“The joke is that everyone in Birmingham is one degree from my phone number. Maybe I come home too much. But I want to pour back into a place that poured into me. Getting on television and cheering on Birmingham and Alabama matters to me. 

You can’t live in a community and only see things one way, especially not in Alabama. I think black or white, we all had a classmate or two who we liked, but our parents probably didn’t get along with that well. I had a classmate in middle school–a white kid–and we wanted to kick it together one weekend. My dad didn’t want to drive all the way to his house in Huffman, and his dad didn’t want to drive all the way to my house in West End. So we met downtown at the Rogers Army Navy Store and swapped cars. I went out to his house, then his dad brought me back to the Rogers Army Navy Store and dropped me off. It was like a hostage swap any time we wanted to play together. Our parents never spoke. But there was an understanding that their kids liked each other, so fuck it. Their attitude was, ‘Let the kids grow together and have whatever interracial harmony that we were never going to have.’ It’s sad, but beautiful in a weird way. Both parents could have just said, ‘No, I don’t want you hanging out with him.’

The one gift I have as a standup–I’m able to regularly see people in small towns. I see people individually, not lumped in a herd. I also enjoy the challenge of more than just telling jokes. I’ve done three comedy specials about the hurdles we have or haven’t overcome. Why not do something about where we are as a people as a result of some of these hurdles? Isolation is one of them. COVID made it easy for us to be alone and showed us the convenience of loneliness. You almost have to be intentional about seeking people out and connecting with old friends. It’s one thing to make people laugh, but what if I could also make them feel by posing a question: what happened to us? I start my new ‘Lonely Flowers’ special with that question. We have to take a second to look at how all of the disconnect affects us. 

Many of my key interactions and meaningful moments are surprisingly with strangers–the middle seat person on the plane who you normally don’t talk to. The quick hi and bye moments become amazingly deep. You can run into a singular person and just go, “Oh damn, that was God sending someone for me to talk to today. Thanks, Lord. Secret message received.” I try to treat every moment I have with strangers with care, because you don’t know where you’re meeting people in their emotional journey.

Growing up in Birmingham taught me about those connections, but there was one thing I never got to do there: I wasn’t hired for the Zoo Crew. The Birmingham Zoo hired high schoolers to be tour guides. I loved animals and thought it would be the perfect job. I wanted to wear khakis and walk around the zoo. I went to Ramsey High School and was in the church choir–I checked all the boxes. I was devastated when I didn’t get the job. Bro, I’m not qualified to stand here in the heat and tell people which way to walk? I was pissed and didn’t go back for years. I was dumbfounded because I got every other job I applied for in the city. It’s funny because I’m still the same way. If I audition for a show and don’t get the role, I don’t watch that show. I don’t want to see who you got instead of me. That’s just my own ego. When I didn’t get the Zoo job, I ended up at Baskin Robbins, where I could eat for free.  

I live in New York, but when I’m done with entertainment or when entertainment’s done with me, I want to have a decent home in Birmingham to come to. There’s a community here that knows how to connect and mobilize, so I keep pouring positivity into it and helping any way I can. We’re given skills and opportunities to make the world a better place. I choose to focus on Birmingham. And I still like cheese grits. That’s never going to change.”

Roy Wood Jr.  

(You can watch Roy’s Lonely Flowers comedy special on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Roy.)