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Despite a thriving film career, Mike Epps always finds a place in his life for stand-up comedy.
“I’m always doing live performances,” Epps said in a phone interview. “You never stop performing. That’s what keeps you grounded, keeps you level-headed after everything else. It’s what keeps you out there.”
There aren’t many stand-up performances as grounded as the one Epps plans to give on Sunday at the Embassy Theatre.
“Mike Epps and Friends: From the Hood to Hollywood” features four Fort Wayne-area acts: Tasha Denae, Rick Reader, Tony Roberts and Mike Moses.
“From what I understand,” said comedian Moses, “everywhere he goes on tour, he opens the door and gives local comedians and performers a chance to share the spotlight with him. I like the whole concept. It makes him seem very down to earth.”
Epps said he hasn’t grown so successful that he has forgotten what the lean times were like.
“I grew up poor,” he said. “When you grow up poor, you have to entertain yourself to keep from being hungry.”
Indianapolis native Epps was one of nine children in a single-mother household. He had a built-in audience that helped him develop his comedic skills early.
He said his drive and ambition grew out of that environment.
“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a hard worker,” he said. “I used to lie to my mother that the NBA came to the school to watch me play basketball. She acted like she didn’t know I was lying, but she knew.”
He was a class clown who went from entertaining his classmates to entertaining millions.
Epps began performing stand-up comedy as a teenager and became a regular at the Comedy Act Theater in Atlanta. From there he went to New York and joined the Def Comedy Jam on tour and on HBO. He was with Jam from 1992 to 1997.
He took a break to explore the film world, making his debut in Vin Diesel’s “Strays.”
Ice Cube discovered him and cast him in “Next Friday,” the sequel to the 1995 hit “Friday.” Since then they’ve done several projects together, including “Friday After Next” and “All About the Benjamins.”
The two pair up again in “Janky Promoters,” due to be released this year.
“Me and Ice Cube, doing a little movie about two promoters trying to get some money together to do a little show. I think you’re going to like it,” Epps said. “People like to see me and Ice Cube hook back up, from doing all the ‘Friday’ movies and stuff. I think everybody will enjoy seeing me and Ice Cube hook up again.”
The two had not met before 1999, when Epps stepped in to replace Chris Tucker in the follow-up to “Friday.” Ever since, they’ve become regular on-screen foils.
“ ‘Next Friday’ was the first film we did together. I didn’t know Ice Cube before then. I heard he was auditioning for the movie. He came to see me do stand-up. He liked it. From there we’ve been rolling ever since.”
Epps appears in two other films set for release this year – “Next Day Air,” with Wood Harris, Debbie Allen and Mos Def, and “Hangover,” directed by Todd Phillips of “Old School” fame and filmed in Las Vegas.
“The movie’s about four guys who go to a bachelor party with their friend to Vegas and get real wasted,” Epps said. “I come out to Vegas just to work, you know what I mean. It’s a fun spot, but I have fun when I’m working. I don’t want to have too much fun – I might end up in the Vegas county jail, like O.J.”
Epps has never written a film script, but he does do some script doctoring on his films.
“I write on spec, you know what I mean?” he said. “When I get a movie, I’m allowed to write my (stuff) right there on the deck to make it better. A lot of these movies need flavor … You get the script and it’ll be OK, but it be needing that flavor.”
Epps said his early influences were Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. “The same suspects.”
He hasn’t met Murphy, but he was able to spend some time with Pryor before the legendary comedian died in December 2005.
“I got picked to play Richard Pryor in a movie and I sat with him a whole year before he died. Sat with the king,” he said, referring to a Pryor biopic that was to have been released in 2007 but remains on hold. “I was in the last movie with Bernie Mac before he died – ‘Soul Man’ with Bernie Mac, Samuel Jackson and Isaac Hayes, who just passed.”
The Newport News Daily Press and Steve Penhollow of The Journal Gazette contributed to this story.
