I’m RobinThede. I’m the host of the Rundown with Robin Thede and I am currently the only black female late night host. NAT I’ll rundown….What’s Carbi B up to . I think right now there is a hole in the late night space for a black female perspective and I’m certainly not waging the success of my show on just the fact that I’m a black woman like I’m a black woman who’s been in this business a long time who has developed a very specific point of view NAT Police brutality you know I have more agency to talk about say Bill O’Reilly when he was calling black women hot chocolate. You know it’s like people made jokes about that. But I as a black woman can say how that would make me feel. NAT I worked on The Nightly show….I was the only black female headwriter…. The numbers of women in late night comedy are very low. When I first went to the nightly show they were I think three or four black female writers in the entire genre of late night comedy out of almost 200 writers. There was less than on one hand you could count the number of black women in writers rooms and the same on camera after the nightly show we double that number. And then when the nightly show went away it went back down to that number four which to me was a problem. I started working with the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild to pass legislation in Albany to encourage Film and Television Productions in New York State to hire women as writers and directors and people of color and we passed that this year I’m really happy to say. I think that our voices are really important and a lot of the things that this administration is targeting focuses on minorities and people of color and women and we need a voice in this space. I’ve definitely felt like there were times where you know you have to write for people that don’t share your opinions I have certainly felt like an outsider and I’ve certainly felt like I was misunderstood in a writers room and often as a performer as well. This is earlier in my career but I remember I mean I wrote for 10 years before I was with another woman in a writers room 10 years. Nothing but men. And that’s what’s hard about this world and sitcom and sketch in late night is that it’s just very very male dominated. And as a woman I remember being referred to as the girl writer in one of the writers rooms for two years I was called The Girl writer wasn’t called Robin. I wasn’t called Hey you they just like let’s ask the girl writer. NAT ..Do you feel like the White writer of the group….”I’m aware…I feel welcomed” [00:15:25] It seems like every other day there’s something going wrong either in this administration or with natural disasters and for a lot of comedians that’s there’s pressure. Right. There’s pressure to have a fake perspective because they don’t want to give their own. in the comedy community there are black comedians that make choices. To fit in in certain spaces and that is absolutely a pressure that we have all felt. NAT – I’m just doin Me for me it’s really important that I’m true to who I am and if I feel like I’m doing something that’s just like oh I’m black so I’m doing this thing. It’s like that’s not going to work NAT – Black lady sign language SOT – I do use Black Lady Sign language all the time, and it’s very useful in many situations… I think you have to just be true. I think you have to be real and if you’re not being real people see through it. So whether you’re trying to be super black or super white or whatever. If it’s not authentic to who you are people are people are going to see through it you know and they’re not going to buy it.