Nick Kroll on “History of the World, Part II”

I can tell by your wide-eyed stares and slack and jaws that you've never been taught by a caveman before, so let's go through the basics, shall we? Do I hunt and kill my own food? No. I shop in an organic grocery store and pay too much for heirloom tomatoes. That's actor and comedian Nick Kroll in the short-lived TV series Caveman. Now Kroll is tackling a new role with ancient roots and a truly legendary pedigree. He's teaming up with Mel Brooks on History of the World, Part 2. Nick Kroll is in conversation with Ben Mankiewicz. Where are you guys at with Trump? Honestly, are you guys here? Because here's the thing, there's just like something fishy about that guy.

Nick Kroll working on another recipe for jokes in the comedy kitchen. I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to vote for him again. After a wildly successful stand-up special last fall. I'm just never going to be the guy who rides a motorcycle. If I were, I'd be the guy at the back of the pack who's like, oh no, I'm going to miss the light. We found Kroll back on stage at Largo, on the L.A.

's hippest nightclubs, trying out new, yet still unrefined material. I am so excited for tonight's show. We have an insane lineup. You guys, Kanye West is here tonight. Were there a couple of things that you know basically worked that will probably likely show up in the next special, whenever that is? Yeah, or yes, or at least be the base of operations that will be tent pulls that I'm like, okay, that joke works well enough to put here. 44 years old. Life is drunk.

She's babbling nonsense. Kroll has had an enviable last decade in show business. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear our case. Producing, writing and acting. Reservation, Larry David. I requested a table by the window. Those were all jobs, good ones too, but his vocation hasn't changed.

I'm sorry, but we cannot honor that request. He's a comedian. Shall we? It's like whenever you tell something like, I'm a comedian, before you're well known, or when people are like, I'm dating a comedian, or I'm a comedian, they're like, oh, how's it going? Right, yeah. You know, like, it's actually going pretty well. He forged his identity early, growing up just outside New York City, the youngest of four. My impression of your family, they wouldn't be surprised at your career path. No, I think they were, so I was always like performing for them.

Like I remember being with my family and just reciting Andrew Dice Clay jokes to them when I was like 11. When do you come out to LA, 2006? 2007. I live in the Oak Woods with a bunch of child stars, not child stars, children aspiring to be stars. Like they had a little deli, and there's all these like 150 headshots of brooding seven-year-olds. Just kind of like, I live there. I went on like, I don't know, 30 auditions for pilots, and the final one I went on was for this show called Cavemen. It's so easy to use, Geico.

com, a caveman could do it. Inspired by the popular Geico commercials, not cool, the ABC sitcom Cavemen failed to evolve. Oh, hi. A copy of Nodona, please. He wants a americano and a benign. Cancel after just seven episodes. Beloved commercials, a despised show.

It has moments. It's not bad. No, it's not bad at all. No, it's funny. I mean, I'm like, I still stand by, I'm like, that's as funny as any other show. Nothing would be shamed on that at all, right. So it didn't feel like failure to you.

It didn't, well, it didn't feel like personal failure. It felt like I'm participating in a failure. Yeah, right. Which is. It's different. It's different. Kroll is philosophical about failure.

My dear friend Maya Angelou said, if you don't pick up the compliments, then you don't have to pick up the criticisms. So it's like, how much do you let in, if you don't let in all the good stuff, if you just don't let other people's opinions sway you too much. Is there enough room for some mayonnaise in this lady's sandwich? Oh, Leslie, this is brand new. Free shot. I'm not even touching the Fusenstraften. With a steady diet of supporting roles on TV. Whoa! Along the way, he found a strength, writing and playing outlandish characters from a crass lawyer playing fantasy football with his friends in the league.

Darren Sproles. Darren Sproles. Good pick. Darren Sproles, no, no, no, no, that's who I was going to pick. Who cares? He picked Darren Sproles. He could have picked Bill Shatner. He doesn't know what the difference is.

I think of myself as like a very cool, very white Jay-Z. To a tacky, overconfident entrepreneur. Okay, I'm Bobby Bottleservice, aka Bobby Bottleservice. Bobby Bottleservice eventually became a fixture on Kroll's self-titled sketch comedy show. In a related notice, excuse me, are you 9-11? No. Because I could never forget you. I'm going home.

You guys are repulsive. Kroll's show ran for three seasons on Comedy Central. It was easier to be a character. It's like you could put on silly sunglasses and a funny, you know, shirt and silly pants and become someone else. So breakfast will do something cool, like have a cigarette and like a bar of chocolate. So that if someone didn't like it, it wasn't like they didn't like Nick Kroll. And it gave me a freedom and confidence to say things and do things that were harder for me to do as myself.

Oh, hello. These days, Kroll is putting the final touches on his latest sketch comedy show for Hulu. History of the World Part 2, a limited series sequel to the 1981 Mel Brooks comedy. It's the same sketch style with an updated cast, including Wanda Sykes and Ike Barronholz. Who is this? It's your mama. If you're my mother, what is your last name? Mel. It's my mother.

That confirms it. For Kroll, it's a chance not only to collaborate with his friends and peers, but to work with his comedy hero. Mel Brooks. How important was Mel Brooks to young Nick Kroll? It's Mel Brooks and Saturday Night Live, but Mel Brooks' movies, to me, we owned, you know, we owned History of the World on VHS. We owned Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles and the Producers. I watched the Producers basically every day as I became a teenager for like three or four years. There's a school of thought in Hollywood these days that Brooks' brand of comedy isn't 20-23 friendly.

Hey, where are the white women at? That movies like Blazing Saddles couldn't be made today in an era when comedians like Kroll have to watch what they say. But I don't think it's limiting. I just think it's like anything else, there's just challenges that have to be figured out and the ones who are the best figure out how to continue to shock and surprise and also be mindful of the time and place that we live. Some call me Jesus Christ, son of God. Some call him broken corny. That woman is enchanting. However we can figure out how to keep that connection with an audience where you're surprising them in the laughter is the ultimate goal.

If this was on Netflix, I would cancel my subscription. The journey is figuring out how to do that.

CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, nick kroll, history of the world, ben mankiewicz