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The Interview · In-Depth Interviews · October 2026
Marchese asked whether the post-George Floyd "woke 1.0" era was just a crazy moment or had anything redeeming about it. Rock says helping people is good, and that the trouble starts when the effort becomes an institution that has to justify itself.
…have a voice. It is great to advocate for anybody that feels marginalized. This is great. But the problem with wokeness is we're in the Old Testament right now. Okay. And the Old Testament has no forgiveness. The Old Testament didn't work. So they had to write a remix called the New Testament.
…era, was crazy. People say, you know, Woke 1.0 was crazy and like AOC distancing herself from that and other Democratic politicians doing the same thing. And I just wonder, do you see that moment in time as just. Like that was just a crazy moment in time, or was there anything redeeming about it?
I think I just answered it, you know. Again, it's great to help those that need help. That is an amazing, you know, we need more of that. The problem is, is when you institutionalize it, you know, that's the problem, you know. So my half a joke: the Salem witch hunts. I'm sure, you know, the first three witches they caught were actually fucking witches. But then you open up a witch office and now you got to start lying. Now you got to fucking make shit up because you got overhead.
You have to justify paying the witch hunters.
Yeah, you got to justify the witch hunters' fucking pensions and shit. So, yeah, man, it's all good. I'm glad. I'm glad that all of this stuff happened. It needed to happen. You know? And because it happened, maybe I've heard some voices that I probably wouldn't have heard otherwise.
Let me switch gears and ask a comedy question, if that's okay. Sure.