History of the World, Part 2: Wanda Sykes & Ike Barinholtz on Saying Yes to Mel Brooks

If you’d said to any Mel Brooks fan even three years ago that we’d finally be getting a long-awaited sequel to History of the World, Part I, the epic parody film that took audiences through all of human history, they’d likely have called you crazy. But, in 2023, that vision is finally a reality, and the much anticipated History of the World, Part II, has finally arrived, shepherded in by writers, stars, and executive producers Wanda Sykes and Ike Barinholtz. The series continues the tradition begun by Brooks, framing each episode as a series of sketches covering the entire history of civilization — and then some. Certain sketches, like “The Civil War,” which sees Barinholtz as Union general Ulysses S. Grant, or “Shirley Chisholm,” which casts Sykes as the former presidential hopeful, stretch over a number of episodes, while certain one-offs cast celebrities for brief but hilarious appearances, including Josh Gad as Shakespeare leading a writer’s room, or fellow writer and executive producer Nick Kroll