Jerrod Carmichael and director Ari Katcher discuss filming Jerrod's personal life for 'Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show'. They reflect on consulting with an anonymous, masked friend, break down the show's score and reveal the challenges of dealing with personal issues on a 'reality' TV show.
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00:00Don't say you love me unconditionally when there's a condition.
00:03We're watching him in the park and very quickly he's back to being compared to a murderer for being gay.
00:11When I see us argue in the park, yeah, I have a lot of feelings like, am I crazy?
00:16Am I asking for too much? Why does it feel so bad? What do I want from her?
00:22I think the show is also me trying to articulate that.
00:30I'm Jerrod Carmichael.
00:38Hey, I'm Ari Kacher. I'm the director of Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show.
00:42And this is Variety's Making a Scene.
00:44It's fucking so upsetting.
00:48No, it does break my, it breaks my heart.
00:50When we made the show, it was important for me to remain a pure subject.
00:55I didn't want to be involved in creative meetings.
00:58I didn't want to think about my life as a season,
01:03or I didn't want to think about these problems as having an art any more than I already do,
01:09because then I would perform for the camera.
01:11And part of the conceit is that I'm trying not to perform.
01:15I felt like I was performing so often in my day-to-day life,
01:20harboring a lot of secrets, and I just wasn't being true.
01:23And I used the camera to make me accountable.
01:27I feel like we did kind of talk early on about like,
01:29if we do this, we're going to be showing the reality.
01:33You know, it's not going to be the likable sides of you.
01:37It's going to be the likable sides of you and the unlikeable, you know, the full picture.
01:41It makes me a little bit nervous just as a friend watching somebody do that.
01:45It's funny because with my show, I wasn't in the editing room.
01:47I'm not involved with the edit, but Ari Kacher, who directed the series,
01:52is one of my closest friends and my most frequent collaborator.
01:56And so I trust him creatively.
01:59I also trust him personally because he's someone I turn to for advice.
02:02He knows the truth. He knows the true story.
02:05He knows at least my feelings toward my mother, toward my boyfriend,
02:09toward Tyler in the first episode.
02:11He knows all those things.
02:13So I don't have to think about it.
02:15Is he going to manipulate something in the edit to make something that it wasn't?
02:18He knows what it is.
02:19So I wasn't involved.
02:21So I was able to just trust the camera in the series completely
02:25in a way that if I'm, like, here, like, you know,
02:29you all seem nice, but I don't know, makes me want to be anonymous a little bit.
02:34What the fuck is this show?
02:37That is so upsetting.
02:40Anonymous serves as the Greek chorus for this and the voice of the audience.
02:45And the show operates with an awareness of itself.
02:51I like that choice to be so engaged and so present and so there and so vocal
02:58while you're being filmed, but also not wanting to be a part of it
03:03to the point of wearing a mask.
03:05This is my fucking problem with the show,
03:07which is why I'm wearing this fucking mask and why I fundamentally want no part of it.
03:13He had such strong opinions about the show,
03:18and we want to include any point of view that's strong.
03:23That person has it for a reason, and I'm at least curious to hear about it.
03:27I just love their chemistry, and they're very compatible as friends.
03:32And I always find that pretty engaging to watch.
03:36And I think that's why I got so excited about that scene,
03:39was because it did show a deeper layer to their friendship
03:42of how much Gerard's friend really loves and cares about him.
03:45I don't think that I've really thought about release
03:49for anything that I've made until right before it comes out.
03:53And then weeks before its release, I'm like,
03:55oh shit, people are going to see this and react to it and analyze it.
03:59And that last moment with me and my friend in the theater,
04:03and he says, this is on a conveyor belt to hell.
04:05All of this is on a conveyor belt into fucking hell, which is the release.
04:11It is kind of a moment of realization like, oh yeah,
04:15like Twitter and TikTok and Reddit and whoever is going to react to this.
04:20And people in the streets are going to react to this
04:22and have feelings about this.
04:23And it's so personal.
04:25I was excited, but it was a little scary.
04:27I actually, to be totally honest, was like pretty on the fence about it,
04:32about shooting these things,
04:33because it was really, really towards the end of the shoot.
04:36And it was actually a pickup scene.
04:39Like we'd already filmed the bulk of it
04:41and we're kind of in the editing room and we're like,
04:42maybe this would be useful.
04:45But in the edit, I was so glad that we had it
04:47because they ended up having this like really nice conversation.
04:51I think the original idea was maybe when Gerard's friend,
04:55who had been really kind of skeptical about this,
04:58sees some of the final product,
05:00a lot of what we had filmed throughout the season,
05:03maybe he'd have a different point of view.
