Latest / The Breakfast Club / Best of full interview: Arsenio Hall On Capturing Culture, Breaking Boundaries, Life's Lessons + More

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Best of full interview: Arsenio Hall On Capturing Culture, Breaking Boundaries, Life's Lessons + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hold up.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: Every day I wake up.
• 0:03
  Speaker 3: Wake your ass up. The Breakfast Club. Y'all finished or
• 0:05
  Speaker 3: y'all done?
• 0:07
  Speaker 4: Morning, everybody.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: It's DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha Guy.
• 0:11
  Speaker 5: We are The Breakfast Club. Lauren LaRosa's here with us
• 0:14
  Speaker 5: as well. Now we got a special guest.
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  Speaker 3: A legend. A cultural icon. An OG.
• 0:19
  Speaker 4: A legend in this game. Ladies and gentlemen, Arsenio Hall.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, sir.
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  Speaker 5: How are you feeling, brother?
• 0:29
  Speaker 4: I'm feeling great. I'm thanking God for the day that
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: Charlemagne called me. Because I wouldn't have done this without
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: the voice of respect on the other end of the phone.
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm 70 years old. Could have written a
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: book many times, but that's adult work. It's a really
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: hard thing to do. And he talked me into it.
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  Speaker 4: And I'm so glad I did for my son and
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  Speaker 4: for my legacy.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Man, I'm so glad you did, too, because I want
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: to talk about your legacy today, man. You know, I
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: always say that I got four entertainment icons, right? Jay-Z, Clarence, Avon, P.D. Green,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and Arsenio Hall.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: And I feel like people don't truly.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Understand the risk you took to put black culture at
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: the forefront at a time when nobody was putting black
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  Speaker 1: culture at the forefront.
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was hard. I was coming along at a
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: time when you go to Paramount and say, Let's book
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: Bobby Brown the first Friday night, because people won't have
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: to work on Saturday. And to really show him what
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: show this is, he has this song, Don't Be Cruel,
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: in my prerogative. Let's let him break one at the
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: top and one at the bottom. Well, Johnny Carson only
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: does three minutes of a song at the end of
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: the show. And I'm like, well, I'm not fucking Johnny.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: I'm not Johnny Carson. So let's try this. But what
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: was crazier is one of the ladies in the room said,
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: and why would we give a model that much time?
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  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 4: And I didn't realize that there was a Bobbi Brown
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  Speaker 4: in the modeling world.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, no, the makeup artist.
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  Speaker 4: Oh, the makeup artist.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I didn't know her. And I realized my
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: battle is that they have no idea what I'm about
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: to do. You know, you say Michael Bivens called me,
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: and he got these four dudes. They're called Boyz II Men.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: Or Dr. Dre called me, and this kid Calvin. And
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: he wants him to come on and do this thing.
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: And this is how, you know, I was... not hip
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: to it, but he wants to freestyle. I'm like, you'll
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: just give him a beat and he'll just come out
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: of his head with whatever is in the environment. And
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: when his album is ready, then you can have him
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: on to do one, two, three, and to the four
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: with Dre. And I'm like, okay, we call Snoop and
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: he doesn't want to do the show. And like why
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: he says, he's talking about the streets of Long Beach.
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: I have respect. And I don't want to, I don't
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: want to, lose the respect of the streets to do
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: this late night television type stuff. I had to go
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: to the studio and talk him into it. This is
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  Speaker 4: a guy who Snoop Dogg is more popular than Lassie now.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: The most popular dog ever.
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  Speaker 4: The most popular dog ever. And did not want to
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: be on television. But I'll never forget he walked in
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  Speaker 4: the door with a blue hockey jersey on.
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  Speaker 3: I remember.
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  Speaker 4: And we gave him a beat And I don't think
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  Speaker 4: we'd ever seen freestyle on television. But those kinds of things.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: I saw a little kid on a tape do an
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  Speaker 4: Elvis impression. And I tell Paramount, I want to put
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: this kid on. They say, well, you need tune-in numbers. Names.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: If you put Prince, you get a tune-in number. You
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  Speaker 4: can put it in TV Guide two weeks ahead of time.
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  Speaker 4: That was the game back then. And if you put
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  Speaker 4: some unknown, you know, this is not Star Search. You
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  Speaker 4: can't put an unknown kid on. until you, maybe in
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: the fifth year. And so I would put people on
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: in a monologue. And I created this little spot where
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: I put people on. But the kid was Bruno Mars.
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: And stuff like that. They didn't want Eddie Griffin, because
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  Speaker 4: he's too edgy. So during the monologue, I said, oh,
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  Speaker 4: Eddie Griffin. Because Ed Sullivan used to point in the
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  Speaker 4: audience when I was a kid, there's Diana Ross, stand up,
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  Speaker 4: Miss Ross. And so I'm like, Eddie Griffin, what's up, man? Hey,
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: come here for a minute. And it's not on the
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  Speaker 4: booking sheet. Paramount don't know what's going to happen. Now,
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: that one backfired on me because Eddie Griffin did Michael
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: Jackson snorting cocaine. I bet he does. Because he used
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: to be a dancer, so he does that. He does
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: all this little stuff. And the lawyers had a hard
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: time that next day at Paramount because- Basically, he had
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: done a routine on television about Michael Jackson snorting cocaine
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  Speaker 4: and then dancing really well.
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  Speaker 3: But it was hilarious. Yeah, it was.
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  Speaker 4: It was hilarious.
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  Speaker 1: We'll never have that kind of monoculture ever again where
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: everybody is tuned in watching one thing at once. Because
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  Speaker 1: I remember all those moments. We had no DVRs back then,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: no on demand. You couldn't go back and watch.
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  Speaker 3: It on YouTube. You had to turn it on.
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: Before we go back to, because I like to go
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  Speaker 5: back to the beginning so people understand the story.
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  Speaker 3: That's why you bought a book.
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: And that's why you're in this business.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: But you know what?
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  Speaker 5: One thing I've noticed, I've watched a lot of your
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: interviews in the last week or so. To mine, when
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: I look at your face, I see a light that
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: comes on. It's almost either a.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Surprise light, like I'm surprised they really fuck with me.
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  Speaker 5: You look amazed when these guys, I'm thinking to myself, no, no, no,
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  Speaker 5: he's the motherfucking OG, the icon. And then another thing
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: that popped in my head is, I know you retired.
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: Maybe he's ready for that comeback because it's just the feeling,
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: the energy. When I watch you come out and just
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: delight and you're pointing at people and you're pointing at
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: the band, I'm like, God damn it, bring Arsenio back.
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: So what is going through your mind when you are
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: doing these press runs and you're doing TV?
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: What's going through Arsenio's mind?
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: The light you saw, I mean, that was the light
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: of a fan. The light of a kid from Cleveland
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: who did a talk show in his basement. I had
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: a little record player. put the record player on, there
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: was a Temptations Greatest Hits album. I'd play Get Ready.
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  Speaker 4: I'd come out, I'd do a magic trick. I'd do
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: a joke after taking the needle off the record. And
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: I would entertain the kids in my neighborhood with this
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  Speaker 4: talk show. So you see a guy who's dreamed it
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  Speaker 4: all his life and can't believe that I've dreamed it
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  Speaker 4: into existence. My mother used to say, if you get
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: good grades, you can go to Detroit. And watch the
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: Motown review with your cousins. For $ 5, you could see
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  Speaker 4: Stevie Wonder. You could see The Temptations. And they give
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: you two pips. Well, sometimes. But for $ 5, what you want.
