Jerrod Carmichael On Why He Named His Special ‘Don’t Be Gay’

Jerrod Carmichael is not shy when it comes to talking about himself–that’s not uncommon for a stand-up comedian–but he has a special way of sneak attacking the darkest of humor in with stories about his own life. After he won an Emmy for Rothaniel, Carmichael invited us even deeper into his dating sphere with Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show where he tested the limits of the audience’s participation in voyeurism viewership. He returns with his latest hour, Jerrod Carmichael’s Don’t Be Gay, and it might be his most pointed, naked hour yet as he dissects how he (and Twitter) feels about being a gay Black man in the public eye deeply in love with his white boyfriend.

The moment that will stick with me the most from Carmichael’s latest special is not how he admits that Whiney Houston’s National Anthem played every morning in school. It’s not even how he describes the differences of how he has sex with his partner versus the men he plays with outside his open relationship. The greatest moment is when the comic recalls watching the video for D’Angelo’s 2000 hotbox of a song, “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” with such vivid detail that it makes you sweat just from hearing about it secondhand. Carmichael and I agree that it’s the hottest that anyone has ever been.

“I deliberately didn’t watch it while I was writing,” Carmichael admits. “I wanted it to be from memory, and I closed my eyes during it because I’m trying to actually recall. I didn’t want to describe it in the writing after just having revisited it, because I wanted an actual memory played out on stage. I was just reflecting on him in that video. And just…all of its gorgeousness.”

Carmichael is at ease during Don’t Be Gay, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone after seeing how he chose to sit for Rothaniel. You react when you hear the Emmy winner speak, and it’s echoed in how the people in the theater receive Carmichael’s material. There is a funny moment when, during that D’Angelo description, he uses a phrase to describe the singer’s hips, and you hear someone in the audience let out a loud, “Oh!” in the darkness.

“It starts with a reaction to the reaction,” he says. “It begins and ends with me reacting to things written or comments that are spoken by the faceless audience. It’s kind of like ghosts that can live in your head, so that informed the way it was shot and how it was captured since I’m speaking to people that you don’t really see.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about the title of Carmichael’s latest, especially in terms of connotation. A lot of people struggling with their sexuality will tell themselves to ‘not be gay’ while others are mocked for being effeminate at a young age by friends or a parent. The phrase can seem like a condemnation from some. Carmichael reveals what the original title of his special was going to be before he and I talked about how the phrase has been weaponized by an increasingly right-wing leaning faction of people in America.

“This was the first special that was named after it was made,” Carmichael admits. “The original title for Love at the Store was Live at the Store, but I accidentally made a typo to a friend in a text and I just kept it. With my second, we were standing in a Masonic hall, and we needed to cover up the Freemason logo. So we covered the G with an 8, and I always like that number so I put it out there. Rothaniel was something we were building to. With this one, and reflecting on the material, I originally wanted to call it N*gga with a White Boyfriend. That was a hard no, and that was mainly because of pushback from YouTube and TikTok. You mean the places that are actually radicalizing people and sites that host some of the most vile content you’ve ever seen in your fucking life won’t allow me to say that about myself?

I came out fairly recently, and the joke you would often hear is, ‘Who cares?’ A lot of it is an internal monologue about what I have been told my entire life, and that was in the material. It seems to be the direction the world is heading. It’s wild. If you would have told [back then] me that the anti-gay rhetoric would ramp up and Roe v. Wade would be overturned, I would’ve been shocked.”

In the first half of this hour, Carmichael jokes about how his family relies on him so much that they should have a picture of him by their front door to remind them of who provides for them. Would he like to do a photoshoot for this specific photo, or does he like a particular photo of himself already?

“When I hosted the Golden Globes, I took a picture in this military jacket, because it felt like I was going to war. It was very stressful doing that, and I was like this mercenary job that I was coming in to do. I really like that picture actually.”

Jerrod Carmichael’s Don’t Be Gay is streaming now on Max.