Image via Ismail Sayeed/Comedy Central
Charlamagne tha God is just getting started.
The radio personality, whose real name is Lenard McKelvey, has been in the media game for more than two decades but has continued to elevate himself and his career by taking on new challenges along the way. Most recently, he took on a late-night talk show host role on Comedy Central’s Hell of a Week With Charlamagne tha God.
On Hell of a Week, he shares his unfiltered opinions on politics, the week’s biggest cultural news, and conducts the type of celebrity interviews he is notorious for. The variety news show follows a similar format to his 2021 showTha God’s Honest Truth With Lenard ‘Charlamagne’ McKelvey, which was also produced by Stephen Colbert. Charlamagne has a full writers’ room, a production crew, and a team of panelists he collaborates with weekly, but the hosting responsibilities fall solely on him. The radio host’s deadpan and frank delivery when asking questions and having conversations has gotten him into trouble in the past, but this era of celebrity podcast hosts has brought forth a new level of appreciation for those like him who aren’t afraid to ask hard-hitting questions. He speaks freely on the radio, but he says working with other writers and comedians challenges him to view and approach things differently.
Aside from his new TV hosting duties, Charlamagne has also launched The Black Effect Podcast Network, the Short Black Handsome Productions company with Kevin Hart, and his Black Privilege Publishing imprint with Simon & Schuster—all with the purpose of helping others succeed. “I like seeing who that next person is and giving that person an opportunity to express themselves. That’s what I like to do,” Charlamagne tells Complex. “Anything that I’m doing now if it’s just about me, it’s not big enough.”
He’s taking that same mentality as his popular Power 105.1 morning show The Breakfast Club is on the verge of a major transformation. Co-host Angela Yee’s upcoming departure means Charlamagne and DJ Envy will continue sharing co-hosting duties, and while Charlamagne knows the value of Yee’s presence on the show, he’s looking forward to the changes. “Angela Yee is irreplaceable and you could never replace that piece we’ve made history with. We’ve all made history together,” Charlamagne says. “Some people say we might be one the most impactful radio shows of all time. But you can never replace her. It’s just, to me, the natural evolution of a radio show.”
Charlemagne hopped on a Zoom call with Complex and he opened up about his new gig at Comedy Central, The Breakfast Club, his thoughts on Kanye West, the state of hip-hop media, who should host The Daily Show, and more. Read our interview with the radio host, lightly edited for length and clarity, below.
How is the late-night show going for you? How has that transition been?
The late-night show is going great. Late-night television is always interesting, especially in 2022. There are so many different options out there for people to indulge in and not just on the late-night tip. Why does the world need another platform for people just having certain conversations? With all of that, I feel like the show is still doing well and it’s a show, especially with the new format, it’s my type of show, which is a show that has a conversation by committee.
We got the panel and it’s us four up there just talking about things that happened during the week. I always think smart conversations with smart people about things that truly impact us all are always beneficial. I’m just glad we get the opportunity to do it every Thursday.
How is the late-night show different from hosting The Breakfast Club with two people? Is it more challenging in a way?
Nah. I’m hosting it by myself, but it’s a whole team. It’s a whole staff behind me and people that I’ve worked with for a long time. My showrunner Rachael Alicia Edwards, I know Rachael for over a decade. When I first started at Viacom, she was an executive assistant to another one of my homegirls. We both have grown and that’s what it’s about. Now of course when I got my own opportunity to have my own vehicle, she’s the showrunner. My other homegirl Bianca [Brunette] would have been with me on every single talk show I’ve done with Viacom. People don’t realize this is the biggest talk show I’ve done thus far. But prior to that, I had two smaller ones on MTV2 called Charlamagne & Friends and Uncommon Sense.
Bianca worked with me on both seasons of Charlamagne & Friends and all three seasons of Uncommon Sense. I do have a whole team behind me. Even when I’m up there doing my one-on-one thing, it’s writers that help me craft a lot of this language that I was going to say anyway. That’s pretty much easy. Then I got the crowd right there as well. So I’m playing off them and then by the time the panel comes in, it’s like the same formula of Breakfast Club or the same formula of Brilliant Idiots. Because every week with Brilliant Idiots, it’s me and Andrew [Schulz]. For Breakfast Club, it’s me, Angela, and Envy. There’s always energy to bounce off and people to bounce off. The formula really isn’t that much different, it’s just different people.
One thing that has always made you stand out is your straightforward approach when asking questions and delivering the messages and opinions you want to deliver. When it comes to Hell of a Week, has your approach changed in that regard?