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: And that kind of stuff. And you grow up. And
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  Speaker 4: then you tour with The Temptations when they had the
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: Standing on the Top tour. Rick James wrote them that track.
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  Speaker 4: Then one day, Michael Bivens calls you and says, hey,
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: I got four guys that idolize the Temptations. They're from Philly,
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  Speaker 4: called Boys to Men. But their album's not ready yet.
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  Speaker 4: When it's ready, I want to come. I said, oh,
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  Speaker 4: I got an idea. If they love the Temptations, I
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  Speaker 4: got the Temptations on Thursday. Let them come and blend
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  Speaker 4: in with the Temptations. And you can imagine Paramount every night.
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  Speaker 4: It was a nightmare because they wanted less black. Now
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  Speaker 4: I got 15 niggas dancing. But my thing was like,
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  Speaker 4: I'd rather do six years my way then 20 years
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  Speaker 4: Johnny's way. And Johnny dug the show because I wasn't
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  Speaker 4: trying to be him. There was never a competition. I
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: was looking for friends of the show. I remember Alan King,
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: a legendary old comic, called me. And he says, your
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: show put out an offer to me. And I just
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: want you to know, I love what you're doing, but
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  Speaker 4: I'm a Johnny guy. And that's when it hit me.
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  Speaker 4: You got to get your guys. And so that's when
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  Speaker 4: I started trying to go for the audience that didn't
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: have a talk show. And that made it work. Because
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  Speaker 4: I had been the Ed McMahon figure on a thing
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  Speaker 4: called Thick of the Night, where I was all, Alan Thicke.
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  Speaker 4: And so I got to watch it go on, and
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  Speaker 4: I got to learn from Alan's experience, don't try to
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  Speaker 4: be Johnny. Try to come up with an alternative. By
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: the way, when I was working for Alan Thicke, there
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: was a little boy I brought Johnny Gill on Alan
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: Thicke's show. I met Johnny Gill in Cleveland with Gerald Levert.
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: I bring Johnny Gill on the show and he gets numbers.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: And that let me know, hey, it's not that black
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: people don't get numbers. It's that we ain't trying it.
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: He came on with Stacey Ladisaw and they did perfect combination.
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  Speaker 4: On the side, there's a little white boy with a
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: Cubs cap on. It's Alan Thicke's son. who always surfaced
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: when there was R & B on the show. That
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: was Robin Thicke. That's another example of how we know
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  Speaker 4: who we are. We know who we want to be.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: And that kid then knew he was Dwight Marvin Gaye.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Is this book, is your memoir a closure for.
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: You or is it correction? A lot of correction. I
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: don't know if I, yeah, a little closure too because
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: I loved putting that letter of resignation. A lot of people,
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: barbershop journalists would say, well, you know, one night he
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: snuck Farrakhan in there. Paramount didn't know about it, you know,
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: and interviewed Farrakhan. And, you know, when the fact is
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: Paramount has to green light that. They have to approve that.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: And so all the barbershop journalism you get, because basically studios,
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: people think studios are above the fray and the bullshit.
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: And what they don't understand is is that studios, just
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: like a relationship, you ever break up with somebody and
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: then you hear that he said, I left her because
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: I was sick of her bullshit.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: That nigga's lying. And unfortunately, businesses like that too, they
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: want to position it sexy their way. And they say, well,
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: we'll come over Tuesday and we'll talk about crafting a
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: release to the press of what we're going to do
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: from here on. And then Monday, some shit come out
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: And you're like, you motherfuckers. But I get to correct
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: those kind of things. And yeah, and have closure too.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Because Arsenio actually quit the show. And I remember when
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: you first told me that, in my mind, I'm like, really?
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: When I heard that little thing, that dental-tungular thing you did,
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: I had my woman go in the garage. And I said,
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: you got to find that letter. And she found it.
• 10:49
  Speaker 6: Because there were so many people that believed that, though,
• 10:51
  Speaker 6: that you didn't quit the show. If you had never
• 10:53
  Speaker 6: written this book, would you have ever tried to clear
• 10:56
  Speaker 6: it up any other place? Was that something that was
• 10:58
  Speaker 6: sitting with you for a while?
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I had a lawyer say, why do you care?
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: Look at your bank account. Why do you care? And
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: I'm like, because truth matters. And, I mean, forget television.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: We as a people.
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: The Puerto Rican gentleman also. We as a people have
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: to be careful not to let truth be buried. Mine
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: is insignificant. How about the history of our people and
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: the way it's being changed, buried and hidden from future children?
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: Truth is important. It's important when it's on your side.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: So let it. Be important for us, too.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: By the way, either way you left is gangster. Walking
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: away because, hey, man, I want to do my black stuff.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: If it ain't working for y'all, it ain't going to
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: work for me. I'm out.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: Or, yeah, I bought Farrakhan on one time. Either way works.
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you get a free bean pie for
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: that second version. Because brothers be very, very supportive of you. But,
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: you know, here's the deal. Here's how you can understand it.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: At the end of the day, entertainment is cool, but
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: Quincy used to tell me the word business is larger
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: than the word show. And my ratings and my income
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: were attached. The higher the number, the more money I get.
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: When Letterman gets CBS, because I'm in syndication now, I'm
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: on bullshit stations most places, but my CBS stations help
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: me succeed. When Letterman comes into the game and all
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: my CBS stations leave at the end of their term,
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: I'm like, what am I going to do now? And
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: so basically and the money goes down. And now you're like, well,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: I have to look at a movie every night and
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: read a Jackie Collins book. I'm like, I don't know
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: if it's worth it for a million a year. You know,
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: and the bottom line is I dashed when the money. Also,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: I'm from Cleveland. I grew up down the street from
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: Jim Brown. And I watched him leave on top. I
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: watched him start doing movies when they were still calling
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: him to the locker room. I always wanted to leave
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: on top. So the bottom line, when the money changed
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: a little bit and the numbers changed a little bit,
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: and I didn't see a future for syndication because I'm like,
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: they're going to put somebody at ABC. I'm going to
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: lose those affiliate too. So eventually there's a Kimmel and
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: there's a Letterman. And the bottom line is the money changed.
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: Let's do something else.
• 13:19
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: I've, I've gotten six years out of this. I've been
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: on the cover of time magazine. Um, I spent two
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: years knowing I was leaving and building a house on
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: the beach. And bottom line is, I'm cool with how
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: it all went down.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: I was always shocked that Fox just didn't get into
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: the late night game.
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: It's funny. I just sat with Conan O'Brien. And he
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: told me a cool story. He says he was in
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: a lunchroom cafeteria at Fox. And he says, you were
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: very nice to me. You won't remember me. But I
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: was getting coffee and you showed me where other stuff was.
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: What I didn't realize is while I was taking over
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: for Joan Rivers and doing the late show, because she
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: eventually got fired and her husband killed himself. You remember
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: all that stuff. I'm doing the late show. I'm doing
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: the last 11 weeks of her contract before I go
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: to do Coming to America. Conan had been hired to
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: create a show to replace me. So while I was there,
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: they had decided that I wasn't the guy. Wow. And
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: they created a thing called the Wilton North Report. I
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: went and did. Coming to America and Paramount was like,
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: when we finish this, if you want a talk show,
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: let's try it in syndication. Now, something in syndication will
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: never work again. Other than Byron Allen, no one's going
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: to ever be able to make syndication money because the
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: network's got it. When I came into it, CBS and
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: ABC didn't want to be in the late night game,
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: so they bought my show. It was a perfect time.
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: Life is all about timing and effort.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Now, you mentioned Coming to America, my favorite movie.
