Wokeseason 1 is now streaming on Hulu.
LAMORNE MORRIS:It feels good.
Every week was some weird trait, or -ism, or quirk that my character developed randomly.
Lamorne Morris on ‘Woke’.Credit: Joe Lederer/Hulu
Sometimes he’s endearing, sometimes he’s insane, thinking harming people’s health is a great prank.
But then you grow from that, and when you take on other characters, you want to expand.
How would you describeWoke, and how did you get involved with it?
I gravitated towards it immediately.
Page one, I was just hooked.
The animation element of it is brilliant.
I love his art.
You’d notice the injustice happening, but it doesn’t really activate you.
This time that we’re living in now has activated me.
It’s activated a lot of people.
And I think this show showcases that.
What do you do when you have a voice, but you’re kind of scared to use it?
I think that theme of the show would resonate with a lot of people.
It got an immediate reaction out of me.
When you’re done watching something like this, you leave with something.
I remember watchingRamyand thinking, “Wow, this is really funny.”
Their walk is not all that different from ours, but also you laugh.
With our show, I think you’ll get similar energy.
Were you a fan of Keith Knight before having to play a version of him?
I knew of his work before, but I never studied it.
I mean, this is a conversation that I’ve been having with people for a while.
In our pilot, I believe the marker says to me “the fog has been lifted.”
I feel like people can see clearly that a lot of people are in denial, which is okay.
It’s just all a part of the growing process.
I’m excited to see people activated and having these conversations because these conversations couldn’t be had before.
Those same friends who didn’t really want to talk about it, kind of bring it up now.
Hey, what about this?
Or, What about that?
This is an all hands on deck fight.
I see the conversations happening constantly.
And I assume that they wanted to bring that to the page.
Do you feel this role is at all in conversation with your character Winston fromNew Girl?
Some would say he served as a symbol for racial harmony within that show.
He was more harmonious whereas Keef becomes more militant in his approach, more direct.
Realizing that they’re different and having to overcome that and address that.
That’s his objective, to find some sort of clarity and peace in all of this.
That wasn’t Winston’s objective.
Winston just was hit with stuff, with certain realizations and revelations of things.
I think Winston was always more aware than Keef.
He just didn’t live in that environment.
If you see his roommates, they’re white, and so he didn’t need to.
I will say, yeah, I just feel like Winston is a magical Negro.
He’s always helpful and smiley and all that stuff.
Maybe it’s jarring to some people, but I think a lot of people can identify with it.
Some of it’s a surprise.
We had done a lot.
We filmed a lot before we cast some of those voices.
I knew ofTony Hale, Sam Richardson, they are Toast and Butter.
There’s more to come, so I’m excited for people to see it.
Oh my God, that’s funny.
Like Jack McBrayer, I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing.
