That’s also true of his experience on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” this season, which is ironic considering it’s so diverse on-camera.īefore he was hired, Perkins said he knew of two black men who were writers on the show. When Perkins worked on “The Break,” he told me he was the only black writer in the room. For the longest time Wanda Sykes was the one queer black comic. How are you so confident?’ Especially in an industry where black gay men don’t exist, which is true specifically in stand-up. “I’ve been getting messages - mainly from queer people of color - like, ‘Oh, this is so cool. Perkins started doing stand-up three years ago and this past year Comedy Central has been posting his clips online. And to get to the point where I am now, where I’m so unapologetically me? It has been an interesting journey to look back on and put it in a narrative story.”
It was a constant readjusting of, who am I supposed to be in this context? I was always told that assimilation was the way to success and you have to figure out how to fit in until things change. “In Chicago and specifically at Second City it always felt like I had to pick - I had to serve as the black person and tone down the gay, or I had to be the gay person so tone down the black. Being black is truly tough in these spaces. I was so worried about the gay part that I did not prepare myself to be a black man in the world. So when I went to college (at DePaul) and everyone was white, I didn’t know how to exist in that space.
“I spent so much time being terrified about being gay that I forgot that being black was also trash.