If History of Swear Words feels familiar to you, it's for a good reason. The Funny or Die-produced Netflix series borrows from a time-honored tradition to tell the story of how our most beloved curses have come to be — specifically "talking head" series like VH1's Best Week Ever, which used on-screen personalities to cover a variety of topics. It's a format comedian Joel Kim Booster was quite familiar with, having grown up watching those shows as his early window into pop culture, and one he was excited to be a part of.
Booster has been a rising comedy star for years now as a stand-up, a writer, and beyond, thanks to the short-lived NBC comedy Sunnyside, roles on Hulu's Shrill and Search Party, and a voice actor on shows including BoJack Horseman and Big Mouth. On Big Mouth, though, he also serves as a consulting producer — a role which means he's able to contribute to many of the stories being told about our favorite animated pre-teens.
Below, Booster gets into what it was like to shoot his portions of History of Swear Words under pandemic conditions, why he feels swearing is important to his personal approach to comedy, and why Nicolas Cage was the perfect host for the show. But he also gets into what he's working on now, what exactly it means to be a consulting producer on a show like Big Mouth, and says something very nice about his experience working with Quibi.
Collider: So, to start off, what was the process of coming on board with the show like?
JOEL KIM BOOSTER: Well, it was pretty easy for me. They just asked me to do it. It was, I will note, the very first thing I shot in COVID times. I think it was the very first production post-pandemic that I knew of. And so it was pretty exciting, and it was interesting to see all of the new precautions that they took.
Obviously, it's a talking head show, so it was pretty easy, but it was really bizarre to just be in a room alone with a camera, and a laptop with a producer on Zoom prompting you. But yeah, it was pretty exciting. I was grateful for a sense of normalcy again, even as bizarre as it was shooting it.
Yeah. I'm curious about the practicality of doing something like this, just because it feels like something we all grew up with.
BOOSTER: Yeah, Best Week Ever and I Love the '80s. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up on talking head shows — I was homeschooled and I was very sheltered, so anything I know about pop culture from the '70s, '80s, and '90s is basically because of VH1 and those talking head shows. Hal Sparks is the biggest celebrity I can think of when I was growing up, because he was on all of those shows.
So it was you alone in a room with a camera, and the producer on Zoom. How much did you pre-write going in? Were you given certain prompts or encouraged like, "Oh, maybe this... maybe try this line?"
BOOSTER: No. Basically, we talked beforehand. I knew going in that my two big episodes would be Dick and Bitch. They sort of let us play with all of the words, but they specifically prepped me the most for Dick and Bitch. They didn't necessarily ask me to pre-write anything, but they gave us the general overview of the history and the context of those words, so that we could come to the table with our own ideas and our own experiences.
But thankfully they were not asking us to be experts on any of this. It was mostly personal anecdotes and how we related to the words. So there was a lot of riffing and it was a lot of play. And I think specifically because it was me and a camera and somebody on Zoom, it felt very freeing to just sort of chat without a filter.
Excellent. Do you have a sense of why "Dick" and "Bitch" were your words?
BOOSTER: I don't know exactly. I think for me, bitch specifically, I think they really wanted to get the contextual perspective of how that word has evolved into an empowering part of the gay lexicon. I talk a lot about that in the episode — it is just such a contextual word. It's something that I would never call a woman I didn't know very well, basically any woman I know. But any of my gay friends are forever bitches in my heart and mind. Because it's not even just like a name anymore. In the gay community, it's like a verb, it's a noun, it's an adjective, it's an adverb. It is slowly seeped in to becoming this all-encompassing sort of use-it-in-any-situation word.
Absolutely. I think it's one of the things I find most valuable about the show, is that it would be a very different show if it didn't have the voice of the LGBTQ community in it, because there's important nuance there.
BOOSTER: For sure. Absolutely. There's a lot of talk in the show about how some of these words were given meaning that we've disregarded. If there wasn't the nuance that the show has, I think there could be a sort of neologistic idea behind the show, but it's not. I think it's all very rooted in context, and we all have an understanding that these words have meaning because of the semiotics of it, because of the meaning behind what the crudest speaker is, and what the speaker means when they say it. These aren't just words in a vacuum.
That was really important for [the producers], to have a lot of different kinds of people speaking to these words, because they mean such different things. Bitch means something completely different to me than it does to you. And I think it's really important to explore that and be uncomfortable with that, too.
So you've watched the whole season — were you surprised by any of the edits they made, any of the things they chose to keep from your sections versus leave on the cutting room floor?
BOOSTER: No. For one, I think this kind of project is definitely something where I felt very comfortable and safe going in there, and just shooting my mouth off at random, and saying whatever was on my mind. The producers were really great about making everyone feel pretty comfortable, I think, because even though all of these words are a huge part of our vocabulary, I think for all of the comedians, I feel comfortable saying that about all of us, it is still one of those things where you really sit down and you think about the usage of these words.
When you think about how taboo all of it is, and it could be really nerve-wracking. So I honestly feel like I blacked out for the most part and pretty happy with what they used. Some of it I didn't remember saying, and was grateful to be reminded of it.
Talking about swearing in comedy — if you'd been doing stand-up in the 1950s, I'm sure it'd be very different for you for a number of reasons. But leaving aside those issues, if you had to work clean, the way that they really used to work back then, how do you feel like you would have handled it?
BOOSTER: I don't think I would be a comedian if I had to work clean, if that were a requirement, honestly. It is a constant struggle for me. I can replace the word, but I think it's the subject matter in general. My entire act, I think, is in part a reaction to puritanical values in general. I grew up in an extremely sheltered house and an extremely evangelical legalistic... "These are the things you cannot say. These are the things you can not talk about."
