As a proud and longtime member of #bodegahive and resident of the Bronx, when I heard that Desus and Mero had a new show on Showtime, I was working all sorts of angles to work on their show.
This is my sister and I meeting them at a special fan thing back in 2017. (yes I’m totally that kind of fan) and I would like to note I was so sweaty and gross because I just worked a full day on a pilot that day before this.
So I was ecstatic when I heard back from the producers who said they needed a Prop Master for some off-set shoots they were doing (it is normally a live-studio audience talk show).
I don’t usually work in the Prop Department or even on-set with the shooting crew, but felt I could take on the responsibility for this short shoot. Also cause it meant I would be on-set with Desus and Mero themselves (!) it was a chance to be closer to the excitement than I usually am when working on sets before the shooting crew gets there. I’m happy to report I was able to reign in my hardcore fandom and do the job even though it was totally outside of my comfort zone.
Of the many sketches I worked on for that short shoot, the one I’m most proud to have been part of was the “Greenbook” parody that was prefectly timed for the fact that “Greenbook” won the Oscar for Best Picture this year. (eyeroll).
It was the full gauntlet of challenging facets of Prop work that we normally don’t deal with in set decorating: food, weapons, and cars! (If there were animals too I would have had the whole shebang). Plus the rhythm of work on-set is so different than usual off-set set decorating work (tougher in a lot of ways!) and I have so much respect for all the hardworking crew members who are on-set everyday.
When I was setting up this scene (which was cut) where they share an oversized sandwich together
The chance to work closely and creatively collaborate with some of my pop-culture heroes made it so worth it and I was really proud at the end of the long (and cold) shoot to be part of a parody sketch that encapsulates so much of how I felt about “Greenbook” myself.
You can watch the full sketch here:
Only footnote I have is, they filmed that clothing scene on re-shoots so I wasn’t part of it (that total flagrant disrespect for period details is killing me so I just had to make that note).
Also, one of the funniest things about this job was they created their production LLC to be called “Gimme Dat Money LLC” (haha so them to be funny even in the name of their LLC) so I legit have a paycheck from “Gimme Dat Money LLC” this year.
