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Janine Brito is “Totally Biased”

After a successful debut season on FX, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell moved from being a weekly show to nightly on sister station FXX. Produced by Chris Rock and hosted by comic W. Kamau Bell, the show is a funny take on news, politics and pop culture with special guests like Rachel Maddow, Whoopi Goldberg and Wanda Sykes. One of the reasons to tune in is out writer and frequent segment host Janine Brito who appears to comment on things like Kate Middleton‘s bikini photos and why Jason Collins coming out was not that big of a deal (“dykes have been doing it for decades!)

We talked with Janine while she was hard at work, something she’s become accustom to but generally fine with since working on a hit show.

AfterEllen.com: I love the show. Congrats on going daily this season. What’s been different for you both on camera and in the writers’ room?

Janine Brito: I think the biggest thing is time commitment. Being essentially a daily show and us figuring out how that process works for us, we’ve just kind of all been coming in really early, staying really late and then going home and going to bed. We have meals here in the office. The biggest difference is essentially we live in the office. But it’s still fun. If I’m going to spend all my life doing a job, it would be the job where I get to, you know, work on comedy with my friends and do fun things like that.

AE: It seems like an awesome gig. Did you know the people working on the show? How did you get involved?

JB: Yeah, a lot of the people on our staff go way, way back. I helped on a pilot along with a lot of the writers, a lot of us were there from the get-go and we all know Kamau personally through the San Francisco comedy scene. I met Kamau when I first moved to the Bay Area five or six years ago and he took me under his arm as his “comedy daughter” and really mentored me in the process. So I’ve known him five or six years through comedy and working together and being good friends. It’s the same with a lot of the writers. That’s how we got brought into the fold of the show.

AE: You’re kind of the resident gay on the show. I love when you frequently come on as the lesbian opinion. Is that something you have to pitch or do they come in and say “Do you want to take this one, Janine?”

JB: It’s a little bit of both. There’s also another gay writer on staff, Guy Branaum, the two of us together kind of represent the lesbian gay man duo. It’s a little bit of both: Sometimes something really piques my interest and other times they see something that they bring to me.

The biggest example of something they brought to me was the piece about Kate Middleton, sort of the idea of the struggle being a lesbian and a feminist, where you know you shouldn’t objectify women but sometimes your animal instincts get the better of you and you do it. That was actually based about a bit I do in my stand-up about Christina Hendricks. When that news story came about Kamau was very familiar with that bit in my stand-up because he’d seen it and was like “You should do this on the show for this news piece.” And that’s how that one came about.

Most of the other ones have been things that really spoke to me in the news and I pitch those angles from the perspective of me. I am a Hispanic lesbian so that’s part of my identity and the way I speak to a lot of things happening in the news.

AE: I watched a video interview in which you talked about how starting out doing comedy in the Midwest helped you to learn how to speak to audiences that weren’t Hispanic lesbians and how you want Middle America to understand what you’re saying and think it’s funny. I feel like Totally Biased might have a little more intelligent and forward-thinking audience than what makes up most of Middle America.

JB: Right. Certainly starting out in the Midwest, the idea that i was like “See, I’m a nice person, you guys like me. Oh by the way, I’m gay and Hispanic.” And I think there’s definitely an importance to that.

I think the biggest icon who has done that the most successfully is Ellen DeGeneres. That’s a large part of her fanbase is, you know, people from all walks of life but specifically older American seniors, which historically on a wider scale have been less tolerant of queers. And I think her likability has changed a lot of minds and she kind of opened the door to allow younger queer comics to be a little more radical and a little more nuanced in what we say and what we present to America. So I think the work she did opened the door for a show like Totally Biased to present a harder line when it comes to any issue including queer issues.

AE: One thing I love about the show too is that so many times people assume it’s people of color that vote against gays, like Prop. 8. I love that he is obviously an ally and he’s a person of color. Is that something that is an important part of the show to you, too?

JB: Absolutely. I know he has a bit in his stand up where he speaks to that but we definitely want to break those boundaries and the idea that all people of color are homophobic. I think it speaks to him personally. He lived in the Bay Area for, like, 12 years, 12 or 15 years so he was immersed in queer culture-a place that is so queer that it’s not a big deal at all to be queer. Like he was immersed in that place where it was not even an issue, it was an afterthought that you were surrounded by queer folk that don’t fit the hetero mold and the gender binary.

I think it’s important to see someone like him, a 6’2″ black guy, come out and say “This isn’t a big deal at all. These are my people as well.” And I think it helps to break down this idea within the queer community that brown people are the enemy. That’s not the case, it’s not true. It doesn’t break along those lines as clearly as we’ve been led to believe. Anytime we can bridge any gaps between disenfranchised groups is a huge step because the sooner each of these groups band together against all intolerance, I think the wider steps we’ll make toward improving the lives of disenfranchised people, whether they’re disenfranchised from their sexuality, their gender identity or their race.

