by Ice-T
And the producers and writers are very responsive to me. If they write a scene for me and I say, “Naw, that’s not how I feel” or “I would never say that shit,” depending on how essential the dialogue is, the writers may change it.
One reason SVU has become the most successful of the Law & Order shows is the fact that we’re truly an ensemble cast. The chemistry between us is great; all the stars and co-stars have such clear identities. We’re not cartoons, but we’re neatly delineated. There’s very little ambiguity to our roles. And in the world of weekly TV shows, audiences connect with that kind of clarity.
Mariska Hargitay’s character, Liv Benson, is supposed to be the child of rape. That defines her mind-set and makes her supersensitive to the victims. Chris Meloni, as Elliot Stabler, is defined primarily by his children, so he cycles almost every case through the lens of being a father. Plus, he’s got major anger issues. Richard Belzer as Munch thinks every-fucking-thing is a massive conspiracy; he’s very well read and verbose. Plus, he’s a world-class wiseass. And I’m the guy on the squad who was supposed to have previously been an undercover narc—I’m pointblank, grew up in the streets, and I don’t give a fuck for niceties. If we grab some child molester, I’m likely to give him a smack in the face as we shove him in the Crown Vic. I’m soft for the little kid victims, but I’m not too subtle or sensitive when it comes to any of the sexual predators we’ve got to lock up.
Those are four very clear personality types; they set up four different points of view. When you put me together with Chris, you know that he’s the rageaholic, but if he crosses some legal boundaries, I’ve got his back. When I’m working one-on-one with Mariska, she’s going to get sensitive, but I’m more like the no-nonsense cop. When I’m working with my partner, Belz, if a perp starts running, I’m jumping over fences and bouncing off the hoods of cars. I’m more or less the muscle, the henchman for the whole crew. Even when Chris gets out of pocket, sometimes the writers have me trying to tame Elliot’s anger by getting in his face.
I love working with Mariska. She’s a real pro, cool as hell—and hilarious. When I’m doing scenes with Chris it can get explosive, two hard-asses butting heads. With Belzer, I get to roll my eyes and say sarcastic shit. Our writers give me a lot of good one-liners to use on his ass. Belz and me are more like a traditional comedy team within the boundaries of a cop show.
With a truly ensemble cast, depending on the writing of a given episode, any one of us can take the reins and run with it. Actually, that’s the way that the show’s writers shuffle the deck to give people days off. We have another trick of the trade called “tandem episodes” that we’ll do if they’re trying to shoot a certain number of shows and we don’t have enough weeks. It’s like cutting a cake in two. They’ll take half the crew with one group, half with another, and we’ll shoot two shows simultaneously. In that one eight-day period, Mariska and I may be the leading roles in one show, and Chris and Belz will do another show. Someone will cover for us, saying, “Fin is in court testifying,” but that’s just because I’m working on another set full-time.
I’ve had a bunch of episodes where I get the starring role—and it works. The writers have written some great pieces based around Fin and his son, who came out of the closet, which Fin had a hard time accepting. I also had an episode where I was butting heads with Ludacris. In real life, ’Cris is my man, and we had fun on the set, me playing detective and him playing a young cold-blooded murderer. I had another starring role recently in a show about murders among different immigrants in New York, all of whom had so-called “anchor babies” to gain U.S. citizenship. I can carry the weight if they ask me to be the star. If they gave me an episode where I’m the lead and I didn’t pull it off, trust me, they wouldn’t write one again.
Like making records, acting can be repetitious. You’re in there until you get the right take, say your lines spot-on, but as an actor you get to walk away from it. I don’t worry about lighting the scene, or editing it, or the background noise of some jet taking off from La Guardia ruining the shot. It’s almost like when I’m a vocalist, making a record; in the best case, I walk into the studio, my producer already has the track up, I step in the vocal booth and do my thing. If that track ain’t happening, he’ll keep playing tracks until I say, “That’s hot.” And then I’ll spit my lyrics, bounce, he’ll call me up later on say, “Yo, Ice. I got the mix. Come down and listen.”
