by Terrence J
I didn’t like to hear it at the time, but something must have sunk in. Because, looking back, it’s clear that one of the biggest successes I’ve had in my life is due to the patience that I learned from her.
By 2009, I’d been working at 106 & Park for three years. I loved my job but secretly still longed to do some acting. I’d started taking acting workshops at the Lee Strasberg Institute, and had taken some small parts in independent movie projects that friends had produced, but I had yet to win a role in any kind of Hollywood production.
I’d recently become involved in the Disney Dreamers Academy. Once a year, the Disney Dreamers Academy gathers a hundred disadvantaged kids from around the country and flies them to Orlando, Florida, for a weekend of mentoring and Disney fun. It’s a great organization. That year, the academy’s selection process was taking place at the home of Steve Harvey, one of the academy’s founders, and I was invited to participate.
I knew who Steve Harvey was from The Kings of Comedy—and I was a huge fan. And he also happened to be a fraternity brother, a fellow member of Omega Psi Phi. I was thrilled at the chance to meet him, and when I arrived at his enormous house I was welcomed with open arms.
Steve and I spent a lot of time bonding that weekend, but one particular thing that he said really stuck with me, because it reminded me of something my mom had always told me, too: “In life, it’s all about relationships.” “Never burn bridges,” he said. “Always keep your relationships close, and take care of them.” This is advice that would serve me well in the coming years.
The Dreamers Academy was an incredible experience—and I’ve stayed involved ever since. The kids were really inspiring to work with. While doing a mentor session, I ended up sitting on a panel next to a young Hollywood producer named Will Packer, an inspiring person who would also end up being very influential in my life.
Fast forward to August of 2009. It was the five-year anniversary of my fraternity line brothers’ graduation, and all thirteen of us had decided to fly to Las Vegas to celebrate. Steve Harvey had invited me to present at the Hoodie Awards, an annual award event he hosts. Think of the Hoodie Awards as a kind of Oscars: Essentially, he honors the best neighborhood barber shops, the best soul food, the best hair and nail salons, the best teachers, the best church choirs. It’s all about average, everyday heroes, with the celebrities presenting the awards to everyday men instead of receiving the awards themselves. It’s an enormously popular event.
The night of the awards, I was in a great mood. My fraternity brothers were in the crowd, and as I walked onstage to present an award, the song that began to blare over the loudspeakers was “Atomic Dog” by George Clinton—a song that just happens to be Omega Psi Phi’s fraternity song, complete with a special hop (a choreographed dance). So when I heard the first bars coming over the sound system, I ripped my shirt off, ran into the crowd, and found my fraternity brothers. Together, we spontaneously began to dance. The crowd went nuts.
My antics paid off, because Will Packer was in the crowd that day with a gentleman named Clint Culpepper, the president of Sony Screen Gems. Together, they had just acquired the film rights to Steve Harvey’s book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. They were at the Hoodie Awards to announce the upcoming movie adaptation, and they witnessed me working the crowd into a frenzy.
After the event we attended the after party, which was an all-white party. I was standing backstage, wearing a white seersucker suit with a fresh pair of white bucks straight from the box. You couldn’t tell me nothing that day. As I stood there with the fellas, Will Packer came over with Clint Culpepper in tow. Clint immediately admired my shoes and shook my hand. “Where in the hell did you get that suit?” he asked.
I whispered to him, “Barneys. But the tag is still in it, in case I have to bring it back.” He let out a laugh.
“You have so much charisma,” he said. “I want to put you in a movie.”
Tiffany looked impressed. “Seriously? You were discovered by a Hollywood producer? That’s like, living the dream.”
I laughed. “That’s not exactly how it happened.”
