Hannibal Buress On Trump, Controversy, And Watching Eric Andre Grab People’s Dicks

Hannibal Buress is in a weird place (not geographically, he’s speaking from his home in Chicago), winding up 2016 somewhere in the realm between cult and mainstream. Put it this way: one of his most prominent roles in the past few years has been the sidekick on Eric Andre’s eponymous bizarro late night parody show. But, when Eric Andre arrives to tour Australia immediately after Hannibal, he’ll be playing rooms roughly one-fifth the capacity of those of his sidekick will be performing in.

Buress has gained the most recognition through his role as Lincoln on the low-key hit Broad City during its three seasons so far (he “thinks” he’s returning for a fourth and seems hopeful). He is also flirting with Hollywood blockbusters, having been cast in upcoming films Baywatch and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Others know him as the stand-up who called out Bill Cosby as a rapist during an October 2014 standup show in Philadelphia — with focus rightfully shifted to Cosby’s alleged victims since.

Since 2014, Buress has maintained steady control of what projects he takes on. Steady makes sense, with his delivery often tempered by a stoic, rational disposition. Now, he’s on the phone just having picked up some DJ equipment in his downtime — “I downloaded Serato and I just got back from Guitar Center and I bought the Pioneer DD-JR, I think it’s called. So I’m alright with song selection but my blending is pretty bad. I’m going to take some time to try to learn to blend well on my own. I’m very excited about that.”

Dude actually wants to hone his DJ chops.

Junkee: You kicked off your new show The Hannibal Montanabal Experience in August. As the tour goes on, you can refine the act and iron out little things. But the world has gone through some massive changes since August. How reactive and adaptive do you have to be with your material as the tour progresses?

Hannibal Buress: I mean I don’t have to be. It’s just what’s on people’s minds. I had to do a show in Kansas City two days after the election here. I could tell a difference in the room, pre-show and when I got on stage. I could just tell the difference in vibe, man. You talk honestly about the situation and what you think about it. I don’t really try to preach. I have my points, but ultimately I want to get jokes off because I don’t think I’m really going to affect a political situation from the stage in Kansas City.

I think for a lot of people it’s not the same as Bush versus Al Gore — that type of situation. When Bush won people were upset, but it wasn’t this passionate. This is something different; where it seemed like it was a joke. That was a big portion of my jokes, where I didn’t really think he wanted to be president. That was a theory that a lot of people shared. I didn’t think Trump wanted to be president. I just thought he was doing it and then got in too deep. A few days before the election he was calling it rigged. And the election hadn’t happened yet. And he was like, “It’s rigged”. So I feel like he thought he was going to lose.

Anyway, man. You wanna talk about some bitches?

You mentioned speaking honestly on stage, and we just saw Kanye speak honestly on stage about Trump [Note: this was before Kanye’s reported hospitalisation]. What’s your take?

He’ll do all these different songs, he’ll do ‘Flashing Lights’. And then it feels like there’s a spot in his set where he’ll do ‘Runaway’ and the instrumental will play under him ranting about something. And he would rant about something and just talk for 15 minutes. Right? Is it because he doesn’t have three other hit songs that he could do during that time? No. He has the songs to fill that time.

But if he just does a killer set of his songs then that pretty much just stays in a room. Right? That just stays in a room locally. Like someone just killing a show. “Oh such and such had a good show”. That’s just amongst that group and their friends. A good review. That doesn’t really travel. But if Kanye goes on stage and compares himself to Steve Jobs and all these other people and says all this shit then he could do it in Cleveland. And motherfuckers in Australia will know about it.

I can see why Kanye likes Trump campaign. Even with all the craziness, it had a smoother rollout than Life of Pablo.

— Hannibal Buress (@hannibalburess) November 18, 2016

Well, speaking of stuff leaving the room… Obviously, you calling out Bill Cosby left the room. The focus was all on you at the start, and then it all played out, and it seems like forever ago now. How do you look back on how everything and where it’s at now?

It’s very weird, man. I mean I just try to work. I just kind of scaled back in general. You know what I mean? As far as just using different opportunities and things like that. I really … It just kind of made me wary of fame.

I do a very low percentage of the stuff that I get offered. There were things that were coming up right after that happened and it just made me kind of feel weird and funny about the business. It was just the fact that there’s so much, even still, so much put on me about it. It’s not really [about me]. It might be that I’m the least important factor in the situation. I mean, you just do work and keep moving forward.

Great segue, by the way. Sometimes journalists don’t really get into that smoothly. That’s what’s really annoying — because people think I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t give a shit about talking about it, but have some technique. Have some finesse. You have some shitty radio hosts… Sometimes I hop on the phone and then right away they’re like, “so the Cosby thing”. Right away. Is that what you want to talk about? Like no, you don’t want to open with something else more current and get into that somehow? You just want to straight out [do that], two years later.

You talked about saying no to a bunch of opportunities. But has it been difficult to retain that control and make those decisions? Are you proud of where your career’s at?

I’m good, man. I mean, I’m just in a spot where I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. But I still work. I work on projects on all types of scales. I got a small role on the Baywatch movie next year. And the Spider-Man movie and also doing weirder stuff, and independent stuff on my own. [I have] my podcast which is all me, and also touring. So I feel good to just be consistently working and when people offer you jobs it’s because you got the job done before. So I don’t really take it lightly.

Are there ever moments on The Eric Andre Show where you’re thinking, “Hey, we’re going too far here. We’re about to cross a line?”

There’s been a couple of situations where he’s way more willing to go really hard with a joke than I am, and just way more into making people feel uncomfortable. I’m fine with saying weird stuff to people versus doing weird stuff to people. I’m not about just grabbing somebody’s dick to make them uncomfortable. You know what I mean?

He’ll just go for it. But I’ll comment on it. There’s a lot of stuff that’s cut out but I’ll just comment on what he’s doing like, “grow up”. I get to play a cynical, bored co-host, and so that’s the role, but sometimes I am like, “This is too much, man. What are you doing?”

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Hannibal Buress is on tour (probably not grabbing people’s dicks) with The Hannibal Montanabal Experience this week. You can grab tickets to his Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane shows now.

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Lachlan Kanoniuk is a Melbourne-based music and film critic. He is the editor of FasterLouder.