Jerrod Carmichael Has Done the Unthinkable
Jerrod Carmichael often does something unusual for a comedian: He stops talking. In a medium that frequently moves a mile a minute, Jerrod will pause, he will sit, he will try to pull the right words and place them in the right order to express exactly what heās thinking. The long, soul-searching silences that punctuated his 2022 HBO special, Rothaniel, are evident throughout his performances these days. They hang there, unfilled by audience participation, more compelling than most comicsā whole sets. Heās comfortable in the searching, under the stage lights.
āIām considering, well, what am I saying to you?ā he says. āWhy should it matter? Why should you listen?ā Carmichael wants to put on a good show because he believes performance is a revelation. When he was three years old, his mother worked as an usher at a church in North Carolina. After the services, Carmichael would ask her to hold him up to the microphone so he could hear his voice on the loudspeaker. āI think your voice being amplified,ā he says, āis a miracle.ā
Andre D. Wagner @photodreJerrod Carmichael photographed inside his home in New York City in March 2024. His new show is unlike anything weāve ever seen on television.
Carmichael, thirty-six, should luxuriate in those pauses, because they are the only moments of silence heāll get for the time being. On March 29, Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show premiered on HBO. It is Carmichaelās experiment in radical honesty: a self-Truman Showing of himself, in which his entire life, including his most intimate moments, are filmed and put on display. It is a big-budget exploration of his fidelity to his first real boyfriend as an out gay man, his struggle to be a less self-involved friend, and, most prominently, his relationship with his very Christian mother and the father who raised him alongside a whole other secret family.
On Reality Show, Carmichaelās voiceāand his silences, and his desire to connectāare turned all the way up and will be for the next eight Friday nights on HBO, streaming from here to eternity on Max. So will the voices of the boyfriend and the friends and the mom and the dad who have less experience in the spotlight. Itās like nothing weāve seen on television before. It is laugh-out-loud hilarious and lacerating, thrilling, and slo-mo-sports-injury hard to watch. And what Iām wondering as I talk with him over the course of two days is not only how will he survive it, but how will they?
In his trial for impiety and corruption of youth, Socrates famously said the unexamined life is not worth living. And itās important to remember: The Real Housewives franchise hadnāt even caught on back then. Now, after thirty-plus years of reality television and at least one generation warped by social media, Carmichaelās experiment prompts a different question: Is the over-examined life worth living? Is it even survivable?
āThis is a raw, uncensored, hilarious look into my complicated relationship with my homophobic family, my insane sex life, and my unlikely best friend,ā he says, reciting off his iPhone the show description his media coach just emailed. Weāre in his hotel room in Beverly Hills, and heās still in the StĆ¼ssy fleece and Kapital pants he wore on Jimmy Kimmel Live! a couple hours ago. He nods. āYeah. Thatās good. She puts things in very clear terms.ā
Andre D Wagner
Want more stories like this? Become an Esquire subscriber today.
