Gina’s fierce fun ripples through “Bob” comedy

On the “Bob (Hearts) Abishola” set, people were semi-celebrating a semi-successful run.
The show has spent much of its five seasons in the top-25 of Nielsen ratings. It’s been a rare throwback to the days when comedy was king.
So members of the Television Critics Association directed questions to its stars (Billy Gardell, Folake Olowofoyeku) and producer Chuck Lorre — who made one thing clear: “We would have never gone far with the show had we not found Gina.”
That’s Gina Yashere, ready for her close-up. In the show, she’s Kemi, a noisy friend who’s there for a few quick laughs. In the second-to-last episode (8:30 p.m. Monday, April 29, on CBS), she finally gets the focus (shown here), with a Las Vegas wedding.
But the core of the show – including its culture conflict – springs from Yashere.
“They found me on Google,” she said later. “I turned it down. But my best friend and my brother said, ‘You’re being stupid.’”
So she reluctantly flew from London to Los Angeles to talk about a fictional romance between a casual Midwesterner and an intense immigrant.
“She spent a couple of days with the writers and myself, knocking ideas around,” Lorre told the TCA. Soon “we went, ‘You know what? Don’t leave. Stay here. Help us make this show, and let’s figure out a way for you to be in it, too.’ ”
Lorre – known for “Big Bang,” “Young Sheldon,” “Mom” and more – wanted to celebrate newcomers, like his own Jewish ancestors. “Immigrants make the country great …. That’s the wonder of this country,” he said.
That theme rippled through the two seasons of his “United States of Al” and five of “Bob.” Now that the latter is ending, Yashere could return to London … but won’t.
“I ain’t leaving,” she said. “I’ve got a swimming pool. I love it here.”
That reflects her first visit to the U,S. She was working for Otis elevators in London, the only Black female maintenance engineer there. She still lived at home, but had the look of London’s Soul II Soul scene, complete with funky clothes and bleach-blond dreadlocks. Now she had a month-long vacation at the Florida home of a friend’s aunt.
This was “a house with a pool!” Yashere wrote in “Cack-Handed” (HarperCollins, 2021), the memoir of her pre-”Abishola” years. “For a bunch of working-class girls from London, this was the ultimate in luxury and American-ness. (We) dived into the pool, where we spent the next four days.”
There had been swimming at her London school, she wrote, but her mother said no. (She sometimes did anyway, with a friend’s suit.) Her mother banned many things, including going to friends’ party across the street. “I remember truly hating my mother that day.”
Yashere was born Regina Obedapo Ebuwa Iyashere, went by Dapo and then by Regina … a choice she regretted when classmates learned it rhymes with a part of the anatomy.
Both parents had upper-class Nigerian roots, but her mother’s brother got the money. That made the mom dependent on her husband … who returned to Nigeria when he found his doctorate couldn’t get him a British career.
The family was left in London apartments with as many as seven people, including an abusive stepfather-equivalent. Yashere obsessed on American TV shows.
“Every kid in the US seemed to have nice clothes, skateboards, dogs, parents who let them out and have adventures,” she wrote. Kids talked back; people hugged.
Instead, Yashere read, watched TV and studied. Nigerian parents, she has said, saw only four career choices – doctor, lawyer, engineer or “family’s biggest disappointment.”
She chose engineering and liked the work, but not the co-workers who considered her a “diversity experiment.” When Otis was trimming jobs, she wrote, she asked to be included. Now she had an apartment, a car, a “redundancy” payout and a chance to keep exploring the night clubs and the comedy scene.
That’s where she thrived. She did some stand-up in the U.S. — reaching the top-10 in the 2007 “Last Comic Standing,” alongside Amy Schumer, Lavell Crawford and others – and a lot in England. That’s where Lorre found her online.
As his show developed, it reflected her world. Abishola’s son is named Dele – the same as Yashere’s brother. Abishola’s husband returned to Nigeria where he could thrive – abandoning the family, just as Yashere’s dad did. Abishola, like Yashere, was dominated by a steel-willed mother.
“I watched lots of television as a child,” Yashere told the TCA. “And when I saw Africans or Black people, … we were never three-dimensional.”
Now the characters are both specific and universal. “Being a 37-year-old white guy from Idaho, I can’t speak to the Nigerian-Americn experience,” said Matt Ross, who produces the show with Lorre and Yashere. But he did grow up with a single mother and limited money. “When I connect to a scene, I realize it’s a love letter to my mom.”
It’s a look at people who are filled with flaws, foibles and immense strength. One of the most flawed, perhaps, is Kemi; and now she’s the bride.