When I show up for work on the SVU set, they’ve got the set lit, all the extras in place, I just walk in, say my lines, and walk away. Then magically—at least from my perspective—a few weeks later it appears on NBC: Wednesday nights.
In episodic TV, we always say “You’re at the mercy of the script.” Your day all depends on how heavily your character is written that week. A network television show takes eight days to shoot one episode and, when you add two days for the weekend, you’re shooting three episodes a month. One episode of SVU will have about forty-two to fifty scenes. That’s one ep. You could be in forty-eight scenes if you’re Chris or Mariska; you could be in ten scenes if you’re me.
But then I’m not getting paid what Chris or Mariska get paid. They’re number one and two on the call sheet; I’m number five. If you take a job as a co-star on a TV show, you know from the jump that your workload is lower. If I shoot for eight days, I might shoot five scenes one day, five scenes the next day and then get the other six days off. Or I could shoot a scene a day over those eight days. Mercy of that script.
What a lot of people don’t understand about episodic television is that you’re not getting paid more when you act in more scenes and less when you’re in fewer scenes. They sign you for the season—just like an NBA player. So over the course of those twenty-three episodes, you’re going to get the same check even if you’re not in an episode at all. Since you can’t break out and do a movie or another long-term project, the network still has to pay you a salary; they’re buying you and locking you down for the year.
Frankly, I’m glad I’m not the star of every show like I was on Players. As cool as Fin is, I think if he was on-screen too much, people would get tired of the character.
It was the same for me in the early days of my hip-hop career. One time when we were doing this big show in New York with Whodini as the headliners, and I was doing my set right before them, I’ll never forget,
I told Jalil Hutchins, “Yo, one day I’ll be up here. I’ll be getting top-billing.” He pointed at the middle of the poster and said, “Yo man, it’s safer there.” I knew exactly what he meant. If you’re the middle act rather than the headliner and the show’s a big hit, you can take some of the credit. But if the show’s a flop, you just blame it on the bigger names. That’s my same position on SVU. If the show’s a big hit, I get some of the credit; if it bombs, I say, “Okay, but I wasn’t the star!”
THE BIGGEST IRONY of my life for the past ten years is that more people recognize me for playing Fin, this street-wise NYPD detective, than remember the whole “Cop Killer” controversy. Cops are now some of my biggest fans. You find that police in the real world are just like normal people—the cops I meet who are in their twenties today are way too young to remember “Cop Killer.” Even during the heat of that madness, a lot of police went out of their way to prove to me that they weren’t the cop I was singing about, that they were by-the-book officers, not some rogue cops engaged in police brutality.
After landing these gigs in New Jack City and Law & Order, of course, there’s always going to be dumb people out there saying, Ice, first you’re killing police, now you’re playing cops. What’s up with that?
Man, shut the fuck up. You stuck on stupid? I’m acting, dude. I am not a cop. I’ve never arrested nobody. I’ve never read anybody their Miranda rights or slapped them in cuffs.
Check it—this is something I just was discussing with the inmates in Sing Sing when I went there to talk with them. A few years back, I was asked to give the commencement address for the guys behind the w
all who’d graduated from university—cats there were getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees. And we recently went back to Sing Sing to do a follow-up. Most of these guys were lifers, or doing twenty-five-year, thirty-year, forty-year bids. We were chopping it up, exchanging game, swapping war stories. Because that’s where I really get information from. If you’re in business, it doesn’t help you much to talk to someone who’s been in business one year. You need to talk to someone who’s been in business for thirty years.
We’re talking about haters, and one of these hard rocks lays it on me: “Yo, Ice: All these muthafuckas givin’ you shit about playing a cop, trust me, they use the cops. All these muthafuckas, all these gangstas, they all use the cops. So fuck that old bullshit—that’s posturing and posing. That’s just them trying to make themselves look good at your expense. Don’t sweat it. Real muthafuckas know that you gettin’ cheddar. And ain’t an inmate in prison who wouldn’t come out and walk on that TV show for a job.”