SUBSCRIBE
Carmichael has become one of the most popular comedians in Americaāand an in-demand actor, most recently in the multiple-Oscar-winning Poor Thingsāprecisely for his own ability to put things in very clear terms, even if it takes a few pauses to get there. Reality Show is something he struggles to describe in his own words, maybe because heās too close to the subject matter, maybe because the subject matter is his actual soul. āIām just a little sensitive to the whole thing. Iāve been trying to talk about the show and sound articulate, and itās not easy. Basically, Iām one of Cesar Millanās dogs,ā he says, describing a reality TV show from a decade ago, Dog Whisperer. āItās like interviewing the Chihuahua about why he peed on the rug. Like, I donāt know what to tell you. Itās not J-Loās This Is Meā¦Now.ā
Pretty quickly our talk starts to resemble what therapy looks like to people who have never done therapy. He goes from sitting up to lying across the sitting-room sofa, facing me, in a chair, as I nod and scribble notes. The table between us is a jumble of books, Leo Tolstoyās What Is Art? right on top. In real life, Carmichael takes his therapy sessions to go. āI do therapy on a walk. My therapyās in my headphones just on the sidewalk, no awareness of whoās around. New York has really desensitized me to being seen. I donāt care. Iām just saying anything and whatever I want.ā
It feels natural for us to settle into a simulacrum of therapy, because there is a therapeutic aspect to what weāre discussing: the essential danger of what heās about to put out into the world. āThese are real relationships,ā he says. āThe Housewives model is a group of people put together. Like, this dinner partyās going to be a place where the fight may happen and the drink may get thrown in the face.ā Reality Show cuts deeper, closer. āThese are ongoing problems in my life and ongoing conversations that Iāve been actually actively avoiding. Theyāve been land mines, and so the stakes are hard.ā
Andre D. Wagner @photodreāI have one friend who thinks itās just me creating chaos and destruction in my life,ā Carmichael says of his latest project, āand thatās maybe one way of reading it. But I think itās me actually trying to heal things in my life, trying to fix things.ā
He stayed out of the editing room, as heās done for his stand-up specials and his sitcom, The Carmichael Show, which aired on NBC from 2015 to 2017. āIāll be too precious,ā he says. āIāll be like, Oh, well, I donāt like my face here. I donāt like this look or something, or Iād be too sensitive about the story and take out all the good shit.ā
Before my first meeting with Carmichael, I was given access to all eight episodes of Reality Show. I watched them in one sitting, and I was rapt and entertained and left with a low-key feeling of dread and discomfort. Why, I wondered, in a show that includes and involves the parents whose religion will not allow them to engage with his homosexuality even in the abstract, would he pull his sexuality so vividly into the real? What is the purpose of forcing them, Clockwork Orange-style, to see what they strain to avoid? After spending time with him, it becomes clear that the project was made with love and honesty toward a larger goal of more love and more honesty. Carmichael appears to find both liberation and inspiration in the process of radical sharing. Good can come from it. Heās not wrong.
But I still canāt shake my worry, for his parents, and for his boyfriend, and for him. Iām not the only one.
Some of the best shit in episode 1 of Reality Show involves a visiting friend dressed in what we can call a fashionable hazmat suit. The friendās face is completely covered, his voice is altered. āTo me,ā the figure says, gesturing to the lights and the cameras and the impending action, āthese cameras, itās like thereās sarin gas in the room, and Iām masked up.ā āAnonymous,ā whose identity Carmichael wonāt reveal to me but who Internet chatter suggests is Bo Burnham, does not approve of Reality Show. āI have one friend who thinks itās just me creating chaos and destruction in my life,ā Carmichael says. Maybe thatās Burnham, maybe director Ari Aster, who has expressed concerns about the morality of the project, āand thatās maybe one way of reading it. But I think itās me actually trying to heal things in my life, trying to fix things.ā
The iPhone buzzes. Itās a Google alert for the name āJerrod Carmichael,ā one of manyāmany manyāthat pops off in our time together. āItās a Reddit post about me,ā he says. āThis is so meta.ā He puts the phone down on the table. But not out of reach.
Andre D. Wagner @photodreJerrod Carmichael is one of the most popular comedians in America right now. His 2022 stand-up special, Rothaniel, earned him an Emmy Award.
In episode 1 of Reality Show, Jerrod deals with the fallout of some off-camera, pre-HBO radical honesty. Namely, his decision to be honest about his romantic feelings for his best friend, Tyler, the Creator. āI think that conversation is so wild and important,ā Carmichael says, āand I mostly have gratitude to him for doing it. Itās a conversation thatās never happened before on TV, and he knows that Iām insane, I guess, so he was down for something chaotic.ā Tyler was not down for a relationship, and as for whether their friendship has endured the chaos, the final decision is still not in. āYeah, I donāt know. I think weāre okay. Iām in New York now, so I donāt see him that often, but still admire him and love him, and his friendship meant so much to me, and he inspired me so much.ā The past tense doesnāt bode well, but Carmichael remains optimistic. āI think every conversation in the show has made the relationship better, at least more honest. But I think weāre good.ā
If anyone is down for something chaotic, itās Tyler, the Creator. And the candor and the vulnerability are thrilling to watch. But Tyler knows his way around a camera. Heās savvy; so is Carmichael. Theyāre both aware of their images and how to maintain them. I canāt help but worry about the later episodes, when Carmichael initiates equally candid and vulnerable moments with people who arenāt camera-ready and media-coached.
