Hosting what Harvey does best
Host extraordinaire Steve Harvey got his start in standup comedy, but he hasn’t executed standup for six years — and might never again.
The reason: political correctness.
“It’s so PC out there,” Harvey said. “(Dave) Chappelle’s special broke a lot of the rules, and so did (Chris) Rock, but they’re not television stars. And I’m connected to a radio show and TV that’s very much sponsor-driven. If I had said anything that those two guys said, and somebody wrote in (to) a sponsor, ... then my whole television empire crumbles.”
Harvey has long kept his TV empire clean. And an empire, it is.
On Thursday, he will mark the season finale of his popular Fox series, “Showtime at the Apollo.” He also hosts a TV talk show, a morning radio gig, “Little Big Shots” on NBC and the syndicated “Family Feud.”
A bit of a workaholic, Harvey, 61, says that hosting is probably his greatest strength. He learned the intricacies of that job, he said, in Steve Harvey, whose series “Showtime at the Apollo” will conclude for the season this week
1991 while emceeing at his own comedy club.
“Hosting is a specialized talent because you have to be gracious,” he said. “Most people are not successful hosts, because they make the show about them."
Harvey has often become the go-to guy when a host is needed. Which explains why he is juggling five jobs on a schedule that would exhaust a tsunami.
“I’ve slowly been turning my brand into a global entrepreneur," he said. "It takes work to make dreams come true. I don’t know any other way to do it.”
But at times, Harvey confessed, he does feel overwhelmed.
“There are a lot of days that I wish I were off, but I can’t be. But at the same time, I’m really grateful and proud of the fact that I don’t miss — I’ve been on ‘Family Feud’ 200 episodes. This is the ninth year. I’ve never missed a day — never missed a show. I’ve been on my talk show — this is the end of the sixth year. I’ve never missed a show. Never missed ‘Showtime at the Apollo.’ Never missed an episode of ‘Little Big Shots,’ ‘Little Big Shots: Forever Young,’ ‘Funderdome.’
“I’ve never missed an episode of television, except one episode of television back in the ’90s — ‘The Steve Harvey Show’ — my mom passed. Other than that, I’ve never missed a day. I’m very grateful for being healthy, to be able to work.”
Life didn’t start so favorably for the kid from the projects in Cleveland. When he was a young boy, he began to stutter.
“I stuttered all the way up to the sixth grade,” he said.
(The owner of a corner store, Moore's Deli, helped him stop stuttering by giving him candy if he could read his mother's note or say what his mother wanted without stuttering.)
Harvey said he always entertained comical thoughts.
“I just couldn’t get them out. Then when I stopped stuttering, I was still so bashful from stuttering in public that even when I was in high school, I would just say stuff under my breath to the students sitting close to me.
“They would be on the floor laughing. And then they’d have to go to the principal’s office, and I’d be sitting there with the same deadpan look on my face.”
His shyness, he said, lasted for many years.
“I didn’t really come out of that until I went to college and I was away from my parents and getting up going like I wanted. That freedom made me say stuff out loud. And there were a lot of loud, brash kids in college, and I couldn’t let them think that I was some little sissy.”
That’s also when he began “performing.”
“In college,” he said, “guys would be sitting around in the room, and I would pull out a desk chair and stand up on it and just start talking about something that happened on campus that day.
“They’d all be drinking beer, eating pizza, and it was like a show."