Keith Knight is all over the place

The cartoonist and Hulu star just got back from Germany. Our Zoom sesh goes down between North Carolina and Cali. We used to hang out in SF + LA + Boston

I’ve always lumped Keith in with artist friends and colleagues whose gig it is to demonstrate freedom for Black kids. Of course, Keith Knight is a universally- consumed artist, and has been one for decades. But when you’re breaking the mold as an artist of color in America? Teaching freedom is part of the gig.

The award-winning, widely-consumed cartoonist and I hung out just a little bit in the 1990s San Francisco scene. About 15 years later we became neighbors in the Culver City-adjacent neighborhood called The Palms. My then-girlfriend and I moved to Venice not long after. The next time I saw Keith Knight he was a fictionalized character on Hulu.

A lot of people saw Woke, a two-season critical hit series based on Knight’s life in our old San Francisco milieu. More people know the Boston native from his autobiographical comics, The K Chronicles, (th)ink, and his syndicated daily strip, The Knight Life. Dark Horse Comics dropped a giant K Chronicles anthology in 2008. In a world that wasn’t warped, Keith Knight would have earned an NAACP Image Award years ago.

He’s married to German illustrator Kerstin Konietzka-Knight, with whom he has two children. The live in North Carolina.

Keith and I tried to make this Zoom thing that follows happen over a couple weeks, even though Keith was in Germany, vacationing with Kerstin and their children, tucked away in a forest cabin. Internet service out there was suboptimal.

So here we go now.

When you come back from Germany, do you have a period of adjustment, or do you just jump back into your life?

It’s getting harder and harder to do that. In the past I’ve been able to jump into it really fast, but the older I get the more I have to transition back. Like: Oh, I do have to get workin’.

I also prepare better? Back in the day I had to draw while over there—scan stuff and do comics. Now I’m organized enough to get it all done here, and I don’t have to worry about it, ya know?

Yeah. That makes all the difference in the world.

Takes a little maturity, I guess.

At the same time, age has you taking more time to get back into the mix. So, age giveth and age taketh away.

Totally. I saw my son making breakfast, and it looked exactly like the breakfast we had in Germany. I’d swear I was hallucinating.

What was he making? Just give me a picture of that.

This pretzel bread that just looks like these little subs with salt on them, and some cold cuts. Jam, butter… different things like that. It looked like our table in the cabin… am I still there?

Do you own a cabin there or do you have a place where you stay?

My wife found this cabin in the woods. We were really worried about it because it cost 60 Euros a night. It just had a stove to heat the whole upstairs and downstairs, so we were worried about how deep in the woods [the cabin would be] and how cold we were going to be. But this was amazing. So amazing that we don’t want to tell anyone about it. Apparently it’s a very old cabin that housed refugees from the war. It was sold to this young couple who owned a nearby farm—he’s a firefighter—and redid the whole inside with all-handcrafted wooden furniture. And it was just gorgeous and wonderful.

You could barely get internet access, so we were really unplugged when everything went down in Israel and Gaza.

Wow.

So we weren’t totally stressed out by looking at all this different stuff.

It makes a difference. You know, who was the kid who got killed in Missouri—in one of the key Black Lives Matter moments—

Michael Brown.

Michael Brown.. When that happened, I was in a cabin out in Eastern California. You know, Gold Country? Mark Twain’s California? [Laughing] I didn’t have a whole lot of media access and I came out of there like, “What happened?” Apparently the earth had shifted. It’s nice to be away from it, but you want to be up on these things a little bit.

That’s why James Baldwin came back to The States. He said, I can’t hang out in Paris where I’m living this wonderful life while brothers and and sisters are fighting for us.

There’s nobody else who could gangsta rap, produce porno, have a kids’ football league, and cohost with Martha Stewart. There’s no one who can do that. It goes to show you the power of hip hop. The power of… I don’t know. To me, [Snoop Dogg] is America. His success story is pretty amazing.