āI think everybody in the show did it because of their love for me. Nobody wanted to be in the show.ā Carmichael grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and moved to L.A. to pursue stand-up at the age of twenty. It would take six years of grinding it out in clubs before his 2014 breakthrough, when he was cast in Neighbors and, later in the year, when Spike Lee directed Carmichaelās first HBO stand-up special, Love at the Store. He started racking up the hyphens soon after. There was The Carmichael Show and another HBO stand-up special, 8, directed by Burnham. He appeared on Tyler, the Creatorās album Igor; starred in the video for Jay Zās āMoonlightā; and served as a producer on Ramy. His directorial debut followed with 2021ās On the Count of Three. He earned an Emmy nomination for hosting Saturday Night Live and MCed the 2023 Golden Globes. But it was Rothaniel that made him a cultural force. In the HBO special, again directed by Burnham, Carmichael came out as gay and spokeāand pausedāat length about his familyās discomfort. Rothaniel won him an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special.
With the credits and critical acclaim have come friendships with famous people. At one point in our conversation, he tells a story about Burgers Never Say Die, a smash-burger joint in Silver Lake that Tyler and Carmichael mention in episode 1. BNSD started as a backyard pop-up only the cool kids knew about, and Carmichael was one of the cool kids.
Andre D. Wagner @photodreāIāve been trying to talk about the show and sound articulate, and itās not easy. Basically, Iām one of Cesar Millanās dogs,ā Carmichael says, describing a reality TV show from a decade ago, Dog Whisperer. āItās like interviewing the Chihuahua about why he peed on the rug. Like, I donāt know what to tell you. Itās not J-Loās This Is Meā¦Now.ā
āI brought J and B there before it opened,ā he says. āI was telling J about it, because he loves food.ā I nod, not knowing. J and B? Bo Burnhamās name has come up a few times, so maybe thatās B? But J? Has there been a J? Carmichael presses forward: He called the Burgers Never Say Die owner and asked him to open the place for him and his friends. āJust trust me,ā he said to the owner. As he tells the story, I start furtively flipping through my notes for a J. āHe didnāt even have dining inside, so we were just playing Connect Four and Uno in the backyard. It was one of my favorite Sundays I ever had.ā
In the name of radical honesty, I give up. āIām sorry. Who are J and B?ā
A pause. A look. āI mean Jay-Z and BeyoncĆ©.ā
Oh my God. Jay and Bey. My soul leaves my body at this point in the conversation. I am watching the two of us from above, and while I do not have clear or specific memories of what happens in the moments that follow, my Voice Notes app indicates that we talk about Erewhon, the maximum-swank wellness grocery store down the road from his hotel. āLunch costs me $67,ā he says. āAll I got is a hot plate and some juice shots, and itās $67, and Iām cool with it. Iām completely cool with it.ā
Andre D. Wagner @photodreāIām still a kid just crying for attention,ā Carmichael says. āIām just begging for attention.ā
Itās therapy here, basically, so I speak my feelings. āJerrod, I am so embarrassed I didnāt immediately get that J and B were Jay and Bey.ā It feels good to be honest. It feels important to tell the truth. (Most of it; the fact that my brain pulled Bartles and Jaymes before Beyonce and Jay-Z is one that I keep to myself.) āI feel like an idiot.ā
āNo,ā he laughs. āI dropped some names, and then I had to pick āem back up.ā
Some of his famous friends appear in Reality Show, but the most complicated characterāthough it feels incorrect to call this person a ācharacterāāto emerge over the eight episodes is his mom. Cynthia Carmichael is warm, funny, incandescently proud of Jerrod, and completely unwilling to engage with the reality that her son is gay. āMy mom is a soldier for the Lord,ā Carmichael says. āShe watched the trailer. She saw herself trying to pray the gay away, and sheās like, āI hope this saves some souls.āā Cynthia is a private person, but Jerrod says sheās not worried about the show making her recognizable. āSheāll say in public what she says in private. It makes an interesting TV subject, but a really difficult relationship.ā He pauses, looking for the correct words. āHer eyes are watching God, and Iām trying to get her attention.ā