It's less even about the words you can't say than it is about the things you can't talk about. It's not that I don't find other topics interesting, but for me, the thing that gets me fired up and the thing that really fascinates me comedically is the stuff that I grew up not being allowed to talk about, and the stuff that nobody to this day likes to talk about. At least in mixed polite society, or the stuff that they think that kids shouldn't be learning about, and all of that. So I honestly don't think that I would have a career if I had to work clean constantly.
I feel like this is a question you're going to probably get a lot while doing press for this show, but what is your favorite swear word?
BOOSTER: Yeah, it's definitely fuck. I think it's the most versatile word. It's definitely the one with the most cultural currency in terms of it still feels a little taboo. It's still the one that's the most censored and it feels like it has the most impact still when you use it. There's still a lot of power behind that word for whatever reason, and it also happens to describe my favorite thing, which is sex.
When you first started working on the show, did you know that Nicolas Cage would be hosting?
BOOSTER: I think when I came on, they said that they were in talks with Nicolas Cage, and I thought that that was the perfect sort of... He was the perfect avatar for a show, like that sort of intensity. But I did not know that until basically until the show came out or was announced, that they had actually Nicolas Cage, which is incredible. What a legend.
Yeah. He's so committed to it on a level I had not anticipated.
BOOSTER: Yeah, that's the thing. He never half-acts in anything he's in. It doesn't matter what the material is, Nicolas Cage brings 100 percent to the table every single time. He brings it to you every single ball.
He is truly a role model for all of us.
BOOSTER: Exactly.
So before I let you go, I do want to ask, because I think especially back in the Best Week Ever days, doing a show like this would just be kind of one thing that kept a working comedian busy and fed. So right now, what is your career looking like? What are you able to get done right now, and what are you excited about?
BOOSTER: Oh, it's a lot of voiceover work. Animation is still going forward the same way. Unfortunately, this show has almost a retro feel to it, because talking head shows aren't as common as they were back in the heyday of Best Week Ever and I Love the '80s — in part because I think Twitter has replaced shows like them. You have access to talking about issues like this all the time. And so it was really nice of Netflix to bring us together in this sort of very concentrated way.
But yeah, it's just a lot of voiceover work. I'm still shooting sets for stand-up. I shot a movie recently. I was on a television set a couple of weeks ago. It's like a whole new world of comedy. The thing I miss most is performing live, and that's the one thing that cannot be replaced via the internet or Zoom, but I'm still showing up to these Zoom shows, and still trying to do and trying to replicate all of that immediacy of stand-up comedy online. But it is with varying results.
Okay. Something you may or may not have an answer to, but I was a huge fan of Season 1 of The Other Two. Have you heard anything about where that show stands right now?
BOOSTER: No. I don't know. I did not work on Season 2 and I'm still a huge fan of the show and everyone who worked on it. And so I'm just as anxious as everyone else to see that second season.
Great. You also got to work on the latest season of Big Mouth?
BOOSTER: Yeah. I've been a consulting producer for the last few seasons on that show, and it's a real blessing to be able to be like a small part of that show. It's one of my favorite things to consume and it is my favorite thing to work on. So I feel really lucky to be even just a small part of that show.
For those who might not be aware of what exactly it means to be a consulting producer, can you explain what your role has been?
BOOSTER: Yeah. I'm in the writers' room. It's just that I'm not in the writer's room every day. I'll go in once or twice a week, depending on what they need that week. I'm mostly there at the beginning of the season to generate story ideas. And then at the end of the series to be a joke machine and sort of pitch on jokes and punch ups, and things like that. But yeah, I'm basically just a part-time writer for the show.
Are there specific characters or specific story beats that you know they're going to bring you in for specifically?
BOOSTER: One of the reasons I love the Big Mouth room so much is that they do such a great job of populating that room with a diverse amount of voices. It's along racial lines, gender, sexuality, and age, everything. The reason I think that they have as many consulting producers as they do is so that they can get a mix of as many voices as possible. And so, there are definitely stories that I gravitate towards — like, Andrew is a big one. As a gay person, we talk a lot about how my experience as a kid going through puberty differed from my straight peers.
But there's a lot of universality to it as well. I think that's the one thing that I've learned from working on the show the most, is I assumed going in in my first year that like, "Oh, I'd be there to pitch on the gay stories." But there's so much that we all have in common about like the hell of puberty, that it's amazing how much I'm pitching on Jesse's stories and mixed stories, and all of these other characters that I didn't necessarily think I have on paper as much in common with. But it turns out that puberty is the great equalizer.
Oh for sure. I hate to ask, but I saw a note that you were working on a show for Quibi in an old interview a little bit ago. And I was curious if you had any Quibi thoughts to share?
BOOSTER: I don't know if I have much to add to the Quibi discourse. I am grateful that they took a chance on a gay show when not a lot of networks are taking a chance on queer work right now. It's really hard to get a gay show made. And so I was really grateful to them for taking a chance and fingers crossed, stay tuned. I don't think that it's completely dead quite yet, not my project. Quibi is dead. Dead, dead, dead, but my project we will... There'll be some more news about in the coming weeks.
That's right. Yeah, I think the best/worst thing about what happened with Quibi is the fact that everyone's getting their rights back eventually. And so there could be a lot of really interesting comedy coming in the next year or two as a result.
BOOSTER: Yeah, that's the thing. Say what you want about Quibi, but they took a chance on us. They had really good takes. They were taking chances on a lot of people who were basically unknown entities outside of comedy nerd spaces. So you got to give it up to them for that.
History of Swear Words is streaming now on Netflix.
January 05, 2021 at 11:00PM
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Joel Kim Booster on History of Swear Words, Big Mouth - Collider
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