

#Stream a black lady sketch show professional
She went to college at Northwestern University, then was scouted by Chicago’s Second City soon after and what followed was a professional comedy career that has spanned 20 years. It was all about making comedy that they wanted to see about things that they could relate to, which Thede continues to do today, just with a much bigger budget. Her childhood scene partners were her sisters - joining her in parodies of “Ricki Lake” or “Jerry Springer” that they’d edit using two VCRs connected together. “Then I started writing and shooting sketches on an old broken video camera we got from the Goodwill.” “If my parents were down, or they were struggling financially, or we didn’t have enough to eat, I knew I could make them laugh,” she recalls. Growing up in an Iowa trailer park, Thede’s family didn’t have much, so she used her comedic gift to perk everyone up when times got tough. I didn’t talk till I was like four years old, not one word,” she jokes. “I started making people laugh pretty early, and I liked that. Thede adopted comedy as a superpower when she was a young girl. But her road to this point has been a lifetime in the making.

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The diversity behind the scenes (which also includes Black men and other people of color on staff) has helped the show carve a profoundly different path in the otherwise white, male-dominated sketch world.Īs creator, executive producer, writer and showrunner of “ABLSS,” Thede is the driver of a cultural revolution in comedy, putting Black women at the forefront. In fact, the show is staffed front to back with people of color - including a series of Black women directors to helm the show, Black women in the hair, makeup and wardrobe trailers to ensure the wigs and weaves have the flair they deserve, and an Emmy-winning troupe of Black women editors to sharpen it all into focus. It all starts in the writers room, where Thede has assembled a group of Black women to pen sketches from their personal experiences and points of view. Most important, though, is the opportunity to “play all of these things without it being filtered through someone else’s lens.” Hadassah can create a ‘Red Table Talk’ type of show with Gabrielle Union, or we can be aliens or we can be otherworldly beings or murderers or priests,” Thede adds. “We really try to create grounded experiences for Black women, but in this magical reality where anything can happen - where Dr. This special “Through Our Lens” interview shines the spotlight on creatives who’ve embraced their unique life experiences and used their cultural and ethnic backgrounds to shape some of the most striking and original narratives in entertainment today.