It wasnāt always this way. When The Carmichael Show was on the air, his parents told everyone about their son, the famous television star. The network-clean NBC show about the straight guy with the Christian mom was in line with his parentsā values. āNow itās like, āDid you tell your friends about the HBO series?ā āYeah, no, if they see it they see it,āā he says, momentarily less upbeat. āI donāt know if they will get why that disappoints me, or if theyāll care, and maybe itās just a line that they just canāt cross.ā
Andre D. Wagner @photodreCarmichaelās credits include three stand-up specials for HBO, an Emmy nomination for hosting Saturday Night Live, and three seasons of his own NBC show.
The line seems to have been drawn in the drying cement around the time of Rothaniel. āItās amazing how many times Iāve been on national television and said the word gay and how little thatās acknowledged,ā he says. āMy parents just completely ignore the words that Iām saying, and that muted response led to Reality Show. The lack of acknowledgment is what made me go, āOkay, I’ll turn the volume up.ā How do I make it as extreme as possible? Itās testing the limits of their cognitive dissonance. Can you acknowledge me speaking directly to you in a comedy special? They donāt really acknowledge that. What if youāre actually in the thing? Will you acknowledge that? I keep showing my mother herself andā¦ā another pause. āYeah, I donāt know. Iām still a kid just crying for attention. Iām just begging for attention.ā
Since the first commercial break of the premiere of MTVās The Real World in 1992, pretty much everyone has thought about what their lives would look like on television. Carmichaelās parents are from a time before people had those considerations, but the episodes are going up either way. Carmichael is definitely offering up his brokenness, but he is also offering up theirs. Ready or not.
Another reminder buzzes, and Carmichael pops up and goes to the table opposite his bed. āItās funny being in a constant state of flux. I never know what Iām doing or what I just did, I just know that itās time to take PrEP.ā From a dispenser, he tears off a packet of the drug that prevents HIV. āItās how I know what the date is, my little PrEP packets. Like, oh, itās Wednesday, March 20th.ā
In Reality Show, Carmichael frequently uses the LGBTQ dating app Grindr, so I ask what the grid looks like at the very center of the most prestigious ZIP code in Los Angeles. Are there even faces? āBeverly Hills Grindr is a lot of torsos,ā he admits, grabbing the phone again. āIf itās on my phone and I check into a hotel, Iām so curious: Is anybody at the hotel? Yep. Oh, look, there is.ā But heās been avoiding it on this stay, distracting himself with snacks from Erewhon and episodes of The Sopranos. Carmichaelās on his first watch of that show, and heās drawn to the realness of it. āThereās a scene where Tony wakes up in his home theater. Heās got popcorn crumbs on his shirt, and Iām like, this is the most true thing Iāve ever seen before in my life. I love this so much.ā
Andre D WagnerIn a 2022 interview, Carmichael discussed Dave Chappelleās legacy. āHe took it as fuck Dave Chappelle, because heās an egomaniac,ā Carmichael says. āHe wanted me to apologize to him publicly or some shit.ā
The day before we meet, I watch Carmichael perform a stand-up set at L.A.ās Elysian theater. He is clearly in a new stage of honesty and playfulness in his act. At one point, he goes into a long, hilarious monologue about his twelve-year-old selfās reaction to seeing DāAngeloās āUntitled (How Does It Feel)ā video. (Iād quote from it, but audience members are asked to lock up their phones at his shows.) This joke, and others like it, come from an underlying tension in Carmichaelās life: He is a gay man who told himself he was straight for most of his life. āNow Iām able to see my reactions to things in culture, things in my family, things in life, and remember how I felt,ā he says. There were desires he had but couldnāt act upon, people he wanted but couldnāt touch. āNow Iām finally able to tell you.ā
And yet for all of Carmichaelās radical honesty, uttering the words āIām gayā remains difficult. āI still think saying youāre gay is saying somethingās wrong with you,ā he says. āAnd so much of comedy is just gay jokes. As long as people continue to laugh at it and mock it, and as long as itās a punchline, itās going to be scary for somebody. Itās scary for me.ā
