with that. Even if you’re feeling like you’re in over your head, we really do hold each other up, and that you’re not the sole representative of all Black people.

 Thede: Which all of us have felt in other rooms.

What’s it like to go up against “SNL” for the third time in the variety sketch series category?

Hilliard: To be nominated back to back? It just proves this show isn’t a fluke.

Thede: It’s back to back to back. I always say that we’re only in competition with ourselves. There are only two nominees [this year]. But even if we were in a larger category, I still think we’d hold our own. I don’t think people are putting in the work like we are. That’s not to shade other shows. Sketch has been my life for 2½ decades. This is my seventh sketch show. I know what most sketch shows are doing. I just took all of that and said, “All right, how do we take it to the next level?” [pause] Tracey? What do you think?

Ashley: It’s an honor, an amazing accomplishment. We all grew up watching “SNL.” And here we are, up against “SNL.” I’m sorry — that’s just historic to me, no matter what. To me, we’ve already won.