Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One (29 page)

And then I reframed it. I’d always gone against the grain. Did I want to live my whole life just being that normal dude, or did I want to keep living an exceptional life? If I got on this red carpet wearing a typical blue suit, and I got ignored, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. “Nana, let’s go,” I said.

Even though I’d talked myself up, we were girding our loins. This was either going to work, or it was going to fail so hard. When I stepped out of the car, all of the movie’s big stars were already on the red carpet, I mean, Dwayne Johnson, Steve Carell, all of them, the cameras literally pulled off of them and went right for me. FLASHES POPPING. EVERYWHERE.
Entertainment Tonight
stopped me to talk about my suit. I’d done other red carpets before, but I’d never gotten that kind of light.

It worked, and I was hooked. I got it after that. Clothing is powerful. It’s not that it makes you, but it changes the way people perceive you. From then on, I decided I had to make sure this was part of the game. And I think every man needs to do so
in whatever way works for him. Of course, fashion starts inside, and not just with fitness and your body, but also with self-love, but it’s all tied together, and it all helps. When we wear something that looks great on us, or something we feel good in, which is even more important, our whole image of ourselves changes.

NOT LONG AFTER
EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS
ENDED
, in early 2009, I was driving back from a meeting, when I got a dream phone call. It was Robi Reed, who was not only a very famous casting agent, but she’d also cast many films for my longtime hero, Spike Lee, including my favorite,
Do the Right Thing
. By this point, she was working at BET, and she knew the show hadn’t been picked up for another season.

“I just wanted to know if you’d be open to meeting with us at BET about a reality show,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say. As much as I respected and admired her, it seemed like a reality show meant the death knell for most celebrity marriages. When I talked to Brad, he wasn’t much more encouraging.

“You know, you’ve got to be really careful because you could
kill your career if they see you as a reality guy,” he said. “They could stop calling.”

I knew he was right. The hard truth was that, many times, people on reality shows were done with their careers, and here I was, on the rise. The timing did seem off. On the other hand, reality TV was not going away, and I was reading a lot of books just then on the importance of not just doing the norm, because everything is always changing, and if you keep your frame of mind in the past, you can never grow. If there was one thing I knew I wanted to do, it was grow, constantly, forever.

“You know, Brad, I want to try it,” I said. “If we do it right, it could work for me. Now, there are a lot of ways it could go wrong, but there are a lot of ways it could go right, too. Plus, if I do it, they have to pay me. I’m not doing
Everybody Hates Chris
anymore, and I need to work, you know, so what’s the problem?”

I did have another show in the works at the time,
Are We There Yet?
If it came through, it would be my first starring role, but the negotiations were proving to be long and drawn out, and it was certainly not a sure thing at the moment.

I was able to make Brad see my point. Now I had to convince Rebecca.

“Becky, what do you think about doing a reality show?”

“No way, Terry,” she said. “I’m not getting on that camera.”

“Okay, cool, I’ll tell them,” I said. “But I’m just saying, this could be a big deal. I mean, I don’t know, could we just meet with them?”

We met with BET, and they told us, immediately, that they wanted to green-light a show about my family and me. If they’d said no, in a way it would have been easier—problem solved—but now I went back to Rebecca.

“Please,” I said. “I think this is a good thing. I think we have to look at these opportunities as God sent them to us.
Everybody Hates Chris
is gone. We don’t know if
Are We There Yet?
is going to happen.”

“I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Listen, Becky, I really feel that if you don’t do it, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. You were the one that was in front of the cameras, long before I was. You’re the actress. You’re the singer. You’re the performer. If you allow people to know who you are, and everyone can see how beautiful you are, and what a great mom you are, you’re going to win a lot of people over for whatever else you want to do. If you don’t want to do it, I hear you, but I think we should do it.”

“Ugh.”

Well, she slept on it, and she woke up with a new perspective. “Terry, you’re right,” she said. “I imagined not doing it, and I think I would regret it.”

So we got the house ready, and suddenly, it was the night before they were coming over to start filming. She hadn’t slept the night before, and she was a wreck.

“Tell them I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t do it.”

I didn’t want to cancel, but I could tell she was really serious, so I picked up the phone to make the call.

“No, no, we should do it,” she said.

It was back and forth like that all day until I finally had an idea.

“Let’s just do the pilot,” I said.

Well, she had a ball. We all did. I had always worked without my family, and now, here I was, filming with my wife and all of my kids every day, and I loved it.

Shooting the pilot for our very own reality show,
The Family Crews
, had gone well, and talks were moving forward on
Are
We There Yet?
But in the meantime, I wasn’t working, and I’d had a series of letdowns that had made me feel like I had to start making opportunities for myself. When I’d heard they were shooting a remake of
The A-Team
, I knew the part of B. A. Baracus would be perfect for me. I wanted that part so badly, I paid an effects house to create a new interpretation of the character with these spikes in his head, and I made a video of myself in the role, which I then delivered to the producers. When they passed on me, I was devastated. (Never mind that in the past five years, that video has since garnered 600,000 views on YouTube; the mysteries of casting are not for me to attempt to unravel.) No other big parts had materialized, so I started writing a character called Squeegee, who’d gone from poor window washer to the world’s best dancer. I was doing everything in my power to move that project forward, writing and rewriting the script, doing all of the choreography, and doing live dance performances all over LA. I was even using the character for a series of commercials to promote LA public transportation, and I was in a meeting for this latest job, all Squeegeed out, when Brad called.