To illustrate his point, Carmichael points to a remark Dave Chappelle made after Rothaniel dropped. āHe referred to it as the bravest special for 1996,ā he says. āAnd itās like, thatās a funny enough line, whatever, but I wonder if he gets the irony that the fact that you are mocking it even then is why it was hard.ā
Andre D. Wagner @photodreāIām not ruling it out,ā Carmichael says of OnlyFans.
Carmichael and Chappelle have had something like beef for the last couple of years. In 2022, Carmichael gave an interview in which he talked about Chappelleās legacy. āI said heās not revealing anything personal about himself and heās removed from what heās talking about, and I think heās smarter than that and deeper than that and has more interesting thoughts.ā (Carmichaelās exact words were āChappelle, do you know what comes up when you Google your name, bro? Thatās the legacy? Your legacy is a bunch of opinions on trans shit? Itās an odd hill to die on.ā¦Itās just kind of played.ā) āBut he took it as fuck Dave Chappelle, because heās an egomaniac. He wanted me to apologize to him publicly or some shit.ā
The iPhone keeps buzzing during our therapy session. āIām getting too many Google alerts for myself. Thatās not good. I like during the slow periods. Iām very sensitive when it starts happening a lot.ā And itās important to note: All those buzzes still bring messages from a time before anybodyās seen Reality Show. But a few important opinions have already come in. Like that of Jay, for example. (Jay-Z. American rapper and businessman.) āJay is an artistic North Star for me. In the world of rap where people donāt give access or insight to their inner turmoil or emotions, he was such an emotional rapper. Heād make songs like āRegretsā and āYou Must Love Meā and āLucky Me,ā where it wasnāt just Champagne and girls, it was also remorse and fear. I sent him everything. I sent him the road-trip episode with my dad, and I remember his text back just being like, This is an X-ray.ā
But again, heās not the only one whose insides are being photographed and exposed to radiation. I ask him what the dangers are for his parents. His father, for example, had kids with another woman while he was married to Jerrodās mother, and although that hasnāt been a secret for a long time, it hasnāt been a storyline on a television show untilā¦a couple of weeks from now. āMy dadās worried about these things being public. Heās worried about the world, and he should realize that the danger is me. Heās seen the episodes, and Iām like: Do you watch me in it? Do you watch me regressing to a child? Are you listening to me? Are you watching my face? I think we all have a fear of being seen and being exposed in some way, and so heās recognizing that as the danger. But to me, that danger is negligible. Who cares? Care about these relationships, care about our relationship.ā
Jerrod has a joke about why his parents would sign up for such an X-ray: āI was joking on Kimmel that they did it out of love, and also I paid for their insurance.ā Itās a joke that speaks the truth pretty plainly. āI think everybody in the show did it because of their love for me. Everybody was reluctant. Nobody wanted to do it.ā He repeats. āNobody wanted to be in the show.ā
Andre D. Wagner @photodreāI think your voice being amplified,ā Carmichael says, āis a miracle.ā
āMy boyfriend gets mad at me because I always wanted to do an OnlyFans,ā Carmichael says. āHeās like, āFor attention?āā Iām like, āWell, kind of, but more so for the freedom.ā Freedom from the shame bomb. Like, Oh, okay, here is the thing that nobody wants to put out. The scariest thing is out there and thereās nothing else to worry about.ā
Sex on camera nearly happens on Reality Show, both within Carmichael and his boyfriend Mikeās relationship andāthanks to uncredited cast member Grindrābeyond. āThe show goes right up to the edge of it,ā Carmichael says. Men arrive at his house for a hookup, and Carmichael kicks out Sean, his cameraman, before the hookup escalates. āI wouldāve been down, and guys that came over would ask: āSo, we filming?ā And Iām like, āHow far are you going to go?āā Weāre out on the Beverly Hills streets now, a couple of days after our first meeting. We stop to get coffee, and Carmichaelānow in an Acne Studios tracksuitāslaps his American Express down before I have a chance: $20 tip on a $15 bill. The sidewalks are as free of pedestrians as the clichĆ©s suggest. There is one guy, down at the other end of the block, walking a dog. Thick, tall. Carmichael notices, I notice, and we notice each other noticing.