AE: What is your sense of who the fans are of the show?

JB: Well I will say I am recognized the most by Trader Joe’s employees. So there’s that! Yeah there’s definitely certain cities and certain demographics, but I think that it’s a lot of basically you are the biggest fan of the show, I think, if you are a black lesbian social worker. If I had to put it all into one group, it would be that. It’s definitely people that work in social justice and sort of like things beyond the 101 entry level of politics. Like I think we got a little deeper into issues, and so I think people that have worked with those issues definitely appreciate that. And certainly people who look like us. People of color who look like Kamau, queer people who see me and Guy on there, South Asian people who see Aparna Nancherla on there, who realize our writing staff has three women as opposed to one or zero. I think people who aren’t catered to by TV are like, “Aw, finally! Something that looks like us and isn’t just milky white dudes 18-35.” I think they appreciate it.

AE: One thing I noticed about the show is you say “dyke” on TV, like in the sketch about Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King: “Dykes have been doing this for decades.” That’s not something you hear all the time. Do you ever have any pushback from the network about something you want to do or say?

JB: No, never. FX, actually, I think like three weeks in came back and told us to do more and said we weren’t pushing the envelope enough. They said they want to have that moment with us where they’re like “Alright guys let’s scale it back a little bit.” But no, I think they have a reputation for this and it’s true they let their creative people run with their vision and they want to see people throw stuff against the wall. They want to see the breakthrough in the process to get to the kernel of what everyone is trying to do.

AE: I noticed on your Facebook that you had posted a picture with trans actress Laverne Cox from Orange is the New Black and you had to police someone in a very nice way when they asked “Is that a man?” And you said “No, she’s a woman. She’s an actress, she’s awesome.” Do you feel like there are people that you sometimes have to educate? Like is this part of the job?

JB: Yeah, I think so. That’s funny-that instance, I sat with it overnight because it was really disappointing to see and it got me angry and I wanted to go back at that person-obviously I could see they were a fan of mine, so clearly they’re OK with me so they’re not entirely, you know, super-conservative homophobic. So I came to realize, “Oh this person just hasn’t been confronted with a trans person, they’re just uneducated with this one thing.” So with that I thought it was important to come back and not jump down the guy’s throat and say, “Hey this is a person, this is who they are, it’s cool.” And just kind of give them the opportunity to step back and be like, “Oh, I didn’t realize that, I want to learn more about that.'”

I think a lot of times the left, the radical left and some liberals, are painted as buzzkills and they won’t tolerate anything and I’ve certainly had times in my life where I jumped down someone’s throat and kind of did a disservice to them having a learning experience by immediately rushing into anger against it and pouncing on them. So I think more and more as I’ve been on television and met more people, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and if something like that comes up I try to make a more compassionate educator role and I think that goes a lot further than just being like “What the hell, man?”

AE: You have such fun guests on the show. Do you have a favorite you’ve enjoyed meeting or working with?

JB: Well, Rachel Maddow. I was completely starstruck by. Laverne Cox, obviously, I like chased her down and very sheepishly asked if I could take a picture with her and she was very sweet. I guess as far as-Dave Zirin, he’s been on our show twice and he’s a really fun guest. I’m not a sports person, I don’t watch sports at all-I’m a book lesbian, I’m not a ball lesbian-and so hew as someone I hadn’t heard of before but he was so engaging, energetic and passionate and I totally fell in love with him and was excited when they asked him back and he definitely brought that same energy again. And he’s an interesting guy where’s a sports commenter but he pairs it with politics which I think is something no one’s ever done before and i think he has a lot of potential to reach a lot of people through that.

AE: Do you have any input on who you book to come on the show?

JB: We don’t get to pick but we’re welcome to throw out names, if we see someone we’re interested in personally we submit the name and then there’s the question of booking and if the person’s in town and all that goes into it. I’m a huge Orange is the New Black fan, that’s kind of my thing right now, so I’d love to get more of the cast members on. We just had Big Freedia on and she was someone that me and my officemate had been asking for since last year so we were happy she finally got on.

AE: I kind of get the sense from your stand-up that you’re not as political as you are on Totally Biased.

JB: Who we are in stand-up is definitely different from who we are in the show. Like I’ve had people come up to me after shows and say “Oh my god you’re not as angry as you are on TV.” I kind of say I’m not an angry lesbian, I play on one television. … I actually kind of hate doing political comedy just because I hate confrontation so much. I get scared when people yell at each other around me and it takes a lot to push me to speak to something. A lot of times I have to be moved enough to get my toe into the fray and get pushed back. My comedy is political because it affects me personally and that’s who I am. But a lot of my stuff is like about growing up when I was a kid and how much I like cats. It’s a lot lighter than what we present on the show.

Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell airs weeknights at 11 p.m. on FXX.

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