Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One (26 page)

“I know when you’re on the set, it’s all, ‘Here’s your chicken
breast, Mr. Crews,’ ” she said. “ ‘Here’s your smoothie, Mr. Crews.’ But, here, it ain’t gonna be like that.”

But do you have to say it? I know it’s not like that at home, but don’t say it
.

I couldn’t wait for the movie to come out. I knew everything was going to be different for me once people got a chance to see it. In the meantime, I lay in bed for hours, and I couldn’t make myself get up and do anything.

“Babe, I’ve got to get back to doing something,” I said. “I can’t not work.”

It was almost like I was addicted to the high of landing my next project and then going on set and achieving that feeling of just nailing it. I was always wondering:
Where’s my next job? What’s it going to be?

It was impossible for me to just sit still and feel whatever it was I was going through. As a football player, and the alpha male, I’d adopted this mind-set that was all about blinking through anything bad that happened, and avoiding all negativity at any cost. This rule applied to me, and also to my family:
Don’t do anything that will take me down. If you’re feeling bad, do something to make yourself feel good
.

Now I know that’s the wrong way to be, but at the time, I was acting almost like this horrible, domineering trainer to my wife and kids. And after a while, they didn’t want to hear it anymore. Even if they knew I was right, they wouldn’t do what I said because of my delivery. My attitude created tension, especially with Azi, who was a teenager. Even when Azi was a youngster, we’d butted heads. One time when she was eight, she did something wrong, and I let her know she was about to get spanked as punishment. She looked at me with this complete and utter calm.

“Dad, you don’t ever have to spank me,” she said. “Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

I was really struck by that moment, but at the time, I was too wrapped up in my own vision of how things needed to be to alter my attitude or approach in any way. Azi was very sensitive, and she was often troubled by the ways of the world. I wasn’t sympathetic at all. I didn’t want her bringing me down.

“If you’re feeling bad, just go play with your toys,” I said.

Looking back now, I can see that she was really just looking for somebody to listen to her. Sometimes we have to make the time to sit with the people who are important to us in our lives and feel their pain, open ourselves up enough to acknowledge what feels bad in their lives. Often, that’s all people need, is to have their feelings validated, and they’ll feel better. But I was a long way from being able to do that at the time. I would not validate anyone’s feelings or emotions, especially not my first two kids’, because I was the most stunted back then.

I was the super-driven, superstar, alpha male. You can’t be manlier than I was. It’s just true. I was in the NFL. For my first job in Hollywood, they put me in a cage, and I had to fight other men. I was that guy. And as far as I was concerned, the only emotions people should feel were positive. Anything negative, get it out of here.

Next up, I auditioned for the part of the President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho in Mike Judge’s
Idiocracy
. I knew this was the follow-up to
White Chicks
that would make me a household name, and I really wanted that part. But it was callback after callback, and my agent wouldn’t even tell me who I was up against because he was afraid if I knew my competition, I’d get too psyched out. When I finally got the part, I was overjoyed. Except for one little thing. We were filming in Austin, Texas, during the time when the
White Chicks
premiere happened, and so I wasn’t able to attend. Rebecca and the kids went, and I couldn’t wait until they got home
to give me a report. I called Rebecca while I knew she was still there.

“Terry, the theater is erupting,” she said. “I can’t believe it. Everybody’s coming up to me, like: ‘Yo, your husband. Your husband.’ Everybody is freaking out. The moment when the scene in the car happened, Terry, they wouldn’t stop laughing. The room burst into pandemonium. It was awesome.”

“Oh, I wish I was there,” I said.

And then the producer, Rick Alvarez, called me, also from the premiere.

“Your life will never be the same,” he said. “Everybody is on the floor at everything you’re doing. People are going crazy. Get ready, man. This is huge.”

Even though I was far away, sitting in my hotel room in Austin, I was so high with endorphins from all of that praise. Also while there, I got a call I’d been waiting on for years. When I’d first moved to Los Angeles, I’d combed the Wilshire Corridor with my head shot and résumé, from one big talent agency to another, only to be told I needed a referral in order to have a meeting. I’d made a promise to myself that I’d be back at one of the premier agencies someday. Meanwhile, around the time I’d done
Malibu’s Most Wanted
, a top talent manager, Brad Slater, contacted me to tell me that he saw something special in my performances. He also told me that he couldn’t sign me because I was not quite there yet, and I needed to do more first. Honestly, I agreed, but I told him when the time was right, I wanted to be his client. Our positive interaction had always reminded me of Coach Lee’s good word that I’d taken all the way to the NFL. Here was a top talent manager telling me he was impressed by my work, and it was a word I’d held on to for years. Now he’d just landed as an agent at William Morris, and he’d immediately gotten me on the phone.

“Hey, TC!” he exclaimed. “It’s Brad. Remember when I told you we had to wait until you were ready? I think you’re ready!”