Yeah, nothing’s changed. I definitely have a writers’ room and it’s actually refreshing to have a writers’ room because I’ve never had that before. I never had that with radio. Radio, you go in there every day and it’s really just you versus millions. You’re literally playing a game of one-on-4.5 million people daily. But when you have a team of writers in there that you can say, “Hey man, this is what I’m interested in talking about. This is my POV on this situation. Help me broaden this POV or challenge the POV so we can make it even broader.” I like beating things up in a room and coming to a bigger conclusion about things. I like having the writers and the straightforward approach. That never changes, that’s never going anywhere.
Has Comedy Central given you boundaries about things that you can or can’t discuss on the show?
They’ve never given me boundaries, but there are things that have come up. This was a public thing so I can say it, but when we had Ray J on the show. Me and Ray J sat down for 17 minutes and of course, you can’t air the whole 17 minutes on the show, which is fine. Even on Breakfast Club, we don’t air whole interviews on the air. We might sit down with an artist for an hour and on-air we might air 20 minutes, but immediately when that 20 minutes is up, you can go on The Breakfast Club YouTube page and watch the whole thing in its entirety. Even in a setting of television, I’m fine sitting down and having a conversation that I know is only going to be six minutes for TV. Because if it goes 10 minutes, or 12 minutes, you put the rest of it online.
I don’t like when people’s thoughts are edited. If you’re going to edit it down to six minutes, let’s at least keep full thoughts. Don’t chop somebody up in mid-thought and move on to something else. I personally don’t like that. So we had Ray on and it was a very sensitive time because he was venting about the Kardashians and what they’re trying to do to him and putting the sex tape blame on him. What people don’t realize is that it’s really impacted his real world, meaning his business and everything else. We couldn’t put the whole 17 minutes out just because Kris Jenner is a mob boss out here in the world of television. People didn’t want to upset her and they didn’t want any possible liability.
For sure.
So what they put on the air is all that we were able to put out. And Ray J was frustrated by that. Highly upset. He lashed out on social media at me, at the show, and at everybody else, but mainly at me. Because that’s somebody that I’ve been knowing for 20 years and he’s come on Breakfast Club and always been able to speak his mind freely. So when he sees me on a platform, he feels like, “Oh, this is where I’m going to go to get my message out.” So for him to be edited like that, it comes back to me. But that’s all the network, that’s Paramount, Viacom, that doesn’t have anything to do with me. So they’ve never come to me and did X, Y, and Z, but they have their own internal conversations and I can’t argue with them. It’s their airwaves.
As an expert who’s been in this industry for so long, do you think that’s the reason why we’ve seen a lot of artists recently go more towards celebrity-run or artists-run podcasts? Is that why this shift has happened?
One billion percent. Not just the artists but the athletes. You see all of these athletes and they all have their own platforms now, whether it’s Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson with All the Smoke. Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor, and Channing Crowder with The Pivot, or Brandon Marshall with I am Athlete. Man, these guys control their own platforms now.
So if you’re an athlete, you probably feel more comfortable going to them. If you’re an artist, you might feel more comfortable going to talk to another artist. I’m not even mad at the artists for launching their own platforms and controlling their own narratives because they can avoid their words being taken out of context. Even though we live in an era that’s going to still take them out of context regardless.
How do you balance talking about real-world issues while also keeping the humor and the delivery that we’re used to hearing from you?
I’m still culture at the end of the day. I think that hip-hop has always been more evolved than people would necessarily recognize it to be. When I think about growing up and all of the things of socially redeeming value that used to be in music, whether it was conversations about religion and spirituality, politics, whether it was referencing books to read, I feel like there were always hip-hop artists who did that. So for me, I’m not a scholar. I didn’t go to college. I’m not an academic. The way that I communicate is just through regular real-world language.
I actually do care about those issues as well. I am watching CNN, and MSNBC, that’s what I watch the most. When I’m at home, my TV is usually on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or ESPN. Literally, that’s always the background noise in my house. Those are things that I genuinely care about. So to have a conversation about them is easy and it’s effortless.
Especially in the past few years, if all you watch is the news, there’s no way you can’t be anxious, sad, or depressed. How do you balance staying informed while also protecting your own mental health?
The mental health aspect of it is always going to be first and foremost for me. I will always disconnect when I need to disconnect. That goes for anything from the news to things that we’re hearing about in hip hop culture, that goes to conversations with friends, that goes to conversations that we have in my house with me and my wife and my oldest daughter. When it’s time to disconnect and everybody really needs to do what they need to do to protect their peace and their mental health, I encourage it. I don’t care what it is.