05:05You saw like the side of his friend that was kind of tender
05:09and kind of like really looking out for him.
05:11And kind of deepened their friendship in a way.
05:14And also I thought Gerard was able to articulate
05:16some of his complex feelings about that in a way that was useful.
05:21Anonymous participates, for the same reason anyone in my life
05:25participates, out of love.
05:27And I like to believe that there is a curiosity there,
05:31because the show is a challenge.
05:33Can we find something that resembles truth?
05:37Can we find truth through such an artificial medium?
05:41It is a challenge that we try to meet.
05:44I hope we met it.
05:45This is my home.
05:47Oh, big.
05:49Oh, my gosh.
05:50They live in large.
05:52And that's nice.
05:53I'm living large.
05:54Gerard just randomly gets a call from his mother telling him
05:58she totally feels terrible about the distance between them.
06:01And it felt like a real epiphany.
06:03It was amazing.
06:04Everybody on the crew got really close and attached
06:06to the dramas in Gerard's life in probably an unhealthy way.
06:10But people are, like, crying and, you know, like,
06:12oh, my God, this is amazing.
06:14And as a friend, I was, like, so happy for him.
06:17He was so happy and just joyful.
06:19And it was amazing to see.
06:20And it was also, as somebody who knew that we had to turn in eight episodes to HBO,
06:25was a little bit scared because I was like, well, that's, like,
06:27two of the episodes gone right there.
06:29Then we get there.
06:31And that's when we're filming this scene.
06:33Don't say you love me unconditionally when there is a condition.
06:36We're watching him in the park.
06:37And very quickly, he's back to being compared to a murderer for being gay.
06:45You just see the, like, this look on his face in real time just happening
06:49as he's, like, realizing, oh, it wasn't, I misinterpreted this phone call.
06:54You've laid out conditions.
06:55It still doesn't stop my love, though.
06:57Do not say you love me unconditionally when that's not true.
07:00We watched a few things that were broken up, like, from across the year of filming.
07:07And I was just reacting.
07:08So I should accept your conditional love?
07:12No, you don't have to accept it.
07:13No.
07:14When I see us argue in the park,
07:19yeah, I have a lot of feelings.
07:21Like, am I crazy?
07:22Am I asking for too much?
07:24Why does it feel so bad?
07:26What do I want from her?
07:29I think the show is also me trying to articulate that.
07:32A lot of the time filming the show, I'm just, like, off somewhere in the bush.
07:39If it's outdoors, I'm probably in the bushes somewhere with two monitors in front of me
07:43and, like, a headset so I can talk to the cameraman and be like, here, let's pan over
07:47to Toronto.
07:48I want to, you know, just trying to think about what we're going to use in the edit
07:51and just trying to stay in the moment.
07:52But there was a few times when we were filming where I would catch myself and be like, oh,
07:57fuck, I forgot that I'm, like, actually supposed to be communicating with the cameraman right
08:00now because I was so, like, blown away by what I was seeing happening in real time.
08:07It almost feels like hitting camera to me.
08:08That conversation would play out without the camera the same way.
08:14I wish there was a way to explain to her how it makes me feel.
08:17I think that's what the impulse to record and show, it did make me nervous to watch
08:25it with anonymous or to watch it with an audience because sometimes I feel crazy, like maybe
08:31I'm asking for too much or maybe I'm asking for the impossible.
08:34I'd like to know that my mother is capable of change at any age because I'd like to
08:38believe that about myself.
08:40And if I am her, if I am my father, I'd like to believe that I can continue to grow and
08:47change and evolve throughout my life.
08:50And so I fight for that for me and for them.
08:53That's a pretty consistent through line that I didn't even really know we were tracking.
08:58I knew Gerard wants to address all the shame in his life, but I didn't realize until kind
09:03of like pretty much towards the end of filming.
09:05Oh, I think there is also another agenda here, which is you thought you could change the
09:11people in your life by filming people and then showing it back to them.
09:17It could be the thing that changes people because I think he's been trying to change
09:22people in his life for a very long time.
09:24I'll pray with you.
09:26Really?
09:27Oh, my gosh.
09:28Okay.
09:28Okay.
09:29There's a couple of times when I felt like, oh, you kind of got to put all this aside
09:33and just check in with him.
09:34And I felt this, especially with his mom, you know, in that episode when she prays the
09:41gay away.
09:42And Lord, I come to you, Gerard and I, and my prayer is, Lord, that you would take the
09:47desire from my son to be with a male.
