*Over the past few weeks, Juneteenth – an unofficial holiday celebrated by African-Americans to commemorate when the last remaining slaves in Texas found out they were free – has been a topic of conversation as more companies attempt to embrace and celebrate diversity and inclusion. It’s sort of like a slice of Black History Month in June.
The critically acclaimed variety sketch show Sherman’s Showcase was already ahead of the curve as it returns to AMC and IFC with a special Black History Month Spectacular that premiers on June 19th.
The very special episode will feature skits that honor historic African-American icons – both past and present – plus Black superheroes, a new version of The Last Dragon and a Charlie Brown flavored history lesson featuring Questlove from The Roots.
EURweb correspondent Jill Munroe talked with the creators and stars Bashir Salahuddin (Top Gun: Maverick, South Side) and Diallo Riddle (Marlon, South Side) about the special’s timeliness with the rise of Juneteenth, a skit that encourages us sport some kente cloth – yes, it was done before House speaker Nancy Pelosi and friends rocked it earlier this month and share some of the segments that didn’t make it to the special.
The kente cloth song came about because of Bashir’s love of house music and wanting to add that as one of the musical numbers for the special.
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You know it’s interesting, we didn’t plan that. The universe really showed out. I always say, this is why I believe in God and a higher power. This is not my plan, this is another man’s plan… I’m from Chicago and I wanted to do a house song because we didn’t do one in the first season. It’s so interesting how these things come together, Diallo knew this incredible remixer name Viceroy, my sister Zuri sings on the song and the writers all came together. We all know that we wear kente cloth at graduation time, etc. continued Salahuddin, for me, I always thought kente cloth was an American image, like Kwanzaa. I only knew of it as something I saw at Black events, Black gatherings and 50% of my mama’s house… so we thought “add some kente,” that’s perfect, we all grew up with it and it is definitely a way for people to ally themselves with Black History month. You fast forward to June, not only has our special been moved to Juneteenth – the special was really originally supposed to air in February – but you see what they were doing, and it looks like we saw that and responded to it.
Diallo and I used to work with “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and that was actually our job. Our job was to watch the news, and the next morning you had to come up with pitches about stuff that has happened and try to get the content up that day so you can be topical. Here’s something that we never planned, but the universe said I’m going to make this relevant as hell and you have no idea that this is coming. So for us, we were like this is great. It just let us know we’re on the right track.
Guest stars in the “Black History Month Spectacular” include (in alphabetical order) rapper Phonte Coleman, Michael Ealy (Stumptown, Westworld), journalist Jemele Hill, Lil Rel Howery (Get Out, Rel), actor and TV host Terrence J, series executive producer and Emmy®-, GRAMMY®-, Oscar®– and Tony®-winner John Legend, rapper and activist Vic Mensa, GRAMMY® winner Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Bresha Webb (Marlon, The Last O.G.), Vanderpump Rules’ Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz, GRAMMY® winner Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, Tyrin Turner (Menace II Society), Mario Van Peebles (New Jack City) and more.
Sherman’s Showcase has also been renewed for season 2. That’s scheduled to drop in 2021.
The Black History Month Spectacular episode will air Friday, June 19 at 10PM ET/PT on AMC and 11PM ET/PT on IFC.
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