Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One (27 page)

AT THIS POINT, I WAS REALLY RECEPTIVE TO
television, especially with another baby on the way. I’d also started to get frustrated with how a movie experience would be really great, but then I’d have to wait a year for the film to come out. And then, sometimes, it would get buried, like had happened with
Idiocracy
, which had opened in only seven theaters in its first weekend. I’m still not exactly sure what happened with that film. But I was told there was a huge blowback against the studio because we had jokes on everyone from Costco to Carl’s Jr., who had all thought they were getting product placements, until they realized they were getting punked instead. At the time, I was devastated that so few people got to see that film.

I was approached about doing a new TV show, and I was open to it, so we entered into discussions. It felt like maybe I was starting to get a little light as a performer. Around the same
time, I auditioned for the Adam Sandler comedy
The Longest Yard
. Since it was a football movie, and I was one of the few former NFL players working in Hollywood, I thought maybe there was something in the film for me. They kept trying me out for all of these different roles, but they didn’t know what they wanted. And then, one day, I got a call from my agent, Brad.

“Dude, you’re about to get a call from Adam Sandler right now,” he said. “Keep your phone on. He wants to talk to you. It’s about
The Longest Yard
. I know we had you bouncing around to different roles, but he’s got it now.”

Let’s just say it’s hard to do anything else when you’re waiting for a career-making call from Adam Sandler. I sat and stared at my phone. Finally, there he was.

“Hey, buddy, how you doing?” he said.

“Hey,” I said, while thinking:
THIS IS ADAM SANDLER
.

“Hey, man, check it out, you killed me in
White Chicks
. It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve got this role for you. We want you to play Cheeseburger Eddy.”

Now, in the script, Cheeseburger Eddy was a 300-pound guy, like Fat Albert.

“But I’m not obese,” I said.

“Nah, nah, nah, what we’re going to do is you’re muscular, you’re in shape, and you’re eating cheeseburgers,” he said. “That’s even better.”

“All right,” I said.

“Dude, you’re in, you’re Cheeseburger Eddy,” he said. “I love it, man. I’ll see you on the set. You’re in.”

I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to shoot
The Longest Yard
, and this was another dream project for me. First of all, it was a superstar cast. Chris Rock was costarring, and it had everyone in it. Even better, I felt like this was my revenge on the NFL. I was going to show them that I hadn’t just disappeared. I was
back, and career-wise, I was better than ever. The film also reunited me with my old teammate from the Rams, Bill Goldberg, who’d become a wrestling superstar after his time in the NFL. That was so great, and Bill is one of the best people you could ever know.

Even then, with things going so well, I could not break my addiction to porn. When I went away on location, I watched adult movies on pay-per-view in my hotel room, even as I vowed to stop. But when Friday night rolled around, I couldn’t resist the temptation. Then I threw myself into my performances and workouts even more in order to make up for my guilt. Let me tell you, it was an exhausting way to live.

Filming
The Longest Yard
was another incredible experience, on par with
White Chicks
. It felt like being away at summer camp. I was working with my heroes, and everyone was having the best time. I was getting paid. The food was good and abundant. I’d been starving on and off for the past six years, and here I was, in heaven once again. And best of all, everything I did for the camera was working: riffing off the other actors, doing crazy stuff, dancing. Adam was laughing so hard. “Put that in the movie,” he said. “That’s in the movie.”

Chris Rock and I developed a friendship, and he was coming up with stuff off of what I was doing. He looked at me dancing one day and it just came out: “That’s a big-ass robot,” he said.

Everyone was just dying, they were laughing so hard.

While I was on the set, it was Tera’s birthday, and so Becky brought all of the kids to visit so we could celebrate together. I pulled Rebecca aside.

“Look at our lives, Becky,” I said. “Look, can you believe it?”

She shook her head, smiling so big. That whole visit, she and I were always looking at each other, giving each other double takes, like:
Look what we’re doing
.