09:50I maybe in life have never seen such a moment of disconnect where somebody is so happy and
09:56feel so seen and somebody is so unhappy and feeling so unseen and they're happening together
10:04at the same time.
10:04It's kind of chilling.
10:05It doesn't make me concerned putting these things on camera because she doesn't care.
10:12She would say this in front of the world.
10:16She'd say it privately.
10:17She doesn't really change in that way.
10:19The show is very exploitative.
10:21Like I'm paying for my parents' life and they have to be in my reality show because I give
10:28them no choice.
10:29If you want to use the word exploitative, feel free.
10:33I don't disagree with that.
10:34I think that having the conversation is more important than the meetings.
10:41I know I needed to say these things and I wanted to explore my relationship with my
10:45parents or the people in my life.
10:47And that was far more important to me than how we did it.
10:53I think it's insane.
10:54Yeah, of course it's insane bringing cameras into your personal life in that way.
11:04I really love the score.
11:05I love those voices.
11:08Those things get stuck in my head.
11:09I already felt this Italian producer who really caught the essence of the show.
11:17The fact that I think they use voices because it's so much conversation.
11:23And just trying to distill that into music, it was just an interesting challenge for them.
11:29I always gravitate towards a score that feels right, but isn't what you'd expect.
11:36You almost don't even know why it feels right.
11:38I like to trust that.
11:39Something just felt right about it.
11:41There's nothing about that that makes any sense.
11:43But we just were playing some Italian scores over it early on as we were editing.
11:50And something just felt right.
11:53If there was a tough conversation that Gerard had,
11:56I didn't want heavy strings telling you that this is tough.
11:59Everything that happened just happens.
12:02It really just has to be a gut instinct with music.
12:06Happy Mother's Day.
12:07Say something.
12:08No, let me hug you.
12:10I've always been obsessed with telling my own story, with capturing moments, giving them purpose.
12:16While making the show, I had a couple cameras on me at all times on vacation.
12:22Just always.
12:23And I would film things and film myself and film moments in my life.
12:27And then Sean, our DP, would just come pick up the cards.
12:30And same thing with the home videos, like all the home footage.
12:34I didn't know what was chosen from that.
12:37There's moments of me singing in the choir.
12:39There's really intimate moments with my parents at the beach or my parents at home
12:45that I was surprised to see when I watched the final edit.
12:51Oh my gosh.
12:53I had given up hope that the series was going to bring together his family and his new family
13:02in any way.
13:02And then he sent us that footage from Thanksgiving.
13:05And it was a little kernel of hope.
13:07I'm filming a moment between my boyfriend and my mother in the kitchen that made me
13:12really happy, that is redeeming because I know that ultimately things take time.
13:19Whether or not my mom changes or not, I know we can still have happy moments.
13:23Is this your mom standing over there?
13:26Yes.
13:28Mom, I love you.
13:30I think it was the most honest version of where he was at most currently because it
13:38was the last thing that was filmed because we didn't even have a film crew.
13:42I wasn't there.
13:43Cameraman wasn't there.
13:43It was Gerard with a camera.
13:45We were already deep into the edit.
13:48And he sent us that footage.
13:50And it was just kind of nice to see that that is where they're at.
13:54Everyone's still trying.
13:55His mom's still trying.
13:56Mike's still trying.
13:58And you can also really see, too, how much Cynthia really does, I think, like Mike as
14:04a person, which is beautiful and sad.
14:08You know what I realized that I need is a reason to believe everything will be OK.
14:15I think I've seen a huge shift in him after doing the show.
14:19So I think it was hugely, hugely effective for him.
14:22Even if he didn't show it to the world, just a project in growth was really helpful for
14:27I feel like the conversations I had on the show were necessary for me in my life and
14:31necessary for my own healing.
14:33I wouldn't have had them without the show.
14:36I know that's crazy, but I just wouldn't have.
14:38I would have lived in a space where I was just hiding myself and afraid of rocking the
14:45boat.
14:46And I'm happy it was said.
14:48And so, yeah, we're able to show up as ourselves with nothing hidden.
14:53And that feels really, really good.
14:55All we can do is keep trying, you know, and we show up in North Carolina.
15:00We're there for Thanksgiving, going for Christmas.
15:03My boyfriend holds my hand throughout all of it.
15:06And we just are there and we're playing with the kids.
15:09And he's helping my mom with the dishes.
15:11And that's life.
15:12I felt like that was the happy ending.
15:15You know, I feel like that we just keep trying.