All of my friends are like that. Going into 2022, one of the books that I read, and I read it because she was actually a guest on my late-night talk show last season, Nedra [Glover Tawwab]. She wrote a book called Set Boundaries, Find Peace. It was literally a book about setting boundaries. And that’s literally what my 2022 has been about. I can be having conversations with really close friends of mine and one of us will be like, “Look, I don’t want to talk about that. I’m setting a boundary. If that’s what we’re talking about right now, let’s talk again later.” I know that may sound harsh, but it’s not.
Especially in group chats, sometimes it gets negative.
Oh, man. Why are we even having these conversations about certain things? It’s a waste of time. When I had my Mental Wealth Expo last weekend, a good friend of mine, David McCullar, was speaking on one of the panels and he said we all suffer from opinion fatigue. You can look at your phone and you already got a whole bunch of other stuff you’re concerned about, but now you’re worried about dogs driving golf carts. [Laughs.] Why do you even care? And he was like, “Somebody will come up to you and be like, ‘What do you think about Kanye?’ I’m not thinking about Kanye!” And it’s real. We all just got to know how to disconnect, period.
When you do talk about people like Kanye, who have such a beautiful legacy but then we also see this other side of them, how do you balance not completely tearing him down but also being real about it on the show?
I got to be real about it. The reality is he’s a Nazi, to me. If you attack Black people and Jewish people in the same week, you’re a Nazi. My name for him right now is KKKanye. And then you go on Drink Champs and you basically get your Alex Jones conspiracy theory on and you traumatize the family of George Floyd by just straight-up lying. What you said is just a straight-up lie. It was proven in court. George Floyd did not die of fentanyl. To say that the police officer didn’t even have his knee on his neck like that? Bro, did you even watch the video? The whole world saw that officer’s knee on George Floyd’s neck. That was just a wild thing to say. So you got to call complete and utter bullshit on that. There is no balance with that. It’s really straightforward. Kanye West has been Kanye West for a long, long time. He does have a great legacy. But I think that what we realized in recent times, you can destroy your legacy. You can absolutely ruin your legacy.
That’s why to me how the plane lands is very important. You want to take off and you want to be in the air, you are going to have those moments where it’s turbulence and where you go through storms. But as long as that plane lands and the wheels come out, and you can land safely, that’s great. That’s what we all should be striving to do. But some of these people are trying to land the plane and not putting the wheels out and they’re not slowing down, they are just destined to crash. That’s what it looks like to me with Kanye. It’s sad because he’s really moving like a person who doesn’t plan to be here much longer.
How do you feel about the state of hip-hop media and media in general, how do you feel about where that’s at right now?
Media is in a great place because there are a lot of different platforms. I was just having this conversation yesterday about journalism. I don’t know if journalism exists anymore, but I’m not sure it always has. Maybe during the era of print magazines, and print publications. I know it existed more back then. Some websites still deal with the facts. But a lot of this stuff is just so opinion-based and that’s where a lot of people are getting in trouble. When you look at where the game is going now, people have to start being careful. The reason I love that I grew up in radio is that we had FCC rules and regulations and those taught you a lot about what you can and cannot do.
Keeps you responsible.
That’s exactly it, it keeps you responsible. Right now there’s nothing keeping people responsible. That’s why you see people getting sued and losing. Alex Jones got to pay a billion dollars of money he does not have. There’s not a dollar he will receive for the rest of his life that truly belongs to him. You gotta ask yourself, “Is it really worth it for some retweets? For some views? For a couple of likes?” What are you doing? Watching somebody like Kanye just spew that rhetoric, especially after the Alex Jones situation, especially after we’ve seen people lose lawsuits to artists and have to pay money. We know what this is. So why would you as a billionaire get on any platform and be that irresponsible? Why?
I’ve been doing it long enough that all of these brothers and sisters that have new podcasts and they haven’t been around as long—I’ve been in radio for 24 years! Not just The Breakfast Club, I’ve been doing radio for 24 years—as somebody who has a reputation of being a shock jock, if I tell you that you shouldn’t do this, you probably should listen.
If I tell you, “Nah, bro. this person over here is wildin’, they are going too far. We don’t need to get his individual platform right now. And if you are going to give him a platform, you have to cut his head off or her head off.” But personally, somebody like Kanye, that’s not even something I would entertain. Why? We know how he’s coming. We saw the all lives matter shirt, you saw the tweets, you saw the text messages he was reposting, you saw Twitter and Instagram banned him, you saw Fox News edited his anti-Semitic comments, you saw The Shop say they are not even going to entertain the hate speech. They’re not even going to think about putting it out.