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: Of all time. Yes, right? Let's talk about that.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Movie and how it came together and whose decision it
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: was to.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: Play those parts. What made me think I didn't need
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: water in here?
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: Somebody get Arsenio.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: Some water, please. Any kind of beverage.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: And Arsenio's memoir is out right now. Arsenio, okay?
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: I really appreciate you. When I walked in and saw
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: the monitor, and there was a shot from this way,
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: so it was the book with Lauren's beautiful eyes behind it,
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: and I'm like, Yes! I appreciate that. I thank you
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: because they'll see it and they'll buy it.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Coming to America. How did that movie come about?
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: And what was the decision to play so many different
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: characters for both you and Eddie?
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: Well, the decision for me to play characters was Eddie saying, yeah,
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: him too. That's cool. You know, because he's the king,
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: you know. But the movie, the movie... was all hinged
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: on the fact that America missed Eddie doing characters. They
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: wanted that again.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: And I remember.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. And I remember his manager saying to me,
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: they want Eddie to do characters. So when you guys
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: go to America, he'll be some of the people that
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: you meet. And I'm like, that's really cool. Now I'm
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: just a straight out standup. I'm not an impressionist and
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: I'm not an actor. I was honored when he asked
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: me to also do some characters. But that movie was
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: supposed to be me as, you know, like a personal
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: assistant or an undersized bodyguard coming to America from Zamunda
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: with Eddie. He saw me do stand-up and I did
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: this bit about going to church in Chicago and going
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: to the South Side. So I do this preacher character
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: and he's like, that's all it is, man. You know,
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: we do the prosthetics and you do that and you're
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: a preacher, you know. And of course, my dad was
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: a Baptist preacher. And so at any moment, I'm ready
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: to preach.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I was laughing the other day because I saw you
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: post a video. You was like, I'm walking like the
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: preacher and coming to America, but not because I'm pretending.
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: Life is crazy because, you know, at one point you're
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: in your 20s and you're standing in front of a mirror. Jess,
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: you've been through this. You're standing in front of a mirror.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: You're practicing the character. You're looking at how Red Fox
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: walks and you're breaking it down. And then one day
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: you turn 70 and you realize, now that's my walk.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: But if loving you is wrong, I don't want to
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: do it.
• 17:29
  Speaker 6: I was going to ask, coming to America, I read somewhere,
• 17:31
  Speaker 6: I think it was one of the interviews you did
• 17:32
  Speaker 6: or something, it almost didn't happen a couple times at
• 17:35
  Speaker 6: first because of the pitch and then there was an
• 17:37
  Speaker 6: issue with Eddie Murphy and somebody on set.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, they wanted him to do characters and
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: that made the Treatment, perfection. And he decided different things
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: I can do when we come to America. And the
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: other thing you reference is he had a conflict with Landis.
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: And Landis is a brilliant director. And they worked that out.
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: Thank God.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thank God.
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: My business manager thanks God every day for me.
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: Residuals gotta be crazy, right?
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: Not as crazy as one might think. Because you see
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: it all the time on VH1 and on things owned
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: by Skydance, I guess it is now. By the way,
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: the checks Eddie get are probably what you just described.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: But the bottom line is I was a lucky actor
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: to be involved and mine sometimes will be 13 cents.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: What did you think about, too?
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: Did you let Eddie write this book? Did you let
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: Eddie read it?
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: Not yet.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Okay, okay.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: But when the... And that's another bit of advice you
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: gave me. I think you said, Kevin Hart also agreed
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: with you, that in this culture, in this day and age,
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: the book on tape, the audible book... That's right. is very,
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: very important.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: And that's when I was like, well, let me call
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: you back. Because I've talked to George Lopez and different
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: people who have done this, and to sit every day
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: for eight hours.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: And keep it consistent in front of the mic. And
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: read this book. I mean, I used to read to
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: my son before bed, but it was like goodnight moon.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: and the book was like eight pages you have.
• 19:17
  Speaker 7: A and I just did my audio book Arsenio I'm
• 19:20
  Speaker 7: so glad you said it because they say I can't
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: read in here all the time because the first day
• 19:24
  Speaker 7: I went to read my book I only read like
• 19:26
  Speaker 7: 70 pages in five hours but it's voice acting is
• 19:30
  Speaker 7: not just reading like you're.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: Reading Good Night Moon six weeks to read that.
• 19:33
  Speaker 7: Book he's a god damn and it's 204 pages he
• 19:36
  Speaker 7: is lying But I don't know. I saw you even
• 19:39
  Speaker 7: looking through, like, all that 204 pages that you were struggling.
• 19:42
  Speaker 7: But it was, you know, it's a co-parenting memoir. So
• 19:45
  Speaker 7: on some of the parts I had to be emotional.
• 19:48
  Speaker 7: Then I had to relive some of the stuff. And,
• 19:50
  Speaker 7: you know, it's not just like regularly reading.
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah. You got to sit there. I would sit there
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: for eight hours a day. And you almost want to
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: do it like when you read to your kid.
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: You want to have this intimate moment with the audience
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: on the other side of that speaker. And they think
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: you're actually reading to them and talking to them and
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: telling them this story. So a lot of care involved.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: and performance. I saw Charlie Sheen talk about, you know,
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: he said, I was just going to read it, you know,
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: and then I realized, wait, let me step up the
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: actor part of this. And I listened to an interview
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: he did. And so I put great care into it.
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: And I'm glad you told me how important it was
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: because I didn't want to do that shit.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: I want to hear you. Like that voice is very
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: familiar to us.
• 20:30
  Speaker 6: I literally bought the audio book just because I wanted
• 20:32
  Speaker 6: to hear how you went in and out of things. Yeah.
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: Because it's you, and you nearly bought it, I'm going
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: to send you one. No, I bought it.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I bought the audio book, yeah.
• 20:42
  Speaker 6: I mean, we had this book as well, too, but
• 20:43
  Speaker 6: I went and bought the audio book because I was like,
• 20:45
  Speaker 6: I want to hear him, like, get into it and,
• 20:48
  Speaker 6: you know, like all the emotion and just hearing your
• 20:50
  Speaker 6: voice again just was, you know, crazy.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: You know, emotion, it did take me back. There are interviews,
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: not interviews, there are parts of the book based on
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: interviews on the show meeting Sammy. You know, Sammy... came
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: in three waves in my life. There was a night,
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: he invited me to his house. Sammy used to have
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: a gun collection. He showed me all his guns, and
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: I love guns, because my dad was a marksman and
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: a former serviceman.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Sammy Davis Jr.
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: Yes, and so he had a theater in his house,
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: and he would have movie night, and he invited us
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: to movie night, so we'd go see a movie. And
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: it's surreal to knock at somebody's door and hear, I'll
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: get it, I'll tell. And Sammy comes to the door,
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: and Then I have him on the talk show later. And,
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: of course, he has cancer, but he sings anyway. And
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: I don't want to give away everything, but that story
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: conjured up so many emotions because as a kid, I
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: watched Sammy, this versatile man, this person. You know, people
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: like Ali and Sammy were so important to me to
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: see these talented, positive images, to see Ali during an
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: interview after a fight comb his hair and say, oh,
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: I'm so pretty. Go on, Howard. Do what you want.
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: You know, and those people were so important to me.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: So to have that moment at the end of his
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: life and him to say, I'm going to sing for you, Matt,
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: because I would sing for Johnny. And gets up and
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: goes over spontaneously and says, time after time in D.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: And my band, Young People, start playing Cyndi Lauper's song,
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: Time After Time.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, man.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: No, no, no, no. You know, it's a time after time.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: I tell myself that I... And I realized how sick
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: he was weeks later when he started to transition from
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: this earth. So that was emotional.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: The Richard Pryor stuff had to be emotional too, right?
