Dane Baptiste on Unreasonable Doubts and Sunny D
A nationwide tour and a self-penned sitcom would go right to some comedians' heads. Not so for Dane Baptiste, who tells us that success is a mix of roots, determination and a lucky vagina.
Dane Baptiste is already well into his first ever national tour, and despite this being a nerve-wracking time for any comic, over the phone he sounds surprisingly laid-back. It’s ironic then that the quiet confidence and certainty he exudes is strongly at odds with the theme of the show itself.
“The show’s called Reasonable Doubts,” he says. “Originally the title was a reference to the Jay-Z album Reasonable Doubt, and the idea of the show is that it’s me juggling the transition from being an aspiring comedian to being a professional one”. It’s a struggle familiar to comics who’ve suddenly found themselves on the greener grass, unsure what to do now they’ve got everything they hoped for, but even in his whirlwind ascent Baptiste has keeping himself surprisingly grounded: “It’s a modest tour and that’s why I like it. Just playing intimate rooms with people that have paid to come and see me, and that’s a very humbling phenomenon in itself. I’m happy so far.”
His doubts about the comedy life are thrown into sharp relief as he reflects on some of the tough decisions made along the way. “It comes down to the fact that I am aware of the sacrifice that’s needed to pursue a dream, a creative dream especially. So I need to put a family on hold – it’s very much a widowmaker in terms of relationships.”
Hard work and exposure
He's similarly cynical about the scattergun nature of success. “Is there any real benefit in working hard? It’s a lottery ticket. If you’re in the right place at the right time, or if you came out the right vagina at the right time, then you can have a life of fame.” People used to shy away from the arts because creative work is rewarded poorly, but with traditional skilled jobs going the same way, everyone – artists and professionals – is writhing around in the same filth. “We’re at a stage now where you have people that work in Lidl that get paid more than junior doctors. So even if I did pursue a legal or a medical profession, would I have my life sorted?”
Readers aware of his appearances on various television outlets – Live at the Apollo being just one bulletpoint on his swelling CV – might not pick up on his polemical streak, but it’s definitely there. Dane broke new ground in 2014 when he was shortlisted for best newcomer at the Fringe for his debut hour – the first black British performer to trouble the nominations since the awards began. “It has been [dominated by white performers] for a long time,” he says, “and there’s probably a very small cabal within Edinburgh who’d like to maintain that same kind of status.” While diversity has crept into both the newcomer and main awards at Edinburgh in recent years, there’s clearly still a long way to go. The black comedy scene – where all-black bills perform for largely black audiences – passes by the white-dominated mainstream largely unnoticed, even when its biggest events can pull in four-figure crowds. “A lot of the acts that I speak to within the urban or black comedy circuits, they’re not even aware that Edinburgh exists. And that’s the world’s biggest arts festival.”
(Continues below)
More from Comedy:
BBC Three and the future of comedy online
Rachel Jackson goes under our Comedy Spotlight
Hailing from multicultural Lewisham in South London has clearly had an impact on his outlook. “I live about 15 minutes' walk from where Stephen Lawrence died,” he explains – Lawrence’s murder, which shook the whole country back in 1993, hit hardest in the borough and helped forge a young Baptiste's radical conscience: “Early 90s is kind of the resurgence, coming towards the end of the golden age of hip-hop. Groups like Public Enemy were quite prolific, so I was getting into that Afrocentricity, for a while anyway, but seeing that happen very much woke me up.” The murder shed light not just on a frightening racist gangs but also on institutional racism in the Met. “It probably concerned some suspicions and more doubts that I had, and basically made me a nightmare to any authoritarians that weren’t my parents.”
Lewisham, with its mix of the monied, minorities and the white working class also provides a fertile ground for building a stage persona: “It means I kind of have to wear different masks in order to navigate and interact with these demographics. It’s helped me to shape a broader comedy voice, but I don’t have to assume a character or pander in my material in order to have empathy with these crowds. So it’s been very rewarding living somewhere like this.”
Dane Baptiste on his new sitcom Sunny D
Though South London has undoubtedly shaped his worldview, he’s got a strong affinity with the Northwest. He’s just finished filming the first series of his BBC3 show Sunny D up here: “I was filming the series in Media City and on location in various places around Salford and Manchester.” Those who followed last year’s Comedy Feeds pilot will have spotted 90s comedy stalwart John Thompson amongst the cast, and this cherrypicking of Mancunian talent carries on into the series: “Mick Ferry will appear in the show, Jonathan Mayor appears in the show, and these are guys that I’ve met working up north who’ve been excellent in a mentoring capacity as well as just to watch, so it’s great to have them involved.”
Sunny D focuses around a fictionalised version of Baptiste: a millennial everyman staring 30 in the face from his childhood bedroom, clocking in every day at a meaningless sales job. “Up until five years ago, I was still working in an office,” he remembers, and working as a recruitment consultant, he was obviously overcome by the crushing ennui of the nine-to-five. “You’ll never go to a sales office and see a statue outside of someone hitting their targets,” he remarks, but also picks out a deeper problem: “With sales, it’s very much a system that’s based on infinite resources, but if you’re a recruitment consultant and everyone’s gainfully employed, then you’re out of a job. Because your life depends on a) unemployment and b) people without job satisfaction and a lack of fulfilment in their lives. So they’re some form of parasite, really.”
In spite of his eloquent disdain, a lot of his past live work has erred on the playful rather than the political. His routines, though keeping one foot firmly in reality, are full of hyperbole and prone to breakouts of whimsy: “When I have surreal bits as well as social commentary, I do try and make sure to run along the line of the soapbox without climbing on it.” While serving the purposes of making him seem less hectoring, it also helps to fluff up audiences for the tougher stuff: “It reduces people’s minds to a more juvenile or imaginative one, where they don’t feel they need to deal with certain topics in what’s considered an adult kind of way.”
Passing all the milestones he has, with the weight of critical acclaim behind him, you’d think success would go to his head. “To be honest, even being the first black British nominee, most people don’t know who I am yet. It’s good, I’d rather work at being the best at what I’m doing,” he muses. “In retrospect, I didn’t really get involved in comedy so I could be listed on a Wikipedia page or lauded by critics, so it’s fine. It’s fine.”