WYATT CENAC

Grenadian Making Waves

Wyatt Cenac is an American comedian, actor, producer, and writer. He was a correspondent and writer for The Daily Show from 2008 to 2012. He starred in the TBS series People of Earth and in Barry Jenkins’s first feature Medicine for Melancholy. He also hosted and produced the HBO series Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas.

Cenac who is 5’10, was born in New York on April 19, 1976 and spent his early years in the Bronx. His father, Wyatt Cenac Sr, was a cab driver born in Victoria Grenada on 1/12/48. In December 1980 when Cenac was only four, his father, his only link to Grenada was shot and killed in his cab by a teenage passenger in Harlem, New York. His body was flown back to Grenada for burial. Cenac then moved with his mother, a New York native, and a Trinidadian stepfather to Dallas, Texas in 1981. He spent his summers with his maternal grandmother in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in an apartment on President Street.

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Wyatt Cenac Sr was the son of Francis Cenac aka Uncle Kimby or Mr. Snag from Victoria St. Marks Grenada. His children are Richie Cenac, Rodney Wade, Lydon Cenac and Tonia Becton. His sons reside in the same village in Victoria, off Diamond street. Wyatt Sr was the half-brother of Hon. Albert Forsyth a government representative for the Gairy’s government. His cousin Bernard Coard was disgraced former deputy prime minister of Grenada who was imprisoned for 25 years following the American invasion on October 1983. Cenac’s paternal 3x-great-grandfather Cherebin Cenac was an officer from France who on a French battleship during the Napoleonic War settled in Soufrière, Saint Lucia. Cherebin’s youngest child, Francis Cenac (1830–1892), later emigrated to Grenada…

While in elementary school, Wyatt Cenac Jr became friends with comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan, who introduced him to comic books. He graduated from the Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallasand the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillbefore moving to Los Angeles.

Having previously worked for three years as a writer on King of the Hill, Cenac garnered public attention in The Doomed Planet comedy sketch in which he did an impression of then senator Barack Obama, discussing possible campaign posters.

In June 2008, Cenac was hired as a correspondent and writer on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. After making several comedic appearances along with other correspondents, Cenac filed his first field report on July 21, 2008; titled “Baruch Obama,” the report discussed Jewish voters’ opinions of Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. He continued to integrate satirical Black oriented material in his Daily Show segments, including “Rapper or Republican”until his final Daily Show appearance on December 13, 2012.

In October 2009, he worked with rapper Slim Thug on the music video “Still a Boss”, a parody of how the recession is affecting the rap community. Cenac co-starred in Medicine for Melancholy, an independent drama by Barry Jenkins released in 2008 that includes issues of African American identity and gentrification in San Francisco.

Cenac plays the voice of Lenny and Michael Johnson in the Nickelodeon animated series Fanboy & Chum Chum.

Cenac guest-starred on the MC Frontalot album Solved. Cenac’s first hour long comedy special, Comedy Person, premiered May 14, 2011, on Comedy Central.

In October 2014, Netflix released Cenac’s second comedy special, Wyatt Cenac: Brooklyn. This album was nominated at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album. In 2014, he guest-starred in an episode of the Netflix series BoJack Horseman. The following year, he appeared in a filmed segment with fellow comedians Rachel Feinstein and Alex Karpovsky on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

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Cenac has also co-hosted four episodes of The Bugle podcast with Andy Zaltzman since 2016.

He released his third stand up album “Furry Dumb Fighter” in 2016 both digitally and on vinyl. It was recorded in Madison, WI. Cenac reports that his album titled is meant to sound like “freedom fighter.”

Cenac’s film roles include parts in Sleepwalk with Me and Hits, as well as a lead role in 2016’s Jacqueline Argentine and 2017’s festival hit, Fits and Starts, a film nominated for multiple awards, including the feature film grand jury prize at the prestigious South by Southwest film festival. Cenac released a web-series titled “aka Wyatt Cenac” about his life as the Viceroy for a gentrifying Brooklyn. Cenac’s HBO docuseries, “Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas”, premiered in April 2018.

Cenac revealed that his departure from The Daily Show stemmed in part from a heated argument he had with Jon Stewart over a June 2011 Daily Show bit about Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain.

In his recounting, Wyatt said Mr. Stewart became defensive and frequently shouted expletives.

In the podcast, Mr. Cenac described events at “The Daily Show” in 2011, after Mr. Stewart did an on-air impression of Herman Cain, a black business executive who was seeking the 2012 Republican nomination for president.

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Mr. Cenac compared Mr. Stewart’s impersonation to the Kingfish, a racially stereotyped character from “The Amos ’n’ Andy Show,” and said it struck him as “a little weird.”

For days afterward, the Fox News Channel, a frequent target of “The Daily Show,” seized on Mr. Stewart’s imitation and criticized it as racist.

When Mr. Cenac later tried to discourage Mr. Stewart in a staff meeting from pursuing a further segment that would take up the Fox News criticism and catalog all the stereotypes he had exploited in his impressions of politicians, Mr. Cenac said the host “kept shutting me down.”

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“And then he got upset and he stood up,” Mr. Cenac said, adding that Mr. Stewart shouted expletives at him several times. The argument continued as Mr. Cenac followed Mr. Stewart into the host’s office and could be heard throughout the building.

Mr. Stewart later apologized to his staff, but Mr. Cenac, who was at the time the only black writer on “The Daily Show,” said he felt disrespected. Though Mr. Cenac remained with the program for one more year, he said he was alienated and miserable and “never felt comfortable” during the remainder of his time there.

“I represent my community and I represent my people,” he said in the podcast. “And I’ve got to be honest if something seems questionable.”

Wyatt is active on Social Media. On Twitter he has 50.6k followers, while 25.4 k people follow him on Instagram, and 28.5k people follow him on Facebook as of May 2019.

This Son of the Soil has earned a considerable amount of income from his profession as an actor, writer and comedian. His estimated net worth is around $400 thousand. All the work he has been involved in has helped him earn a decent amount of wealth and a lavish lifestyle.