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, man. The Richard Pryor stuff, emotional also because
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: he's the first person I learned from. Comedy was insignificant.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: I was going to get there one way or the other.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: It's a life that Richard taught me about. And it's
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: watching his life near the end when you realize those
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: lawyers and agents and a lot of hanger-ons aren't around
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: anymore when you're sick, when they can't make money on
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: you anymore. And it taught me to find someone you
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: love and build your own bubble because these people who
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: get a commission aren't going to be here when they
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: can no longer get a commission. I remember near the
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: end of his life, I used to go visit him
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: and there weren't a lot of people around like there
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: were in the early days at the Comedy Store. I
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: got gas, excuse me.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: I thought you were about to cry.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: It's funny how those two things look alike. A fart
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: and tears kind of manifest themselves on your face in
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: the same way.
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: I wanted to know about Coming to America 2. When
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: y'all shot that, the sequel, what were your thoughts on it?
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: Because it's so hard the top American, the first original version.
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: It feels like some things just shouldn't be touched. What
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: was your thoughts on that?
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: I need this check.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: No, no, but my thoughts on it, God, it was
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: going back to this wonderful time in my life, you know,
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: and doing the characters again, hanging with Ed. We didn't
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: get to do it here like the first one. The
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: second one, Zamunda is Atlanta. Here's what's interesting. Zamunda, the palace,
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: is Rick Ross' house.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: And that was kind of interesting. But I enjoyed doing it,
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: but I also knew that it was like trying to
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: write a better song than Thriller. You know, it's very complicated.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: So winning has its traps, too.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's a bar that can't be set again.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know if for my life, I don't
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: know a higher bar than coming to America One.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: Did you feel like that when you came back with
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: your talk show again?
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, that was to do the talk show
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: reboot was an interesting time because I initially wanted to
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: do a show that was scripted about a guy trying
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: to get back in the game at a time because
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: it had changed. You know, when I was doing research
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: in the 90s, there was no cell phone, no Google,
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: no search. We had a file cabinet. It's like, see
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: if there's an article on Mel Gibson. I'm trying to
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: find out how old he is. That was a different time.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: So when I came back, I wanted to do a
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: scripted version of Arsenio Hall coming back to television. And basically,
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: they say no to us a lot because I don't
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: know if that'll work. And then they do hacks. Because
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: that's what it would have been, black hacks. And they
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: talked me into... Because people in Hollywood... They're not very imaginative.
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: They go with what's worked before. You know, if you
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: have different strokes, Gary Coleman, and it's working, and Envy
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: pitches a show about him and his wife, you know,
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: you pitch them something, they'll say, we don't know because
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: that's new to them. But what they're looking for in
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: that moment is another little black man that don't grow.
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: Because they know that works. So what do they do?
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: They find Webster. And that's how this town works. They
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: want to be safe. No one wants to have, I mean,
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: you can say no and not get fired to a pitch.
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: But if you say yes, it better work. So executives
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: try to keep it safe. You just made me think
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: of something.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: Nobody thinks about what Emanuel Lewis and Gary Coleman did
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: for midgets.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: Well, nobody talks about that. Yeah.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: But Todd Bridges wasn't a midget.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: Not Todd.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: You don't mean Todd. No, because he said Gary Colvin
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: and Todd Bridges.
• 26:56
  Speaker 6: Emmanuel Lewis.
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: Oh, my bad. My bad.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: Basically, what they said is, Let's just do the talk
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: show again like you. And unfortunately, the reason I left
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: is the reason it can't work. In syndication, now it's
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: even harder because there's Kimmel and all these guys. So
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: you want me to compete against them on Channel 29
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: in Phoenix? You know, and that's not going to work.
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: And you don't have as much budget as the networks.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: I remember I wanted to book Will Smith and they said, well,
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: Will Smith is not going to do it. He's going
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: to do Fallon and he can't do another show after
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: he does Fallon for two weeks. So there's some kind
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: of rule. But basically, I couldn't even compete with the
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: offer because Fallon offered him the opportunity to ride into
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: the Tonight Show on a white horse. Wow.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow, wow, wow.
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: Gosh, my first time around, Prince wanted a purple piano
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: and it took a week for me to get.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: It approved, you know.
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: So, you know, Budget-wise, when I came back and did
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: the reboot, you can't compete against Kimmel and Fallon. And
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: James Corden was riding around in a car singing with fame.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: I'm like, I don't have that kind of budget, and
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: you just can't do it now. You can't do a
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: syndicated show now. I snuck in at a time when
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: people didn't have product, and I could sell them mine.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: But now everyone, every network has product. And the reason
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: I did syndication the first time around is I knew
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: A brother was never going to get the NBC, ABC,
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: or CBS job. But I was like, I've been doing
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: this in my basement since I was 12. I'm going
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: to get something.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: And they said that, you know, at first, it was
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: hard for you to get guests. That you would actually
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: have a security guard call you and be like, so-and-so's here.
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I would chase, because thank goodness the show was
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: on the Paramount lot, on a film lot, versus like
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: Colbert here is at the Ed Sullivan Theater right on
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: the street. I was on a film lot where you
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: could find out what was being shot on the lot.
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: And there was a dude at the gate who would
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: let me know when certain people arrived. And I could
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: be in front of Andy Garcia's trailer when he got
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: there and ask him to come on. You know, I mean,
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: many guests. I would actually get the Paramount executives to
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: let me come over and meet people. It's like, I
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: hear Harrison Ford's having a meeting. Can I just come
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: say hello? And, you know, like me and Charlamagne are
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: in business online. this book, Paramount was like, yeah, but
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: just don't act like we invited you. Just pop by. Mr. Ford. Yeah.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Your life is very eventful.
• 29:52
  Speaker 7: You've got so much that you've done. You know what
• 29:55
  Speaker 7: I mean? How could you fit all of that into
• 29:57
  Speaker 7: one book? I know of some things that did not
• 29:59
  Speaker 7: make the book.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. That, oh man, Jess, it was so hard because
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: I looked at books to find out what length they were.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: I looked at Barack Obama's book. I'm like, ooh, that's big,
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: but I'm no Barack Obama, so let me try to
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: give them as much as they can handle of this
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: kid from Cleveland. Barbara Streisand's book is huge. I got
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: two great Barbara Streisand stories. Didn't put in the book.
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: I had to cut things down. I have a great
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: New Kids on the Block story where they flew from
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: Australia to come on the show. See, we didn't have Twitter.
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: You couldn't go on Twitter and say what you have
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: to say. If there was some shit that jumped off,
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: Donnie Wahlberg and the whole group flew back to America
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: because they were being accused of lip syncing. And Donnie
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: was like, Arsenio, we're going to fly home. They may
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: not like how we sound, but it's us. you know,
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: and the Milli Vanilli thing had happened. So they wanted
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: to come and defend themselves. I met Tommy Mottola in
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: an Ivy and he had a cassette tape with Vision
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: of Love written on it. And he gave it to
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: me and he was with this young lady. You know,
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: I joked with him. I said, who is that? The
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: star of the young and the breastless? Who is it?
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: She's fine. You know, and it was Mariah. And, um,
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: I called him the next morning. I'm like, I couldn't
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: believe that light that Envy talked about. Dog, when you
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: first hear Mariah Carey and you realize she's not famous
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: and this ain't what Johnny does and you are going
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: to be able to present this woman to the world,
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: that light is shining while you sleep through your eyelids.
• 31:34
  Speaker 6: You know?
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: We might need to do like, you know how Charlie
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Murphy had the true Hollywood stories?
