Nothing Like the Real Thing

Since when does a comedy special also need to be a documentary?

- By Kathryn Vanarendonk

In her 2020 HBO comedy special, Momma, I Made It!, Yvonne Orji stands in front of an appreciative audience in Washington, D.C., telling jokes about her life. She is a confident, charismatic performer who can slip in and out of the characters she creates onstage so that she is with them, against them, laughing at them, illuminating them, all in the course of the same story. When Orji, who is Nigerian American, tells a joke about haggling at a Lagos market, she is three characters at once: the shopper pushing for the lowest price, the insulted seller, and Yvonne Orji the narrator, laughing at all of it.

Then the scene cuts, and now the camera is following Orji as she and a friend wander past market stalls in Lagos, looking at fabrics and negotiating the prices. “See?” this scene seems to say. “It’s just like she said!” This kind of footage returns throughout the special, woven in between scenes of Orji’s stand-up performance. Here’s a talking-head interview with her parents, teasing her material about parental expectations. Here’s a scene where she asks for directions, right after a riff on how Nigerians can’t give directions.