With all of that, you should know there’s no need to give that man a platform unless that man calls you and says, “Man, I just want to apologize to everybody. I just want to say how wrong I was.” That’s the only way you should give him a platform right now.
Can you talk a little bit about the shift that’s happening at The Breakfast Club? Are you guys replacing Angela or is it just going to be you and Envy?
I tell everybody Angela Yee is irreplaceable and you could never replace that piece we’ve made history with. We’ve all made history together. We all came in at the same exact time, and started at the same exact time. Signed our contracts at the same exact time. We all started together and what The Breakfast Club is right now, what The Breakfast Club has done over the last 13 years—we’re in the Radio Hall of Fame. Some people say we might be one the most impactful radio shows of all time. I don’t know because I have such respect for history, but I’ll leave that up to other people to debate. But you can never replace her.
At the time when we first announced it, it was such a shock to people simply because they never had seen that before. But that’s only because there haven’t been too many Black radio shows that have been around that long for people to see the change. Tom Joyner definitely had cast changes. Doug Banks, God bless the dead, he definitely had cast changes. Elvis Duran who’s still on right now on Z100, he’s had a million different cast changes and those people that were on his show went on to have other successful radio shows. So to me, what you’re witnessing is the natural evolution of a successful radio show.
This is what I want The Breakfast Club to be: a place, a platform where Angela Yee can get a spin-off show called Way Up With Angela Yee that’s a midday show that comes on right after The Breakfast Club. Now we get to bring in new energy, new talent, and give somebody else another opportunity. Maybe two people, give two people another opportunity because the hope is, you never know what’s going to happen with me in a few years. Never know what’s going to happen with Envy in a few years. We might want to move on and go do other things, but that brand of The Breakfast Club will still exist and we just help usher in new talent and new players.
I’m excited. I’m really looking forward to what the future holds with The Breakfast Club. I’m getting an opportunity to do something that I love to do, which is help that next person. I’m interested to see where it goes, and what happens.
It feels like when A.J. and Free left 106 & Park. But then we wouldn’t have Terrence J or Rocsi Diaz without that change.
That’s a great example. That right there is a great example. And when Terrence and Rocsi first came, there was mad resistance, too. Then they became people that folks love and then they left and they had to do a whole new talent search and bring on new people. That didn’t work out quite so well. But to be able to say that one show had a successful run with two different hosts, it’s great.
Trevor Noah also just announced that he’s leaving The Daily Show. Do you see yourself maybe filling in those shoes or do you have someone in mind that you think should be in there?
I think it should be a committee. I think it should be at least two people. I personally think so. I think they should try something new in 2022. Because when I look at The Daily Show, it reminds me of a cable news format. When you watch these cable news channels, of course, you just see Joy-Ann Reid doing her show or Rachel Maddow doing her show. But I think that it would maybe benefit them to have two hosts. If I had to put my money on a couple of hosts, man, it would be Amber Ruffin and Roy Wood Jr.
Oh, that would be great.
Either one of them could do it by themselves, but I would like to see a duo or either one of them by themselves. And other than that, my candidate would be somebody who I know would never do it, but my guy, Andrew Schulz, would absolutely positively body The Daily Show. But they would have to let him be him and they would have to let him bring in his team, his team of writers, and everything else. That’s how I know it’ll probably never happen. But I think he could bring some much-needed energy to The Daily Show.
Where do you see your career going from this point forward?
That’s a great question. I don’t know. I’ve learned that when you tell God your plans, God tends to laugh at you and you just never know where any of this is going to take you. The only thing I tell people is to remain open because a lot of us get to a point where we know this is what people like us for so we tend to put a cap on ourselves. We put a limit on ourselves.
That’s when you end up becoming a character of yourself. When the reality is the older you get, the more you grow, and the more you evolve. Just constantly remain open because you’re going to have new interests, and you’re going to have new things that you’re into. If you’re really being authentic and bringing that to whatever platform you’re on, that’s going to translate to people and you’re going to be projecting whatever that new energy is onto other people and you never know where that could lead you.
I have no idea where this is all headed for me. I just know what I love to do at this moment is something that I’ve always loved to do. I just throw assists, man. I like helping people get in position. I like seeing who that next person is or calling who that next person is and giving that person an opportunity to express themselves. That’s what I like to do. Anything that I’m doing now, if it’s just about me, it’s not big enough. For The Black Effect Podcast Network, we got 25 different podcasts that we’re partnered with. I love seeing all those people have their own voices.