I get this shit all the time. Especially in the age of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. “Oh, Ice-T used to be down with the little man,” some guy posted online. “Now he’s down with the system.” I got news for you, dog. The system is a monster. Sooner or later you’re going to have to learn how to work it. There is no overturning or overrunning the system, you need to learn to manipulate it. Even if you’re a gangster, there is still a system.
But you get those haters. Especially when you’re an entertainer. Pick any name in the public eye like The Rock, Dwayne Johnson, for example. You’ll get these people saying, “Remember The Rock? He was a bad-ass in wrestling but he went soft. Now he does corny kids’ movies.” Well, check it, idiot—when The Rock was wrestling that was a character, too, same way he’s playing a superhero or a hockey player in The Tooth Fairy. But I try to remember what my mother was always saying back in Summit:
People are stupid.
Real talk.
MAKING THE TRANSITION to the regimented schedule of network TV was rough at first. I was used to the freedom of my life in L.A., running my own record label, calling my own shots, doing concerts on my schedule, and taking movie roles if I was feeling the script. And this might sound crazy, but I honestly don’t think I could have developed and sustained a successful career on a network drama if I didn’t understand the world of pimpin’ and hoin’.
See, the pimp game often translates into the broader world. It’s like this: Either you work for somebody or you have them working for you. Now I work for NBC. I don’t get the lion’s share of the money. I don’t make a fraction of what that corporation makes. But I’m happy to do it. I love the gig.
All of us who work in the entertainment business brag on who we work for. “I’m on NBC—Dick Wolf’s a legend in this game.”
“Well, I’m on ABC—we’ve been number one for years.” That’s like hoes bragging on their pimps. Yeah, I brag on Dick Wolf. Brag on his reputation. I don’t care who you are: Everybody wants to work for the flyer pimp.
I had dinner with Dick Wolf recently in Monte Carlo. I’m not going to front: I was excited to sit down with the boss. The man is the man. Sometimes you’re lucky. You’ve got a good pimp. Dick Wolf is cool; he don’t whoop me. But don’t get it twisted. Don’t mistake what it really is—ever. If you’re not bringing home the lion’s share of the check, in a sense, you’re hoin’. The key thing is that you don’t mistake pimpin’ for hoin’. When you hoin’ know that you hoin’.
One of the primary rules in pimpin’ is that you never treat a ho better than the money she brings in. When I had a record deal with Warner Bros. and they were rubbing my neck, telling me how I was the bomb—when Prince walks in, all of a sudden, they’ll throw my fucking ass out and the platinum records on the wall will magically change to Prince records. All that rubbing of the neck, sweet-talking, bullshitting—yo, that’s pimpin’.
I’ve got the same situation with my employers at NBC Universal. Does NBC really love me? Or does it just love the money I’m bringing in? If I stopped bringing in money, man, they wouldn’t even accept my phone calls.
Here’s one real jewel from the game. Pimps and hoes don’t fall in love, they make love. I like to use the strip club example because most men won’t cop to having been with a hooker, but they will admit they’ve been to the strip club. When you’re in the club, that girl giving you lap dances, looking into your eyes, doesn’t love you. She’s making love to you. Your dumb ass thinks she loves you and you give her all your money. Sorry. She doesn’t give a shit about you, dog.
The big bosses at NBC don’t love me; they make love to me. They act like they love me because my fucking show is making money. I’m putting millions of dollars into their bank account. I’m a top-shelf ho, but I’m still a ho.
But, dig—all actors in Hollywood are hoes, as long as they’re making the studios and networks money. If you hear some studio executives saying, “Oh, Megan Fox is hot!” they don’t want to fuck her; they want to know how many guys will pay ten bucks to come to the theater to see her. She’s valuable only in as much as she can make them some paper.
I’m not naïve enough to think they actually care about any of us. We could drop dead tomorrow; they don’t give a fuck. Oh, they’ll cry, all right. But the only thing they’ll cry over is the money they lost.
Now when you blow up to the level of Will Smith or Tyler Perry, when you run your own successful production company, then you start to pimp yourself. That’s where the real Hollywood power is.
