Jerrod Carmichael’s ‘Reality Show’ Is Extraordinary

In 2024, Jerrod Carmichael is perhaps as well known for his confessions as for his comedy. The writer, director, actor, and stand-up—or, more accurately, sit-down—comedian has reinvented his career in recent years from casually boundary-pushing comic and sitcom star to the award-winning star of one of the most talked-about comedy specials in recent years. 2022’s Rothaniel won widespread acclaim for Carmichael’s astounding vulnerability, as he wrestled with the nature of secrets before revealing one of his own: that he’s gay, much to his family’s dismay. (He also admitted that his first name is actually Rothaniel, the special’s namesake.) Since then, his star has exploded, taking his career into new, highly visible directions; he’s hosted the Golden Globes, guest-hosted Saturday Night Live, and even appeared in the Oscar-winning Poor Things, for good measure.

But with increased visibility and self-reckoning came an increased dependence on the camera for self-expression, as Carmichael himself explores in HBO’s Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show, premiering March 29. The half-hour series—which errs more toward documentary than pure reality show—captures the comedian’s effort to poke veins adjacent to the one he burst open in Rothaniel. But Carmichael’s intimacy here is more playful, building a narrative over the course of its eight episodes that requires both performativity and painful honesty. While Reality Show is not quite as revelatory as his career-defining special, it’s a fascinating, affecting, and valuable experiment in how honest one can really be when you’re writing, directing, and filming your own life.

Carmichael—who, prior to Rothaniel, was best known for his revelatory NBC sitcom The Carmichael Show and his conversational, casually provocative stand-up—had an atypical coming out process: He publicly declared that he's gay in a stand-up special on a major network. Armed with a new feeling of liberation, Carmichael has captured a larger audience’s imagination by allowing us to watch him reinvent himself as an out gay performer in real time.

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