Premiering tonight at 10pm (July 31) on the IFC channel is “Sherman’s Showcase” a scripted musical variety sketchy comedy from Bashir Salahuddin and Diallo Riddle, two former writers for “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.”
Sherman’s Showcase is inspired by variety shows including Soul Train, American Bandstand, The Midnight Special, and In Living Color with each episode hosted by Sherman McDaniel as he takes viewers through time via music and comedy drawn from the forty-year library of a legendary (but fictitious) musical variety show.
The eight-episode series has it all: music, comedy, games, and dancing (executive produced by John Legend’s Get Lifted Film Co). Guest stars include Marlon Wayans, Tiffany Hadish, Common, Quincy Jones, and Ne-Yo, to name a few.
Last week, the pair debuted “South Side,” their new Comedy Central sitcom about two friends in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago.
During the 2019 American Black Film Festival (ABFF) this past June, Blackfilm.com spoke with Salahuddin and Riddle about the show and what separates it from shows of the past.
Can you talk about creating another show that’s on television?
Diallo Riddle: Well, I’ll say that we’ve we’ve worked both for broadcast and for semi broadcast and cable and streaming. The thing that’s exciting about launching on IFC in this platform is that there’s a lot of creative freedom. This idea was born in a quest for creative freedom. We were on a Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for a long time, had a lot of ideas for songs, and they were a little too edgy, a little too, unNBC-ish. So we set out for the creative freedom of basic cable. I think, I think we found a nice green pasture.
Bashir Salahuddin: I would just say that Diallo and I met in college, and he might have been studied, I certainly was not. He was really trying to make whole table, the lunch table laugh. Both of us come from big families. So we’re used to having to get that voice out there and to be heard, to be fed. And so when we had a chance to do our own show, we actually had sketch comedy show in Los Angeles for years, and then that turned into doing some viral videos for YouTube, which Jimmy Fallon became aware of. So this show in some ways, kind of represents the culmination of many, many years of training and education in sketch comedy. When we were at Fallon, we were guys who would often tapped to work with a talent, whether it be Justin Timberlake for history of rap or Barack Obama, who has the best comedic, great, great timing.
Diallo Riddle: There are a lot of stand ups who don’t have Barack’s comedic timing. We gave them the lines, and he like, nailed him. And Jimmy was like, “you want to try it again?” He’s like, “Nope.” It was just like, okay. He’s such a great guy to work with. We worked with Drake for the Espy’s and the NBA awards. I feel like we’re sort of the go to guys to write for others. But this is been a fortuitous year, because we have two shows where we were able to write for ourselves. Yeah. And sort of, like, put our own visions out there. So it’s been it’s been fun.
This show is getting a lot of profiles, you’re doing interviews. Is it much more of a challenge now when the spotlight is on you guys? You’ve have been doing work and doing your own thing based on the work you did previously. Now people going to be paying attention. Can I get what we want?
Bashir Salahuddin: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think there’s definitely new challenges now that we are more in the spotlight. The thing for me that’s grounding is that the work is so good. And the work is worth doing. And it’s worth screaming about, you know, from the mountaintop. So that for me is like though there might be things that I’m I’m still kind of adjusting to. I know, for a fact based on our many years of doing sketch comedy that this show is is incredible. And it’s funny, and it’s unique. And it’s unlike anything, and the ability to tell anybody about it, whether it be an interview, or whether it be a bunch of people on the street who are writing some of those three motorcycle thing or whatever it is, I’m so proud of it. I’m so proud to talk about it, that everything else becomes not important.
What’s important is that, we’re saying, look, here’s a chance for us to showcase some young black talent, to show us being funny and to really showcase our not just people who are excellent dancers; we have an incredible menagerie of amazing dancers, but also some wonderful music written by real musicians. I mean, everything on our show this that is musical is going to be available, I think, on iTunes and Spotify, it’s going to be stuff you can bump in your car. Diallo deejays is all the time. He spins a lot of this stuff out at clubs, and it kicks time loop featuring Ne-Yo, who came through and blessed us on a track. It was incredible. So we feel like the show is a triple threat. And we’re really excited for people to see it.
People have mentioned like this is sort of like the “In Living Color’ but with a different style, because everything you’ve just mentioned, and some of it is viral stuff. What are the pitfalls you want to avoid? So it’s not competing with anything from the past, but so you guys can stand out on your own?
Diallo Riddle: I would say that we sort of set out with this show to do nothing with anything else in mind, if that makes sense. To their credit IFC literally let us do a show that is what almost 100% unique there. There are parts of it that will remind you of In Living Color, or The Chappelle show, but there’s going to be other parts that remind you of that Spike Lee movie that you saw. We’re really calling from all of our influences and throwing it into this stew. So, yes, I think you have to call us a sketch show. We’re also like a variety show. We’re also just like a short film, TV show if you will. So I’m not I’m not dodging the question. I guess what I’m saying is that, I don’t think there’s ever quite been a show quite like this.
Bashir Salahuddin: I would also say that comparisons to In Living Color for me, makes me so happy. I was actually in this city and I have a lot of family here, and I remembered we’re all sitting around in 1991 or 1992 watching that first episode of In Living Color. Everybody in the house, oldest to the youngest, dying, laughing at Tommy Davidson and David Alan Grier and the Wayans. So, to be compared to them for me as a great honor. Because I love that stuff. I think they really revolutionize comedy. And I’m hopeful that we’ve taken that baton from those guys, from Chappelle from anybody who’s done sketch and hopefully we’re advancing the narrative and showing people more new fun ways to make people laugh.
Diallo Riddle: Can I say one more thing about that? People forget, Dave Chappelle and The Chappelle Show came out before YouTube. There was no YouTube back then. I think YouTube fundamentally changed sketch comedy in the sense of like, everybody, with a phone can shoot a sketch and post it on YouTube. So if you’re going to do a sketch show now, you got to elevate the form in some way. I don’t think we set out to do that. And I’m not even claiming that we have elevated it. I think that we’ve tried to do a show that is very unique, that has like a sort of a sketchy aesthetic. But I don’t think it’s just something that somebody could have shot on their phone. I think that a lot of effort went into the look and that. We owe a lot to our director, Matt Piedmont who directed every episode of the series, all eight episodes, incredible work. We wanted to do a show that can can present funny material, sort of like a Laugh In way but also in a post YouTube environment.
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