Although Hulu's Woke has been in production for a long time, it only premiered its first season this year. As the television series was met with a mixed reception due to tackling controversial topics and the pandemic's continuous evolution, a Season 2 renewal was uncertain until this week.
The show stars Lamorne Morris (New Girl, Desperado) and Blake Anderson (Workaholics, Tigtone), with Morris portraying Keef Knight, the show's creator and cartoonist, on which the semi-autobiographical series is based. We recently chatted with the real Keef Knight (K Chronicles) to learn about the differences between himself and Lamorne's portrayal. We ended up speaking for several hours and getting a ton of information.
Unexpectedly, Knight went into detail about one of the show's biggest Easter eggs: the fact that he was in the koala suit from the popular Justice for Kubby episode. We learn about the difficulties of the scene, how they obtained the suit in the first place and the donations made to help the victims of the Australian wildfires.
Keith also revealed that he is releasing a comic for each episode, diving into the different Easter eggs that no one points out from the show.
Hear our full conversation with comic creator and Woke inspiration, Keith Knight, using the podcast player below. Woke fans can also check out our last chat with Keef and our exclusive interview with co-star Blake Anderson (Workaholics) included along with the transcript.
Keef Knight: I'll tell you, the best places for me to draw are in bars, cafes, airplanes, and trains. In Woke, there was a scene where I was drawing in my car in between rides. But yeah, no, there's a couple of things that I would never do that the character does.
And the first one is I would never wear headphones walking down the street. I would never. And this is something that many people do, but I walked everywhere in San Francisco, and the farther you go West, the worse the drivers are, you know? And so if you don't have all of your faculties, if you're not listening for cars and bikes and scooters and all that stuff and seeing everything, and it's San Francisco, which is full of bad drivers. And all of the pedestrians who think they have more power than they actually do, which is just because you're walking in a crosswalk, and you're legal, you know, everyone should be stopping. It doesn't mean they're going to stop.
I grew up in Boston. So, no one believes that if they walk into a crosswalk, the cars will stop. And there is chaos in Boston, but there are better drivers and better pedestrians from Boston. I've seen so many people get hit by cars, people on bikes, people all over the place in San Francisco, in Los Angeles. It's crazy. But a bunch of metal always beats flesh and meat every time.
Oh yeah, I think that the biggest Easter egg is that I was the koala, probably. I liked it because I was really excited to do a story about how people are more careful about animals than people. So, that was a big thing. We knew that the character was going to stumble upon this big protest or a Wake for Cubbie.
And I don't know who came up with the idea of having someone in a suit. I was like, "I have got to be in the Koala suit, that's going to be me. I have to punch my character." So that is like the ultimate Easter egg. Yeah.
It was a nightmare because it's very awkward. It's round and bizarre, and you couldn't see anything out of the eyes. There were little spaces where you could kind of see, like off to the side or something like that. And also it was raining like crazy when it was going on. And every time they asked me to step up to punch, I could only see there was like a parking lot line, like a parking space line that I was just like, okay, I gotta make sure the parking space line is just past my eyesight and then I'll swing.
And I said it in a Comic; I just heard people say, "I don't think he's ever thrown a punch," and it's probably true. I probably never throw one. And it's funny because the stunt guy was like, "okay, you gotta throw your body this way." It was really fun getting advice from the stunt coordinator, and it never really worked out. It was so bad.
So it was just all in the editing. Like you never see me with Lamorne because I was never, ever close to him. And they were also worried about me possibly hitting him for real. And so they were like, "Oh, you know, insurance and this and that." So it was a very interesting thing.
But a story about, just about the suit itself's quality, we couldn't find a decent quality suit online. They were all terrible outfits, but we found this one natural food company based in Seattle whose mascot was a koala, and they let us borrow their koala suit if we donated to the koala sanctuary in Australia because all of these koalas had died because of all of those fires in early 2020, which is insane, right? That seems so long ago, but we made this donation to the koalas to get this really cool koala outfit, but that's my story.
*This article has been edited for clarity.*
Ignorance was bliss. New comedy series, Woke, follows Keef, An African-American Cartoonist finally on the verge of mainstream success when an unexpected incident changes everything. Keef must now navigate the new voices and ideas that confront and challenge him, all without setting aflame everything he’s already built.
Woke Season 1 is currently streaming on Hulu.