2 Dope Queens

» see wnycstudios.org as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

The thing about this one I cannot reconstruct is the room, and the room was most of what it was. It started as a live show. Blaria LIVE! was Phoebe Robinson's monthly standup night in Brooklyn, named after a blog she had been writing, and Jessica Williams had been co-hosting it with her since 2015. WNYC Studios turned that night into a podcast on 4 April 2016, the first comedy show the station had put out.

The format was a bar and two hosts. Union Hall shows ran about two hours, with several standup sets and long stretches of the two of them talking in between, and the published episode came in around an hour. What the edit kept was often the talking rather than the sets. Guests who were famous came through without the show changing shape around them.

It found its audience immediately, which almost nothing does. The podcast hit number one on iTunes inside its first week and stayed there for seven days. It took the People's Voice award for comedy podcasts at the 2018 Webbys. By the end there were 49 regular episodes and 20 bonus ones.

~ the chart ~

Public radio podcasting in 2016 had a house sound, and this was not it. WNYC's catalog at the time ran to careful documentary work and interview shows with scoring under them. 2 Dope Queens was a recording of a room laughing, released with the laughing left in, hosted by two Black women who talked about what they wanted to talk about at the length they wanted. It outranked almost everything else the station was putting out.

~ the dossier ~

~ what HBO made of it ~

HBO adapted it into four hour-long specials that aired weekly from 2 to 23 February 2018, directed by Tig Notaro. A second set of four followed from 8 February to 1 March 2019, directed by Sandra Restrepo, which went out after the podcast itself had already finished.

Moving a bar show to a television soundstage is a trade, and the specials made it honestly: better lighting and a budget in exchange for the thing where you could hear a glass being set down behind the microphone. Both versions are still findable. Only one of them sounds like a Tuesday night.

~ the last guest ~

The final episode landed on 14 November 2018, the day after Michelle Obama's memoir was published, and she was the whole hour. The conversation ran through mentorship and motherhood. There was also a long stretch about her hair, and a push-up contest with Desmond Tutu came up.

Neither host said the show had stopped working. Williams was moving into film and Robinson into television and books, and they ended it at the top of its run rather than letting it thin out over another two years. The feed is still up and the back catalog still plays. There has never been a revival episode.

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