Byer is now making ready for what may very well be one of the pivotal moments in her profession.
She is nominated for three Emmy Awards this yr. Byer is the primary Black lady to be nominated for an impressive Host for a Reality or Competition Program for her work on Netflix’s “Nailed It!,” an beginner baking competitors the place failure to execute the design of a famend pastry chef is the norm. She can be nominated for Outstanding Reality or Competition Program as an govt producer for the present, and is nominated for an Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special Emmy for her Netflix stand-up particular “Big Beautiful Weirdo.”
“Give me an Emmy, please,” she captioned a publish of clips on Instagram after studying of the nominations. (She additionally was nominated for two Emmys final yr.)
Byer, 35, used to call herself “the Bob Saget of this generation.” Her picture on Netflix’s healthful “Nailed It!” has received her an enthusiastic younger fan base — a few of whom scream the catch phrase once they spot her in public. But her comedy routines could be brash forays into her sexual exploits and observations on race, together with her sudden purpose for having fun with intercourse with White males.
She is the Nicole Byer of her technology — a dreamer raised in White suburbia, a daughter of a Barbadian immigrant and a Jim Crow South migrant, and an entertainer who plots her success with the shrewdness of the enterprise govt her mom and grandmother would’ve most popular her to be.
Along the best way, Byer says, she’s labored to free herself from the expectations of what a Black lady ought to look and sound like. Trying to pretzel herself into the mould others anticipated is unsettling, she stated in a 2019 interview with NPR, and akin to a type of Blackface.
“It’s hurtful when you realize — Oh, Hollywood understands one type of Black,” she informed NPR. “Like, Emma Stone, Emma Roberts — all these girls get to exist, and they don’t have to be one thing. They can be anything they want. And we have to be just one thing.”
Byer grew up in a predominantly White neighborhood in Middletown Township, N.J. She credit her mom, Lillie Byer, a Mississippi native, with noticing her comedic skills and steering her towards theater. That is the place she found the ability of with the ability to make folks giggle.
Despite encouraging her theatrical pursuits, Byer says, her mom wished her to pursue a extra conventional path after highschool. After her mom’s demise when Byer was 16, she determined to maneuver to New York City to check appearing. “I would not have been able to go if she had not died,” Byer stated.
She survived in Manhattan working odd jobs, consuming low cost pizza and smoking marijuana with mates. She aspired to be an actor like Viola Davis or one with sufficient vary to star in “A Raisin in the Sun” or “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” as she was studying her craft.
After her father died of a coronary heart assault when she was 21, Byer stated she was wanting for a option to course of her grief when she stumbled upon improv and started to seek out her footing. She joined the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre improv faculty and started performing.
Sometimes the humor onstage wasn’t resonating along with her. Byer and her greatest pal, Sasheer Zamata, didn’t all the time perceive the cultural references of the majority-White improv troupes. The confusion was typically mutual.
“We would get on [stage] and reference things like Black church and R&B,” which would go away some viewers members bewildered, Zamata stated.
After being repeatedly mistaken for one another, Byer and Zamata started performing throughout New York City with one other Black feminine comic, Keisha Zollar, as an improv group referred to as Doppelganger.
Byer landed an MTV present, “Girl Code,” the place she, different comedians and actresses would supply humorous takes on the unwritten guidelines of feminine habits and discover grooming rituals similar to waxing.
That was adopted by provides to carry out stand-up comedy at faculties and universities. Byer was initially reluctant to take these jobs as a result of stand-up was so unfamiliar to her, she stated, however her supervisor persuaded her to take an opportunity — and the cash.
Her supervisor informed her that her lack of expertise about stand-up comedy and hesitation to attempt it had been “ ‘like leaving money on the table,’ ” she stated. “My dad would be so angry.”
Byer stated she would “crush” her school exhibits in the course of the week, then “bomb” at her Los Angeles comedy membership exhibits on the weekend.
MTV gave her the prospect to provide a scripted present. “Loosely Exactly Nicole” captured her life as a 20-something, unconventional-looking actress attempting to land roles in Hollywood whereas determining maturity. In one episode, Byer re-created an audition throughout which a White casting director informed her to sound and act “Blacker” for the position, an expertise Byer has carried along with her since her early days in leisure.
“We’re not like a monolith. I sound Black because I am Black,” she stated. “I think when people say, ‘Be Blacker, be sassier’ … I don’t know, I just want to do me.”
Byer’s present was praised for having a various forged in a sequence that didn’t focus solely on the identities of the characters. It was panned for its lack of ability to transcend crude jokes and racial tropes for laughs.
MTV canceled the present after one season in 2016. Facebook Watch picked it up for a second season and didn’t renew it for a 3rd.
“I’m really proud I did a big comedy about a fat Black girl,” she stated. “I learned how to be on set. I learned how to be in a writer’s room.”
Criticism about her Blackness now not bothers her, Byer stated.
When comic Faizon Love trashed her as an “unfunny Black woman” in an Instagram post final yr, Byer thanked him for sending folks to observe her now-Emmy-nominated Netflix stand-up particular. “He doesn’t have a Netflix special for me to watch,” she stated casually, including that many individuals did agree with him.
Instead, Byer says, she’s targeted on constructing an empire. Conan O’Brien’s firm, Team Coco, is now the manufacturing residence for her courting podcast, “Why Won’t You Date Me?” She performs Nicky Coles, an actual property agent, on “Grand Crew” — an NBC comedy sequence with an all-Black forged depicting the on a regular basis lifetime of upper-middle-class folks with out Black tragedy being at its core. Byer additionally stars within the recently released film “Mack & Rita,” alongside Diane Keaton and Loretta Devine.
Byer may not have the enterprise diploma her dad and mom would have appreciated, however she’s mastered the artwork of being herself.
“My parents would be really proud that I figured it out,” she stated. “It would’ve been nice if they were around to help and give wisdom or support. But my mom would be really proud of me. She would say: ‘These jokes may not be for me, but they’re for somebody.’ ”