Welcome back to Jerrod Carmichael week with the #BoBurnhamHistorian
For our penultimate thread (Rothaniel premieres April 1!), I wanted to provide some interesting facts about the ongoing friendship between Bo and Jerrod.
Here are 10 facts!
1. Bo and Jerrod met in LA sometime around 2014 to 2015
Per Bo in this Uproxx article, "We ran into each other in a movie theater, I think. We’d seen each other’s stuff mutually and just really hit it off."
"When I was coming up in comedy, a lot of the people around weren’t my age, but Jerrod was."
2. The two comics are three years apart in age, and they both started doing comedy when they were young (Bo was 16, Jerrod was 20)
By the time Love at the Store came out in 2014, Bo had already had two successful hour-long specials (Words Words Words and what.)
3. For Jerrod's next special, 8, he specifically wanted Bo to direct
Per Jerrod in this The Hundreds article: "He was always my first choice. It was over a series of conversations that we had where we discussed the state of comedy and comedy specials over a couple of years"
"Just us talking about the things that we wanted to see and the specific tone. I also think Bo is really one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. I think he’s one of the most brilliant—I don’t even know what to call him: Comedian? Humorist? Thinker? All the above."
Bo is equally impressed by Jerrod and mentions him constantly in interviews.
Per Bo: "Watching Jerrod, for me, is such a unique experience. It doesn’t feel like anything else. So we really wanted to try to make the special not feel like anything else."
"Because trying to put the round peg of him into a square hole would just be boring. It just doesn’t work for his comedy."
"He became my first really close friend in the stand-up world. My first peer, really. He’s the best."
4. The filming of 8 was certainly unique—the Masonic Hall's Grand Lodge Room had
never been used by comedians before "making them, according to a venue spokesperson, the first comedians ever to film a stand-up special there."
5. Both Bo and Jerrod were entrepreneurs at a young age
Per Jerrod's dad, Joe: "I built a clubhouse in the backyard, and when he was 8 or 9, he and his friends decorated it into a haunted house and charged admission."
And Bo's New Yorker profile includes a family story about him charging kids $10 to teach them math in first grade—"his mother still remembers him shaking the shoebox for cash as parents dropped their kids off."
6. Both also loved creating and performing when they were kids
In the New Yorker profile, it says that Bo would "perform 'Bo Shows' for his family in the living room—no talking allowed."
And Jerrod got a camcorder as a gift and carried it everywhere.
Jerrod’s older brother, Joe Jr., recalls Jerrod constantly toting around the video camera he’d begged for one Christmas: "If I was playing ball, he’d be on the side, taping us, interviewing the players."
7. Neither attended college
For Jerrod, it had to do with growing up in the hood: "It was the type of neighborhood where my mother’s only goal was that I get a high-school diploma."
And with Bo, he deferred at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for a year and then never went, instead opting to pursue a career in comedy.
8. 8 is a special number for Jerrod, and he moved to LA in the same month Bo turned 18
"When I first moved to LA it was August 8, 2008. It’s recurring in a way that it surrounds very personal things in my life. And that’s what I wanted this stand-up special to represent."
9. The bracelet Bo wears throughout Make Happy was a gift from Jerrod
This Reddit post explains more.
10. Both Bo and Jerrod despise social media
If you're looking to interact online with them, don't bother. Jerrod deleted his Twitter account (was @NotoriousROD), and Bo posts rarely and only to promote projects.
Bonus: A24 podcast
To learn more about their friendship, I highly recommend the podcast they did together during the Eighth Grade press tour.
That's all for now! I hope you enjoyed reading these 10 facts about Bo and Jerrod.
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