Me and Kevin Hart got a company, SBH Productions at Audible. It’s the same thing. We’re doing original audio-scripted content. We’re allowing storytellers opportunities to do scripted sitcoms and documentaries all in the audio space. And that’ll all turn into television and film IP later in the future. I got my book publishing company, Black Privilege Publishing. For me, anything that I’m doing, anything that I launch, if it just benefits me, it’s not big enough. It’s got to be big enough to empower other people.
Is it important for you not to gatekeep success? Is it because people extended that kind of help to you when you were coming up or because they didn’t?
Both. Literally both. I hate the word “gatekeeper” because first of all there are no gates anymore. There literally are no gates. But you still have some people standing there as if they’re not realizing it. You might be standing in front of a gate, but this gate is only about a hundred feet wide and a hundred feet high. You’re not noticing all these people coming in through the side, through the back, you’re not noticing all these people coming up from underground. Some people are dropping from the sky, but you’re standing at that gate just wondering why people aren’t walking through it—because they’re already in here, idiot. Turn around and pay attention to what’s going on.
So for me, I had the people who would try to gatekeep and block me, but then I had people who embraced me. And put their arm around me and said, “Hey, I like what you doing, let me show you how to do it the correct way.” So I tried to be the adult that I had as a child but also be the adult that I needed as a child. Plus, I grew up on Wu-Tang. So I always knew there was strength in numbers. I always believed in unity and group operation. I thought there was nothing flyer than somebody pointing to you and saying, “That’s my OG right there, that’s my guy. He gave me an opportunity. I’m in this position because he saw me.”
It feels good to be seen. I know what it feels like for somebody like Wendy Williams to be like, “That’s the one. We going to take him all the way from South Carolina and bring him up to New York, put him in position.” That means a whole lot. So to your point, yes, I do it because it’s been done to me and because it wasn’t done to me.
Why is it important for you to also open doors, like you said, not for just anybody, but specifically for Black comedians or Black people in entertainment and in media?
Because I’m Black. I’ve never had a problem with anybody looking out for their own. That’s just a natural thing that everybody does. If you’re Latino, you going probably look out for other Latinos. That doesn’t mean that you’re excluding anybody, it’s just that you’re going to see yourself in said individuals. Same as me as a Black man. I’m Black from South Carolina. You Black and you tell me you from South Carolina, I’m already “Oh, word? Where you from?”
There’s already a link.
You’re already linked! For me, it’s just a matter of, man, I feel like that’s what you’re supposed to do. Don’t get me wrong. I’m always looking for the best, period. I don’t care what race, gender, sexuality, whatever, I’m looking for the best first and foremost. But I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t looking for the best to be Black as well. We’ve been so underrepresented in so many of these spaces for so long. It’s just dope to see Black people, brown people, really fill up these rooms. It’s dope when you walk in a writer’s room and it’s majority Black and brown or you look at a production team and they’re majority Black and brown. That’s what I want to see. You can’t tell me something is Black or anything if it’s just hosted by. Pop the hood, let me see what’s under the hood. Let me see who’s really calling the shots around here. That’s when you get to really see it.
Honestly, man, you know who made me feel really great about being that way? I interviewed Ava DuVernay back in maybe 2015. It was at this BET weekend. At the time there was a story about how Ava only hires women directors for Queen Sugar. I remember asking her, does she ever feel like she was being biased or like she was discriminating by doing that. She said, “Absolutely not that.” I believe it wasn’t just women, it was women of color directors. And she was like, “No, but people do that to us all the time.” So when she said that I was like, “You damn right, let’s go.”
What can we expect from Charlamagne in the future?
You can expect me to continue to produce more great content with more great creatives. I love collaboration. That’s my favorite thing in the world to do. I love collaborating with people and I love building platforms to let other individuals be heard. Me and Kev, we got so much scripted content coming out through SBH and Audible. That’s just another entertaining way to get messaging out as far as audio is concerned.
Right now, with the podcasts, everybody’s talking, but who is actually creating compelling stories for people to take in? So that’s what we’re doing with SBH. So for me, I’m just going to create, keep creating dope content, man. I got TV shows that I’m executive producing and films. We got more books coming out through Black Privilege Publishing. I’m working on my third book right now. We just going to keep creating dope content from dope creators, man. I just pray that God keeps me in a position to just continue to empower the people that are next up.
Hell of a Week With Charlamagne tha God airs on Thursdays at 11:30 p.m. ET on Comedy Central, or watch full episodes here.