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Next Tuesday (26 April) Universal Channel premieres Fairly Legal, at 20h00.  The series debuted in the US in January this year and centres round Kate Read, played by Sarah Shahi (of The L-Word and Life):

Her right hand man on the job: Leo Prince, played by 31-year old comedian and actor Baron Vaughn ...


Baron's been in South Africa so I caught up with him for a chatter, to find out more about him:

Man-handles

Tashi: What's your take on dude assistants?
Baron: Well, a lot of males need assistance. It's fine, you know, it depends on who it's for ... most of the assistants I know have been female now that I think of it.

Tashi: Ja, that's what struck me about Leo.
Baron: Obviously it's a little different from a female assistant, especially because there's always - and you can disagree with me - but when a male has a female assistant there always seems to be some sort of sexual tension there. When a female has a male assistant it doesn't seem as much.

Tashi: It got me thinking, you don't often see male secretaries and there's also the whole thing of "male nurses". What do you think of them?
Baron: Well, you know, that's just sexism, come on, men are doing for it themselves.

Tashi: If you went to hospital would you want a male nurse?
Baron: I wouldn't mind, if they know what they're doing. If the person knows what they're doing I don't care what sex they are.

If it's a female nurse and she's very attractive, but she walks in, sneezes into her hand, wipes it onto her armpit and presents it to me for a handshake, I'm not going to want that person as my nurse.

"I want to spend the night dude, but with no strings."

Tashi: What will it take for Kate and Justin to get back together?
Baron: The relationship between them is sort of a gender reversal also. They're still technically married, they're going through a seperation on their way to divorce. The way it plays out is that Kate is more the man and Justin is more the woman.

Kate likes it as it is, being able to call him late at night to go over and not say what it means and Justin is always like "What is this, what are we doing? Are we married? I can't do this." which is usually what women do and Kate's doing what the man does.


Tashi: You're not going to like this question  (I don't think comedians ever do) so I'm preparing you in advance. What's the funniest joke you've told in your life?
Baron: Well, stand-up is hard to make sense of out of context. There are jokes that, you know, comedians think things are funny in a different way to most people.

A book I read once said: what makes a comedian is knowing the difference between a sense of humour and a sense of funny. Like a sense of humour is knowing what makes you laugh and a sense of funny is knowing what makes other people laugh.

The whole journey of a comedian is to bridge the gap, like to communicate to someone who isn't me why something is funny to me.

Out of context it can be kind of hard to share a joke but a lot of times comedians laugh at the ideas instead of the execution.

Tashi: What idea do you find funny?
Baron: There was a joke I used to do and I used to love doing this joke which is: When I was a child I remember my father once said to me ... *silence*.

That's what he said. I've never met him.

Tashi: *silence*

Uh, hehe.

Baron: 25-years of silence. Some people laugh, some people don't but it gets a genuine response. It surprises people.

Baron on what Fairly Legal's really about:  "It's about finding out what it is you really want. It's a very Eastern thought of  'Get out of your own way.' I think it's the essence of the show, a lot of the time, what we think we want isn't actually what we want.

"The hardest thing is seeing who you actually are and what it is you actually want. Getting past our own projections of ourselves."

Guys who need a punch

Tashi: What else do you find funny?
Baron: I can be sarcastic, but I can be supportively sarcastic because I don't really mock people. At least not people who don't deserve it. I mock institutions more than I mock people.

If someone deserves being mocked I'll mock them and those are usually people who run institutions. Like a bank CEO in American who crashed the economy but still gets a bonus.

That person needs to be mocked - not that they'll do anything, they can't hear me 'cos there's so much money stuffed in their ears. Hundred dollar bills stuffed in their ears, that's how they sleep.

I'm interested in questioning why we think we need these institutions and the things in us that make us try to escape from them. The truth if you will.

If I can make someone see something that's common in a way that they haven't seen it before, then I feel as if I've done my job.

Ends

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