I feel like I knew you through The Crack Emcee. Yes or no? Or is it some other way? Susan Gerhard, perhaps? Weird intersection right here.

Maybe Dave Eggers?

Naw. I don’t associate him with you. I think I know you two separately.

Okay, well, very early on.

“Very early on.” What does that mean?

I knew about you early on. I moved there in 1990.

You had the comic in the Weekly, didn’t you?

Keef!

Yeah. My very first comic that I ever had printed was in the local color section of the SF Bay Guardian. That’s the first one I ever got paid for. The SF Weekly was the one that started running it regularly. It was a review of a Beastie Boys show at The I-Beam.

The I-Beam— that’s great!

There was this unknown and brand-new band that smoked weed onstage called Cypress Hill. [Laughter] It was pretty cool, pretty fun.

That had to be their first album, right?

Oh yeah. Totally. No one knew who they were.

I want to place you in your journey. You came from Boston. Did you come to San Francisco straight out of school?

Pretty much straight out of school. Basically, I went to school in Salem, Massachusetts, Salem State, but I worked downtown at Faneuil Hall in Boston drawing caricatures during the summer. This one amazing illustrator I used to work with, Dale Stephanos, he would always get the good jobs away from the cart. If a corporate thing hired us, he would get the job. He got one in San Francisco.

He went to San Francisco and came back and was like, “Dude, you’ve got to go to San Francisco.” He said, “It’s like Harvard Square, but the whole city’s like that!” I was like, Okay, man. I’m there.

[Laughing]

The year I graduated I just worked like crazy during the summer, saving up as much money as I could, and then in the fall I just drove out there.

I don’t know if you know, but I interned at the Boston Globe when I was in school.

Really? Where did you go to school.

Oh, I went to Fresno State, but I got an internship at the Boston Globe. Funny aside, and I always feel weird about sharing it, but I interned with John Yoo. You know him? He’s a prof at UC Berkeley now—infamously wrote the Bush torture memo.

Oh really?

But I used to sleep on his couch in Harvard Square. So I know that whole world that you’re talking about there. Saying it’s just like that—except it’s the whole city—does describe San Francisco of that era. I don’t think that San Francisco really exists anymore.

No. It’s interesting to watch the [makes finger quotes] San Francisco Doom Loop from afar. I’ve come to visit and, for what it’s worth, if you know the city and you’ve been to the city, you just go to the neighborhoods and it’s still the same San Francisco.

But more expensive.

Oh, of course. But everything’s more expensive. I’ll tell you this. We’re notoriously cheap. I’ve always been cheap. And one thing I do is compare prices of just regular stuff. Food is so expensive. It is so expensive to eat reasonably healthy in the U.S. It’s insane. Completely insane.

It’s a test.

Yeah. Just coming back from Germany, I get it. Part of it’s the socialist aspect; Germany feels like it looks out for its people. In the US, it looks out for its business. Businesses are the priority, it’s not about the people.

[Former San Francisco Mayor] Dianne Feinstein died while you were gone. I had a hard time mourning her, because I associate her with representing downtown San Francisco business more than anything. I know she had an entire career as a national figure, a senator representing the state of California. But on the local level I will always have anger at Dianne Feinstein.

What’s happened in San Francisco is the result of prioritizing business over people. They were so excited to get all of those Silicon Valley companies to move into downtown and rejuvenate Market [Street]—C’mon, come on in—and they were expecting them to just move in and have their employees frequent all of the business around.

What they didn’t anticipate was that they’d build restaurants and everything inside their buildings, so their employees didn’t have to go anywhere. Busses picked them up from their apartments that they’d overpaid for, bring them right to their businesses and they go in there and eat and the bus takes you home. It was a very bad miscalculation. But, you know, that’s San Francisco politicians.

We probably shouldn’t get too deep into San Francisco politics, because you’re in North Carolina… I kinda lost track of you when I moved to Los Angeles. Then I ran into you at the Trader Joe’s in Culver City—

And we were in the same neighborhood!

