Daniel Baker And Joel Martinez Giving Late-Night Comedy New Life

With their free-flowing show, now running twice a week on showtime, the twitter-born duo are giving late-night comedy new life.

- Joe Berkowitz

Bronx Natives Daniel Baker (Desus Nice) and Joel MartineZ (The Kid Mero) met in high school. After honing their rapid-fire cultural commentary on Twitter, Baker, a former small-business columnist, and Martinez, a onetime public-school teacher, parlayed their viral popularity into a podcast on Complex before adding TV, first with an ill-fitting stint at MTV2 and then with a hit nightly show on Viceland. Now, the sons of Jamaican and Latino immigrants, respectively, are working with a writers’ room for the first time and translating their off-the-cuff humor for a broader audience with the seven-month-old Desus and Mero.

Desus and Mero doesn’t follow the same template as other late-night shows. For example, there is no opening monologue. What did you set out to give your audience instead?