“I want to put you in a movie” may be the most hollow words in Hollywood. People say this all the time, and rarely—if ever—do they actually follow up. But I remembered the advice I’d gotten from my mom and Steve Harvey—“nurture your relationships.” So I kept in touch. I sent Clint and Will holiday greetings at Christmas; cordial emails just to say hello. I kept my name in their consciousness. Over time, as you continue to communicate with people, you start to develop genuine relationships with them; and after a while, my friendship with them became organic. I wasn’t hitting on them because I wanted a gig, but because over time you truly become friends.
Those relationships started to manifest into amazing things. Within six months, I got a call from Shayla Cowan, Will Packer’s right hand. Will was putting together a sequel to his hit movie Stomp the Yard, about step competitions at a black university. Shayla set up an audition for me with the casting director. I jumped at the opportunity, worked on the audition with my acting coach, and flew out to audition for the second lead.
I didn’t get the part. Instead, they offered me a much smaller part, four or five characters down the list. My manager at the time told me that I should turn it down. “It’s a direct-to-video movie,” he sniffed. “You’re on TV every day. You’re a name. You need to either be a lead or a more prominent role. There’s no reason to take the role they’re offering.”
This is the kind of ego-stroking thing that managers say all the time. And I did want a bigger role. I would need to take almost three weeks off work to do the movie, which was a lot of time for a role that wouldn’t even get me prominent placement.
But I stopped and remembered my mom. My mom was always humble. My parents didn’t expect anything fancy. They were minimalists. It was about what was necessary, not what was lavish. Humility, not cockiness, was what they valued.
“I want to do it,” I told my manager. “I really want to work with Will Packer. I’ll take any role they offer me. I don’t care what it is.”
My boss at BET, Stephen Hill, was terrific about letting me take time off to do Stomp the Yard 2. But there was a lot of travel involved. I would literally be in dance rehearsals in Atlanta all day, learning the moves and filming scenes, then get on a nine o’clock flight back to New York City, film my 106 & Park segments, and then fly back to Atlanta on the red-eye. Three or four times a week! By the time I was done with filming, I’d spent more than double on airplane tickets than I’d actually been paid for acting in the movie.
But it was well worth the time and effort, because I got to spend more time getting to know Will Packer; Shayla; and the film’s director, Rob Hardy. We even spent Thanksgiving together in Atlanta—I was too tapped out to fly back to New York City for the holiday. Even though the movie didn’t change my life financially, it ended up being a great experience. I developed new relationships, got experience on camera, and learned all about being on a movie set.
In early December, just a few weeks after we wrapped Stomp the Yard 2, I got a call from Clint Culpepper. He had a role for me in a film, playing Cher’s assistant in Burlesque. He was a man of his word: He was putting me in my first Hollywood movie. It was the most exciting thing in the world.
I went back to Stephen Hill and asked him for a few more days off, to fly out to L.A. and shoot the part. This time, he said no. “You already used all your time,” he said.
I was floored. “I just need a few days.”
“I just gave you three weeks.”
It grew more heated. Next thing I knew, we were yelling at each other. I could hear myself, sounding like a teenager complaining that his dad is being unfair. “You need to make a decision,” he said. “You are the anchor of this show. We need you here. You have a great job and you need to appreciate that more.”
He told me to get out of his office. I slammed the door, cursed at him on the way out, and told him I was
leaving. I’m not sure what I meant by that, and I don’t think he knew, either.
I walked back to my dressing room and looked around. Was this it? I grabbed my things and made a halfhearted attempt at packing up, and then slumped to the ground. I didn’t know what to do. Legally and morally, he was right. I had no argument. I’d taken off all the days at work I possibly could. But I really wanted to work on this project, to begin my career as an actor and begin building my brand outside BET. After working so hard to nurture that relationship, I was embarrassed to go back and tell Clint I couldn’t take the roll. But I also loved my job at 106 & Park. And the more I thought about it, the more I felt horrible about the way I’d yelled at Stephen. He was well within his rights to tell me no.
