First of all, no one in that room, or probably any audition room, knew who Avery Johnson was. When I did my impression—“Dave, I’mma pass you da ball”—no one gasped and said, “Ah, that’s Avery Johnson!” I might as well have been impersonating Tommy Too Smoov.
Next I did my De Niro. I figured I had to do a white guy, and he seemed like the easiest one. So I squinted and screwed up my face, then looked at Lorne Michaels—the gray-haired legend who created Saturday Night Live—and promptly forgot everything that De Niro had ever said in any movie. As for my Denzel Washington, I extended the pointer fingers on each of my hands as if they were guns, waved them in the air, and yelled until I was embarrassed enough to stop.
There was total silence in the room, except for the sound of Lorne Michaels eating popcorn and licking the salt off his lips. He seemed more interested in his snack than in me. I went into some of my best stand-up material, but no one even smiled. I just heard the squeak crunch smack of Lorne and his popcorn.
Sweat started trickling down my back. I wasn’t used to performing comedy in total silence. Even when people hated what I was doing, they at least booed or threw chicken wings.
When I was finished, Lorne said, “Thank you,” and I walked out of the room.
Even though the audition didn’t feel good, I didn’t know what anyone else’s had been like. Maybe Lorne was like that with everyone. Maybe my personality was more important than my impersonations. Maybe he saw my potential. Maybe I’d nailed it. Maybe they saw a young Eddie Murphy or Tim Meadows in me.
Every day after that, all I could think about was SNL. What would happen if I got it? On the comedy circuit, I’d see Tracy Morgan and Chris Rock, who had both jump-started their careers on SNL, and I’d think, Aw, man, if I get this, I’ll be a star.
54
* * *
THE GREATEST PILOT THAT NO ONE’S SEEN
Thanks to Damon Dash’s willingness to take a chance on me, one day I found myself sitting in first class on a plane to Los Angeles to meet with a young director who’d just gotten a television deal with ABC. His name was Judd Apatow.
Judd had told Dave that he was looking for a young black comedian. I might not have even been considered for the meeting if I hadn’t acquired an edge over other comics at my level of inexperience: Paper Soldiers. Every comedian had footage of them performing at a club, but none had footage showing that they could not just act but hold down a film as the lead.
Before I knew it, I was in Los Angeles for the first time. I drove around Hollywood for hours, staring at the palm trees and the mansions, the Hollywood sign and the luxury cars. Then I walked back and forth along Hollywood Boulevard, taking in the stars on the Walk of Fame, the handprints outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the street performers dressed as Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson—and thanking God and comedy for getting me this far. When I went to bed that night at the Hyatt on Sunset Boulevard, I couldn’t sleep. I just kept thinking: Holy shit, I’m in Hollywood.
I met Judd in his office the following day and liked him instantly. The audition was the exact opposite of the Saturday Night Live experience. I wasn’t a jester being asked to amuse the royalty. Judd was curious, excited, and enthusiastic. He explained the idea of the show, which was about three struggling roommates living hand-to-mouth in North Hollywood and hoping to make it big. But the story was less important to him than the characters in it. He asked me what my character would do in different situations, and I would answer—or, more often, act it out—and he’d laugh at everything, even when it wasn’t funny. He seemed to enjoy the process of watching a character come to life. In fact, he enjoyed it so much that I got the part.
It paid twenty-five thousand dollars, which blew my mind. That was the equivalent of roughly three years of shows at Sweet Cheeks.
I called my mother. “Mom, I did it! I made it. I got a pilot deal. I’m going to do a TV show!”
“I’m so proud of you, son,” she replied. “I’m happy that you’re doing your best.” There were probably times when she’d lost faith in me, but now all the work and struggle she’d put into making me a responsible, respectable person appeared to be paying off.
At the time, the most famous actor doing the pilot was Judge Reinhold, who had starred in Beverly Hills Cop with Eddie Murphy. The rest of the cast I’d never heard of before—a funny little improv comic named Amy Poehler and a big, goofy twenty-one-year-old named Jason Segel. Though they’re household names now, and they had more experience than I did back then, they were relatively unknown at the time.
In the show, Amy paid her portion of our rent by working as a personal assistant to Judge, who played himself. She’d walk his dog, pick up his dry cleaning, and get moldy food out of his fridge. Jason made his money by dressing up as Frankenstein to greet tourists at Universal Studios. And I was the roommate who got lucky: I’d landed a popular Bud Light commercial and lived off the residuals from that. My character’s famous tagline from the ad was, “I love the way it tizzaste.”
In order for me to develop a stronger camaraderie with my costars, Judd asked me to live with Jason Segel in real life while we were putting together the pilot. I returned to L.A. with my bags and moved into his house. I wanted to be a good roommate, so on my first mornings there, I cooked him pancakes, but he never woke up in time to eat them.
Almost every day, a friend of his named Seth Rogen came over, and they smoked a shitload of weed in the living room. It was the first time I’d hung out with productive stoners. They talked about the show, got excited about other projects they were auditioning for, and came up with hilarious movie ideas, most of which were still funny when the high wore off. We were often joined by more of their actor friends, January Jones and Charlie Hunnam. Jason Segel’s living room turned out to be a better introduction to L.A. than the Walk of Fame.
As I studied my lines before the first day of shooting, it struck me as ironic that the guy who hated tests more than anyone in school had ended up with a career that required him to study and memorize things on a regular basis.
It was my first time on a Hollywood set with a director who actually gave direction, and the taping came surprisingly easily to me. There were only four things I really needed to do:
1. Know my lines
2. Show up on time
3. Pay attention
4. Be positive
We shot the pilot in seven days, which flew by quickly. I tried to bring good energy to the set and be easy to work with, because I hoped this would be my job for a long time. When the pilot wrapped and I left L.A., I gave Jason a check for groceries and rent.
He never cashed it. My best guess is that he either lost it while he was high or smoked it.
Back home, I phoned Dave every day: “Hey, did ABC call yet? No? What do you think, though? You think it’s gonna get picked up? What about my chances of getting Saturday Night Live? I mean, like, no, I know you don’t know, but if you had to put a definition to your feeling, what would it be?”
Finally, Dave called me.