When CNN announced it would not renew W. Kamau Bell’s show United Shades of America in fall 2022, the Emmy-award-winning host, producer, and stand-up comedian quickly found the silver lining of being abruptly out of a job.
While his show was on the air, he was often on the road filming and away from his family for weeks at a time. Now, back home in Oakland, he has the luxury of spending more time with his children, ages 12, 9, and 5. Bell says the youngest is “part of the COVID kids who didn’t learn about polite society early on and has no time for the social contract.” He can now fulfill dad duties like taking them to Colonial Donuts on a Sunday or enjoying a movie at Grand Lake Theater.
“I was a seasonal employee at CNN for seven years,” Bell told the Oaklandside during a recent interview. One of the reasons why his show was canceled, he said, is that the then embattled chief executive and chairman of CNN, Chris Licht, wanted to revamp the network and got rid of the entire documentary division.
Despite the cancellation, Bell has stayed busy. He launched the Oakland-headquartered Who Knows Best Productions in the spring of 2023 and co-founded the East Bay Film Collective that summer. He also did a three-month stand-up stint at Berkeley Rep and his new venture, W. Kamau Bell Asks, Who’s with Me? on Substack has been gaining traction with more than 33,000 subscribers. Most importantly, he has found more time to dedicate to his wife and children.
Bell called his stint at Berkeley Rep “humbling” because he hadn’t performed stand-up in a few years and had prioritized his family instead. He recalled one of the nights at Berkeley Rep when he got a call from one of his kids right before he kicked off his set.
“She’s on the phone saying ‘I’m crying, my ice cream recipe didn’t work out.’ I wanted to tell the audience, ‘Goodnight, everybody. Sorry, I really do want to leave.’ It took me a while to get into gear,” he said.
In December 2023, his HBO documentary filmed in Oakland by Bay Area filmmakers and crew and starring his children, 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed, won an Emmy.
By this time, Bell had started the behind-the-scenes work with the East Bay Film Collective, a dynamic group of local filmmakers and community organizers whose mission is to fortify Oakland’s economy by attracting film and television productions, transforming the Town into a thriving filmmaking hub, and generating numerous job opportunities.
“If we valued culture, we would be doing much more to subsidize restaurants, artists, and musicians,” he said. “When people outside of this country talk about the greatness of America, whatever that means, often it is about culture.”
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao expressed her commitment to supporting the arts in Oakland during her mayoral campaign. Last June, she contacted Bell, expressing her willingness to help facilitate incentives for filmmakers to choose The Town. Despite some challenges, such as the delay in issuing pending cultural grants, film incentives remain a key economic development initiative on her agenda for her proposed budget released last week.
The proposed budget adds $600,000 for film incentives, encouraging TV and film productions to film in Oakland in exchange for rebates. According to the East Bay Film Collective, $100,000 will go towards establishing an office to be led by the collective and to directly encourage production spending on local goods and hires.
“There’s a lot going on with the mayor right now, but my point is that we have somebody in office who is interested in taking this on, and we don’t know who the mayor will be,” Bell said. “I learned a long time ago, ‘strike while the iron is lukewarm.’”
“If we valued culture, we would be doing much more to subsidize restaurants, artists, and musicians. When people outside of this country talk about the greatness of America, whatever that means, often it is about culture.”
W. Kamau Bell
The group is working with city officials to create economic incentives, like tax rebates and other mechanisms, for film and television productions to film in Oakland. According to Bell, this would generate jobs and stir economic opportunities for adjacent industries like catering, trucking, hospitality, security, construction, and more. Similar incentive models in other U.S. cities have shown success, growing local economies and returning far more tax revenue to the local government than the rebates cost.
“I want to be part of training the next generation,” Bell said. “There’s all this talent here in the Bay. I want to not just train them but work with them.”
Given the wave of “doom loop” stories published about his home, Bell is committed to shining a positive light on Oakland. He has lived here since 1997 and recently shared some of his favorite food establishments with Nosh.
“Nobody talks about how beatiful the Rose Garden is,” he said. “Those people have never been there. They just go and show the same areas.”
Bell also celebrates cultural hubs like the Destiny Arts Center, where one of his daughters and mother dance. “I like the fact that my daughter feels comfortable dancing there and also feels her Blackness in a way that she doesn’t feel all the time,” he said.
When it comes to local politics, he relies on the guidance of people like Cat Brooks from the Anti-Police Terror Project and Pastor Michael McBride to find out what is going on at city hall.
“Just because everybody in Oakland who’s going to win for mayor is a Democrat, it doesn’t mean they’re your people,” he said. “All I can rely on is that I know people in this community who have deep roots of activism and organizing and political action, who will push that person to be on the right side.”
While film incentives slowly materialize in Oakland, Bell is not waiting around. Besides his stand-up stint at Berkeley Rep, he also participated in the ABC hidden camera show What Would You Do? Most recently, he’s part of the HULU docuseries Black Twitter: A People’s History.
“I’m not going to wait for showbusiness to tell me when it’s time to go again,” he said. “I have to always be able to make my own gravy.”