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: We might need to do the Arsenio Hall true Hollywood stories.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: That would be dope. Put that out as a podcast
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: or something, animated or something. That would be dope.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: Animated would be real cool.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: It would be really.
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: Cool because then you can imagine Bobby Brown performing my
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: prerogative as an animated character. Yes.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: That would be dope. Just use me for one of
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: the voices. I'm real good at voice acting.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: I hear you.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: I did Ghostbusters when I was young. I paid the
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: rent as- Because the Winston Zedmore character, there's one black Ghostbuster,
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: it's like back in the day, they hired comics to
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: do voice acting. Me and Dave Coulier was a comic.
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: And Full House. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I used
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: to make... My living doing that kind of stuff.
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: Did you mind the spoof when people used to spoof you?
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: I remember like the super long finger.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Did you mind the spoofing back then?
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: By the way, all that's in the book, Arsenio, the memoir,
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: which is available everywhere you buy books now.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: Yes, sir. You know, here's the deal. First of all,
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: if you're a comic, and I think Jess would agree
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: with this, if you're a comic, you can't be sensitive
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: to jokes about you.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Most comics are sensitive, though.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: I mean, as humans, I think we're sensitive. But, dude,
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: there's an upside and a downside to every punchline. It's
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: like I have extremely long fingers. But I remember as
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: a little boy, as the pastor's son, I'd be standing
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: next to my dad and old sisters in the church
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: would shake my hand. and they would hold on a
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: little long. And it's like, how you doing, baby? And
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: it's like, you say, these fingers are gonna have an upside, too,
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: at some point. People are responding to these long-ass fingers.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: The fingers are one thing, though, but what about the ass?
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Pause. What?
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Remember when Kenan did that? Kenan had him with a
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: long finger and a big ass.
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: You gotta stop. There's no context, is there?
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Forget your fingers.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: What about your ass?
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: Whoa.
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: Whoa. That's another book for another time. Singing midget scared me, but.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Crazy.
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: You ain't going to asses. Yes, I have a predominant derriere. And,
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: you know, A, if you're going to do jokes, you
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: got to be able to listen to jokes.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: And sometimes say, well, first, sometimes you just say, that's funny.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: That's a funny shit. Then other times, like Dana Carvey,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: it was a sign of the times that I was
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: going through. This guy created a character at SNL called Carcinio.
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: And the essence of the sketch was that Johnny was
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: going to get a high-top fade and start wearing bright,
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: double-breasted suits. And so for me, you can always flip
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: something into a positive. Now, they're making fun of me,
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: but at the same time, what they're really saying is,
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: Johnny's going to have to find a younger audience somehow
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: because that's what's up. And so there's an up and
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: a down to punchlines. But yeah, you've got to be
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: able to take it. You can't be too sensitive. How
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: are you going to be sensitive and then go to
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: the comedy store and do five minutes on Tiger Woods?
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: That's true. You know, it's interesting when you talk about
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Dana Carvey, right?
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: When you were at your peak, do you think people
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: were loving Arsenio Hall or the.
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: Idea of what you represented? The youthfulness, the hip hop,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: the blackness.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: My ego won't let me think that it was me.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: I think it was what I was doing and what
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: it represented. But, you know, it's like when I talk
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: about talking Alan Thicke into putting on Johnny Gill. My
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: thing in the meeting was, I think it'll get numbers.
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: Why not try it? Third guest out, try it. And
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: what I loved that relates to that question is, I
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: was showing that there was a value that you all
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: haven't looked at. I know you think it won't get numbers,
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: but that proved for thick of the night in a
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: syndicated situation, there are people checking for black people. And
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: being from Cleveland, when I met Johnny and Gerald LaVert,
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: then Gerald calls me at a certain point when the
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: show is on the air and he has this track
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: Casanova plays over the phone can't send it to me
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: on a link plays it on the phone I'm like
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: that shit sound good even through the telephone you know
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: and he flies out with his cousin and his brother
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: and LaVert does Casanova and that was the late show
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: you know LL Cool J that's another reason why I'm
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: shocked that Fox didn't want to do a show because
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: it was apparent there that something was going on that
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: the viewing audience was fucking with us And because there
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: are a few. LL Cool J was the first rapper.
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: LL Cool J and Houdini, first hip hop things I
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: ever did. Way back on the Late Show when I
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: took over for Joan Rivers. And LL got big numbers,
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: you know, and he did I'm Bad. And Houdini did
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: The Freaks Come Out at Night. And they did numbers.
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: But at that point, Paramount was sneaking around Fox, coming
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: to my dressing room. You know, you would think it was.
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: fans but it was guys that taking off their suits
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: and put on t-shirts and come over to say do
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: this at paramount if they don't get it do this
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: at paramount because they were seeing the numbers on a
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: show where they had fired the host and now they're
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: getting these numbers you know people watched me to see
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: me talk to mike tyson that's right yeah.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Man there was a debate on the uh the bag
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: fuel podcast loot the bag fuel and they were happy
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: they were saying there's arsenio hall hip-hop I'm like, not
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: only was Arsenio Hall hip-hop, Arsenio was black culture. From
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: 89 to 94, I don't even know if black culture, entertainment-wise,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: and especially hip-hop, could grow as much as it did
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: without the Arsenio Hall show.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: Where else would we have seen it to that level?
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: You know, we would have found a way. Just like now,
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: the problem with a late-night talk show is what you
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: all are doing for a cheaper budget podcasts, radio shows.
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: It's like you can't do those giant shows anymore with
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: all that staff and a band and the lights. Now
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: you put Theo Vaughn in front of a fake plant.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: And it's really inexpensive to do. And so that's what's
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: happened to Late Night. It's hard to do it the
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: other way.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: But I'm talking hip-hop and black culture. There was no
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: platform for that. From 89 to 94, we ran. It
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: was Arsenio, Yo MTV Raps.
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: And we all grew up waking up on Saturday to
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: watch Soul Train. That was Soul Train.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Ralph McDaniels had the thing locally.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: That was New York. We didn't have Ralph McDaniels all
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: around the country.
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: Soul Train was what I had.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Soul Train.
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: Even when I saw a white person, it was Soul Train.
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: I remember seeing Elton John play an acrylic clear piano
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: and do Benny and the Jets for Don Cornelius.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: Soul Train had no rappers, though.
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: Don wasn't crazy about hip-hop, and neither was Oprah. And
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: that's a good point. That also was part of the
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: history of this. I saw a vacancy. I saw a void.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: And the best way to make money, whether you're creating
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: a product or scope and show business, is to find
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: the void and fit into it. You know, what Lauren does,
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: you know, she saw a void. You know, they need
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: a competent black journalist to jump into this infotainment Hollywood news.
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: And she filled it with an accuracy and a hard
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: work effort that she found herself a place. She made it.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: I agree with. Accuracy and accuracy too.
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: Who taught you the business? No, wait, wait, wait.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask him, who taught you the business?
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: You just knew so much. Like the syndication, like that's
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: nothing that you can read about.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So how did you.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Learn and understand the business in depth?
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: Well, whether it's sitting, like I would, if Don Cornelius said,
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: If Don Cornelius would go to lunch with me, I
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: would take that lunch. I'll buy. He took me to
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: lunch one day. I've sat with Quincy in front of
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: a board and listened to all the off-the-wall stuff before
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: anybody heard it. And he said, you're from Ohio, right?
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: He said, let me play this for you. And put
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: it up on big reels. And he played a song
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: called Just Once. He said, this kid is from Ohio.
