The Lucas Brothers

Hell & High Water with John Heilemann

In which John Heilemann talks with Kenny and Keith Lucas, the 35-year-old identical twin comedians, actors, producers, and writers who share a 2021 Oscar nomination (with Will Berson and Shaka King) for Best Original Screenplay for "Judas and the Black Messiah." Heilemann and the Lucas Brothers discuss their decade-long quest to persuade Hollywood to green-light the story of Fred Hampton, the precocious and charismatic chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party in the late Sixties, and his assassination by the Chicago Police Department and the FBI; Keith and Kenny's unlikely rise from rough family circumstances and the mean streets of Newark, New Jersey through elite law schools (from which they both dropped out days from graduation) to acclaim in the world stand-up comedy, culminating in their 2017 Netflix special, "On Drugs"; the role of illicit substances in their art and lives; their mutual struggles with PTSD, addiction, depression, and suicide; their out-front, at times hilarious, codependency; their passions for politics and philosophy; and how "Seinfeld" saved their lives.

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