This time, I didn’t even have to call my mom to know what she was going to say to me. She would have told me the same thing that she told me at NASCAR: “If you believe in something and your heart is saying you have to do it, then you have to do it. No matter what the sacrifice is.” She would have told me that I needed to humble myself a little and go apologize to Stephen Hill. “You have to be a man if you want to be treated like a man,” I could hear her say. “Go back and work it out.”
She would have been right, of course. So I called Antoinetta, Stephen Hill’s assistant at the time, and asked her to set up a meeting. She told me that he was really upset and needed some time. I gave him a few hours before going back to his office.
The first thing I did was tell him how sorry I was for being disrespectful. “You changed my life,” I said. “I don’t know where I’d be without you and 106. But I need to do this, its part of my long-term life plan. What can I leverage to make this happen?”
He took me in for a minute, and then finally laughed. “Look, if you ever curse at me and slam my door again, you’ll be out on the street faster than you got here.” He paused. “So I guess if you’re going to do this no matter what, we’ll figure it out.”
And we did figure it out—a few weeks later, I flew out to L.A. and shot three days with Cher and Christina Aguilera. He did make me pay for those three days: I was indebted to him for the rest of my time at 106 & Park. But I learned a lot from that encounter. From that point on, we were friends instead of just employee and employer; I wasn’t just the talent, I was participating in the show as a producer, too. I had gained his respect as a businessman by humbling myself and trying to work things out. I wasn’t afraid of my boss anymore. Instead, I realized that a good working relationship is about figuring things out together, compromising, being in a partnership. To this day, I can call on Stephen as a mentor and friend, and we still do a lot of business together.
And the film that I was willing to sacrifice my job for? It was an amazing experience—my first time on the set of a major Hollywood film—and worth every bit of grief I got.
Tyler had squirmed off Tiffany’s lap again and was attempting to overturn a garbage can. Tiffany ran to retrieve him and then came back and sat next to me again. “I didn’t know you were in Burlesque,”Tiffany said. “I loved that movie.”
“I played Dave the DJ.”
Neither of these roles—a small role in a small film, and an even smaller role in a big film—was going to knock the world’s socks off. But it’s all about the slow build, about patience. This whole time, during the filming of those movies and the events surrounding their release, I was building relationships. Nurture your relationships.
Three years after we met at the Hoodie Awards, Clint and Will were ready to put Think Like a Man into production. Shayla was on the ground with that production, and she kept me abreast of what was going on; it’s thanks to her that I was slipped one of the earliest copies of the script, before anyone else had it.
As soon as I got the script, I knew I wanted to do this film. I bought a copy of Steve’s book. Wherever I was—in my bedroom, my dressing room—I would read it. Every time I looked at the cover I’d say to myself, “I am going to be in this movie.” I read the script over and over and over again.
One Monday morning, not long afterward, Will called me. “Hey, man,” he said. “I know this is last minute, but we’re having a table read for Think Like a Man tomorrow. Are you in L.A. right now? Because we’d love to have an extra voice.”
“Of course I’m in L.A.,” I told him. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, bright and early. Looking forward to it, man.”
I got off the phone with him, confused. I had no idea what a table read was. Not to mention the fact that I was still in New York. I hit Fred immediately and told him to go on Kayak.com and buy us two coach tickets on the next thing smoking. I faked sick—by now, my signature move—on the phone to my executive producer. On the way to Los Angeles, in middle seat 38B, I read and reread the part I’d been assigned: Michael, a momma’s boy. By the time we landed, I had it memorized, as if I was going to be tested on it the next day. After all, the same stuff you do in school is the same stuff you do out of school.
When I walked into the table read, I was thrilled to discover that the director was Tim Story. I had auditioned for him for a pilot two years earlier. Even though I hadn’t gotten that part, he remembered me, and we had an instant rapport. It goes to show that things often come full circle.
