Emily Longeretta When W. Kamau Bell got started, he just wanted to make people laugh. At 21, he began with a goal of being a stand-up comedian.
Then everything changed.“We had a Black president, then we had an orange president,” he says. “I got motivated in different directions.
It would be hard to explain to the young me what this is.”Bell always knew he wanted to be in showbiz and even took a class in filmmaking at Columbia — but at that point, it wasn’t for him.“It was back in the days when you had to cut film with razor blades and tape it together and I was like, ‘I don’t want to do any of this!’ I definitely had ideas,” he says, noting that eventually, he knew he wanted to do comedy but also talk about important issues. “When I was out there really trying to make it, the only shot for political comics was, maybe I can get on ‘The Daily Show.’”So he paved his own way.
He continued doing stand-up and hosted a weekly series, “Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell,” sharing social and political commentary, which ultimately led to a role in CNN’s “United Shades of America.”Bell took time off in 2018 after his third daughter arrived.
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