Back in February, W. Kamau Bell found himself on a hill overlooking the grasslands of Kenya, sharing a beer with Anthony Bourdain. Bell remembers it was near the end of February, because Bourdain was excited for the new movies on the plane home. Their 11-day trip would become the television legend's final full episode of Parts Unknown. Despite the beauty of nature stretched out before them, Bell—a comedian and host of CNN's United Shades of America—was in awe of the man at his side. The cameras around them were pulled far back, so Bell didn't think they were filming, and he took the moment to "tell him how much he means to me separate from us doing this episode of TV together," Bell remembers a few days before the premiere of the final season of Parts Unknown.

"Sometimes you tell people stuff like that and they just go, 'Oh cool,'" Bell says. "But then he leaned in and talked about how lucky he felt in his career. And where he had come from. And all the sort of, 'We're here to make a TV show about Kenya' stripped away, and it was just two dudes talking about how strange their careers have been and how lucky they felt in that moment."

It makes for a powerful scene in what would become Bourdain's final full episode of television—the only one for which he recorded his narration before his death by suicide in June. Even then, 17 years later, Bourdain was in awe, too—he never lost his passion for the stories he told, for the lives he changed around the world.

That appreciation is apparent throughout the entire Kenya episode—one that in hindsight is touched with a tragic and poetic finality. We spoke with Bell about what Bourdain was like when the cameras turned off, and what he learned while traveling with the world's most famous traveler.

To start, tell me how this collaboration came about?

I met him at the Governor's Ball after the Emmys in 2016. I saw him across the room and sauntered over to him and tried to make eye contact and hoped he knew who I was—he might not, because why would he be watching TV, when he makes great TV? He's in a tuxedo. My first impression was like he looks like America's James Bond. It's funny—for a guy who's not known for dressing up, he looked very comfortable in a tuxedo. He saw me and his eyes brightened and we met, and he was very cool. He was like, "We should do something together." And I was sort of just like, "Yeah, of course." People say stuff all the time, but I was just flattered that maybe he at least liked what I did. Then next thing I know, I was standing there with him and my boss a few months later and she's like, "Where do you want to go?" And I was like, Kenya. Because my middle name Kamau is Kenyan.

When did you first see him when you got to Kenya?

It's a crazy long trip to get there, 20 hours or something. I just went to bed, and woke up the next morning and just sort of went down for breakfast at the restaurant. And I saw the crew, I said hello to people, and he was just sitting by himself, smoking a cigarette, and drinking some coffee and reading his phone.

He looked conspicuously by himself. So I'm just gonna go say hello. And then I'm gonna go sit somewhere else. Like don't bother this guy. And I walked over, said hello. And he was like, "Sit down." And we talked for a little bit—"What are your thoughts so far, this is gonna be fun." Just really sort of chopped it up. I finished breakfast, he went off back to his hotel room, and then we had a shoot later that day.

CNN

What was he like with you and the crew when the cameras were off?

We ended up driving to every location in the car together, so we just talked a lot. We talked a lot about our kids, and a lot about travel. We talked a lot about comedy. He was a big fan of comedy. Talked about martial arts, because I had a martial arts background. We talked a lot about the art of making television. And I don't know that he'd have put it that way. But he really approached it like, "This is my life's work." Not like, "I'm the host of a travel show. I'm the host of a documentary show." He was talking about how to get good music, and how to find good music. And then at night usually we'd all, me, him and the crew would go to the hotel bar and just order some food. It was just like hanging out. We would talk about the show a little bit, but it was just whatever. But his whole crew really welcomed me in.

A big thing is he was very clear about the amount of energy he had every day. I could tell sometimes he was conserving his energy because there'd be a big scene coming up. And so the great thing about Tony was that, we would talk a lot, but I didn't feel like I had to talk all the time. And he didn't feel like he had to talk all the time. And I'm an only child so I'm very good with silences. So sometimes he would just get quiet and just look at his phone and do the thing we're all doing, scrolling Instagram or whatever. I really appreciated the fact that he was friendly, he was open, but he also took care of himself. I saw the crew also really respect that. They didn't treat him like a renewable resource. When he passed away it sort of reminded me of that. He was not a renewable resource. He was a human being, who had this incredible job and did an incredible job with his incredible job. But we were lucky to get what we got out of him.

CNN

Inevitably something always goes wrong on one of these trips—which Tony would often include in the episode—were there any tense moments where it didn't go according to plan?

At one point Tony and I got back to where we were staying, and we were like, "When's the crew coming?" And it got darker and darker. Then they sort of all pulled up covered in mud and wet. And one of the Jeeps they had, it had gotten basically irreparably stuck in the mud. All these TV producers and camera people had to go back and figure out how to dig a Jeep out of the mud again. They did it and they came back and we laughed and drank some beers and talked about it, but it was just like the thing about this crew that's so amazing is that they were just down for the cause. And they were down for the cause with Tony, and what Tony wanted to do, they wanted to do.

The thing about Tony is that we all liked him, because there was a sort of a distrust of authority, and a sort of a cynical sense of humor. But also he clearly had a big heart. For a dude who had traveled as much as he had and had as many conversations as he had, I wouldn't have judged him at all if he was like, "I'm happy you're on the show, but I do this all the time. So I'll see you when we're shooting. But I'll be in my room." Or if he had said, kick him out of his own car because I don't want this dude from this other show talking to me all the time.

One thing that I've always admired about Bourdain is his genuine curiosity for the people that he visits, or even regular people that he talks to. What did you observe about him, when you were talking to the female boxers or the LGBTQ community or the fashion community in Kenya?

