Rell Battle is a writer, stand-up comedian who has been featured on TBS's Conan which led to his performing on the TEAM COCOHouse's nationwide tour. He'll also be a featured act on Will Smith’s upcoming This Joka for Roku and served as creator and executive producer of Comedy Centrals' Roast Battle. On the acting front, he was a series regular on CBS’ multi-camera comedy series Superior Donuts for two seasons, recently just guested on ABC’s Black-ish, NBC’s Good Girls, and recurred on ABC’s The Good Doctor. Rell recently sold a half-hour single-cam comedy to NBC with Bradley Gardner at Orion and Hazy Mills.Rell will next be seen as a series regular in the half hour comedy series KILLING IT opposite Craig Robinson for NBC/Peacock.
Tell us about your experience at the Hip Hop Film Festival?I had a ball, it was really dope to see people who look like me presenting their original unique ideas. It was also interesting during the Q/A when we had to face our critics and a lot of vibrant conversations sparked. Most festivals are a little too timid to keep things that real, but hey it ain't called the Hip Hop Festival for nothing,
Why are stories from the culture important? Our stories are hella important because we dictate the culture, the fashion, the music, sports world, to the dougie, we decide what's cool and the rest of the WORLD follows suit, our stories should be just as important. If Hov can still shut the internet down with a verse on DJ Khaled album, our stories should continue to resonate the world.
What projects are you working on now? I'm gearing up for Season 2 of my show "Killing it'' on Peacock. I was lucky enough to book a comedy film In LA, and I'm writing a horror script. Switching genres on em'.
Why do you think the Harlem Film House and Hip Hop Film Festival are important?
It almost like when the negro leagues were the only ones that would give dark faces a chance to show their talent when in reality the most talented people were Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson and Jackie Robinson.
The Hip Hop Festival is still a big part of the film festival game but they're going to see the next big names first because the Harlem film house is going to attract artists who want to feel like they have home field advantage. There's a comfort when you know the audience will understand your stories so we can hit it out of the park. (That's another baseball reference. That's 3 of them thangs!)