Wed since age 20
More puzzlingly, a high school counselor once called him into her office and issued a stern warning: “Terry Crews, stay away from white women!”
Crews leaned in closer and repeated the line sotto voce, adding, “Turns out her husband left her for a white woman.”
He, on the other hand, has been with his wife Rebecca for 23 years — since well before he landed the role of Latrell Spencer in the 2004 Wayans flick “White Chicks.” (Irony!) They were married a day before Crews’ 21st birthday and, thanks in part to frequent couples counseling, they’ve remained together ever since.
But surely his mounting success has brought with it a bevy of flirtatious femmes eager to engage in the obsequious ego stroking many men crave — especially if there’s a dearth of it at home. Crews has obviously thought this through.
“What happens is that little girl over there goes, ‘She doesn’t understand you. You’re so awesome,’ ” he said, affecting a siren’s come-hither tone. “All of a sudden, it doesn’t even matter what she looks like. She could be 400 pounds and you’re like, ‘Wow, she’s so cute, she understands me.’ But most of the women a guy cheats with do not look better than the wife [he’s] with. And you’re like, how did that happen? Blinded. But like a lamb to the slaughter, once guys leave one woman for [another], they get the same thing.”
His rule of thumb, therefore, is to love the one he’s with. So as to bond and make money simultaneously, they and their brood of five share screen time on BET’s “The Family Crews.” Launched in 2010, the genial reality show pits the Crews crew against outside forces that threaten to rent them asunder — or at least to cause headaches. It took some coaxing to get Rebecca on board.
“I had to beg her and convince her to do it,” Crews said. “She was so scared.”
It is a feeling with which he’s intimately familiar and from which he has learned to draw strength. While fear can “stop you and freeze you up,” he said, a healthy dose of it is necessary “to keep you ready, keep you pumped.”
And so he told his bride, “Honey, to get what you’ve never had, you gotta do something you’ve never done.’”
It’s certainly worked for him.