Layla Law-Gisiko Has A New Public Access TV Talk Show: “Carte Blanche”
The tenacious Community Board 5 mainstay, City Club head, and adversary of Jamie Dolan is honoring her journalistic roots with her new public access show. It’s now available on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Law-Gisiko told Chelsea News that it’ll encompass anything and everything–culture, politics, transit–relevant to engaged locals.
| 19 Dec 2023 | 11:36
Layla Law-Gisiko, a Parisian-born community activist who’s become a Chelsea mainstay, hosting the first episode of her new public access show. Topics will include everything from public policy to the arts. (
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A glance at Layla Law-Gisiko’s public record reveals what happens when the idea of “community activism” is taken seriously. As the land use chair of Community Board 5, she recently stared down Jamie Dolan and Madison Square Garden. She also made a pitch for a seat in the New York State Assembly, not to mention ending up as the new president of the City Club of New York.
MSG was forced to settle for a five-year permit, which is half of what a planning commission recommended–and considerably less than the “in perpetuity” deal that Dolan sought. While she lost in a Democratic primary to the 75th District’s current incumbent, Tony Simone, the Parisian-born journalist isn’t taking a break from the fray of New York civic life. Indeed, she hopes to learn from what other local power players bring to the table via her very own talk show.
“Carte Blanche”–which is available now on the public access network MNN (Manhattan News Network)–will be an everything-and-anything sort of show. As she told Chelsea News, she’ll tackle a wide range of topics: “policy, arts, culture, infrastructure, land use...all those things that are important to New York and the way that it’s going to get shaped.” She said that she’ll spotlight people of influence that are “useful” to Manhattanites, and in doing so will perhaps effect change.
To some extent, the show is a return to her roots. After all, she’s produced documentaries for French networks such as TF1.
The first episode of “Carte Blanche” went down on December 14. She interviewed Chris Ward, who was the past Executive Director of the Port Authority between 2008 and 2011.
Law-Gisiko told Chelsea News that she believes Ward is a “true civil servant,” and that what she finds more important than his stature is his “extreme knowledge on technical matters.” Viewers hoping for a glitzy program–such as one featuring softball questions lobbed at showboating celebrities–may want to look elsewhere.
However, anyone that has had the displeasure of navigating Penn Station in recent years will no doubt be intrigued. In fact, there may finally be a talk show for equipping people with intel to bring to a community board meeting. “The idea is not to have scripted conversations,” Law-Gisiko said, adding that “I don’t want people to come...and we all agree, and we all say things that have already been pre-digested.” She noted that she has her share of disagreements with Ward.
Although indeed unscripted, the talk show will be segmented. Perhaps in a rebuke to skeptics that think a public-policy talk show must be deadly serious all the time, two of her special segments are amusingly named “Fast and Curious” and “Poll Dancing”. As may be expected, the former features rapid-fire questioning, while the latter involves a breakdown of various political metrics.
“Carte Blanche” will host an episode every other week. Law-Gisiko–in one hell of a scoop–said that a forthcoming guest would be Mary Brosnahan, a former CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless. Louise Legay, a graduate of the New York Film Academy, is the show’s director. Élisa Lambert, a French exchange student at NYIT, is a volunteer producer. A composer known only as Timothée crafted the Bach-inspired theme song.
Law-Gisiko, of course, will not be putting her activism on hold now that’s she’s got her own television show. “2024 is going to be crazy,” she said. Established interests, consider this your warning shot.