At a panel led by Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Paley Center for Media on Saturday afternoon, Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore used the opportunity to weigh in on comedy's role in providing a reprieve when tragedies like Friday's attacks in Paris strike.
Deadlinereports that toward the end of the panel, an audience member specifically asked Wilmore about what he felt was comedy's role after an event like the Paris attacks, adding, “How, at a time like this, do you begin to reconcile these events with comedy—and specifically a comedy TV show?”
Per Deadline, Wilmore responded:
“What we always try to do is find the humanity in the story,” Wilmore said. “And if we can pull up the humanity through the humor, that’s what we are going to do. By Monday it’s going to feel a little different from today. At times like this, I think people do need to laugh. And what I really appreciate about our show is that we also have discussion. We can have some laughs about it and then we can have a conversation.”
Neil Tyson preceded the discussion by saying that Wilmore and other Comedy Central folks in attendance were "reaching for the most awkward, challenging social issues and somehow empowering people to laugh, and that is not easy to do. These are topics people don’t want to touch."