If you understand the essence of that game, you won’t get caught out there. You won’t start catching feelings. Sure, it may be cynical. Cold-blooded. But for me the value of understanding the pimp game is seeing life—all shapes and forms of human interaction—for what it truly is, not what you might wish it to be.
ONE THING I’VE LEARNED from straddling two worlds: Hollywood is way more gangster than the streets. Hollywood is way colder. Way more vicious. When I first started doing TV and movies, I never saw people get fired the way they do in show business. I never saw the coldness of the producers. They just don’t care about anybody. I suppose it’s because they don’t deal with the same ramifications as you do on the streets; they can hide behind attorneys and lawsuits. It’s a whole other set of rules.
With just a glance or a nod from the boss on the set, a producer will get his ass fired. The next day—boom—there’s a new producer sitting in his chair. The gangster of it is: I’m not even gonna fire you, dude. You won’t even know it’s coming. The boss is smiling the whole time, acting like everything’s cool. In the street, we call that rocking somebody to sleep.
I’ve learned so much hard-core gangsterism from show business. As a black street gangster, if I don’t like you, trust me, you’ll know it. That’s something the Italian mob had over us: Black people often have a problem disguising our anger.
It comes down to this. The higher you go up the mountain, the colder it gets. I’ve been around some of the most ruthless gangsters in the streets of South Central L.A., but I’ve never seen anything like Hollywood’s gangsterism. In the studios, they’re dealing with billions of dollars. On the streets, you’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars. When cats are dealing with billions of dollars, anybody—I mean, anybody—is expendable.
PART SIX
ICEBERG FAMILY VALUES
“IF YOU’RE HAVING GIRL PROBLEMS
I FEEL BAD FOR YOU, SON
GOT NINETY-NINE PROBLEMS
BUT A BITCH AIN’T ONE.”
—“99 PROBLEMS”
14.
MONOGAMY IS THE BOMB. Having one steady relationship—yes, being in love—that’s what turns me on. People trip when they hear that because they’re so conditioned to that idea of Ice-as-player that was an early part of my showbiz image. But I’ve always been into having one serious relationship.
I live by the code: One down bitch is worth ten funky hoes.
Even at the height of my rap career, I never felt the need to boos
t my ego with a bunch of women swarming around me. These days, whenever I see a guy with a gang of girls—like a neon sign announcing to the world that he’s a player—I know he’s really a trick. Probably a dude with low self-esteem. He may think he’s a player; but he’s a trick because he’s paying for all those women. No guy on this earth is handsome enough, sexy enough, charming enough that a bunch of girls are going to hang around him trying to suck his dick just because his dick is that good. Now and again, even an average dude may get two girls to fight over him, but not eight, nine, ten chicks. Don’t get it twisted. The dude is paying for sex, in some form or fashion, whether it’s the cash, the lifestyle, the parties, whatever—it’s coming out of his pocket. If that is what he chooses to do, and if he’s got the ends to do it—yo, have a blast, man. But again, own that shit. Know what you are: You ain’t no player. You a trick.
Most people want to be chosen by a mate for their character. They want to get chosen for what’s inside them. And most men—even real players—eventually want that one woman they can call “my wife.”
Let me give you one more insight from the pimp’s code. When a guy decides to get out of the game and get married, true players respect that. What a player will say is, “Just speak on it.” Meaning don’t come around here with your girl, treating her like shit, acting like you don’t care about her, then get pissed when one of the homeys cracks on her.
I don’t care where you’re from, what gangster nation you claim, real players are going to respect your woman. You just have to make it clear. This is my wife. This is the mother of my children. I love her. Then it’s handsoff. Men of all stripes are going to respect that. When I was in the game, I remember guys doing that all the time. Sometimes we’d met the chick before, but they’d reintroduce her as “my wife” to make sure we got it. Come up and say, “Yo, this is Cherelle—no, maybe I didn’t do that right. This is my wife. I love her.” And all the guys have to respect that reintroduction. Because there’s a different way you treat a guy’s wife than you treat some girl who’s hanging out with him who’s some party chick or another number in his phone book.