What is Larry Wilmore's secret to success? He says look for the signs

When Larry Wilmore was growing up he was, by his own definition, "A TV kid" — so much so that he had the TV Guide memorized.

"I knew every show that was on and every time and every channel," he says in an interview with q host Tom Power. "I just knew everything about it."

He loved comedy and loved making people laugh, but he never imagined it was possible to make a career out of it — until a high school friend broke into the TV business as a writer.

WATCH | Larry Wilmore's full interview with q host Tom Power:

"That opened my eyes that it could be a possibility, because somebody I knew had actually done it," he says.

While in college Wilmore met Forest Whitaker, who later landed a spot in Cameron Crowe's legendary party film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. A few years later he appeared in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money and Oliver Stone's Platoon, and one year later, in Good Morning, Vietnam.

"When Forest got his big break, I thought, 'Oh, man, this can actually happen to people, you know?' And that gave me some confidence to actually go into it," he says.

"It's easy looking back, and people go, 'Oh, yeah, you did this and that.' But when you're starting, you don't know what's going to happen. You have no idea if it can even work, or if you're fooling yourself."

'Look for an indicator'

Wilmore wasn't fooling himself. Since those early days he's produced and acted in The Office, been a regular on The Daily Show, hosted The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and created the hit sitcom The Bernie Mac Show.

He was an executive producer on Black-ish and co-creator of the series Insecure. And in 2016, he was the headliner at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner as President Barack Obama neared the end of his second term.

Now he has returned to hosting with a new current affairs-themed comedy show called Wilmore, which is streaming on Peacock.

Wilmore says the key to his success has been looking for "indicators" that he's headed in the right, or wrong, direction.

"What indicators are is no matter what you're doing, there's something that's telling you, 'Looks like you're doing the right thing.' And they can be small, or they can be big," he says.

"But each time you're doing something, look for an indicator that's giving you feedback — and the indicator has to be objective, too. It can't just be a friend or family."

For example, on the first show he worked on, Wilmore got a good review in an industry forum; after one of his first auditions, he got a TV part.

"I thought OK, these are indicators, and I kept looking for that each time. And if I wasn't getting that, if there were walls, then I thought, 'Alright, listen to it. Be passionate about it and be dedicated, but also be realistic,'" explains Wilmore, who would give himself a period of time, and if the universe seemed to be saying he was on the wrong track, he listened.

"But it kept saying, 'Yeah, you're doing the right thing,' so I kept going."

He says the indicators can be small, but they can give you confidence that you're doing the right thing.

"It's just paying attention. And being realistic and honest with yourself is the other thing, because being honest with yourself tells you that maybe you have to work harder at it, that you may have the potential but you're not working hard enough," he says. "And that's paying attention to that objective reality."

So what happens when Wilmore sees an indicator that says he's not headed in the right direction? He says that earlier in his career, he was doing well at stand-up comedy, but wasn't getting acting gigs, that "there was kind of a wall there."

"I wasn't breaking through and I realized that I wasn't the type that Hollywood was really looking for," he says.

"And I thought, 'If I'm going to make it, I'm going to have to take control of this.' So that was a negative indicator that said, 'This isn't working for you to just be a performer.'

"That's when I decided to be a writer and producer. I thought, 'If I carve out my own path, I can have control over that, and I can define who I am, and then Hollywood will come. And that's exactly what happened."

'How come there's no Black Seinfeld?'

One of Wilmore's biggest passions has also been to shift the face of television, and to make sure that shows centred around Black characters can be both smart and funny. He remembers working on The Bernie Mac Show and having a conversation with a Black writer.

"She said, 'Larry, how come there's no Black Seinfeld?' — meaning a Black shows that's considered quality and funny. There were just funny, but they weren't nominated for Emmys," says Wilmore.

"And I said, Janine, it's because you haven't written it yet.' And then I was like, 'Wait a second, I haven't written it yet either.'

"And I wanted to really make it my passion to have us regarded in both lights, that we could be accepted on this entertainment level, but also respected."

Wilmore has been in the business long enough to see the acceptance of Black characters and writers wax and wane, but this time, he says, the shift seems more irreversible.

Willmore says "it's not even just a black/white thing" — last year he did a pilot with a Chinese-American writer about her family, and he's currently working with an Indigenous writer — but rather he's always been committed to working with people from a range of perspectives.

"I think people hearing from different voices just makes television better — and it makes it harder to go back to that monolith that we had before. It's going to be almost impossible, because the audience is going to be too discerning. They're not going to want that."

By Jennifer Van Evra. Interview produced by Matt Amha.