Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Terry Crews, m Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna show you how to do it. You're doing it
Speaker 1: right now. I'm gonna show you how to do it.
Speaker 1: It looks like you've got like six cell phones in
Speaker 1: your jacket and we were ringing at the same time.
Speaker 1: So good. It's been a long time since I last
Speaker 1: saw you. You know, it's been a whole pandemic. Between
Speaker 1: everything you've gone through. You wrote another book, Congratulations on that,
Speaker 1: Tough My Journey to True Power. So when I when
Speaker 1: I heard about the book, I was like, Tough my
Speaker 1: Journey to True Powers. Like, oh, Terry's writing it's like
Speaker 1: a weightlifting book. I figured it was just gonna be
Speaker 1: about muscles and everything, and yet there's basically nothing. It
Speaker 1: seems like this whole book is about you emotionally weightlifting. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I I had to redefine what tough was in my life.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. Um As as a kid,
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, I was filled with rage.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna start at the beginning just a little bit.
Speaker 1: Because my father was an alcoholic and he was addicted
Speaker 1: to alcohol, and my mother was addicted to religion, which
Speaker 1: created a really toxic relationship. And at five years old,
Speaker 1: I grew up watching my father not my mother, out
Speaker 1: on the regular um and it was something that changed me,
Speaker 1: I mean my whole thing. When I saw him do that,
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, man, it's your world, this, it's
Speaker 1: your way on the highway. And I learned that that
Speaker 1: was the only way to be a man um and
Speaker 1: it was through rage, and it was I would rather
Speaker 1: be feared than loved. And it got me a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean I lived my life like it is a
Speaker 1: revenge movie. Okay, and a lot of people see me now,
Speaker 1: you know, as ohay, it's so funny and so great
Speaker 1: and the whole thing. But but this is the thing, man,
Speaker 1: I I was filled with rage, and I mean I
Speaker 1: used to snap on people. I read that in the
Speaker 1: book and I'm not even jokes, Like in the first
Speaker 1: let's say quarter of the book. First, I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm scared to have Terry on the show because you like,
Speaker 1: in the book you talk about this this journey, you know,
Speaker 1: and you talk about young Terry you know, and I like,
Speaker 1: it's like there's multiple Terries in this book. In your
Speaker 1: in your story, you talk about young Terry and you
Speaker 1: talk about your dad is old Terry, big Terry, and
Speaker 1: you know, you talk about the terror and the fear,
Speaker 1: but also the rage that you felt it being unable
Speaker 1: to protect your mom, unable to protect the house, and
Speaker 1: you were scared. But then it gets to a part
Speaker 1: of the book where one day you you developed enough
Speaker 1: and you you beat your father, like in ways, I
Speaker 1: got him. And this was so wild because you know,
Speaker 1: growing up in that kind of household, with the intense
Speaker 1: alcohol and religion, the whole thing. I became a pleaser.
Speaker 1: I became a searcher for I wanted approval and I
Speaker 1: was addicted to approval. And the thing is is that
Speaker 1: if I didn't get it, it was it was one
Speaker 1: of those things that would make me very very, you know, angry.
Speaker 1: And but one thing that I discovered once by the
Speaker 1: time I became an adult, and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I knew I needed to get strong because one day
Speaker 1: I would have to kill my father. That was the
Speaker 1: vision that I always had in my head because he
Speaker 1: was such a terror. And one day he I mean
Speaker 1: and as a grown man, I was thirty years old,
Speaker 1: and I remember we called it the Christmas Christmas from Hell,
Speaker 1: and I get a little emotional thinking about it. But
Speaker 1: I took my family home for Christmas and he told
Speaker 1: me that he was going to behave and I said cool,
Speaker 1: because they hadn't been around and my kids had never
Speaker 1: been raised with any domestic violence. And me and my
Speaker 1: wife go out and he decides he's gonna hit my
Speaker 1: mother in the mouth. And what was crazy? I get
Speaker 1: a call. We're on the road, we're aroot to go
Speaker 1: to dinner, and my mother, my aunt, calls me and says,
Speaker 1: your mother just got hit in the mouth. Her tooth
Speaker 1: is sideways. Man. I turned the car around and I
Speaker 1: told him get everybody out of the house and just
Speaker 1: leave us alone. And I went and I confronted him
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, man, what are you doing. You
Speaker 1: promised And he said, oh, man, get out of here. Man,
Speaker 1: And and I hit this man. I don't know how
Speaker 1: long it was. I know I beat him from downstairs
Speaker 1: all the way up to his room. He's bleeding, he's
Speaker 1: he's screaming, and I all I can think about is
Speaker 1: this is revenge. This is what I always wanted, This
Speaker 1: is what you made us go through. This is the revenge.
