Sam Jay's Comedy of Compromise

With her new HBO late-night show, the stand-up is aiming to bring Americans together

- MANKAPRR CONTEH

ON AN OVERCAST Thursday evening in April, Sam Jay settles into a booth at New York’s storied Comedy Cellar. She’s wearing a sweatshirt featuring a photo of Kobe Bryant clutching the 2001 NBA Finals trophy, and her short hair is hidden under a fitted Lakers cap. It’s dim and the bar hasn’t opened yet, but Jay asks a worker for a reposado on the rocks anyway, and he obliges. In December 2017, shortly after moving to New York to write for Saturday Night Live, Jay “passed” here — meaning she successfully auditioned for the owners and started getting regular gigs at the venue where comics like Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock have performed. “Only passed comics could sit at the table,” Jay says, as she twists to motion to a table behind her. “If you were a comic who was just hanging out and you weren’t passed, it’s like unspoken code — you don’t sit at the table.”

The whole cool-kids-table thing doesn’t really seem like Jay’s style. In her act, she pokes fun at herself — frequently employing her perspective as a black, masculine-of-center lesbian who dated men until she was an adult — as often as she does others. And her Netflix special, 3 in the Morning, released last August, showed a willingness to provoke without being cruel.