In her first HBO comedy special, Yvonne Orji took viewers back to her native Nigeria for documentary segments that helped amplify her stand-up. This time around, Orji took a more sketchy route, starring in offstage vignettes lampooning her premises. Does her African idea of In Living Color make her a Fly Girl, or will it have you saying, Homey don’t play that?
YVONNE ORJI: A WHOLE ME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Since releasing her first HBO special in 2020, Yvonne Orji: Momma, I Made It!, the comedian and actress wrapped her work on Insecure and hosted a Yearly Departed comedy special on Prime Video.
But the pandemic also left Orji wondering what comes next, and how to value her worth independently from whatever work she has booked. How does she deal with professional losses? How does she get through personal breakups? She not only discusses how therapy has helped her, but also shows us in a series of filmed sketches. As for the title? Orji explains in a voiceover at the very beginning of the hour: “This is the new me, that was birthed in isolation, built on growth, refined through hurt, curated from introspection, and perfected by healing. The old me met the new me and became a whole me.”
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Orji told Decider that her stand-up portion of this special was influenced by this year’s Emmy-winning HBO special from Jerrod Carmichael, Rothaniel, while the vignettes are meant as her pitch for an African version of In Living Color.
Memorable Jokes: The sketches most likely get your attention in a more immediate way, as they’re sometimes jarring departures from the stand-up, although some of Orji’s declarations from the stage may stick with you well after you’ve finished watching the special.
Among the sketches: A parody of Shark Tank called “Tiger’s Nest,” in which Orji asks her parents for money so she can move out of the house and into her first apartment (which introduces a character named Shady Shola who pops up in subsequent scenes); a police interrogation where the officers accuse Orji of having high dating standards, because that in itself is “a jail sentence!”; and a therapy session that inspires Orji to imagine whether she’d date herself, complete with imagined speed-dating visits with herself at age 15, 22, 31 and into the future.
Our Take: The sketches are all well and good and all, but it’s in embracing therapy and sharing her findings with the audience where Orji lands maximum impact.
When she describes the difference between the expectations White parents have versus Nigerian parents via the phrase “let’s just see” vs. “you better be,” there’s a noticeable moment of recognition in the audience. Moments like those become even more profound when Orji starts in on the idea of separating her work from her worth, and then releasing herself from a “hustle and grind culture,” replacing it with ease and flow. You can hear the groans released audibly from the crowd, prompting Orji to reply: “I swear, this is the First Baptist Church of downtown L.A.!”
She reveals that her first hour-long set ever as a stand-up came years ago by mistake, while visiting Atlanta and asking her agents and manager to find her a gig anywhere. When they booked her that first headlining spot, Orji only wanted and thought she had 15-20 minutes to work on, and felt, well, insecure about doing an hour. Her reps response? “Either way, we’re gonna learn something!”
Several years and high-profile gigs later, Orji might not be struggling with paying the bills or filling an hour onstage, but she’s now focused on making sure her offstage life feels as secure as her onstage one. That means cutting ties with people she thought were friends or potential life partners but who didn’t make her feel safe or loved, or even cutting ties with therapists who were laughing too hard at her jokes.Because she doesn’t need anyone else to make her feel whole any longer.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Aside from the imagined therapy sessions, I found the vignettes more of a distraction from the stand-up this time than her first special’s documentary elements, but your comedic mileage may vary. Orji’s monologues, on the other hand, could turn into dialogues that anyone would benefit from listening to thinking about, and laughing along the way.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
