Wayne Brady has reignited a long-running feud with Bill Maher.
In conversation with Sarah Jones on the latest episode of her podcast America Who is hurting you?Maher’s name came up and Brady took the opportunity to share his opinion on at present The host, with whom he has been engaged in a war of words dating back more than a decade.
“He’s a racist and I don’t care if Bill Maher says I have all these black friends,” Brady told Jones after mentioning how Dave Chappelle called out Maher on his comedy special late last year. “It took Dave Chappelle to say something recently. And then I told people the day I said to Bill Maher after he was using that joke of saying, well, ‘I wish President Obama was less Wayne Brady and more, I forgot any gangster rapper or whatever.’ And even then, how dare you as a white man try to define this thing?”
Brady was referring to an interview Maher did in 2010 when he compared Brady to then-President Barack Obama. “I thought when we elected our first black president, as a comedian, I would be making jokes two years later that he’s a gangster, you know. Not that he’s President Wayne Brady, you know. I thought we’d get Suge Knight,” Maher said at the time.
Emotions went back and forth, and Brady was found challenging Maher to see if he wanted to “know what Black Wayne Brady is like,” and how “Bill would gladly slap Maher in front of Coco, Ebony, and Fox, the three ladies of the night he hired.”
Back on Jones’ podcast, Brady said he grew up watching Maher and thought he was funny. He later encountered him on the Hollywood tour. He said, “There was a party the day I went to the Playboy Mansion that I was invited to, and there was Bill Maher with two sisters on his arm. And I looked at him and I didn’t even know. I’ll never be one of those people who disgusts you.” “And I saw it for what it was, and it was that way. This is a cat who believes that his proximity and the things you can use give you the right to say what you want to say about other people, people whose shoes you never walk in. So I’ll say it out loud that I don’t hate Bill Maher. I don’t know him as a person like that, but what I do know is that I know his words. So based on your words, I don’t like you as a human being because you hurt others with the views you hold and the things you hold.” [you] He said and the platform he has.
“It’s not funny to me anymore. It’s stinging because it only encourages foolish behaviors and reactions in those whose default setting is to belittle people,” Brady continued.
Jones, who won a Tony Award for the Meryl Streep production Bridge and tunnel And recently known to her Buy/Sell/HistoryThe second season of America Who is hurting you? Featuring interviews with Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, Monica Lewinsky, Yvette Nicole Brown, Bryan Stevenson, Baratunde Thurston, David Alan Grier, Stacey London, Busy Phillips, Elizabeth Gilbert, Joelle Nicole Johnson, LaTosha Brown, Liz Blank, Aida Rodriguez and more. The podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts and on YouTube.
She has been commissioned to perform live at Oxford University’s Schwarzman Center to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. The May 22-23 event — presented by the National Black Theater in association with Foment Productions — will be directed by Eric Ting and produced in collaboration with Jason Jackson.
