Ziwe Fumudoh


Ziwe Fumudoh is an American comedian and comic writer based in Brooklyn who is notable for her commentary on politics and race and young adulthood. She is the creator of the comedy show Baited With Ziwe, a writer for Desus and Mero, and a co-host on the Hysteria podcast on Crooked Media.

Career

Her comedy career began as an intern for Comedy Central, where she worked on shows including the Daily Show and The Colbert Report. A year later, she worked as a writer for The Onion, the iO improv theater, and The Rundown with Robin Thede. She has written jokes for Stephen Colbert. Currently, she is a writer on the show Desus and Mero and has been since 2019. A reviewer in Forbes magazine wrote that she has the "confidence of an old comedy pro".
In addition to her writing, she co-hosts a podcast entitled Hysteria on the Crooked Media channel. She also appears monthly in a show that she created at Brooklyn's Union Hall entitled Pop Show in which she performs original pop songs.

''Baited With Ziwe''

In 2017, Fumudoh created a show on YouTube entitled Baited With Ziwe. The show originally featured some of her non-Black friends and she baits them into making unwitting racial faux pas. It was an edited show including effects that highlighted when someone was "baited." During the pandemic in 2020, she pivoted the show from YouTube to Instagram Live with new guests each week. This new version has no effects and the featured guests are increasingly more notable, including Caroline Calloway, Alison Roman, Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan. She asks direct questions of her guests like "What do you qualitatively like about Black people?" and famously asked Roman to name five Asian people and she was unable to in the moment. Fumudoh was quoted in a Vanity Fair interview that she isn't trying to get anyone canceled, but that the goal of her show is to have a good discussion about race while entertaining people, and to critique the system, not individuals.

Personal life

As a child, she began writing fan fiction based on her watching of the show Sailor Moon. She was also a big fan of X-Men growing up. She attended Phillips Academy in Andover. It was during her Freshman year, when a teacher played for her class The Colbert Report, that she discovered satire. Fumudoh attended Northwestern University, where she studied poetry, film, and African-American studies. She identifies as Nigerian.