Nicole Byer will never forget the racism she witnessed while on the road as a comedian.
The “Nailed It!” host had plenty of stories to share about her early days as a struggling Black comic but, while talking to Jesse Tyler Ferguson on Tuesday’s episode of his “Dinner’s on Me” podcast, Byer recalled one particular night in Appleton, Wisconsin, standing out.
“I really hated it there,” she revealed. “I was like, ‘The vibes fucking sucked. Bad vibes!’”
Byer recalled learning that Appleton was a “sundown town,” a community where Black people are allowed to work or travel through during the day but were implicitly or explicitly told to leave by sunset.
“During my show, I had a white host, a Black featurer [or opener], and the crowds were so unruly,” she said Tuesday. “And at one point, my Black featurer was onstage and … a guy in the crowd was like, ‘Smile, we can’t see you!’ And I was like, ‘What the fuck?’ What?”
“I walked out on the floor and looked at a server and I was like, ‘You’re not gonna say anything?’” Byer continued. “And she was like, ‘What?’ And I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ So I refused to do meet-and-greets, even though it was sold with the tickets.”
The actor recalled telling her agent she’s “just not meeting these people” as a result of the remark, and said the glaring lack of repercussions “blew my mind.” Byer added that though she assumed there were also “nice people” in the crowd, “I will never go back to Appleton.”
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In addition to hosting Netlflix’s “Nailed It!” since 2018 and co-hosting TBS’s “Wipeout” alongside John Cena since 2018, Byer hosts four popular podcasts and starred in a critically acclaimed comedy this year.
The comic has had to endure a plethora of racist nonsense in her career, however.
The comedian published a viral social media thread in 2018 about the slew of ways in which Black people are treated unfairly, and later revealed in 2022 that a casting director once told her to “be Blacker” — but not “too Black” — during an audition.
“It is scary,” Byer told Ferguson about the Appleton incident. “That shit sucks.”