Speaker 1: This is going to fulfill every dream, every fantasy, everything
Speaker 1: is going to be in this moment, and I felt nothing.
Speaker 1: You talk about that, it's it's a severy moment where
Speaker 1: you you're wailing on him and then you cry at
Speaker 1: the end of it, and you felt even emptier than
Speaker 1: when that moment started. You didn't feel powerful, you didn't
Speaker 1: feel you didn't get the revenge that that that you
Speaker 1: thought you were gonna get. You can get the closure.
Speaker 1: I did it, and I'm like, this is supposed to
Speaker 1: be the end of the movie. Did you know at
Speaker 1: that moment that Terry had anger issues or did you
Speaker 1: think that was an isolated incident. No. No, My wife
Speaker 1: was telling me the whole time. She's like, you got
Speaker 1: you are really angry, And I'm like, what do you mean,
Speaker 1: I'm angry? You know I'm getting angry and you're telling
Speaker 1: me I'm angry and I never saw it. You understand,
Speaker 1: it's something that's so imperceptible because you have it tied
Speaker 1: in with your manhood. This is something that's tied into
Speaker 1: you and you go, hey, man, this is what you
Speaker 1: do somebody. I remember when one man disrespected my wife.
Speaker 1: I picked him up, put him on his head on
Speaker 1: the concrete, and I'm and my wife is like, no,
Speaker 1: you promise me you will never ever do this again.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, but I have to. This is what
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to do. This is how I prove I'm
Speaker 1: a man. This is what I'm put on earth to do.
Speaker 1: How did you How did you change that? That's what
Speaker 1: I want to know. Like people talk about the change,
Speaker 1: but how do you change that? How does Terry go
Speaker 1: from being the person who snaps, the person who's angry,
Speaker 1: the person who proves himself to the person who says,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to react Because I'll jump to another
Speaker 1: part in the book that some people know about as
Speaker 1: a story, but you you've never told it in in
Speaker 1: as much depth if he hasn't as you have in
Speaker 1: the book. Is the now infamous story where you are
Speaker 1: in a hollywo You had a Hollywood party and one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful agents in the business is there
Speaker 1: and he comes up and he grabs your crotch, you know,
Speaker 1: and at first you're like, oh, was that a mistake?
Speaker 1: What's going on? And he laughs and he grabs your
Speaker 1: crotch again in front of everybody, and he just laughs
Speaker 1: it off. And you didn't do anything, And the irony
Speaker 1: of the whole thing is Then people online were like, man,
Speaker 1: Terry Crews, you're gonna have all those muscles and you're
Speaker 1: gonna do ship and someone grabs your dick, You're not
Speaker 1: gonna punch you what you know what I mean? And
Speaker 1: then they're like with these fake muscles and inflatable muscles,
Speaker 1: people roasting you. But you talk about in the book
Speaker 1: how you didn't want to do anything that's right. Explain
Speaker 1: to me how that change comes about? What? What? What?
Speaker 1: What shifts in your perspective? First of all, it was
Speaker 1: seen and I'd already been through seven years of therapy.
Speaker 1: UM my wife left me in Um. First of all,
Speaker 1: I had an addiction to pornography, I had anger, I
Speaker 1: had all kinds of stuff, and she was like, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm done, And this is the thing. I
Speaker 1: was very successful, you know what I mean? Like I mean,
Speaker 1: I had movies and TV and everybody knew who I
Speaker 1: was and and my trick to life was fake it
Speaker 1: till you make it. But the problem is you make
Speaker 1: it and you're fake, You're still fake. It was an image.
Speaker 1: It was the Terry Crew's image is what everybody fell
Speaker 1: in love. And my wife ended up married to that image,
Speaker 1: but the real me was still messed up, broken and
Speaker 1: and and she left me. It was the highlight. It
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute. And first I was like,
Speaker 1: go ahead, I'm Terry Crews, show give me another woman.
