Attention, BUSTies: We found your new favorite podcast. Meet “2 Dope Queens,” premiering today. The WNYC podcast was created and hosted by The Daily Show’s Senior Beyoncé Correspondent and BUST’s February/March cover gal, Jessica Williams, and comedian and writer Phoebe Robinson, who you may have seen on Broad City or read in New York magazine.
The BFFs met when Phoebe worked on a Daily Show segment that Jessica did about black hair in the military. The pair instantly hit it off. Soon, Phoebe invited Jessica to co-host her “Blaira” (short for “Black Daria”) standup show.
“You know when you go on an awesome first date and you’re like, ‘We’re gonna fuck tonight’?” Phoebe said at the launch of “2 Dope Queens” last night. “It was like that, minus the sex part.”
They kept working together, and “Blaria” became a regular standup show called “2 Dope Queens” at Brooklyn’s Union Hall. Understandably, the show sold out regularly. The podcast grew out of a desire to reach a wider audience and is essentially a condensed version of the show with extra sections by the two dope queens. Just like the comedy show, the podcast will feature a diverse group of comedians, including Comedy Central’s Michelle Buteau and Late Night With Seth Meyers writer Aparna Nancherla.
“Doing standup in New York for the past eight years, there are so many shows where it’s a bunch of white dudes with beards and me,” said Phoebe. “They don’t put more than one black woman in the show, the never put more than one gay person in the show, and we’re like, there are so many talented people in the city that don’t get an opportunity to perform because people just don’t think about them.”
Jessica said, “We’re the main characters of our stories. There’s always that stereotype in television where it’s a black lady who’s always telling a white dude like Patrick Dempsey, like, ‘You need to get it together!’ We can do more than ‘You need to get it together.’ Sometimes we have so many different emotions and it’s really cool that we can show that in our podcast. We go through so much. We are awkward and weird and funny and sometimes sad and sometimes happy. We have this whole range, and I hope that that’s shown in this podcast, and I hope that other people see it in this podcast.”
The first episode covers dad bods, racist Uber drivers, the “Woody Allen of catcalling,” sexy roleplaying gone too far and much more. It had me giggling and snorting on the subway this morning. People were staring. It was great.
Download episode 1 here — it’s absolutely worth the subway judgment.
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