Racial slur changes tone of Greenville comedy show

It was supposed to be a night of laughs at a downtown Greenville comedy club.

Instead, a show headlined by stand-up comedian Jamie Kennedy turned into a discussion about race after a white female shouted a racial slur from the audience the night of Feb. 11 at The Comedy Zone on North Main Street.

Nikki Marshall, who was at the show with her fiancé, said she felt the slur was directed at her. She said it's not the first experience in Greenville that has made her uncomfortable since she moved here from California.

Kennedy, who was on stage at the time, described the incident as bizarre and said he felt terrible that it had happened.

“I don’t condone racist behavior or any of that," he told The Greenville News in a phone interview.

Representatives for The Comedy Zone could not be reached for comment.

Kennedy, who was scheduled to perform for three nights here, was about 10 minutes into his act Sunday at the comedy club when things got “weird.”

Marshall said a woman who was sitting behind her repeatedly called out "Hey, Jamie!" in an attempt to get Kennedy's attention. The comedian finally addressed the woman who was "yapping" at him.

"She’s heckling me, right?" Kennedy said. "And I’m like, ‘What? What do you want?’”

Kennedy said he didn’t hear the woman’s reply, but he saw that what she said made the crowd “very, very uncomfortable.”

According to Marshall, who is black, the woman said, "Hey Jamie, there's a (N-word).”

The room grew silent, Marshall said. She turned around to the people behind her and asked, "Did she just say what I think she said?"

“I don’t know if it was directed toward me," Marshall said. "It certainly seemed that way."

Marshall said she then told the woman her comment was inappropriate. Others in the audience said the same, Marshall said. The heckler said she was quoting something from a movie, Marshall said.

"I said, 'Well, this isn’t a movie.'"

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Greenville stand-up comedian Kyle Nolan was also at the show. He said he didn’t hear much of what the heckler was saying but did hear her use the slur.

“I guess she was quoting a movie but no one knew what movie she was quoting," he said.

Kennedy said although he hadn’t heard the racial slur, others in the audience had.

“I said, "No! Oh, my God. What are you doing?” he said. “Then they escorted her out.”

When it happened, Kennedy said he started asking Marshall questions.

“I said, 'Does this happen here a lot, people using the N-word that should not use it?’” he said. “She said, ‘I’m from California and it happens more than I would like it to.'”

The comedian said he tried to have a conversation about race. Marshall was “going with it,” but Kennedy said others were trying to shut down the conversation and that annoyed him.

“They didn’t want to deal with it and that’s what made it really awkward," Kennedy said. "That’s where the real tension came in.”

After the show, Kennedy said he apologized to Marshall, telling her how sorry he was that the incident had happened.

Kennedy said people approached him after the performance and said what happened was not representative of Greenville. They said the heckler was just "some random drunk person," Kennedy said.

Marshall hopes that what happened in The Comedy Zone will inspire local leaders to start the conversation about race.

Since moving to Greenville, she said she's seen men walking along Main Street holding Confederate flags and carrying signs saying, "Join the Movement." It made her feel uncomfortable.

"You don't want to feel uneasy," she said. "You certainly don’t want to have to look over your shoulder when you’re going out, or be fearful for yourself."