By Karu Daniels
In comedy, you’re pretty much put out to pasture by the time you’re 50. That’s certainly not the case for one of the “Original Kings of Comedy” Steve Harvey. With his new daytime talk show on NBC and his host gig on the nationally syndicated game show Family Feud, Harvey’s doing double duty on TV. Factor in his top-rated morning radio show boasting a listenership of 7 million, best-selling books Straight Talk, No Chaser and Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man (recently transformed into a No. 1 movie) and a fashion line with K&G, and you’re looking at a multipronged media maverick. And he’s 55.
Not too shabby for Broderick Steven Harvey, a former Ford Motor Company plant worker who’s not ashamed to tell his own rags-to-riches-back-to-rags-to riches story (after he left a successful six-season run of WB’s The Steve Harvey Show, he only had $1,700 in the bank). Though he recently retired from stand-up, the happily married father of seven is showing no signs of slowing down.
I am… a positive person. I’m an enjoyable person. When I’m doing my thing as a comedian and it’s at the expense of something or someone, people take that as being mean, but it is the business I’m in.
Comedy is… not what it used to be. Look back to when I was coming up on Def [Comedy] Jam. It was me, Bernie [Mac], Cedric [The Entertainer], Bill Bellamy, Simply Marvelous, D.L. [Hughley], Adele Givens, Sheryl Underwood, Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Damon Wayans, Earthquake, Bruce Bruce, and the list goes on and on and on. You had to be a lot funnier back then because the competition was great.
My new talk show is unique… because of its male perspective, which is missing from daytime television.
Photo credit: mark mann/contour by getty images
I didn’t know… that my book would sell 3 million copies. I figured 200,000 would be good. The book company said, “[Write] black women do this, and black women do that.” And I said, “No, black men, white men, brown men, red men, and yellow men all think the exact same way. Let’s not put color in it.”
I was enlightened by… hosting BET’s Celebration of Gospel. I found out that you not only don’t have to be perfect, but guess what? You can’t be because no one is.
I Thank God… for my haters, because my haters have made me greater.
The best Tweet I ever received… “Your career is what you get paid for, your calling is what you’re made for.” That was a very powerful tweet, and it really touched me because it was the truth.
I was made stronger… when [people] were trying to destroy my family on the Internet. All it did was push us closer together, made us rely on each other more, and get closer to God.
Within the next five years… me and my wife, Marjorie, are going to open up a mentoring camp. We are going to Paris. Sail the Mediterranean for a couple of months. Then come back, and I’m going to give her two more babies!