The thing you were talking about the genuine curiosity is 100 percent real, so I was glad to see him do it. He was aware—"this was my opportunity to ask these questions, and if I don't ask them, they don't get asked." He was always aware of himself as a global citizen as somebody who had to always acknowledge, "I live in the world."

CNN / David Scott Holloway

It feels like such a quintessential Anthony Bourdain hour of television. You guys get all the hits: You drink blood, you eat the eye.

He was both acknowledging the fact that he was hazing me, and also super supportive, like "It'll be good. Don't worry. Don't freak yourself out, kid." And also I think he did want to see, when we sat down and had the goat's head stew, "Yeah, I can't wait to see how you react to all this." I told myself when I went over there, and I do this on my show too, but I really was like, I have to be as in as Tony Bourdain is in on the show. And I can't say "No thank you."

My favorite scene was the one of you two sitting on a hill. It makes for such an incredible, heartbreaking moment.

It was a wide shot, the cameras were pulled way back, and I was like, "Well, they're not gonna use this stuff for the show because I know how this works. This will just be an edit." I told myself before I left, if I get a chance, I have to find a way to connect with him and just tell him how much he means to me separate from us doing this episode of TV together. Sometimes you tell people stuff like that and they just go, "Oh cool." But then he leaned in and talked about how lucky he felt in his career. And where he had come from. And all the sort of, "We're here to make a TV show about Kenya." Stripped away, and it was just two dudes talking about how strange their careers have been and how lucky they felt in that moment.

What did you learn from him on that trip?

The reason why I specifically remembered we came back at the beginning of March, is because at one point he was like, "When do we go back?" And so I said, March something, and he goes, "Oh cool, the movies on the plane will be different." It was just like this little tiny moment that showed Bourdain as a traveler. Like, "Oh great. I've seen all the movies in February. It'll be March movies." And for me it was that on some level he's just like the rest of us. It's the simple pleasures in life that are like, "Oh good. New movies on the plane." He also said, "I never eat the meals on the plane. Never." Which I just thought was classic Bourdain, like, under no circumstances do I eat the meals on the plane. They always try to push them on me. I wonder if they do that because he's Tony. They're like, "Here. Try our food." He's like, "Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope." He'd eat eyeballs and drink cow's blood mixed with milk, but he wouldn't eat the airplane food.

I saw in a preview or on social media a clip of you on a camel and in a plane?

Oh yeah we were sitting there, it was after we'd had breakfast, and they had just brought camels out and Tony was like, "You ever been on a camel?" And I was like, "No." So everybody was like, "You gotta get on a camel." And I was like, "Okay." And I got on and I found out why, because it's basically impossible to sit on a camel if you've never sat on a camel before. And so that was just literally us messing around, and the camera crew ran over we get a quick shot of that. It was nothing we were supposed to shoot. And Tony got it for Instagram. We were just having fun.

The biplane was just something else we thought was just a fun thing to do while we were there. Tony and I took pictures by the plane. I just look goofy standing next to a plane. But Tony looks like some sort of World War II hero. It looked like a picture from a catalog. And this is all hard to say because I don't know what led him to take his own life. But he seemed so sure of who he was. And it resonated and it made others around him more sure of who they were. Him letting me be with him for 11 days when we were in Kenya, made me feel like, "I know what I'm doing. I can be less hard on myself. I'm a person." I think people who watch this who had never met him felt that way too. And certainly the people who were the subject of this show felt that. Like Kenyans, when they finally saw him, they knew he had never been to Kenya before. And they were all like, "Thank you for coming. What took you so long?" It sort of gave them a sense of, we are part of this thing, too.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

In the final scene he says something like "I do my best. I look. I listen. But in the end I know. It's my story, not Kumau's, not Kenya's or Kenyans'. Those stories are yet to be heard." How did you interpret this line?

That makes me cry every time. He really made an effort in the show to center it around his observation of my experience. The line—"It's my story, not Kamau's, not Kenya's"—that's everything we want white men to acknowledge. I really interpreted it as an invitation for all of us to listen to the stories of people whose stories we don't listen to. We talk a lot about the election, and the current political system in America, and Trump. And there's sort of a very common media narrative of who should we listen to. And some people always have the microphone. I didn't really see it as him talking about me at all. I want to be clear about that. I saw him as like, we need to listen to the stories of the people that we don't normally listen to. And we need to provide them a space to tell their stories. And we need to be aware [of] the difference between letting them tell their stories, and us interpreting their stories for them.

So for me it was like an invitation to all of us media makers, and also an invitation to people who have stories that haven't been told, to get out there and tell their stories. But it's an invitation for me who has the privilege to facilitate that happening. That's what I see myself doing in the United Shades of America. And there's a reason why my show is different than his, because we're doing it in different ways. But the work of giving people the microphone who don't normally have the microphone is how I see my job, too.

And another thing about that last statement is you can't help but feel a little bit like he's talking to you from the grave. I don't want to be an armchair psychologist, as I've said many times. We were not great friends. The show is your watching a friendship form in real time. By the end he gave me his number and said "Reach out when you're in New York." And I was there a couple times but I didn't reach out because I didn't want to bug him. But maybe I should have bugged him, just to say hello. Just to take in the friendship in the limited time left that I didn't realize. When I watch it, the hardest thing about that line is it feels like he was sort of putting an end on his career and I don't want to put too much on it, but that's how it feels now.

Matt Miller Culture Editor Matt is the Culture Editor at Esquire where he covers music, movies, books, and TV—with an emphasis on all things Star Wars, Marvel, and Game of Thrones.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io