<\/p>\n
By Lateshia Beachum<\/strong><\/p>\n Nicole Byer had finished working out with her personal trainer and calmed her dog, Clyde, who was \u201cyelling at a ghost\u201d, when she started to contemplate her hectic schedule.<\/p>\n She is juggling four podcasts, getting ready for a table read for another production and working on testing new stand-up material.<\/p>\n Byer is now preparing for what could be one of the most pivotal moments in her career.<\/p>\n She is nominated for three Emmy Awards this year. Byer is the first black woman to be nominated for an outstanding host for a reality or competition programme for her work on Netflix\u2019s \u201cNailed It!\u201d, an amateur baking competition where failure to execute the design of a renowned pastry chef is the norm. <\/p>\n She is also nominated for outstanding reality or competition programme as an executive producer for the show, and is nominated for an outstanding writing for a variety special Emmy for her Netflix stand-up special \u201cBig Beautiful Weirdo\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cGive me an Emmy, please,\u201d she captioned a post of clips on Instagram after learning of the nominations. (She also was nominated for two Emmys last year.)<\/p>\n Byer, 35, used to call herself \u201cthe Bob Saget of this generation\u201d. Her image on Netflix\u2019s wholesome \u201cNailed It!\u201d has won her an enthusiastic young fan base \u2013 some of whom scream the catch phrase when they spot her in public. <\/p>\n But her comedy routines can be brash forays into her sexual exploits and observations on race, including her unexpected reason for enjoying sex with white men.<\/p>\n She is the Nicole Byer of her generation \u2013 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 business executive her mother and grandmother would\u2019ve preferred her to be.<\/p>\n Along the way, Byer says, she\u2019s worked to free herself from the expectations of what a black woman should look and sound like. Trying to pretzel herself into the mould others expected is unsettling, she said in a 2019 interview with NPR, and akin to a form of blackface.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hurtful when you realise \u2013 oh, Hollywood understands one type of black,\u201d she told NPR. <\/p>\n \u201cLike, Emma Stone, Emma Roberts \u2013 all these girls get to exist, and they don\u2019t have to be one thing. They can be anything they want. And we have to be just one thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Byer grew up in a predominantly white neighbourhood in Middletown Township, New Jersey. She credits her mother, Lillie Byer, a Mississippi native, with noticing her comedic talents and steering her toward theatre. That is where she discovered the power of being able to make people laugh.<\/p>\n Despite encouraging her theatrical interests, Byer says, her mother wanted her to pursue a more traditional path after high school. After her mother\u2019s death when Byer was 16, she decided to move to New York City to study acting. \u201cI would not have been able to go if she had not died,\u201d Byer said.<\/p>\n She survived in Manhattan working odd jobs, eating cheap pizza and smoking marijuana with friends. She aspired to be an actor like Viola Davis or one with enough range to star in \u201cA Raisin in the Sun\u201d or \u201cWho\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?\u201d as she was learning her craft.<\/p>\n After her father died of a heart attack when she was 21, Byer said she was looking for a way to process her grief when she stumbled upon improv and began to find her footing. She joined the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre improv school and began performing.<\/p>\n Sometimes the humour onstage wasn\u2019t resonating with her. Byer and her best friend, Sasheer Zamata, didn\u2019t always understand the cultural references of the majority-white improv troupes. The confusion was often mutual.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would get on (stage) and reference things like black church and R&B,\u201d which would leave some audience members bewildered, Zamata said.<\/p>\n After being repeatedly mistaken for each other, Byer and Zamata began performing across New York City with another black female comedian, Keisha Zollar, as an improv group called Doppelganger.<\/p>\n Byer landed an MTV show, \u201cGirl Code,\u201d where she, other comedians and actresses would offer funny takes on the unwritten rules of female behaviour and explore grooming rituals such as waxing.<\/p>\n That was followed by offers to perform stand-up comedy at colleges and universities. Byer was initially reluctant to take those jobs because stand-up was so unfamiliar to her, she said, but her manager persuaded her to take a chance \u2013 and the money.<\/p>\n Her manager told her that her lack of knowledge about stand-up comedy and hesitation to try it were \u201clike leaving money on the table,\u201d she said. \u201cMy dad would be so angry.\u201d<\/p>\n Byer said she would \u201ccrush\u201d her college shows during the week, then \u201cbomb\u201d at her Los Angeles comedy club shows on the weekend.<\/p>\n MTV gave her the chance to produce a scripted show. \u201cLoosely exactly Nicole\u201d captured her life as a 20-something, unconventional-looking actress trying to land roles in Hollywood while figuring out adulthood. <\/p>\n In one episode, Byer re-created an audition during which a white casting director told her to sound and act \u201cblacker\u201d for the role, an experience Byer has carried with her since her early days in entertainment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not like a monolith. I sound black because I am black,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n \u201cI think when people say, \u2018Be blacker, be sassier\u2019 \u2026 I don\u2019t know, I just want to do me.\u201d<\/p>\n Byer\u2019s show was praised for having a diverse cast in a series that didn\u2019t focus solely on the identities of the characters. It was panned for its inability to go beyond crude jokes and racial tropes for laughs.<\/p>\n MTV cancelled the show after one season in 2016. Facebook Watch picked it up for a second season and did not renew it for a third.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really proud I did a big comedy about a fat black girl,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n \u201cI learned how to be on set. I learned how to be in a writer\u2019s room.\u201d<\/p>\n Criticism about her blackness no longer bothers her, Byer said.<\/p>\n When comedian Faizon Love trashed her as an \u201cunfunny black woman\u201d in an Instagram post last year, Byer thanked him for sending people to watch her now-Emmy-nominated Netflix stand-up special. <\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have a Netflix special for me to watch,\u201d she said casually, adding that many people dagree with him.<\/p>\n Instead, Byer says, she\u2019s focused on building an empire. Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s company, Team Coco, is now the production home for her dating podcast, \u201cWhy won\u2019t you date me?\u201d She plays Nicky Coles, a real estate agent, on \u201cGrand Crew\u201d \u2013 an NBC comedy series with an all-black cast depicting the everyday life of upper-middle-class people without black tragedy being at its core. <\/p>\n Byer also stars in the recently released movie \u201cMack & Rita\u201d, alongside Diane Keaton and Loretta Devine.<\/p>\n Byer might not have the business degree her parents would have liked, but she\u2019s mastered the art of being herself.<\/p>\n \u201cMy parents would be really proud that I figured it out,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n \u201cIt would\u2019ve 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: \u2018These jokes may not be for me, but they\u2019re for somebody.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n