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: And it was James Ingram. I would sit and talk
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: to legends and try to learn everything I could. And
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: I would take jobs. We've all taken jobs just to
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: get education. We go to college and we pay to go.
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: So I would do things just to learn, like the
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: Thick of the Night job. It probably looked real corny,
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: me sitting next to Alan Thicke and saying, we'll be
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: right back. I was that guy. But I was learning
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: syndication in late night. And a couple of the people
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: in that show, when it failed, I hired them. But
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: I did everything I could to learn. Any place I
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: could go. Richard Pryor invited me to the set of
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: JoJo Dancer once. And I wanted to be in the movie.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: But Richard said, just stand around and learn because I'm
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: going direct. And cool. And go everywhere you can. Do
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: everything you can because knowledge is king.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: Clarence Avon as well.
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: Clarence Ava.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: Rest in peace.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I could say rest in peace a million
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: times during this interview, but.
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: Wow, yeah, yeah. Other than Donnie Wahlberg, ain't nobody alive. Clarence,
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: he was the man. He was special. And the thing
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: about Clarence, there was a stealth element of his business.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: Where I wouldn't even know how something happened. And later on,
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: they would say, well, Clarence got him to talk to
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: him and that's how it happened. I love the way
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: he did business. He wasn't messy and he wasn't always there.
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: But you knew it happened because of him. Good times.
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: I was going to ask, did you ever feel alone
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: in your fight? I heard your story about NWA and
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: trying to push for that. I don't know. I guess
• 42:04
  Speaker 6: with the Clarence Avott thing, though, you had the support,
• 42:07
  Speaker 6: but it just feels like you were always like fighting.
• 42:10
  Speaker 6: And I wondered if you ever felt like internally more
• 42:13
  Speaker 6: support externally you had, it was divided, but internally who
• 42:17
  Speaker 6: was there and did you feel lonely?
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And you know, it was hard. Even the situation
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: where the queer nation came after me. Um, first of all,
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: you fight hard when you know you're right.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: And the bottom line is to say, I don't, I'm
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: homophobic and I don't put on enough gay guests. That's bullshit.
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: And we're at a time when everybody ain't going to
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: tell you they're gay. Ellen would come on and do
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: jokes and Rosie would come on and do jokes, but
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: they weren't going to talk about their dates with women.
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: They would probably make their dating bit about a man.
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: Everybody on my staff was gay except me. That's an exaggeration.
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: But the bottom line is it was a time when
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: you just didn't know who was gay and they were
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: in a trap. There were people who were gay and
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: they knew if I say I'm gay and women know
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: I'm not singing to them, it could ruin my career.
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: Thank God times have changed and people can be themselves
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: and still survive. But yeah, there were some very lonely times.
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: And when you have this battle with the queer nation
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: and no one defends you and say, oh no, that's
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: wrong about him. You feel alone or... The NWA situation,
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: I had to wait. And patience was the lesson there.
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: Because at first, they fought me, you can't do NWA.
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: And I was mad because eventually the group broke up.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: And I had to do Dre and Ice Cube and
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: Eazy separately. And that's what God meant for it to be,
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: I guess. But initially, I wanted to do NWA and Paramount.
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: I wasn't big enough initially. Successful enough yet to say,
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: I'm doing it. And later, I was. But what you
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: have to go through is you're fighting for NWA, and
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: then you hear a track where Ice Cube is rhyming
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: your name with the word bicentennial and dogging you. And
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: you're like, fuck, does brother know I'm in here fighting
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: for him? Why was he so mad? Because I couldn't
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: get them on the show then.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: Because he wanted me to... get them on to do
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: Fuck the Police. And I wanted to get them on,
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: but Paramount wasn't ready yet. And down the road, I
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: got to call more shots. And in life, that's the
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: way it is. The more successful you get, then you
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: get to take some chances and do what you want
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: to do. But initially, you got to do what Paramount
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: says to do. Call between a rock and a hard
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: place often.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask, what chance did you try
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: that didn't work?
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: Um.
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: Chances I took that didn't work. Well, Paramount was right
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: about what they were saying. If you want to maybe
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: be in the position to be considered the king when
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: Johnny leaves, do this show. So when Johnny leaves, people know,
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: the show I was doing, I could have been a
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: lot more successful and made a lot more money if
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: I was a little more commercial and if I listened
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: a little more. But I was hard-headed, and I had
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: a love for hip-hop and black music. And my thing was,
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: I've said this many times, I did the show I loved,
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: and I knew that I needed to do more Steve
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: and Edie, you know? But I wanted to get Q-Tip
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: sitting in with the posse. And the bottom line is,
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't change a thing. I loved being in that
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: position and being that guy. And unfortunately, they were right
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: if I wanted bigger numbers. You know, you can get
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: a huge number if you do share. But I wanted
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: Tony Braxton.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: But the problem with that is there's no reward for that.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: Ain't no reward for being real. Right. Like, so you
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: do all of that, but then. When the rent do.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying?
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: With everybody that loves you when they see you on
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: the screen. They say, boy, you kept it real, Arsenio.
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah. That's why when you look in the mirror and
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: you're happy and satisfied with who you are, that has
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: to be your barometer of success, failure, and happiness. I
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: was loving what I was doing. Two Bobby Brown numbers
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: that night made me happy.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: That's a jewel, though, man.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: And that's the thing, like, even with you and Eddie, right,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: I always felt like y'all never let fame confuse your
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: sense of self-worth.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Like, regardless of how famous y'all were, y'all didn't run
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: to the cameras, y'all come in and out the spotlight
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: when y'all want to, and it feels like y'all know
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: exactly who y'all are, regardless of if all of this
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: goes away tomorrow.
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I think sometimes if you have that,
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: You have to thank God and thank your parents because
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: that's usually based on your foundation and how you're raised
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: and how you're taught. And maybe like I talked about
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: seeing certain heroes when you're young and how they carry themselves.
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: Before we had the term cancel culture, we all remember
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: Sammy Davis Jr. hugging Richard Nixon.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: And you're like, oh, okay. So you learn about him. PR, marketing,
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: and positioning, and things like that. I was a student
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: of show business. If you want to play basketball, you're
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: watching somebody cross over in the science of putting your
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: weight here and shifting it back this way. If you're
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: Chris Mullen, you go to the ghetto and play basketball.
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: It's where the best are. All my life, I've wanted this,
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: and I've watched the people who were successful at it
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: and studied it so that One day I could apply
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: all those things. I knew who I was. I would
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: go see Al Green because my mother loved Al Green
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: and I would take her. But I was there early
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: when the house lights were still on and everybody was
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: filing in and there was a stand-up comic on the stage.
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: I knew who I was. I was a magician as
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: a kid so I had birds and doves and when
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: I'd go do a bar mitzvah or a birthday party
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: to make money I had all this shit. My mother
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: would have to rent a station wagon to take me
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: I was a musician. I was a drummer. So I
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: had tom-toms and cymbals. That night I watched Al Green,
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: and the stand-up opened for him. The dude just walked
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: out with a juice, a little glass, put it on
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: the stool, and everything was from the neck up. And
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: I'm like, that's what I want to do. And be
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: careful what you say in your life, what you manifest verbally,
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: because my house burned. down and I lost the boxes,
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: the doves, the cymbals, the drums. And then it was
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: like I graduated and I'm like, I'm going to be
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: a stand up because I have nothing else. And by
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: the way, in my junior year, I'm playing ball every
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: day after classes with Steve Harvey. So we're dreaming. We're
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: talking about it. And then Steve left Kent in his
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: junior year. And we didn't have cell phones. So I'm like,
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: if you don't get Steve Mama's number, where's Steve? And
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: he didn't come back. But in our junior year, we
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: did a lot of dreaming. We went to see Franklin
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: Ajayi perform. We went to see Dick Gregory perform. And
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: that's my biggest message. Dream. Because you can manifest a
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: dream into reality. I know this. It's not a coincidence.
