When Questlove is hosting one of his star-studded game nights, which by now have drawn everyone from J.J. Abrams to Taylor Swift, he makes sure to remember a key detail: The tables need to be round. “The rock manager Shep Gordon told me whenever you throw
a social event, make sure the tables are circled and not square,” the Roots drummer, producer, DJ, author, and filmmaker says. That way, the guests are always facing each other.
We’re in a tucked-away room on the second floor of a princely Chelsea townhouse that I’m told was once owned by Lady Gaga. Tonight isn’t an official game night, per se; instead, it’s a launch party for the new web series those game nights inspired. The Next Move, which premieres today, takes the popular video interview series concept and introduces something a touch more personal. Where Subway Takes and Hot Ones occupy hallowed ground in the celebrity press tour, Questlove’s new series feels more like a hangout. The show’s slate of guests all come from within the already established game-night orbit, and thus audiences get a view into a more relaxed, convivial perspective on their favorite stars.
Produced by Questlove and Black Thought’s Two One Five Entertainment, the show’s interviews have the natural vibrance of a party in an intimate setting, making for often surprising insights. “Roy Wood‘s episode with the comedians… They were more serious, and somehow fricking Robert Glasper and Michael Che wound up being the comic masters,” Questlove says. “So yeah, you just never know.”
Even though tonight isn’t an official game night, guests — who include Katie Holmes, Jon Hamm, and Ayo Edebiri — are greeted on each of the home’s six floors with a different variety of board games, from the crowd favorite Uno to lesser-known titles and a few new ones (Janelle Monáe has a game she invented called Kaboom). At one table, Ziwe holds court over a game of Uno as a nearby group plays something I’ve never heard of, but that involves slapping the table every time you land on a certain word. The only guests I recognize in the group are Kilo Kish and someone I met earlier who works in music finance, acquiring artists’ catalogs (business is booming, I hear).
“They’re having more fun than us,” Ziwe jokes, as the other group bursts into laughter and table-slapping.
The whole thing, from the new series to the game nights themselves, even this evening’s celebrations, have the feeling of the late-1970s public access show TV Party, a loose, unpredictable New York salon helmed by Glenn O’Brien. When I mention the comparison, Questlove laughs. “When I interviewed Fab 5 Freddy on my podcast… he led me to the [TV Party] archives, where I saw those shows, and I was like, ‘This happened?'” he says. That’s much of the appeal of this latest project. “It’s like, what could happen if you mix Ryan Destiny with Robert Glasper. It’s people that don’t know each other and have nothing in common.”
When Quest thinks about the questions he likes to ask on Questlove Supreme, the podcast that he’s hosted since 2016, he breaks them into two camps. “One, of course, is based on your profession. I got to ask you, ‘OK, tell me about the demo that led to this song, that led to this thing.’ And then there’s a sector that wants to know the nerdy parts like, ‘What mic did you use? Did you use vacuum tubing for this particular compressor?’ Those things,” he says. But his favorite questions are the ones that have nothing to do with music at all. “My favorite ones are mainly about the artist himself… Have you ever gotten fired from a job? What’s your favorite cereal? When was the last time you vomited?… Because people never ask people about things.” That same ethos, he says, is the guiding principle for The Next Move.
As for dream guests, Questlove has one name in mind: Michael Jordan. “Only because I watched The Last Dance twice in the pandemic,” he says.
As the night goes on, and guests mingle between floors like patrons moving through a museum, enjoying the evening’s menu of burgers, pasta, and pizza from a curated set of local restaurant vendors, I think about Questlove’s overall philosophy on starting his now-famous game nights. “I think a shared experience for human beings is music. Either you dance to it, create it, listen to it — we all need to survive,” he says. “And it’s safe to say that every human at one point in their life made space to have fun.”
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