Kevin Hart is arguably the funniest man in Hollywood right now. Whether you find him funny or not, his incredible success has solidified him as a force to reckoned with when it comes to producing numbers at the box office. After laying the ground work with many years of performing at practically anywhere, he’s enjoying enjoying the fruits of his labor.
While he once slept in a bunk bed squeezed in the hallway of a one-bedroom apartment he shared with his single mom and older brother, the 36-year-old international superstar now lives in a massively gorgeous mansion sitting inside a gated community in the Los Angeles suburb of Tarzana. That’s where the Ride Along actor sat down with Rolling Stone magazine to give us a closer look inside his life as the funniest man in Hollywood.
In between stops on his “What Now” tour, which is on track to becoming the highest-grossing comedy tour of all time, and filming on the set of Central Intelligence (starring opposite Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), the comedian opens up about his struggle with homophobia.
You’ll recall during a skit on from his 2010 Seriously Funny comedy tour, Kevin offered up a joke about how upset he would be as father to have a gay son. In the skit he said,
"One of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay. That's a fear. Keep in mind, I'm not homophobic. . . . Be happy. Do what you want to do. But me, as a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will."These days he said he would stray away from jokes about being gay, but revealed when he made that joke, it was more about him dealing with homophobia rather than it having anything to do with his son (if he were to be gay). He explained,
"It's about my fear. I'm thinking about what I did as a dad, did I do something wrong, and if I did, what was it? Not that I'm not gonna love my son or think about him any differently. The funny thing within that joke is it's me getting mad at my son because of my own insecurities — I panicked. It has nothing to do with him, it's about me. That's the difference between bringing a joke across that's well thought-out and saying something just to ruffle feathers." Even so, he adds, "I wouldn't tell that joke today, because when I said it, the times weren't as sensitive as they are now. I think we love to make big deals out of things that aren't necessarily big deals, because we can. These things become public spectacles. So why set yourself up for failure?"Next, the Wedding Ringer star touched on the issue of race in America. While he doesn’t joke much about race or address the current race issues that have dominated the media recently during his stand-up shows, he said such issues anger him.
He said,
"A guy in the hood with two nickel bags of weed gets five years in jail, because they say they want to make an example of him, but I haven't seen one judge make an example out of one of these police officers that killed one of these young black men." But he keeps it offstage: "When I see videos of children being shot dead by police, I don't talk about it because it's something that scares me. Because I have kids. At that point, it's not a joking matter. There is no joking there. I would not touch it."True indeed.
He added,
“I won't acknowledge what I won't let beat me. Have I experienced racism? Of course. But will I make you feel superior by saying I've felt trumped at times? No. I'll beat you by succeeding. I want to show my generation that a man of color, despite the roadblocks, can still make it. There's moments when I took to social media and said things, but it's always been on the positive side. I gave a message to Baltimore: At the end of the day, we're only hurting ourselves by destroying what we have. We have to go back and live there. We're torching, firebombing, looting our stuff. We need that CVS! Be smarter than this!" Hart doesn't see a time coming when he explores racism in his act, like his idols Rock and Chappelle do. Hart characterizes his appeal differently. "It's not my style of comedy," he says. "It angers me, but not onstage. Onstage, my job is to take away whatever problems are in the world, for that brief moment of time."As he continues to sell out arenas and movie theaters, he’s also vigorously working to turning himself into a household name. He’s currently developing a video-sharing comedy site, set to rival Funny or Die, and plans to get his feet wet with the fitness sector. So who’s going to check him? He said,
"At this point, I'm competing against Kevin Hart."Nice.
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