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: It's not just me. I was on the campus of
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: Kent State with Steve Harvey. We were dreaming. And right now,
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: Steve is fine on cloud nine.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Was there a moment where fame ever did confuse you
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: since the self-worth?
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: How do you mean that?
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: Like when you was at your, like the height of everything,
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: you know, senior hall, cultural, everywhere.
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: Like in just- The cover of Time Magazine.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Did you walk into Paramount and say, I need
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: $ 10 million a season. God damn it.
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: The bottom line is, Envy, and I have to keep
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: reprising his thought about that light. Dude, I- I was
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: just always, God, maybe I have low self-esteem as a
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: black man, but I was glad to be in the game.
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: I was glad to have an opportunity. I felt blessed
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: every day. I prayed before that screen flew every night
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: because I thanked God. Every night before, when that motherfucker
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: was holding the O, Arsenio, and you see the silhouette
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: behind that screen, that screen flew, right before you saw
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: that silhouette light go on, I was praying and thanking
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: God for all these moments, for these things, because I'm
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: a kid from Cleveland. The closest I got to fame
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: was my uncle used to run numbers with Don King.
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: That's the first time I saw a Rolls Royce. Don
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: King was in town with Ali. I was a dreamer
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: and now I was living my dream. So I was
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: always grateful and it sometimes can keep you from becoming arrogant.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: They say gratitude turns what we have into enough. So
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: that's what you had. You had extreme gratitude. So what
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: you had Yeah, when I got.
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: To Hollywood, man, I used to go to the supermarket.
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: There's days when I would walk around the supermarket and
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: pretend to shop, putting stuff in my cart. But the
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: stuff in the little baby part of the cart, the
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: little baby seat, I had stuff in there. That stuff
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: was what I was eating. So I was eating in
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: the supermarket and pushing it around. And when I got full,
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: left the cart and run out the store or walk
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: fast out the store. I would go there on, I
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: knew a day when the Jimmy Dean's lady would cook
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: sausages in a little electric fryer and she put toothpicks
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: in them on a plate. I would go in there
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: and talk to her and eat 10 sausages and make
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: her laugh. And that was breakfast. You know, so when
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: things took off for me, I was just grateful to
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: have a meal.
• 52:43
  Speaker 7: What about in your show, right?
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Has there ever been anybody.
• 52:48
  Speaker 7: that would talk shit about you but didn't want to
• 52:50
  Speaker 7: come on your show and you didn't let it happen.
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: Um yeah once okay yeah uh one time but but
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: for the most part you know what who oh I
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: forgot her name but it was somebody who you know
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: now that I think maybe there are jokes that were
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: too much you know um but I, I forgot it,
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: but she was a comic.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: Okay. Oh, another comedian. Yeah.
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: It was, it was a young comic and I was like, no, not, no,
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: keep that same energy.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: When you was calling me the F word on stage,
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: you know, but, um, the gay slur from the 90s.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah. It's like, which is rough on a black man because, uh,
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: but you know, you know, that whole history. Um, I
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: was one of those guys that would put the business
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: before my personal feelings. I've had Spike Lee call me
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: an uncle Tom, but when it's time for Spike Lee
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: to promote his shit, I'm like, dude, I'm here.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: Come on.
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: You know, as a matter of fact, Spike was mad
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: at me because I probably didn't give him the date.
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: I think he wanted a certain date and it sweeps and, oh,
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: that date's taken that Friday night. And he got mad
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: at me and, you know, call me an Uncle Tom,
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: and it's like, you would think that we would never speak,
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: but I walked up to him at a Laker game,
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: a Laker-Knicks game. Grabbed him. Dude, come on through sometime.
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: Next price.
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: I never understood that, though.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Like, how could Spike Lee call Arsenio Hall an Uncle Tom?
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Like, you was doing the right thing every night, the
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: way you was fighting for.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: Black Lives Matter.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah.
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: And, you know, like I said, people, you make mistakes,
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: you say stuff. A lot of times, by the fact
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: when I hugged him we talked and it was over
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: you realize in the moment he said that because he
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: didn't get the date he wanted to promote you know
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: whatever Uncle Tom is strong especially.
• 54:58
  Speaker 6: When you already had people that were feeling like that
• 55:00
  Speaker 6: about you so for him to echo it made it
• 55:02
  Speaker 6: you know bigger.
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah and that's probably why he went for that Achilles
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: heel or.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: That spot you know.
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: But I think sometimes to hold a grudge you have
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: to keep that ugly thing with you. Sometimes it's, it's
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: easier for you to let it go.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 55:22
  Speaker 6: Wait, I was trying to, I've been trying to get
• 55:24
  Speaker 6: this in. You got really personal just about like a
• 55:26
  Speaker 6: dating life as well too. In this book, you talk
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: about Pamela Anderson and Paula, Paula Abdul.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: And by the way, one of the reasons I wanted
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: to tell the Pamela Anderson story is because I don't
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: know if it's changed, but the older comics, that was it.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: That was the kind of advice. It's like, yo, Johnny
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: Witherspoon in this book, he stay away from white women,
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: you know, and you're a young guy. You're like, okay.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: You know, cause there were no white women in my
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: neighborhood and I didn't know why. And of course the
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: night I walked into the comedy store with Pamela Anderson,
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: Johnny Witherspoon looked at me and did that tongular thing
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: that you'd what I tell you, you know, and, and just,
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: I wanted to take people through that growth process of,
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: of what the OGs told you and, You just had
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: to dip in. You're talking about like.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: Family, family.
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: Damn. Me and Tupac had an argument because Tupac in
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: an article said something about Quincy and Arsenio and some
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: of these brothers and these white women you see with white,
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: you know, it's like back then that was a no-no
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: to the older brothers who were talking to you. And
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: they were trying to tell you that's a problem. You know,
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: and it was. Some people in your demo will not
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: like you if they see you in Jet Magazine with
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: a playmate. So he was trying to protect me.
• 56:51
  Speaker 6: Was she the first white celebrity that you had dated,
• 56:54
  Speaker 6: or just the one that we know about now?
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: Before her, I think I talk about this in the book,
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: I was at an ABC function and met Emma Sams,
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: who was about, they were about to replace Luke and
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: Laura on the soap opera with Luke and Holly. And
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: I met her the day she got the role, and
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: we went out for a minute.
• 57:15
  Speaker 6: And was that why it ended? Because in the book,
• 57:18
  Speaker 6: but also just whenever you have mentioned it, you always
• 57:20
  Speaker 6: make it like, it just was like a quick thing,
• 57:22
  Speaker 6: but did it end because you were like, all right,
• 57:24
  Speaker 6: I can't do this? Like career-wise, it's not going to?
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: Well, everything ended back then because I was young and
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: I was busy. The woman in your life at that
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: time in your career, I don't know if it's like
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: this for everybody, but she's always going to be the
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: chick on the side. You know, show business has to
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: be your woman.
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: Um, or you have to be a man who's probably
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: not doing the right thing in your relationship because you,
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: I was on the road. It, that's all that was
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: important to me. So relationships weren't going to work. Um,
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: thank God. Actually, thank God my life worked out the
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: way it did because my woman who I've been with
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: for 20 years, uh, I can't imagine my life without her. Um,
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: That's the only thing that's important to me. She's my
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: best friend. The only reason I want to get on
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: a plane and go home is because she's there.
