Friday, May 10, 2019

Re-Introducing Jordan Klepper

Jordan Klepper’s new TV series gave him gout. Probably. But even so, the ex-Daily Show correspondent is pretty sure the harm he’s suffered for the sake of that show, Klepper, has been worthwhile. “It’s a crowded field at 11:30, with people behind desks . . . and a lot of Trumptalk,” Klepper told Laura Bradley. “If we’re reading the room, the room is tired of sarcasm and irony, and can use a little authenticity.” So Klepper and his team decided to look outside of that formula, and into more elaborate on-location pieces. The result is a series that reads like the child of Vice and John Oliver’s Emmy-guzzling HBO juggernaut Last Week Tonight. Each episode catapults Klepper from one U.S. city to another: one week, he’s in the ring with military veterans who use wrestling to help them manage their P.T.S.D. Next, he’s in a Louisiana bayou on the way to a pipeline protest—nervously eyeing the alligators in the water just feet away. “I think the luxury we have is we can go deeper with some stories,” Klepper said. “We can tell maybe more nuanced stories, get into gray area, if we let them breathe more. And essentially, we were finding our way to do something that felt much more like making a documentary than it did making a field piece.” The series debuts on Comedy Central tonight.
Elsewhere in HWD, Joanna Robinson may have sussed out how Game of Thrones will end; Anjelica Hustonapologizes for shading Poms, sort of; Yohana Destadetails how Hollywood is fighting Georgia’s ultra-restrictive abortion bill; and Richard Lawson digs into the most important film of our time: Detective Pikachu.