Larry Wilmore: ‘Best Racial Stuff Happens’ After Show Cancellation

Larry Wilmore is still frustrated about the cancellation of his Comedy Central series The Nightly Show – partly because he missed the chance to lampoon so many noteworthy headlines. “I’m very upset that they did cancel a brother’s show when all the best, worst racial stuff started happening,” he told Stephen Colbert Thursday on The Late Show. “Hillary calls Trump a bigot; he calls her a bigot. He’s going on his Mexican tour right now. You’ve got a quarterback who won’t stand for the National Anthem … All the best racial stuff happens now when I lose my show.”

Wilmore “kept it 100” throughout his Late Show sit-down, saying he regrets missing out on the full election cycle. “I am very disappointed about it,” he said. “I thought we’d be on through the election. You never know what’s gonna happen. It’s real tough when you’re doing a TV show – you’re thankful that you’re doing a TV show, but we hadn’t talked to them for awhile. It was almost like you’re in a relationship, but you were the one who didn’t know [that something’s wrong] … I’m very sad for it, but I’m very proud of the work that we did. I like to live in the abundance of being grateful for what we had to do, and hopefully I can do something like that again some time.”

The comedian also relayed Nightly Show executive producer Jon Stewart’s words of wisdom, discussed the “unblackening” of the Oval Office and joked with Colbert about the pressures of hosting the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “I was very inspired by Stephen,” Wilmore said. “When you called President Bush ‘your nigga,’ I could not believe you did that. I thought it was very brave.”

Wilmore opened the episode by stealing Colbert’s monologue. “I thought whoever leaves Comedy Central at 11:30 just gets The Late Show,” he said.