He replied that when he was starting out, he was small fry, so he didn't face anything beyond what he would as an average, non-comedian African American. In the comedy circuit, he was mostly ignored, but not explicitly discriminated against.
Once he reached a certain popularity level, and he was in the running for spots on talk shows, SNL, TV episodes, he started to notice it. The stakes are a lot higher, and there are lots of people coveting those TV appearances. So suddenly, people who would otherwise never even notice him, were acting in ways to specifically exclude him from the running in areas that were traditionally reserved for white comedians.
Just because you aren't important enough to be spied on today doesn't mean that you won't appear on someone's threat radar later.
That made me nostalgic for 2013, which at the time felt like a bad year. I wonder how I'll feel about 2018 in 2023.
(Context: "I'm not important enough" was the standard rebuke to Snowden's leaks)