But wait: an OnlyFans? āIām not ruling it out,ā he insists. āItās a freedom that Iām seeking that I feel like sex on camera would provide. It was such a place of shame, so I have a personal reason of wanting to just dive headfirst into that world. But also it seems like the answer to AI, it just seems likeā¦ā And then we pass Thick & Tall with the dog, who turns out to be extremely handsome up close, and Carmichael continues: āā¦I love it when someoneās as hot as I was thinking they were going to be a block away.ā
Telling the truth really is a thrill.
Andre D. Wagner @photodreCarmichael wants people to dissect his life and comment on it. āI offer this piece at the altar of Twitterā¦or X, formerly known as Twitter,ā he says, smiling but not laughing.
We know how Cynthia Carmichael feels about God, but I wonder what Carmichaelās relationship with the Almighty is. āI think I long abandoned the concept of God that I was taught as a child,ā he says. āNow I believe in an internal God, and not the man in the sky.ā God takes many forms, it turns out. āI was talking about Scott Rudin at dinner and how much I miss him,ā he says about the EGOT-winning producer, who has effectively vanished from the public eye after stories of his abusive behavior toward employees surfaced. āI miss him. I love him. I was saying, Scottās just so important. Heās so good. Heās so important. Describing Scott Rudin is describing God, in that heās just like, I canāt tell you exactly who he is, just that heās needed and that he makes things better and that he offers a certain security and focus that is hard to articulate.
āI donāt know how to explain the concept. I just know Heās needed. Heās needed.ā
A couple millennia ago, Socrates was put on trial for acknowledging gods that were not recognized by the city of Athens, and for corrupting the youth of the city with his dialogue, his method of questioning that revealed the contradictions in the other personās beliefs. People donāt like that shit; he was put to death. In Reality Show, Jerrod Carmichael questions modern evangelical Christianity, and monogamy, and masculinity. And he does it before the omniscient and all-powerful God of cameras. And Godās righteous judgment will come, in the form of Twitter and Reddit and the quickening buzz of those Google alerts.
You donāt just wonder whether Carmichael will have to drink the hemlock. You canāt help but wonder whether heāll be the only one, whether his boyfriend and friends and mom and dad will also suffer this wrath, and whether you care, because in the name of amplifying his voice, to plead to the people closest to him to really see him, Carmichael has made a wildly entertaining and groundbreaking television show.
āI offer this piece at the altar of Twitterā¦or X, formerly known as Twitter,ā Carmichael says, smiling but not laughing. āDear God, please dissect it. Take my life and dissect it and comment. And again, I would rather it be focused on me and not my family, not my boyfriend, butāāand there is no pause here, but there is emphasisāātake it.ā
Read the author’s recap of episode 1 of Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show with exclusive commentary from Carmichael.
Design Director: Rockwell Harwood
Contributing Visuals Director: James Morris
Executive Director, Entertainment: Randi Peck