I could see Chris noticing that I was a family guy, and while we were on the set together he started asking me questions about being a husband and a dad, but I didn’t think much of it. After the film was finished, we were all invited to the Super Bowl as part of the film’s promotion. With Adam Sandler’s production company, the Happy Madison clan, the way they do everything is just enormous—limo buses, and tickets for everybody, and all of these amazing events. The whole time, Chris was watching me and asking questions.

“So, yeah, how long you been married?”

“Sixteen years in July.”

“How many kids you got?”

“Four.”

He just kept going, but again, I wasn’t really thinking about his questions because it was so amazing to finally be at the Super Bowl. After all my years of struggle in the NFL, and then in Hollywood, now, finally, I felt like I’d found where I belonged. As we were leaving the Super Bowl, Chris pulled me aside one last time.

“Terry, I’ve got something for you,” he said. “I can’t tell you about it now,” he said. “I can’t tell you, but I’ve got it. I’ve got it. Just wait for it.”

Wow
, I thought.
Chris Rock says he’s got something for ME
.

I loved making movies. I wanted to make more movies. When it went well, it was this absolute high. It was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. After the fun I’d had working with the Wayanses on
My Wife and Kids
, I was open to TV. But when I thought about doing it instead of movies, a part of me was like:
Do I have to?

As usual, Rebecca was the smart one in our family.

“Honey, you’ve got to do TV because TV is going to be the thing for you,” she said. “And it gives us security.”

Yeahhh, security-smurity
, I thought. (Remember, this was the before part.)

“I’m loving being away on film sets, though,” I said.

“But we need you to be able to come home at night,” she said. “And if you do a good show, it will provide everything we need.”

Inside, I was still the risk taker, but after sixteen years of her good advice mostly keeping us from being taken down by the disasters I’d set in motion, I got it.

“I’m listening,” I said. “You’re right. I’ve got to get a TV show. I’ve got to do something like that.”

In the midst of all this, there was that television show I’d been offered. I was still not quite ready to commit, but I’d been told I had to give them a decision by the end of the day, and everything was telling me that I needed to move toward TV.

That day, a messenger delivered a script to the house. I opened it up, expecting it to be a revised script for the show I was in discussions about, but the title read
Everybody Hates Chris
. No one had told me it was coming, so I had no idea what to expect. It was the funniest thing I’d read in years. It was genius, so well done it was like a half-hour movie all about Chris’s life as a little boy. They wanted me to play his dad. On top of that, my old mentor and friend Reggie Hudlin was directing the pilot, and he’d also recommended me for the part.

Now, he and I hadn’t really been in touch since he’d backed out of producing my film,
Young Boys, Inc.
, after he’d directed me in
Serving Sara
. Before I moved to Los Angeles, I’d cut a trailer of my film so I could shop it around to potential investors for completion funds. I gave it to everyone who would take it and met with rappers, actors, music producers—anyone I thought might be interested. Once I got to LA, a friend took the trailer videocassette to his barbershop and asked the guys there what they thought. The reaction was pretty good overall, but
more important, Reginald Hudlin was in the barbershop at the time, saw the trailer, and loved it. Reginald had directed
House Party
, and
Boomerang
with Eddie Murphy, and eventually went on to produce
Django Unchained
with Quentin Tarantino. The funny thing was, I’d just been in his office the day before he saw my trailer, hoping to get a copy of it to him. But his assistant, Traci Blackwell, who was very good at her job, blocked me hard. My initial rejection made it all the sweeter when Reggie gave his card to my friend to set up a meeting. I then went back to his office and smiled at Traci as I told her Reggie wanted to meet with me now. She gave me a little side-eye, conferred with Reggie, and let me into his office. Traci is now a vice-president of current programming at the CW Network. I told you she did her job well.

