Jerrod Carmichael coming out in HBO's Rothaniel is pointed, quiet, hilarious and heartbreaking all at once

Variety

In the special, "Carmichael walks an astonishingly difficult tightrope between the fraught past and present to, he hopes, a more hopeful future," says Caroline Framke. Carmichael looked relaxed hosting SNL this past weekend. But in the special, taped in February, "he was clearly still struggling to reconcile what he wanted to say onstage with how it might complicate everything once he walked off," says Framke. "It’s hard to describe how well he does this without just writing out his set, which is pointed, quiet, hilarious, and heartbreaking all at once."