A table read, I soon discovered, was not an audition at all. It was simply a read-through of the script, so that the production team can hear how the jokes sound and the script reads. The whole team was there, watching. When I was handed my script, I just stuck it under the table. I didn’t need it: I knew the script by heart. Some of the other actors read their parts straight; others put a little bit of pepper on it. Me? I was acting out every scene as if a camera was coming in for my close-up. I didn’t know any better. I put everything I had into it. Maybe it wasn’t a formal audition, but this was my audition. I knew they were going to go look for a bigger actor, so this was the only chance I was going to get.
After the reading, Will pulled me aside. Will is extremely charismatic and he has a way of making any news, even when it’s not the greatest, sound like you just won the lotto. “Thanks so much for coming. You did a great job. We need big names for the lead roles, but we’re definitely going to find something for you,” he said, with all the charm in the world.
“Thanks, Will!” I said. It took me three days to realize what he really meant—I probably wasn’t getting this role. Damn.
Fast forward to six months later, and I’m on the set of Think Like a Man, getting to work under the direction of Tim Story alongside super movie and TV stars that I’d looked up to for years. My role? Michael, the same part that I’d read months earlier—the same part they said they were going to give to a bigger actor. The movie outdid anyone’s expectations; it ultimately went on to make just under $100 million—almost ten times its budget. In addition to the film’s success, Think Like a Man went on to win the BET Award for Best Movie. Walking onstage to accept the award from BET, the company that had started my career all those years earlier, was one of the most gratifying moments I could ever have imagined. The only thing that made it even better? I would soon get the chance to reprise my role in a sequel.
But up until the minute the camera rolled, I was still convinced that someone was going to walk into my trailer and say, “It’s all a practical joke. Did you really think you got this role?”
There are a lot of reasons why Clint and Will changed their minds and gave me the part, even though they had other actors in mind. At the top of the list was the fact that I came into the table read and just owned that character. I had studied and studied, worked and worked at it—just like my mom taught me—until I had willed it into my existence. As my mom says, the more you work, the luckier you’ll get.
But there were other reasons, too.
I got the job because of relationships. I’d nurtured my connection with Will and Clint, growing a business relationship that over time led to a genuine and close friendship. When it came down to it, they were willing to take a risk on me.
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p; I think another reason I may have gotten the gig was because of my humility. My manager thought I was too big to take that first job on Stomp the Yard 2, but I never came in cocky. I was grateful for any opportunity I received, and I came in humble, as if I was an intern starting at the bottom. And you know what? That small role in that small movie ultimately started my acting career in earnest.
And last, I got the job because of patience. Think Like a Man was almost four years in the making, and I had the patience to wait for it to manifest. In this industry, things don’t happen overnight. I went to over a hundred auditions for roles I didn’t get. Success doesn’t often come from your first audition or casting call, and your ego is going to get bruised and damaged along the way. But all you can do is plant those seeds and wait for them to grow.
Like my mom also said, patience is key. No matter how long she had to wait, that bus always eventually arrived and got her where she wanted to go. And it did the same for me.
I glanced at my watch—it was time for me to leave. Before I left, I stood up and gave Tiffany a hug—I had no idea when I would see her next. Tyler batted at my face with his little baby hands. “Good luck, little man,” I told him. “I’ll be expecting to hear big things coming from you soon.”
* * *
In Her Own Words: Lisa on Patience & Humility
We’re in a world now where it is all about instant gratification. But sometimes it takes a long time to master something. Things don’t come to you overnight. You have to put in the time. You really have to have patience. Today, a lot of kids struggle with that.
I didn’t learn all the things I’m telling you overnight. This has taken years, and I’m still working at the Art of Learning. I’m still always trying to perfect things. Sometimes we want things so quickly—or we think we do—and we have to calm down and put the time in. In creating a company, for example—you’re not going to be able to get your website up in a day, order your business cards, launch your advertising. Rome wasn’t built in one day. Instead, you need to come up with a plan for what you want to do, and then take it one day at a time. That takes patience.