Larry Wilmore used a portion of his Saturday “Nightly Show” panel at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour to reflect on the biggest story in his genre of satirical news — the terrorist murders in France at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.
“It’s very tragic … and I think we were all affected,” Wilmore replied when a reported asked for his thoughts. “We talked to Jon (Stewart) that day and, whoa, his whole office was kind of numb.”
Stewart is not only Wilmore’s former “Daily Show” boss, he is the creator of “The Nightly Show.”
“My only opinion on it from a slightly comic point of view is, you know, they’re starting to kill satirists just as a brother is about to launch his show,” Wilmore said. “So the timing of that is a bit scary.”
After the joke, which was met with pause from much of the media in attendance at the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, Wilmore returned to sincerity.
“I give those guys in France a lot of credit … the type of courage that it takes to do it,” he said. “We can’t relate in this country to the type of thing they’re facing.”
Twelve people were killed in the attack on the French weekly by two French Islamists.
Earlier in the panel Wilmore described his upcoming new vehicle as a “hybrid of ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘Politically Incorrect’” — with the first part of each show seeing Larry perform scripted material, much like “The Daily Show,” and the second part consisting of a panel discussion, a la Bill Maher‘s show.
“Not every topic is going to be a laugh-generating topic,” Wilmore insisted. “It may be comic, it may be provocative, who knows? We’ll let it go where it goes.”
“The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” kicks off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to which Wilmore quipped: “I had a dream that a brother had to work on that day.”