I feel like we hung out a little bit. I was running around with my two little boys and I think I had my daughter with me—a circus of children. Was that the start of the stuff that got you to Wake?

[Laughter]

I’m sorry, to Woke. I’m thinking about waking and baking. We have different priorities here.

I moved to LA to get the TV show. The writing was on the wall with print media. You know: I could stay in my rent-controlled apartment for 20, 25 years, but then I would turn into The Bitter San Franciscan. Oh, well San Francisco used to be cool. Blah blah blah blah blah. So I said to my wife, we’ve got to get out of here. My intent when I first moved to San Francisco was to stay for five years, treat it as my graduate school, and then move to LA and get a show. I stayed for 17 because I loved the town so much.

I went down there and it took me a while to understand everything. I didn’t have a car for years.

This is like 2009, right?

Right around then. I was stubborn, I didn’t want to get a car. Then I inherited a car, from Boston. A family member passed in Boston, so I drove the car out there. That’s when I realized, Oh, okay, I have to do all these things and schmooze people and sort of hang out.

I always draw in cafes, so I’m always in public. Just enough people got to see the work that I was doing that eventually it got to this one producer who seemed to be competent. He wasn’t that experienced, but you could tell that he was a hard worker and a really good person. And I was like, Yeah, this is who I’m going to hitch my wagon to.

Do you want to say a name?

John Will.

Before you go on, where were you working?

I was right in that neighborhood where Trader Joe’s is. Just across the street from Sony. I was at The Conservatory.

Yeah, that’s a good place.

I loved it because it’s family owned. They let me do signings there. They were really super nice. They were the first people who put us on to home schooling. We home school our kids here.

Did not know that.

It was right across from Sony and my wife was saying, when we first moved, Do you want to do one of those tours of the Sony lot. And I was like, Nah, I don’t want to be the tourist riding through there, looking at the people who I want to be. I want to be in there. I want to be the guy that the tourists see and say, “Who’s that guy?” you know?

The irony of it is that Sony did end up co-producing the show.

Wow. Keeping it in the neighborhood.

That was it. It was working in there, a couple of other cafes in that area. There was a Starbucks that had a really great person there. And they fired her because she just became too popular.

That’s one of the best Starbucks in Los Angeles, for what that’s worth. I want to go back to the producer and your storyline, but one more aside about the neighborhood: I don’t know if you remember the park around the way from where you were, but there was where Snoop had that dude shot.

Yes.

That’s a landmark I pointed out to my kids.

I took my kids there all of the time. Believe me, I have street credibility now that I never had.

[Laughter]

We can go back, but… your thoughts on Snoop’s transition to basically America’s Uncle? Isn’t that amazing? Hasn’t it been a transition like nothing you’ve ever seen?

There’s nobody else who could gangsta rap, produce porno, have a kids’ football league, and cohost with Martha Stewart. There’s no one who can do that. It goes to show you the power of hip hop. The power of… I don’t know. To me, he is America. His success story is pretty amazing.

Let’s get back to your success story. You found this dude who wasn’t that experienced…

Super cool, super nice. He knew a couple of writers. So, he said, you’re inexperienced, let’s pair you up with a couple of writers. There were a couple of writers that I interviewed. One of them was writing American [Dad], Family Guy-type jokes? And I was like, Eh, that’s not the kind of show I want to do. So I went with the other guy.

What was interesting is that we created something based on my comics, but this dude was a white dude who, you know, didn’t want anything to do with the racial aspect of my work. So, we created what was, essentially… Friends? With Black people?

[Laughter]

Like, a diverse Friends. And we had interest, from this company. Thankfully, it blew up. It blew up for a couple of reasons. One is the writer sorta pulled something on me, which was kinda weird. You know, “I’m getting credit for writing and creating this. That was the deal I had.” Or whatever. And I was like—

Wow.

