Laughing Matters

Thought Borat Was Daring? Wait Till You See Dangerous World of Comedy

Larry Charles on finding humor among Liberian warlords, Iraq war survivors, and American neo-Nazis in his new Netflix series.

By Nicole Sperling

March 1, 2019

Larry Charles, the 62-year-old director of such gonzo comedies as Borat, Brüno, and Bill Maher’s Religulous—as well as one of the key producers and writers of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm—is as well known for his scraggly gray beard as he is for his biting satire. But though he understands the global popularity of his best-known works—he’s seen bootlegged versions of his films sold on the streets of Jordan, and has had fans approach in Palestine to tell him that they are fans of Seinfeld’s eccentric neighbor, Kramer—he had never known such uniform praise before Netflix released his new four-part docuseries, Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy, in the middle of February.

“The significance of this show to people—when they talk to me about it, personally, on the street—has been very, very sweet, and unexpected to me,” he said during a recent interview at a coffee shop in Los Angeles. “I mean, Borat got bad reviews. Seinfeld was a slow build. I don’t know if I’ve had such a great response to anything I’ve ever done.”

Armed with a cameraman, a soundman, and two producers—a crew that could essentially fit into one van—Charles and company traversed the globe looking for people who use humor to combat their dire circumstances. While he had ambitions to head into Asia, Latin America, and Syria, he was constrained by budgets and security issues. (All travel had to be cleared by the State Dept.) So instead, he focused his efforts on the Middle East and Africa, touching down in a slew of war-torn countries looking for comedians.

The series shows Charles meeting a former warlord on the streets of Liberia: General Butt Naked, a nickname for Joshua Milton Blahyi, one of the most notorious commanders during the First Liberian Civil War. (He was known for leading his troops into battle nude.) Blahyi discusses his atrocious cannibalistic behaviors and penchant for human sacrifice with Charles before sharing that he’s a big fan of Bill Cosby’s Kids Say the Darndest Things. Talk about irony.

He tracks down Iraq’s Ahmed Albasheer, best known for his satirical talk show, the Albasheer Show, created in the vein of The Daily Show. In his quest to keep young people from joining ISIS, said Charles, Albasheer could either become the country’s next president or risk his life doing so. Charles also interviews former child soldiers in Liberia, who use comedy to help ease the trauma of seeing their parents murdered. He discusses rape jokes with the most famous comedians in Nigeria. And he talks to U.S. veterans as well, including Bobby Henline, a retired Army sergeant who turned to stand-up after nearly 40 percent of his body was burned when his Humvee hit an I.E.D. in Iraq.

In most cases, Charles was surprised by what he found during his quest. “I wasn’t really looking to have an emotional experience, and all of my expectations were shattered. Everywhere I went, I was expecting one thing, and I got something way more,” he said. “I saw no bitterness, no anger. And no anger towards America. I’m more angry than most of the people that I met.”

Charles did encounter some hate in the U.S. itself, via far-right trolls who use anti-humor to promote their views of white supremacy. One of them, notorious neo-Nazi Tim Gionet, who goes by Baked Alaska, said that he was excited to talk to Charles, since he found Borat, and the absurdist character’s anti-Semitic views, to be an inspiration. (He clearly didn’t get the movie.) I asked Charles—a Jew from New York himself, raised in Trump Village in Brooklyn, New York—if he had reservations about including figures like this in the episode.

“I didn’t,” he said. “Just like I didn’t have any reservations about talking to Buck Naked, to an ISIS person, to [terrorist group] al-Shabaab. I wanted to go into the heart of darkness with this, where humor is kind of oddly juxtaposed with horror and it comes in many forms.

“I don’t agree with pushing these people aside and marginalizing them,” Charles continued. “Let’s see what they have to say. Let’s understand it. I don’t want to give these people a platform to sell their hate, but I want people to actually hear what they think, and have people make a judgment for themselves.”

Charles began ruminating on the idea that would become this series in 2015. He was in Morocco for 11 months, shooting a movie starring Nicolas Cage called Army of One—produced by Condé Nast Entertainment, which shares a parent company with Vanity Fair—and he saw a burgeoning comedy scene coming up in the middle of the Muslim monarchy.

“I started thinking about all the international travel I’ve done with Sacha [Baron Cohen], and all the mayhem we created. But we get to leave, and we come home, and we get rewarded, and we get accolades. I thought, ‘What happens to these guys who stay? How do they survive?’”

That question coincided with Charles engaging in the most painful movie-making process of his career, one that resulted in him losing control of his film in “a long, horrible saga.” Eventually, he said, he was kicked out of the editing room as the film was recut with different music and a new ending, then sent straight to video. “It really just destroyed me,” he said. “I swore to myself that I was done with that.”

Rather than engaging in a big studio movie again, what Charles craved was control of a small, upstart crew that could nimbly traverse locations and capture footage in an authentic, vérité manner. “I loved making Borat. I loved making Religulous,” he said. “I’m a guerrilla army guy, not a big platoon person. Leading platoons like on Army of One or The Dictator, it’s too unwieldy. This way, it was very pure and very urgent, and I think you feel that urgency when you watch it.”

Charles has been buoyed by the anecdotal reception to his new show, though Dangerous World’s residence on Netflix means he has yet to see any hard viewership numbers. He would like to set out for a second season, hopefully reaching some of the countries he couldn’t hit the first time: Yemen, Venezuela, Syria. But he also has other ambitions: a Dangerous World of Comedy tour, perhaps, or longer stand-alone interviews with some of his most compelling subjects that Netflix could air in their entirety.

One thing is for sure: Charles wants more.

“I’m always looking to do challenging, provocative things,” he said. “I don’t really care about the medium. I don’t really care if it’s fiction or nonfiction. I’m looking, again, to have this pure, urgent filmmaking experience. I’m looking to present stories that nobody else really could. I’m trying to delve deeper into my niche.”