Interview: W. Kamau Bell Wants to Start Big Conversations With 'United Shades of America'

The host of CNN's new series United Shades of America concluded his last run on TV in November 2013, when his FX (and then FXX) series Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell got canceled. Bell's project was an essential, tragically under-watched one, a late night stealth missile that shot progressive comedy through the most talked-about/insane news of the moment, often pertaining to issues of race, sexuality and gender. Guests included Laverne Cox, Big Freedia, Chris Rock, Melissa Harris-Perry, Hannibal Buress and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

On United Shades of America—premiering tonight, April 24, at 10 p.m. EST on CNN—Bell's premise is to embed in places and situations a black man may not find especially welcoming or safe. He's said it's like Anthony Bourdain's travel series except with racism instead of food. For the first episode, Bell, a Berkeley, Calif. resident and father of two young daughters, sits with a variety of Ku Klux Klan members in two Southern states. They explicate the brutally backward, racist nooks and crannies of their beliefs; Bell keeps it moving and doesn't flinch. By the end, he's standing at a twilight cross burning (a "cross lighting," the KKK corrects Bell), contemplating how few black people have survived such a sight.

In the seven episodes to come, Bell will consider gentrification in Portland, the Latino community in East L.A., spring break in Daytona Beach and inmates at San Quentin State Prison in California. The self-described "socio-political comedian and dad"—who also has a Showtime stand-up special, Semi-Prominent Negro, coming April 29—spoke to Fuse about United Shades of America. First, watch a preview: