Wanda Sykes strides onstage at Seattle’s Moore Theatre as Earth, Wind, & Fire’s “Shining Star” blares from the house speakers. The sold-out crowd is on its feet in a rafters-testing ovation. For the next ninety minutes, the three-time Emmy winner, resplendent in taupe calfskin blazer, jeans, and crystal drop earrings, slays with such laconic verities as

“I love getting older, because the older I get, the less I care. The words ‘I don’t give a fuck’ just fly out of my mouth. And if I’m not saying it, I’m thinking it.”

Sykes is in town to film an upcoming television special and DVD, the latest in a string of projects that have lent the forty-two-year-old Portsmouth, Virginia, native and onetime National Security Agency employee an air of pop-culture ubiquity. The past few years have seen her provide gridiron commentary (Inside the NFL), explore the inner workings of a whorehouse (Wanda Does It), foil Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm), voice a bold cartoon skunk (Over the Hedge), and act alongside the likes of Jane Fonda, Uma Thurman, and Steve Carell. After writing her own book (Yeah, I Said It), Sykes also penned Esquire’s now-infamous “clit article” (“the quickest way to a woman’s heart is through her clit”), in which it was impossible not to hear her deliciously staccato voice.

This conversation was conducted by phone from her home in Sherman Oaks, California.

—Litsa Dremousis

I.“THE UNWANTED CHILDREN GROW UP TO BE ASSHOLES.”

THE BELIEVER: At what age did you become aware that you were observing things that other people weren’t—that you had a certain radar?

WANDA SYKES: It had to be early on, like kindergarten. It wasn’t really that I was funny, but I was saying things that no one else was saying. And because I’m getting punished for it, I guess you’re not supposed to say these things. I was very outspoken. My parents looked at me like a little time bomb. Whenever they had guests come over, they would ship me off to my grandparents because they had no idea what I was going to say. They were always on edge when I was around if there was an outsider in the house. But I would even do it with family. If I heard my parents talking about how one of the relatives borrowed money, and if they came over and they were wearing new clothes, I’d say, “Hey! That’s new! Don’t you owe my dad fifty dollars?” And I knew my parents were thinking it. Someone would come back with pictures of a vacation they’d been on and I’d be like, “Hey!...