EXCLUSIVE | Dulce Sloan says '10 Things You Don't Know' will reveal celebrity facts you never knew before
Comedian and actor Dulce Sloan is making a return to E!. She's fronting the network's new show '10 Things You Don't Know' that will premiere in an hour from now. In an exclusive chat with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW), she talks about the show, her podcast 'The Blacka** Show', lack of diversity in the writers' room on Black-centered shows, and her boss moves with which she tackles trolls on the Internet.
Her new show '10 Things' will highlight 10 unknown secrets about one celebrity per episode. Asked to part with a celebrity secret that she became privy to on the show, she said, "I don't know what I would be able to share because I think they want to leave it on the show but I learned some interesting things about Tiffany Haddish and Will Smith, I can say that." Responding to what pushed her to be a part of this project, she says, "With everything going on right now, I am just glad to be able to be working. I worked with E! years before on their daytime show. So, I decided it was a good opportunity to get some more work during the quarantine. With all the touring dates and live standup gone, it was another opportunity to work and work with E! again."
Describing '10 Things' in one a couple of lines, she says, "We tell people stuff that you won't usually find on a regular Wikipedia page. We get stuff that people really don't know about some of the celebrities: stuff about their childhood, jobs they had before they were celebrities. So it's just giving you information that you'd probably never heard before after doing a regular Google search."
In recent times, there has been a massive shift in the workings of the entertainment industry. George Floyd's death has reinstated the conversation about the treatment of Black people in America and measures have been taken across the board to tackle racism. A number of White actors who voiced multi-racial characters had stepped down in the light of the movement to make way for artists of color to fill the positions. We asked Sloan if that was enough and if she had any other suggestions. While she understands that it was an important step she said, "But I think what's more necessary instead of the White actors stepping down from a role for a people of color, what does the writer's room look like? Whos writing for that character? What do they look like?"
Audiences around the world and also people in the industry speak about the need for more people of color and LGBTQ representation on the screen but Sloan feels that is not enough. "You also need those people in the writers' room because as a person of color who has worked on various projects where there are only White people and White men in the writers' room, you have to go through a lot of push back. It's because we don't speak that way, I don't know what a certain reference is and so it's still not as genuine as it could be as it should be if the writers' room is still full of White men."
Sloan gets a lot of hate on her Instagram for speaking her mind about LGBTQ, PoC, and women's issues. Asked how she tackles these keyboard warriors, Sloan replied, "One of the best things I have discovered on social media is the delete button. Because if you leave a comment on my page or my Twitter, or my Facebook, I can delete your comment, and I think, and that's the best thing that I have figured out to do. Because if you have nothing better to do to say something ugly to me then you have to reevaluate your life. You came to my page. I didn't come to yours, I don't know who you are."
Sloan has also been hosting Starburns Audio’s 'The Blacka** Show' since April 2020 wherein she talks to Black creatives about their favorite Black shows. Speaking about it, she says, "I'm talking to black creatives about Black shows because as Black creatives, performers, writers, and directors, we have an insight into the creation of programs that people who aren't in the entertainment industry don't have."
As someone who's well-respected in the industry, we asked her to highlight other Black comics that people need to know and she came up with two names, Shalewa Sharpe and David Perdue, both from her hometown Atlanta. "I and her started the same year in Atlanta together and she's always been inspiring to me and as a writer, as a comic, writing my joke, she's someone that I looked up to even though we started at the same time." Sharpe and Sloan were about to go on tour with the one-woman show called 'Don't Reach in the Bag' that the former produces but Covid-19 played a dampener. Perdue has appeared on a lot of TV shows including, 'Kevin Hart Presents: Hart of the City' on Comedy Central as well as 'Monsters and Misfits' on truTV. He has also opened for Sloan a number of times while on tour and she highly recommends checking his work out.
A new episode of '10 Things You Don't Know' will air every Monday night at 10 pm ET on E!