Speaker 1: And it was so stupid because I heard myself talking
Speaker 1: like this and I went, maybe it's me, Maybe it
Speaker 1: is me. And dude, you gotta understand. I got the
Speaker 1: best advice I ever received in my entire life. A
Speaker 1: friend of mine said, hey, man, I can't promise you
Speaker 1: you're gonna get your wife and family back, but you
Speaker 1: have to get better for you now my whole life. Therapy,
Speaker 1: especially in in male culture. In black culture, therapy was
Speaker 1: looked at as quackery. I mean they were like, you
Speaker 1: can't care crazy, you know. And that was that was
Speaker 1: said a lot, you know. Uh. In fact, my father
Speaker 1: went to go see a psychologist for his alcoholism. The
Speaker 1: psychologist killed himself a week later, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that don't work. Damn, I'm going what But this was
Speaker 1: the thing. I'm at rock bottom. I have nothing. And
Speaker 1: that was the D day. And I went to therapy
Speaker 1: and I discovered this anger and where it was coming
Speaker 1: from and this this you know, this need for people's
Speaker 1: approval that would send me through the route that would
Speaker 1: make me a high achiever. You understand what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like you you need to go. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: where the success comes from. But the disapproval brought the rage.
Speaker 1: So now Terry Crews has this rage, he's working on it.
Speaker 1: He goes to therapy. Sometimes I feel like what happens
Speaker 1: to people, though, is they don't understand that anger is
Speaker 1: a natural part of being a human being, and so
Speaker 1: when they come out, they go, now, I have no anger.
Speaker 1: The universe is my spirit. And so now how do
Speaker 1: you deal with anger? How do you, like, everyone gets angry,
Speaker 1: how do you now deal with What did you learn
Speaker 1: as a healthy outlet for your anger? First of all, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did come out like that. The first year. I
Speaker 1: was like piece to everyone and it was the baddest
Speaker 1: acting I ever did. Like set your ass down, love,
Speaker 1: you know, it was bad. Yes, it was hard, right,
Speaker 1: but I actually got to understand. Remember, now this is
Speaker 1: the whole thing you can You can be angry and
Speaker 1: sind not it's a it's a biblical phrase. And the
Speaker 1: whole thing was righteous anger. It's a good thing. And
Speaker 1: it was about accountability holding people accountable is how you
Speaker 1: deal with your anger. It's like there's a legal way
Speaker 1: to do everything. My answer to everything before was like
Speaker 1: playing chess, turn over the chessboard, like if I can't
Speaker 1: get a problem. And what I learned was wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I gotta use wisdom here. I have to figure out
Speaker 1: this problem. Maybe going backward, I can go forward two steps.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, my my, everything about the
Speaker 1: energy towards anyone that I was angry at was a thoughtful,
Speaker 1: methodical move. And this is what I did with ad
Speaker 1: him vinit. It was. It changed everything because I knew
Speaker 1: because my wife had made me promise too. She was like,
Speaker 1: don't you ever do and I was like, yeah, I probably,
Speaker 1: but that was the test. And I remember taking her
Speaker 1: hand and we went into the car and I drove home.
Speaker 1: And now, mind you, my first mindset was to drive
Speaker 1: back through the club and like terminator and you know
Speaker 1: I was going to do it, but I went home.
Speaker 1: But you got to understand this, because this is the
Speaker 1: support that I had. The whole time I was driving home.
Speaker 1: My wife said, I'm proud of you, Terry. I'm proud
Speaker 1: of you because she saw me throwing people around. She
Speaker 1: seen it, and she was like, I'm so proud of
Speaker 1: you that support that said, I'm doing this right. I'm
Speaker 1: doing this right. And then I went legal and I
Speaker 1: went to the head of William Morris Endeavor and I said,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do about this predator that you
Speaker 1: have running in your hallways? And they were like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, he's the big man, so we can't do anything.
Speaker 1: And I was like, hell no, I said, dude, you
Speaker 1: work for me. And he laughed. He laughed in my face,
Speaker 1: and I said, wow, okay, And you know what, it
Speaker 1: made me more emboldened and I got stronger. I went like,
Speaker 1: all right, you want to play this game, We're gonna
Speaker 1: play it. You're gonna play it all the way out.
Speaker 1: And what happened is quiet has kept other people joined
Speaker 1: my case because you don't rob the biggest bank in
Speaker 1: the you know, in the state right now, you always
Speaker 1: dropped little banks. And what was happening is there was
Speaker 1: little There were all these other people that came out
Speaker 1: and say, hey man, he did the same thing to me,
Speaker 1: and they joined my case. And he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: white black, I'm out of here. I'm going to retire.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want any money. I just said, man,
Speaker 1: you cannot molest the clients and go back to work.
Speaker 1: That's all I said, dude, that's all I wanted. You
Speaker 1: cannot do it, and you can't go back to work.
Speaker 1: And he's out and he's out, and this is the thing, checkmate.
