By Bill Vaughan
Entertainment Writer
On the eve of his 70th year of life, DAVID ALAN GRIER recently received the Vanguard Award for his illustrious career at the eighth annual Celebration of Black Cinema & Television presented by the Critics’ Choice Association. It was a high honor for a man with hundreds of roles on stage and film and who currently tops NBC’s Monday night line-up with the hospital-based sitcom “St. Denis Medical.”
The Detroit native spoke to TASTY CLIPS several years ago in his role as co-host of the L.A. presentation of “100: The Apollo Theater Celebrates Ella’s 100 Birthday!” at the Ford Theatres. He was introduced to the music of Ella Fitzgerald by his parents and wore her albums out while at the University of Michigan and the Yale School of Drama.
“Ella was always my favorite jazz singer,” exclaimed Grier, “cause she always had a girlish and youthful quality to her voice. If you listen to someone like Betty Carter, Billie Holliday or Sarah Vaughan, it’s like their voices aged, matured and got lower. Ella’s never did really until the very end. She always had this energetic quality and attack to the way she did her music. And of course, her scatting was awesome.”
The versatile actor and comedian with numerous credits on Broadway, TV and on the big screen, is always busy. He’s hosted the Game Show Network’s “Snap Decision,” has his own food blog at ChocolateGlutton.com, and has played characters in TV shows such as Netflix’ “Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “Queen Sugar,” “The Cool Kids,” and “Joe Pickett;” in addition to movies “They Cloned Tyrone,” “The Color Purple,” “Candy Cane Lane,” and “The American Society of Magical Negroes.”
Prior to our chat, he delivered some mighty punch lines as the patriarch on the recently canceled “The Carmichael Show” starring Jerrod Carmichael.
When asked what happened to the fan favorite comedy series and if there was a chance for a revival, Grier was frank.
“I thought for a minute we would go on to Netflix,” he said. “It’s just the way it was handled by NBC kind of precluded all of that. They took us off for over a year. By the time we ended the show, people were totally dispersed. [Lil Rel Howery]’s career took off with ‘Get Out.’ Tiffany [Haddish] blew up with ‘Girls Trip.’ We were already contracted to other jobs.”
“Also, by keeping us off the air for a year and premiering us intentionally after the Emmy qualification deadline, we were killed on every platform,” he added. “At least we got three seasons which took like five years to do.”
As for the failed reunion of “In Living Color,” the hit 90s ensemble series featuring some of his most memorable comic work, Grier was a bit perplexed.
“They tried to do a reboot,” he said. “Rel was in the cast. We were all coming back. I talked to Jim Carrey. I heard [Jennifer Lopez] and everybody was going to come back. We were going to work for basically nothing because we just thought it would be cool, and Fox just messed it up. Now I don’t know why they didn’t choose to air the pilot but everybody was down and it just collapsed.”
Since Grier used to dispense relationship advice on the radio show “Loveline,” Kevin Hart’s indiscretion at the time was brought up.
“First of all, I did some research and that little side piece is Hoo,” he offered. “Blessed week! You just got to fess up. It’s really not about what people think and your brand. You really have to shut out the outside noise, and really work on that family. If that’s what you want to do, you have to go all in.”
“It’s between them if they can heal and move on. Stay off Bossip and TMZ. A video apology — that circumvents everything. Was there a real sex tape? I don’t know all that. Whatever happened he was compelled to apologize. Now if he was honest then there’s really no more to the story because you’ve got it.
“I would rather do that than go on ‘60 Minutes’ and ‘The Tonight Show’ on the apology tour. No. Just get on that Instagram, fess up and put that bad boy in your next comedy special.”
Grier would love to play jazz great Thelonious Monk in a biopic and said he’s too old now, but always had this dream of Werner Herzog directing him as Aaron the Moor in a movie version of Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus.”
Mostly these days he’s just reveling in his career.
“I feel like I’ve really figured out what acting is about after 30 [now 40] years,” he said. “I’m really in a sweet spot. My flow is coming unexpurgated. I feel like I’ve tapped into myself as an artist. I didn’t know it would take this long, but you know …”
For more than 11 years, Bill Vaughan has kept Wave readers up to date with the latest news in entertainment. Now, we are collecting some of those past columns into what we call the Best of Tasty Clips. To contact Vaughan, visit his social media pages on Facebook and Instagram or @tasty_clips, on X @tastyclips, and on LinkedIn to William Vaughan.