These comics were based on my characters. It just got really weird. That was the moment where I was like, Okay, are you going to just say yes to this and just allow this to happen because it may be your only chance? And I remember bringing it to another friend, who I had met on the beach. And I said, “What do you think of the script?” He said, It’s funny, but it’s not you. And I said, that’s it. One of my producers said, Do you want to move on with the same writer. I said no, I need a writer of color to work with. He said we’re going to do it. I had a lot more confidence then.

And by this time I had moved to North Carolina.

How does this even work? How are you interviewing people?

It’s really weird. It was all really weird. I just remember that we were running on fumes with that first project. My wife wanted to get out of LA anyway. We had our small children then, and I just don’t think it’s a great place to raise your kids if you don’t have money. I said, Just let me see this completely through. It was all starting to go bad and I said, Once this is done we are ready to go.

The funny thing is, right when I said we were ready to go, had planned and set everything up. A lot of people say they’re going to move out of LA, but they don’t. So I think my producing team didn’t think I was gonna leave. The moment we were ready to leave, a mom approached me at my kid’s Waldorf School and said, Hey, I’m with the LA Weekly and we want to feature you in the LA People issue. When I first moved there, there was an LA People issue and I was like, How do I get in this? And the moment I decided to leave they ask me to be in it. So I didn’t tell her I was gonna leave. I just said, Okay great!

We did the interview. And also I was doing an art show, right there in Culver City, where that big building is now. Where Amazon is and the parking lot. It used to be a lot, and there was an art show there that I got a table at. I was tabling when a three-year-old walked up to the table and just knocked all of the stuff over! The dad walks over and he’s like, “Oh man, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I go, “It’s okay, I have a three-year-old, too.” As a nicety he just takes one of my [promo] postcards and moves on.

That night he writes to me and said, Hey, I just read the comic on the back of your card. It’s hilarious. Do you write for television? And I said, “Why, yes!” He goes, “I’m an agent at CAA.” And I’m like, Okay! So I went in there and had this great meeting with this guy and all my stuff. I just ended up with an agent, right? On the way out I asked, [meekly] Will you still represent me if I move out of town? Two days later we left town. I did not tell him we left town. The article ran in LA Weekly after I was gone.

Did it help you?

In a way think it did. My agent and my producers had it. So, they could say, Here’s who we’re working with. So they set up meetings and I just flew back to have meetings with writers. I think moving away made it better. My producers were like, Wow, he really moved away; we really do have to work. And when you’re there they’ll make a slate of meetings that go over a month, but if you fly in from out of town? They’ll make a series of meetings over two or three days. It’s much more imperative for them to make the most of the time.

Good tips.

I went in there and just interviewed a ton of people. I got a lot of scripts that had the generic white-girl-brings-Black-boyfriend-home-to-her-white-parents-watch-the-hilarity-ensue stuff.

What time is this? Tell me where we are?

I think it was 2016 when I started interviewing and I found my co-creator.

Well, tell me all about the Woke journey. I mean, you did it. You did two seasons of a show that people really liked.

Marshall Todd submitted a script that he said was never going to see the light. He did it as therapy for himself. He was about to leave the industry. And while I was getting all of these racial tropes, some bad things, he sent a script that started out with a guy in a gun shop doing lines off the gun case. Then a postal worker walks in and says, Hey, is that your car out there? He’s like, yeah. And [the postal worker] is like, There’s a bunch of high school girls smashing it with baseball bats. That’s how it started and it went crazier from there. I remember calling my producer and saying, We may have to reel this guy in a little bit, but this is the person I want to work with.

It just went from there. He’s really responsible for the Clovis character in the show, really infusing his personality into it. We just bonded over the fact that we were both profiled by the police. So we thought we’d focus on that. And how to incorporate the ideas of a cartoonist without him just sitting at a table, drawing all of the time. Hence the sort of hallucinations.