Speaker 1: So so so great. I remember that moment distinctly because
Speaker 1: you you know, you came out the me too movement
Speaker 1: was happening. You know, you spoke about your case. People
Speaker 1: were shocked, and you know, and a lot of men
Speaker 1: went bolden to say like, hey, I've also had this issue,
Speaker 1: and yes, you know, statist stickle men are miniscule compared
Speaker 1: to women. But it was an interesting story that that
Speaker 1: gave a fuller complexity to what we're trying to get
Speaker 1: rid of in society. People loved you that Terry Crews
Speaker 1: on Twitter. It was amazing, And then you talk about
Speaker 1: this in the book. A few years after that, Terry
Speaker 1: Crews on Twitter became one of the most hated individuals.
Speaker 1: Almost overnight. It was people like, he's a cool he's
Speaker 1: he betrayed black people, he was and it all came
Speaker 1: around Black lives matter. That's what That's what came around
Speaker 1: was black lives matter, and you said something and I
Speaker 1: paraphrase it, you know, because in the in the in
Speaker 1: the book you talk and you lay out the tweet
Speaker 1: was where you say, you know, essentially, I don't want
Speaker 1: white supremacy the same way I don't want black supremacy.
Speaker 1: I want us to all be equal as people. People
Speaker 1: were like, oh, really, terry black supremacy, and I mean,
Speaker 1: they tore into you. But in the book you talk
Speaker 1: about how you didn't even know that that was a
Speaker 1: talking point some people use. And secondly, you weren't trying
Speaker 1: to say what people thought. You were trying to say, well,
Speaker 1: this is the black supremacy has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: white people. When I was in Split, Michigan, the drug
Speaker 1: dealer was a black supremacist. The gang member I was
Speaker 1: scared of, and we could not move around. What's the
Speaker 1: black supremacists? And what I meant was, it's this whole thing.
Speaker 1: If we don't start this movement with the idea of reconciliation,
Speaker 1: we are just postponing a greater war. And my whole
Speaker 1: thing is I didn't hear a lot of reconciliation because
Speaker 1: reconciliation doesn't mean agreement. You know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things. I want to bring this up
Speaker 1: because there's a story about the wisest man in the world.
Speaker 1: It was Solomon, and two women came to them and
Speaker 1: they brought a baby, and they said, we have this baby,
Speaker 1: and the baby is mine. And so Solomon, the wisest man, says, Okay,
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do is cut the baby in half
Speaker 1: and I'll give you a half of the baby and
Speaker 1: you get the other half. And one woman said, yes,
Speaker 1: that's the way we do it. But the other woman said, no, no,
Speaker 1: say this baby. No, in fact, give it to her.
Speaker 1: Give it to her, and said, that's the moment. That's
Speaker 1: recon afiliation. It doesn't mean you get the result you want.
Speaker 1: It means you're saving it, because dividing it is going
Speaker 1: to kill it. But when I look at America, dividing
Speaker 1: it's going to kill it and the whole thing is reconciled.
Speaker 1: We have to reconcile. We have to white and black,
Speaker 1: male and female, Republican Democrat, we have to buy a
Speaker 1: way to reconcile, or we're going to kill what we have.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful as a thought, and I agree with it.
Speaker 1: I think the issue. Yeah, I think the issue some
Speaker 1: people had, you know, is reconciliation cannot take place before
Speaker 1: there's any type of accountability. In order for us reconcile,
Speaker 1: there has to be some sort of accountability. People have
Speaker 1: to say this is what is happening, and this is
Speaker 1: what we're going to do to rectify that situation. Just
Speaker 1: like you talked about reconciling with your wife. You know,
Speaker 1: in order for you, guys to reconcile, you had to
Speaker 1: fix you had to acknowledge, you have to say I
Speaker 1: have a problem. And I think what a lot of
Speaker 1: people thought in that moment is they felt like I
Speaker 1: understand when reading the book. Now you you are saying
Speaker 1: something that, in my honest opinion, is almost a step ahead.
Speaker 1: But people were going to have a terry right now.
Speaker 1: We're looking for accountability first. Right now, Black people in
Speaker 1: America are saying, hey, can we just have an agreement
Speaker 1: on how America does not treat everybody equally? You know,
Speaker 1: we don't want everyone to be treated equally badly, We
Speaker 1: want everyone to be treated equally, you know, totally agree.
Speaker 1: And it felt like to some people you had you
Speaker 1: had skipped you were just like guys guys, kumbaya, I'll
Speaker 1: just be together. And you know, I totally understand that.
Speaker 1: But this is another thing, and I agree, and you
Speaker 1: can't have a nuanced conversation on twitter. Oh yeah, that's mistake.
