History — Mel Brooks style — finally returns

For almost 40 years, Mel Brooks has inhabited Nick Kroll’s comic mind.
Kroll was about 5, he says, when he munched a fish stick and proclaimed, “It’s good to be the king.” It was a start.
“Some of my very first laughs ever (were) from me parroting Mel Brooks,” Kroll told the Television Critics Association. “And many, many years later, nothing has changed.”
Now he’s assembled an all-star project: “History of the World, Part II”(shown here), an eight-part sequel to Brooks’ film, airs (two per day) on Hulu, Monday through Thursday (March 6-9).
Yes, Brooks – now 96 – is part of it, narrating and suggesting jokes.
“Mel is going to outlive us all, so we’re clear,” said Kroll, 44. “He’s just unstoppable …. The guy has an insane life force and he’s still got jokes.”
But this show is mainly written and acted by people who grew up on his humor – Wanda Sykes, Jack Black, Pamela Adlon, Seth Rogen, Sarah Silverman, JB Smoove, Josh Gad, Danny DeVito, Kumail Nanjiani, Richard Kind, Will Sasso, Jack McBrayer and more. They range fro Dove Cameron, 27, to Marla Gibbs, 92 – all sort of in Generation Brooks.
Kroll recalls getting a text from Johnny Knoxville, “about five minutes after” the project was announced, saying “Anything I can do. Mel Brooks is my hero.”
That fit neatly: “We have Rasputin, who everybody tried to kill a million times. Who else would be better to play (him). The only difference is, Johnny’s been trying to kill himself in ‘Jackass.’”
Some of the casting was truly whimsical. George Wallace, the racist governor, was played by George Wallace, the Black comedian.
All of this in the style of “History of the World, Part I,” the 1981 Brooks movie that had the “It’s Good To Be the King” song. Sketches range from caveman days – women desperate to create fire, so they can light a joint – to Chisholm’s 1972 run for the presidency. Characters range from Jesus to Hitler.
Brooks did his best work during a wide-open era when comedy had few limits. Now that’s replicated in a time when people are often offended. “You can still say and do insane things,” Kroll said. “You just have to be a little more thoughtful asbout how and why you’re saying them.”
And yes, some of this reflects the Jewish-oriented humor that Brooks mastered.
“Jews have been making jokes for … going on 2,000 years now,” said Kroll, who stars in the showe’s “Fiddler on the Roof” take-off. “It’s ingrained in the process …. I have the luxury of being a Jew who gets to make jokes about Jewish experience.”
It was at a Jewish-humor award event that he first met Brooks. Kroll was fresh from college then and said he had an idea for a “The Producers” remake; Brooks didn’t bite. “He said, ‘Do your own thing; do your own work,’ and walked out of the room.”
What Kroll didn’t know was that there was already a “Producers” musical in the works. It soon began a six-year Broadway run, the first step in a Brooks revival.
Much later, Kroll got a call from Brooks’ people, suggesting this “History” sequel. He jumped at it. “It’s one of my favorites; I knew the whole movie by heart.”
Much of the writing was done by Zoom, but Kroll and a colleague did get to meet with Brooks. “He gave us boxes of Raisinets on our way out. And it was the greatest day of my life.”