“Sylvester Stallone wants to meet with you. Right now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Check it out. You’ve got to get down there. I showed him your video.”

“Squeegee?”

This was real. Why would he want to meet with me about Squeegee?

“No, no, I showed him your video of your
A-Team
audition.”

Now, at the time, Sly Stallone was making the first
Expendables
movie. He’d already hired Forest Whitaker, but Forest had to drop out. When he went to several other people, he couldn’t get anyone interested because the movie wasn’t a big
deal at the time. Stallone was in his sixties, and when he told everyone he was going to make an action movie, they all laughed at him, and every studio turned him down. He was forced to go to a B player, Millennium Films, which was known for straight-to-video releases. All he had lined up at that point were Jet Li and Jason Statham. But Sly’s a force of nature, so he was making calls and doing everything himself, which was how he saw my video and decided he had to meet me.

“Wherever you are,” Brad said. “Get to Beverly Hills right now.”

Once in Beverly Hills, I found the address, a small office right off of Little Santa Monica. This redheaded kid brought me upstairs into this dim room. And then I heard the voice: gravelly, unmistakable, the one, the only, Sly Stallone.

“Hey, sit down,” he said.

It was really weird, almost spooky, and then the lights suddenly went on, and there he was. He sat down across from me.

“I’m doing this movie,” he said. “We’re shooting it in Brazil. It’s going to be pretty good. I’ve seen some stuff from you.”

What I later found out was that he has daughters, and through them and a friend, he’d seen
White Chicks
and really liked it. But all I knew at the time was that he’d seen my audition for the
A-Team
movie, and now he was explaining the project as if he was pitching the movie to me. Meanwhile, I was thinking this was an audition and wondering where the lines were. I wasn’t prepared for him to talk to me as if I already had the part.

So I did what I’d done the first time I went to Eddie Murphy’s house: Just nod and don’t say anything, so you don’t say the wrong thing.

“We’re going to go down to Brazil,” he said. “We’re going to
have a good time. We’ll take care of you. We feel like it would be a real good thing for you.”

I just smiled and nodded and tried not to mess it up.

“Let me show you what you’re going to be shooting,” he said, showing me videos of this amazing, fully automatic shotgun, the AA-12, known as the world’s deadliest. “This is your gun in the movie,” he added with a smirk.

This is not an audition
, I thought.
He’s giving me this part, like right now
.

The whole thing didn’t take longer than twenty or twenty-five minutes, and let me tell you, I was intimidated. This was the man I’d watched in
Rocky
when I was growing up.

“So, uh, how do you feel?” he said.

“I love it,” I said. “It’s a great project. I’m going to do a good job for you.”

“Good, good, all right,” he said. “You’re my guy.”

The next day, the paperwork came in, and it was a go. So I was jumping around from project to project, doing
The Family Crews
, Squeegee,
The Expendables
. I thought I was doing everything it took to succeed. Now I can see I was hypervigilant. I filled my days to feel alive. Well, I was feeling alive then. I was pumped. I really felt like
The Expendables
could be the big one for me.

We started shooting early that spring, and I flew to Brazil. When I got off the plane, I was in for two big surprises. The first one was amazing. I had no idea that
Everybody Hates Chris
was huge in Brazil. Everyone in Hollywood had always told me that black performers only hit in America, and because they couldn’t sell us in Europe, or South America, or anywhere else, we weren’t worth as much as white performers, and we shouldn’t be paid as much. Well, I was so mobbed at the airport that I had to be escorted
to a special lounge and wait for security to take me to my car. I couldn’t leave the hotel without being mobbed by fans that were waiting for me to come out. But then I decided to see what this was all about. I went running in the streets, and I found that everyone in the country was wonderful. They were so respectful and happy to see me.

The second surprise was not so good. During the month I was in Brazil, I only shot one scene. My character seemed to diminish before my very eyes. Normally, this would have been the kind of development that would have made my insecurities flare up and caused me to act out, as I had on my first film set in Vancouver, a decade earlier. This time, I vowed to behave, and I was lucky enough to have a wonderful tour guide. I threw myself into exploring the beautiful country. I was relieved when shooting in Brazil was over, and I had no more dark secrets to protect, as I was still terrified Rebecca would someday find out what I had done in Vancouver.

I still had to get through the rest of the
Expendables
shoot, and the situation wasn’t looking to improve anytime soon. It took only a week on location in New Orleans for me to be extremely disappointed. All of my scenes had either been cut down significantly or cut out completely. I felt like a glorified background player. I was determined to make the most of the situation, even talk to Sly about a potential spinoff, but it was difficult for me not to become cynical, especially when a month went by and I’d spent most of my time sitting in my hotel room.

The project had been poisoned for me. When I went to the set, I saw everything as a negative. If Sly was talking to Jason, I became jealous. When I saw other people exchanging looks on set, I assumed they were talking negatively about me. I hated feeling that way, and I knew I had to reframe it.

It was hard. It was really hard, but this is what I did. Anytime
I was given an opportunity I took full advantage of it. When Sly gave me a line, I put everything into it. EVERYTHING. I worked harder, stayed later, and improved my attitude. Slowly, Sly started noticing me. By the middle of June, I began winning Sly over. After we filmed a scene, and everybody else had moved on to the next scene, Sly sat with me and went over every nuance, how to act, and what I should do every moment in front of the camera. He basically taught me how to be an action star.