Reggie was the first person to show me what real Hollywood was about. Even while I was doing security, he invited my family and me to parties at his gorgeous home in Beverly Hills. He was one of the smartest men in the business, and I met so many great people through him. In fact, the first time I ever met Arnold Schwarzenegger was when Reggie invited me to dinner with him. Reggie also invited me to movie premieres such as
Mission: Impossible 2
, where I rubbed shoulders with John Woo and Tom Cruise. Sometimes Reggie screened movies at his home theater, and I sat dumbfounded at how cool it was when he pressed a button and the screen descended from the ceiling. His home looked like a museum, with marble everywhere inside, and bougainvillea all over the exterior. Vintage movie posters from thirties- and forties-era black cinema covered the walls. All of this, and yet he continued to hang with a struggling security guard with dreams of making it in Hollywood. I always told myself:
Once I make it, that’s how I want to be
.

So it had been very painful for me when my talks with Reggie
about working together on
Young Boys, Inc.
, didn’t come to fruition. My agent at the time hadn’t handled the situation well, and I’d been so hungry to get something going that my feelings had been hurt. I wasn’t mad at Reginald, but it stung. And then I got busy just trying to keep afloat, and he and I hadn’t spoken in several years. So it felt amazing to be back in the fold with him. As soon as we reconnected, it was like old times again. I will always have so much respect for him.

Reginald shot the pilot for
Everybody Hates Chris
, and then there was this nervous energy around everything while we waited to see if we were going to get picked up. I wanted it so badly. We got word that we were being flown to New York for the upfronts, which was when the new shows are pitched to advertisers, and was a good sign that we’d gotten picked up.

Finally, it was official: We had been picked up. And that was yet another best day of my life so far. Not only was the show a go, but also, this little UPN sitcom was the most highly touted pilot of the year. It felt so great.

That morning, Chris and I stood onstage together at Madison Square Garden, waving at everybody and just beaming with joy. That night was the Los Angeles premiere for
The Longest Yard
. So Chris and I hopped on CBS’s private jet and flew from New York to LA, to attend the premiere with Adam Sandler. As soon as he saw me at the premiere, he came up and gave me a big hug.

“Hey, buddy,” he said. “We did it, buddy.”

My feet did not touch the ground that entire day. Everything we’d endured to get there played through my mind, and I had the thought that even during the moments that are the darkest of the dark, we should never kill ourselves because there’s something amazing on the other side. Here I was, living my dream, and I knew my life would once again never be the same.

The network did a huge takeover to launch
Everybody Hates Chris
. We were on billboards and every bus in New York City. We were on the cover of
Entertainment Weekly
. It was epic.
This is what it feels like
, I thought.

We also worked really, really hard. I decided to get my sports mentality on and never rest on the assumption that we were good. I was determined to be beyond great. I really wanted to show Chris what I could do and thank him for giving me this kind of opportunity. And because the part was based on Chris’s father, who had not lived to see his success, I wanted to really honor that memory and role.

Rebecca was right there. “I told you, TV is the way,” she said. “I told you.”

“I know,” I said. “You are always right.”

And she hadn’t just been right about TV, either. In December 2005, after we shot our first thirteen episodes of
Everybody Hates Chris
, we rented a five-bedroom house in a gated community in Altadena, California. It was the biggest house we’d ever lived in, palatial compared to anywhere else we’d stayed. Just before Christmas, Rebecca stood on the staircase, holding our little six-month-old boy, Isaiah, and we realized that her vision had come true.

Now that we’d made it, I had some ideas about what this meant. I was going to buy Rebecca a new car. So I made her trade in her car, which she loved, and I got her a huge black Escalade. It had rims and tinted windows and everything.

“This is the car you want,” I said.

She thanked me, but she never seemed that excited about her new car, and I couldn’t understand why. I had picked it for her, done everything, and she just didn’t seem to appreciate it. I was hurt, and I sat for hours, pouting about how ungrateful she was. Let me tell you, back then, I could get into a pity party,
with the pointy hat and the blower and everything. I mean I’ve had pity parties that rivaled New Year’s Eve, but the thing about the pity party is that no one else ever comes to your pity party. Not that I didn’t try. I talked to many of my guy friends and got them to agree.

“Yeah, dude, what’s wrong with her?” they said.