More like Sam SLAY. That’s right. That’s how I’m opening this.
The meteoric rise of Sam Jay wasn’t meteoric at all. It was long nights working on her craft, fighting for stage time, writing for SNL, and nailing the big moments, like her wildly-popular Netflix special, 3 in the morning.
She deftly covered a breadth of topics: her marriage, Greta Thunberg, Elon Musk, Trump, and a funk ton more. Her new HBO series ‘Pause with Sam Jay’ is, in contrast, laser-focused.
It’s all about bringing together disparate ideologies and having tough conversations, in a way that’s surprisingly light. Pause, for the uninitiated, is a word Black folks use in place of the phrase ‘no homo.’ The triple-meaning here in the title doesn’t go unnoticed. It’s an acknowledgment, a reclamation, and a call for civility. Did somebody say ‘layers?’
Structurally it’s a sketch show, documentary hybrid, with many of the staged bits built around real-life conversations.
She interviews Black conservatives in one segment, a talk that’s significantly less combative than I anticipated. I think it’s also illuminating for the young bootstrappers she talks to, with Sam lovingly challenging some of their core beliefs. I had fun!
Be sure to peep it this Friday, and get into our interview above!
