My guest today, who you just heard at the top of the episode, is comedian and actor Jaboukie Young-White, who’s currently co-starring in the new romantic comedy The Love Hypothesis, opposite Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman.
Young-White has built his career on bold choices and his effervescent, irreverent energy. In 2017, at age 21, he used the platform of his first ever late-night stand-up set, on The Tonight Show, to come out to his parents. On Twitter, he got up to mischief by masquerading as both CNN and the FBI, and got suspended and un-verified in the process. He voiced the first ever out-gay character in a Disney animated feature in the 2022 film Strange World. And released a rap album on Interscope, also in 2022!
Young-White was a very popular correspondent on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah between 2018 and 2021, and has also shown skill and range as an actor in shows like Only Murders in the Building and Abbott Elementary and movies such as Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon and the charming romantic comedy Dating and New York, in which he played the male lead.
When I found out Young-White was doing interviews tied to the release of The Love Hypothesis, I jumped at the chance to talk to him so I could discover more about the person behind that charming, puckish comedic persona. And I certainly learned a ton of stuff about him, as he opened up about: The French cultural quirk that he recently became addicted to, his wild dream about dung beetles (that may become the basis for a new kids movie), how he was “disrespectful” as an Inception-inspired lucid dreamer, his Jamaican grandmother’s amazing duppy story, the alley cat that taught him about death, his childhood sleepover prank that made people think he was a demon child … and much, much more.
The Love Hypothesis is now available to stream, and go dig into Young-White’s filmography. If you’ve not already seen it, I’d especially recommend Dating and New York.
This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan and our new theme music is “Partly Cloudy Days” by Oscar Louis.
As a quick heads up: Oscar Louis’s band Nowhere Else to Be has their debut album dropping December 4 – go follow them now!
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Next week on Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That, my guest is actor and writer Kathryn Grody …