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: And to eventually become famous, get your paper, and find
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: a successful relationship of that nature, you're like, God knew
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: what he was doing. Because I could have had somebody
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: pregnant or been married when I was a guest on
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: Merv Griffin. you know and that and i never would
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: have been in the situation i'm in now and i
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: have an incredible woman in my.
• 58:51
  Speaker 6: Life i was just gonna say you've always protected that
• 58:54
  Speaker 6: oh yeah so but but and now you're talking more
• 58:57
  Speaker 6: about it is it just because of the book or
• 58:59
  Speaker 6: are you at a place where you just want people
• 59:00
  Speaker 6: to see that love that you have.
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: Well when charlamagne and i talked i knew that was
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: that's why i wanted to think think about it you
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: know because i've always been a very private person. I'm
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: a loner and I'm very private because I know the
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: more you give people, the more they have to hurt
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: you with. So I'm very private about my life. And
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: I knew this book would make me talk about, you know,
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: I also protect the one I love. I don't, I
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: don't put my woman out there because you put your
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: woman out there. You put your child out there. I
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: remember as far back as Kathy Lee Gifford and she
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: put Cody out there. And we do jokes about Cody.
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: We talk about Cody. Everything that's ever gone on in
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: my life, I've learned something from it. So I get
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: to this point where I'm famous and I'm like, I'm
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: not going to give them the stuff they can hurt
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: me with. I'm going to give them show business. That's
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: all I'm giving them. Because a lot of times there
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: are people famous for their personal life. We know people,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: we don't know what their art is, or we haven't
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: heard a record, but we're talking about their girlfriend or
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: their boyfriend. And I've always said, if show business ain't enough,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: if my performance ain't enough, fuck y'all. I'm not giving
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: y'all the personal stuff.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: I got two quick questions for you, Goldie.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: Did writing this book force you to confront any lies
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: you might have been telling yourself?
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: Any lies that I might have been telling myself? Um, no,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: because part of who I am is, is dealing with,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: dealing with the fact, you know, my ass is big,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: my fingers are long and I'm from Cleveland, you know,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: I've heard people call my hometown, the mistake on the lake. So, yeah.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: So the bottom line is, um, I'm pretty real.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: It, I know it's weird, but it can help you
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: to look in the mirror and tell yourself the truth first.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: The last one.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: What do you want people to unlearn about you after
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: reading this?
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: You know what? I'm not trying to educate or teach
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: people anything. I see the book as another form of entertainment.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: It's a story that can motivate you. It's about a
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: kid who dreamed. You can manifest success, I think. And
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: like I told you about Robin Thicke, I think we
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: know inside if we look at our kids and we
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: listen to them, there's a dream in there and we
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: can help them make that dream come true. You know,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: I remember one of my last images of Kobe Bryant
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: was him taking Gigi to a Connecticut game or something.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: I watched him. seeing what she loved, seeing what she did,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: and trying to nurture that and help with that. And
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: that's what we always want to do with our kids.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: And so I don't know. This book is just another
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: project for me. And it's entertainment, you know, in a sense.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: And sharing my story. And hopefully somebody will say, I'm
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: not going to give up. Because the day you give up,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: your blessing might be tomorrow. Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: It's definitely the real story of Arsenio Hall. It's not
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: just about, you know, a guy with a late night show, man.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Go get Arsenio, a memoir available everywhere you buy books now.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: And just salute to you, my brother. Thank you.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: I don't even know how you got my number. We
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: had just come out of the pandemic, and I didn't
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: know what. You stand up, you go to clubs, and
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: people were wearing masks. And we were in the parking
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: lot of the venues performing. And it was a depressing time.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: And I think you and I have the same lawyer, maybe.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I think so.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: I don't remember.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: I don't remember. I remember I was trying to get
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: you to do the podcast.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: Do you know Nina Shaw?
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, salute to Nina.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I was thinking that's how you got my number.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: Probably. I don't remember.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: Maybe on a bathroom wall somewhere here.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: But I think we exchanged numbers when I did your
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: show when you bought the show back.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: Oh, yes. Yep.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: I forgot about the reboot.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: Yes, but thank you for the call because you gave
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: me something to do for a couple years. Man. And
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: it was a lot of fun, and I think I
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: did it well.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: I'm glad you did.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: No, this is one of the best entertainment memoirs I've
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: ever read in my life. That is said with no bias,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: not just bias for publishing it, not bias because I
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: look at you as an inspiration, but this is actually
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: one of the best entertainment memoirs I ever read.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: In my life. Could I just add one more thing?
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: When you talk about dreaming and teaching and what the
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: book does and all that kind of stuff, what you
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: just said is important. A black man saying to me
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: on the phone, I want to do this because I
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: want more black authors. I want more books in the
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: hands of Nubian people. What you did calling me was
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: so important. And to do it with you, because that's
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: what I told Nina. And that's what I told my publicist.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: I got to do it because he's trying to do something.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: And I believe in what he's trying to do. And
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: I knew your history and your parents being educators. It's
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: so important for us. Sometimes we don't work together. We
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: will work with anybody but our own. I don't know why.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: And you know how you are. You're fucking with them niggas.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: And there's a lot of that in us, even when
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: we don't say it. But I fucks with this nigga.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: We got a good book out of it.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: Arsenio freed me a long time ago.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: Cause I, you know, I used to want to do
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: late night television because of Arsenio Hall. So, you know,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: you do radio and you get a talk show and
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: you think like, I got to make it as a
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: late night host, got to make it as a late
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: night host. And when you was on press for coming
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: to America too, somebody asked you, they said, you know,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: who do you think is like the closest to you
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: in this generation? And you said, I would say somebody
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: like Charlamagne, but he does radio and you watch it
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: on YouTube. And you know, that's like where people go
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: to get, I guess that, That so-called late night fix.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: I remember you said that. I was like, yo.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: Hey, that song, Everything Must Change, the business is that
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: way too. That late night format that Johnny created, he
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: was the king. But for budget reasons and for the
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: advancement of technology, this shit has to change. And what
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: you're doing now, when Tupac would call me on the
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: landline and say, I need to come on the show, man,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: because they trying to make me take an AIDS test
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: before I do poetic justice. And I ain't going to
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: really fuck Janet, right? Okay? So why should I have
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: to take an AIDS test? And back then, we didn't
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: have the word Twitter. We didn't have that. It wasn't
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: a bluebird. It was a blackbird. I was the guy
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: you called and came and talked about your problems or
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: the business or what you were going through. Ice-T coming
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: on and explaining Cop Killer, explaining... You know, I'm not
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: really killing cops. Arnold Schwarzenegger ain't really the Terminator. This
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: is a piece of art trying to give a message.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: And so what I was doing when I watch you,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: when I listen to you, I'm like, he's doing it.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: And the medium has come to a different place. You know,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: there's no curtain. There's no Ed McMahon. There's no Doc Severinsen.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: But what Charlemagne is doing is what I did for
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 4: this time, for this culture. And, uh, And look how
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: it's evolved. You got the two ladies now and, of course, Envy.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: It was a friend for me because it just teaches
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: you you don't always have to be chasing something and
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: it goes back to gratitude. Gratitude turns what we have
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: into enough.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: Hello.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: There you have it.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 5: Arsenio Hall, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 5: joining us. The memoir is out right now.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: Make sure you pick it up.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: And we appreciate you, OG, so much.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: Thank you, man. I appreciate y'all. And I'm glad to
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: finally meet the other three Of the foursome in person.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: And the party we can do with the boss.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: The Breakfast Club is our senior hall, ladies and gentlemen.