It would not be in Oprah’s nature to pick an heir. But this is of no matter to Ziwe, the mononymous twenty-nine-year-old Nigerian-American performer who is in the midst of becoming our national inquirer’s unauthorized spawn. Everything that the pleasantness of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” made invisible—the theatrical artifice of the interview structure; the host’s interest in a gendered performance art; the flirtatious conflation of journalism and narcissism; the over-all raging camp of the daytime enterprise—is easy to see when watching the media that Ziwe produces.
I cannot say that “Baited with Ziwe,” an interview series that débuted on YouTube, in 2017, is enjoyable to watch, and that’s the point. On “Baited,” Ziwe subjects non-Black people to interviews about race that quickly become inquisitions. It is a fantasy comedy of entrapment…
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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 28, 2021