We just just worked on developing that idea, that pilot. I was naive, he was the cynical one. Every time it got to a certain point where we’d have to meet with people, he’d say, This is the point where they pull the plug. And I’d say, I dunno. I don’t think so… But we got to the next level and they loved it. They wanted us to produce a full script. When they said, Let’s go to pilot. We went up to Vancouver, did that. It was just amazing.

When I came in to first pitch it, they flew me in, we hooked up with Sony. Who’s the guy from NCIS? [Eugene, Oregon’s] Eric Christian Olsen. He’s a great guy. He’s like Mr. Energy Guy. If there’s a white dude to have in your corner it’s this guy. He is a charmer and his dad was, I believe, a Black literature professor. His dad told him, This will be the most important show you’ll ever make. So there was a lot of motivation.

When we went in there, they set us up with meetings with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, and Showtime. I remember getting these giant books— a 500-page collection. Dark Horse did like 500-page collection of my work in like 2008. They looked like telephone books. Every time I would finish the pitch in the room, I would reach into my bag and I would pull out one of those books and I would chuck it up in the air and it would slam on the table and I’d say, “There’s your first 10 seasons.”

Then I would walk out.

[Hysterical laughter]

I’m telling you, when we were shooting the series, a Hulu person had a few sips of wine and said—

[Laughter]

—”You know when you sold that show? When you threw that book on the table.” So, a little bit of drama goes a long way.

See, I’ve had such bad luck. You’re talking about pitching and CAA. I’ve had two meetings there and I haven’t shat the bed, but I didn’t perform it well. Your ideas are one thing, but there’s a dance you’re doing. I’ve never mastered the pitch dance.

Totally. It is, it is. And Matt Groening will tell you about that. Matt Groening and Linda Barry, another amazing cartoonist, went in to pitch stuff. Matt was all into it and pitching. Linda Barry went into a corner, like hid in the corner. There are people who are ready to go in there and do the dance and there are people who are amazingly creative who are just not good at doing the dance.

I will tell you this: They do everything to intimidate you, right? When you’re walking down those halls they’ve got these giant posters of all their hits and you’re going, There’s Breaking Bad and there’s Game of Thrones, Oh my God. I’m not worthy I’m not worthy. So what I would do—before I’d go in there—in my car I took all the awards that I’ve won over the years—from cartooning and all this stuff—and I’d sit in the parking lot and put them all on the dashboard. Like seven or eight awards. I’d psyche myself up. I’d say, “You don’t need them. They need you.” Only you can tell this story.

I built myself up so big that, even when I went in there… the posters still made my head smaller, but my head was just big enough to be a little bit arrogant. A little bit like, Eh, I could take it or leave it. It is a dance.

You weren’t in LA for any kind of reaction to the show.

Then Covid hit. There wasn’t any reaction. We didn’t get a chance to really enjoy it.

But the viewership had to be helped by Covid.

It was helped by Covid. It’s just that I wasn’t able to do a guest spot on, you know, Tonight Show or whatever. Also doing conventions and all of that stuff. I’m doing it now and I see it now. My sales are a lot more. I do a lot more slide shows and presentations at universities, colleges, and libraries. It’s a mark of being an old man now that I’m a guest at places. I don’t generally have to pay for tables and travel and all of that stuff.

I’m waiting to hear on what the next thing’s going to be.

You’re not going to tell us.

I’m actually going to launch a Kickstarter to fund some animation, because everyone’s like, When are you going to do something animated? There are a couple of characters from The Knight Life, my daily strip, that I held aside and didn’t develop for the show, that I’d like to develop for their own show. Folks will be hearing about that soon. The more money we raise, the more animation we can make. I would love to say, Here, I’ve written a script that has totally defined the characters. I’ve been in a writers room now, I believe I know what it takes to have consistent characters that we can develop over time. I’m looking forward to having some fun.

It’s funny to hear you say you’re the old man, because if you’re the old man then I’m an old man.

Well, we’re Black-old. We still look good.