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On a recent spring morning, Nicole Byer completed a workout with her personal trainer and calmed her dog Clyde, who was “shouting at the ghost” called,” at which point she began to think about her busy schedule.
She’s working on four podcasts, getting ready to read forms for another production, and working on testing new stand-up material.
Baier is now preparing for what may be one of the most pivotal moments of her career.
She was nominated for three Emmys this year. Byer, the first black woman to be nominated for Outstanding Host on a reality or competition show, worked on Netflix’s “Nailed It!,” an amateur baking competition where failure to execute designs from famous pastry chefs was the norm. She was also nominated for Outstanding Reality or Competition Program as the show’s executive producer, and received a Variety Special Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for her Netflix stand-up comedy special “Beautiful Freak.”
“Please give me an Emmy,” she posted a video clip on Instagram after learning of the nomination. (She was also nominated for two Emmys last year.)
Byer, 35, once called himself “the Bob Saget of this generation.” Her appearance on Netflix’s wellness show “Nailed It!” has won her an enthusiastic young fan base — some of whom scream the catchphrase when they spot her in public. But her comedic routines may be a bold take on her sexual exploitation and observations of race, including the unexpected reasons she enjoys sex with white men.
She is the Nicole Byer of her generation—a dreamer who grew up in a white suburb, the daughter of Barbados immigrants and Jim Crownan immigrants, a shrewd business executive who targeted her mother and grandmother Artists who plan to succeed prefer her.
Along the way, Beyer said, she has struggled to shake off expectations that black women should look and sound. She told NPR in 2019 that trying to mold herself into what others expect is disturbing, akin to a form of blackface.
“It hurts when you realize — oh, Hollywood knows a kind of black man,” she told NPR. “Like, Emma Stone, Emma Roberts — all these girls are going to be there, and they don’t have to be one thing. They can be whatever they want. We have to be just one thing.”
Growing up in a predominantly white community in the town of Middletown, New Jersey, Baier identified her mother Lily Baier as Mississippian, and she noticed her comedic talent and guided her to the theater. There, she discovered the power to make people laugh.
Although her interest in theater was encouraged, Baier said, her mother wanted her to take a more traditional path after high school. After her mother died when Baier was 16, she decided to move to New York City to study acting. “If she hadn’t died, I couldn’t have gone,” Baier said.
She worked odd jobs in Manhattan, ate cheap pizza, and smoked marijuana with friends. She aspires to be an actress like Viola Davis, or has enough range to star in “A Raisin in the Sun” or “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” because she’s learning her craft.
After her father died of a heart attack when she was 21, Beyer said she was looking for a way to deal with her grief when she stumbled across improv and started finding a footing. She joined the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre improv school and started performing.
Sometimes the humor on stage just didn’t resonate with her. Byer and her best friend Sasheer Zamata didn’t always understand the cultural references of mostly white improv troupes. This confusion is often mutual.
“We will continue [stage] And reference things like black churches and R&B,” Zamata said, which would confuse some viewers.
After being repeatedly mistaken for each other, Baier and Zamatha began performing in New York City with another black female comedian, Keisha Zollar, as an improv group called Doppelganger.
Byer appeared on an MTV show, “Girl Code,” where she, other comedians and actresses would offer a fun take on the unwritten rules of female behavior and explore beauty rituals like waxing.
This was followed by proposals to perform stand-up comedy at colleges and universities. Baier was initially reluctant to take the jobs, she said, because she was too new to stand-up acting, but her manager convinced her to take a risk — and money.
Her manager told her that she lacked knowledge of stand-up comedy and was hesitant to try it, “like leaving money on the table,” she said. “My dad will be very angry.”
Byer said she would “smash” her college show during the week, then “bomb” at her LA Comedy Club show over the weekend.
MTV gave her the chance to make a scripted show. “Loosely Totally Nicole” captures her life as a 20-something, off-the-beaten-path actress trying to get a role in Hollywood while figuring out her adulthood. In one episode, Baier recreated an audition in which a white casting director asked her to voice the role and play the “darker” role that Baier has had since her early days in the entertainment industry. has always been with her.
“We’re not like a boulder. I sound black because I’m black,” she said. “I think when people say, ‘Be darker, change a little’…I don’t know, I just want to be myself.”
Baier’s show has been praised for having a diverse cast in a series that isn’t just about character identities. It has been criticized for its inability to make fun of it beyond crude jokes and racial tropes.
MTV canceled the show after one season in 2016. Facebook Watch picked up a second season, but didn’t renew it for a third.
“I’m really proud that I made a big comedy about a fat black girl,” she said. “I learned how to be on set. I learned how to be in a writer’s room.”
Byer said the criticism of her black people no longer bothered her.
When comedian Faizon Love called her a “boring black woman” in an Instagram post last year, Byer thanked him for sending someone to watch her now Emmy-nominated Netflix talk show special. “He doesn’t have a Netflix special for me to watch,” she said casually, adding that many agreed with him.
Instead, Baier said, she focused on building an empire. Conan O’Brien’s company, Team Coco, is now the production base for her dating podcast “Why Don’t You Date Me?” She plays real estate agent Nicky Coles in “Grand Crew,” an NBC comedy series with an all-black cast that depicts everyday life in the upper middle class, rather than centering on black tragedy. Byer also starred in the recently released film “Mack & Rita” alongside Diane Keaton and Loretta Devine.
Baier may not have the business degree her parents wanted, but she has mastered the art of being herself.
“My parents would be proud of what I came up with,” she said. “If they could help and give wisdom or support, that would be great. But my mom would be proud of me. She would say, ‘These Jokes may not be for me, but they are for someone. “
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