Speaker 1: The biggest mistake. That was the first any accident that
Speaker 1: was it. That was maybe one of my favorite pe
Speaker 1: when you talk about because you tweeted that and you
Speaker 1: can tell when someone things that got swagging and tweet
Speaker 1: you were like, let me tell you something. What we
Speaker 1: need to supremacy, black spacy all come together band like
Speaker 1: you made. You made a salvage. I can't believe you me.
Speaker 1: I went, oh, no, that's what. That's not what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. But but but you can't
Speaker 1: have that. I totally understand that. Um, and I think
Speaker 1: you're right, and I know you're right, and I actually
Speaker 1: one of my things was it's just when I know
Speaker 1: my people and I love my people. And the big
Speaker 1: thing was black people need to hold other black people accountable.
Speaker 1: It's see what because accountability right, and we do and
Speaker 1: we do and I'm not saying we don't. Uh, but
Speaker 1: but my thing is as a black man and as
Speaker 1: a man who had been in these kind of situations. Um,
Speaker 1: I just knew that it needed to be said by
Speaker 1: someone like me in order because what my thing is,
Speaker 1: I just wanted peace. And I guess it goes back
Speaker 1: to my approval. Yes, it goes back to my need
Speaker 1: for approval. It went back to that. Um. And again
Speaker 1: it was a mistake. It was it was a mistake
Speaker 1: to tweet that out at that time. And that was
Speaker 1: that was the thing. Funny enough, because you know, Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King Jr. Has talked about black supremacy. Nelson Mandela
Speaker 1: himself was one of the people who said, I do
Speaker 1: not look for the oppression of white people. I don't
Speaker 1: look for the oppression of black people. I don't want
Speaker 1: anybody to be oppressed. Right. But the timing, I think
Speaker 1: was this, Yeah, you know what I mean, say that
Speaker 1: in the book. Yeah, you were going, that's not what
Speaker 1: I was trying to do. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: this is one of those moments where I was like,
Speaker 1: that's why books over tweets. It is no, it is
Speaker 1: that the book. You made it out. You were a
Speaker 1: human being. We don't mist understand each other. I honestly
Speaker 1: I appreciated your just like your vulnerability, your your your
Speaker 1: ability to say this is where I messed up. This
Speaker 1: is what I was trying to say. Because I was
Speaker 1: reading it, I was going like, man, I was like,
Speaker 1: why did you send the tweet? Why did you trust Twitter?
Speaker 1: But it doesn't try to understand you do, it does know.
Speaker 1: And I, first of all, I learned my lesson big time,
Speaker 1: first of all. But but I do feel like again
Speaker 1: because of this need for approval that I was addicted to. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's a matter of also exercising the will to
Speaker 1: take disapproval. You understand what I mean. Where really sometimes
Speaker 1: standing up for the right thing, not everyone is going
Speaker 1: to like you. And and again I still know who
Speaker 1: I am. But at the same time, I mean, I
Speaker 1: would never ever tweet again, to be honest, It's all
Speaker 1: gonna be cat videos and promotional uh. And I again
Speaker 1: and I really, I mean, even on this show right now.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna let you know, I really do want
Speaker 1: to apologize to anybody who was offended by these tweets
Speaker 1: and was hurt deeply because as an example, as a
Speaker 1: as an African American man, a black man here in
Speaker 1: this country, I did not want to give the perception
Speaker 1: that we're supposed to gloss this over and and forget
Speaker 1: the death of George Floyd. The murder of George Floyd.
Speaker 1: And I want to apologize to everyone right now who
Speaker 1: has ever offended, because it hurt. And and even back
Speaker 1: when I was trying to explain, it just got worse
Speaker 1: and worse. And this is where the book came in,
Speaker 1: because the need is for us as a people to
Speaker 1: actually come together and really really be what we need
Speaker 1: to be to this country because this is our country.
Speaker 1: This is our country. We die and fought and I'm
Speaker 1: not giving it away. This is our inheritance. I love you,
Speaker 1: Tim first for real, you know, thank you, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: what what I what I always say to people is
Speaker 1: find a person who has tweeted. You will find somebody
Speaker 1: who has messed up, and you will find someone who's
Speaker 1: been misinterpreted. Thank you so much for thank you, thankful
Speaker 1: already more. Thanks. Harry's book, My John, It's a True
Speaker 1: Coll is available now. What's the Daily Show weeknights at
Speaker 1: eleven tent Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes
Speaker 1: anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central
Speaker 1: podcast