The new season of HBO’s ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show’ is designed to leave you breathless

Robin Thede broke ground with season 1 of A Black Lady Sketch Show by being the first sketch-comedy series to have an all-Black female cast, not to mention an all-Black female writers’ room.

But being “a first”—more to the point, “a first Black woman”—has never made Thede overly cautious. As the show’s creator, executive producer, writer, and star, Thede has taken wild creative swings with confidence, earning the show 13 Emmy nominations and three wins.

Barreling into season 4 of A Black Lady Sketch Show, Thede is going bigger and broader with “more jokes, more characters, and more fun,” she says. “We just don’t give a fuck.”

For starters, season 4 features the largest cast that the show has ever had, with newcomers DaMya Gurley, Tamara Jade, and Angel Laketa Moore joining veterans Thede and Gabrielle Dennis, as well as Skye Townsend who was added to the cast in season 2.

“It’s so dope to be able to throw them into this,” Thede says of the new cast members. “These women all brought an extreme array of characters, accents, physical abilities. They all dance. They all sing.”

That said, Thede acknowledges fan grumbling when there’s a cast revamp—particularly when Quinta Brunson left after season 1 to work on Abbott Elementary and fellow inaugural castmate Ashley Nicole Black exited after season 3 to focus on projects including starring in the Apple TV+ upcoming series Bad Monkey and writing and producing on Ted Lasso.

But Thede would like to remind everyone that it’s a sketch show and not a comedy troupe and being any kind of springboard for the cast is part of the ethos of the show. “Too many times in this industry we are told that we can’t grow and that we can’t move forward. Imagine if I took that approach?” Thede says. “This was built as a place for us to express ourselves and for us to have control over our own narrative. It doesn’t make sense for me to limit anyone in any way. Some of the audience is still grappling with that four seasons in. You’ll get over it! You will see these people on a million different shows.”

In addition to beefing up the cast, season 4 goes even deeper—and more strangely—into the show within the main show that’s been an innovative touch to what could’ve easily been regular sketch series.

Since A Black Lady Sketch Show’s beginning, there have been interstitials between sketches that have built toward a broader universe for the show’s characters. Season 1’s narrative interstitials positioned Thede, Dennis, Black, and Brunson as the survivors of an apocalypse, which, as we find out in the subsequent interstitials of seasons 2 and 3, didn’t really happen and was a mind-control experiment by one of the show’s breakout characters, Dr. Haddassah Olayinka Ali-Youngman, Pre-PhD (played by Thede).

Without giving away too much, season 4’s interstitials feature some of the show’s more popular characters being interviewed à la Inside the Actors Studio. Mind you, these are interviews of say, Gabrielle Dennis, playing the “real” actor behind one of her A Black Lady Sketch Show’s characters.

 

From the show’s interstitial saga to an absurd amount of callbacks and Easter eggs within the sketches, A Black Lady Sketch Show is a layered comedic masterpiece. “I just feel like we deserve better,” says Thede of her approach. “We don’t just do a sketch about somebody farting or whatever. Although that’s funny, why not be able to work at it at two levels?”

It’s certainly possible to enjoy A Black Lady Sketch Show on its most surface comedic level. But Thede designed the show to be a densely packed experience that begs for repeat viewing. Going into season 4, she’s even more relentless with that mission. “First season, I was like, every third line needs to be a joke. Second season, I was like, every other line. Ever since then, every line needs to be a joke,” she says.

Thede admits that her aggressive jokes-per-minute style might be a bit “desensitizing” to some. But she isn’t settling with breaking new ground with A Black Lady Sketch Show—she wants to shatter it.

“I want people breathless after you watch it,” Thede says. “ I want it to be an assault on comedy.”