And so began a relationship that has only grown stronger over the last ten years. Agents get a bad rap in Hollywood because most artists feel it’s an agent’s job to get them work, and they’re disappointed when that doesn’t happen. I’ve never felt that way. I’ve always believed it’s our job to get the work, and then our agents take everything we’re already doing and launch it into the stratosphere. It constantly amazes me how one job I’m already doing so often turns into several new opportunities that presented themselves because my agent knows what he’s doing. Brad has always leveraged everything I do into something much bigger and greater, and I believe that’s the only way it should be. On top of amazing success, we’ve seen some crushing disappointments, of course, but stuck with each other the whole way.

Acting is really a confidence game. The more confident you become, the better you are, and I became more and more sure of myself after
White Chicks
. It hit theaters in June 2004 and started doing really well. Not only that, but also, people were talking about my performance. I started getting recognized more and more. I finished
Idiocracy
that summer, and I was waiting for the buzz from
White Chicks
to hopefully bring me something big. I wanted no replay of my experience the year before in
Starsky & Hutch
, where I’d basically been a glorified background player with a name. After the rush of two parts in two major films, I wanted the big time.

But as of Halloween, I was still in between jobs and more than a little unsure about what would happen next. That night was the Harvest Festival at Faith Community Church in West Covina, which Rebecca and I thought would be fun for the kids and a safe way for the little ones to get candy without going door
to door. And it was. As we loaded everyone into the car at night’s end, Rebecca turned to me.

“Can you help me get Wynfrey from her stroller into her seat?”

This was an odd request since Wynfrey was less than a year old at the time and certainly not too big for Rebecca to carry, but I didn’t say anything about it. I snapped Wynfrey into her car seat, helped the other kids climb in, and then hopped into the driver’s seat. As I did, I said what came into my mind, almost as a joke.

“Why can’t you put the kids in? What are you, pregnant?”

Deafening silence.

My head whipped around to look at Rebecca as a sweet smirk snuck onto her face. Whoa, I hadn’t been serious, but THIS was serious.

“Becky, are you pregnant?”

Staring out the front window, she nodded: YES.

My mouth dropped open. My head filled with a million thoughts at once.

“Really?”

As if the answer would change if I asked again. She looked at me and smiled.

“Yes, I’m pregnant.”

My mood was bittersweet. I was ecstatic that we were bringing another life into the world, but I was filled with dread at the prospect of trying to afford five kids in LA with the insecurity of an actor’s transient life and uncertain income. I knew we had faithfully used contraception every time. Even as I saw disappointment cross Rebecca’s face, I couldn’t hide my fear. I took a deep breath.

“Are you sure?”

“I took a pregnancy test twice because of how I’ve been feeling lately,” she said. “And they both came up positive.”

Finally, I had worked my way through my shock and anxiety, and I was able to just be happy. I smiled at her and hugged her right there in the front seat. We grinned at each other:
Here we go again!

A few months later, I accompanied Rebecca to her ultrasound. After our second miscarriage, I was feeling extremely anxious. I wanted everything to go smoothly, and I felt my presence at the appointment would be good for both of us. The nurse rubbed the gel on Rebecca’s belly and began moving the instrument across her skin. It didn’t take long for her to turn to us and smile.

“Do you want to know the sex of the baby?”

I looked at Rebecca. Now, I was fairly certain we were going to have another girl, because it was said that fathers tend to have a run on the same sex in families of more than three children. Rebecca, however, had told me from the beginning that this baby was a boy. She could feel it. Rebecca and I smiled at each other.

“Yes,” we both said.

“You’ve got a boy,” the nurse said.

She showed us a little mark on the ultrasound that let her know for sure, and with that, I knew my dream and Rebecca’s vision were no coincidence.

I WAS GETTING SMALL JOBS HERE AND THERE, BUT NOTHING
steady. Rebecca was always telling me that even though I thought I was a movie guy, I needed to do some TV, especially now that we had our fifth kid on the way.

“Yeah, I don’t know if I’m a TV guy,” I said. “I don’t know if everybody wants to see me every day.”

“Yeah, but you need to try it,” she said. “You need to see.”

Now, by this point, I was starting to see that Rebecca had always been the voice of wisdom in our relationship, especially when it came to my career. She’d gotten me out to Los Angeles in the first place. So when I got the call to go in and do a guest spot on
My Wife and Kids
, I was more than ready to give it a try. I was also happy to be back with the Wayans family again. I still thought of
White Chicks
as one of the best acting experiences of my life, and I wanted to redeem myself after I’d botched my first audition for the show. Plus, I’d never really done true episodic television, and I was eager to see what it was all about.

Let me tell you, it was nothing like what I’d expected. In the first three days, I did a table read, a minor walk-through, and a camera walk-through, and Damon wasn’t on set for any of this. I couldn’t figure out how it was going to work when the cameras started rolling. I’d really liked the script as it was written, but I had an idea for how I thought it could be even better, and after how well my ad-libbing had gone during
White Chicks
, and also
Idiocracy
, I felt empowered to speak up. Damien was sitting with some of the other writers, and I approached them.

“Have you ever had a trainer who was not interested in getting you in shape at all?” I asked. “He just wanted to show you that you could never do what he does?”

“Oh, yeah,” Damien said, already laughing.

“I see this guy like that,” I said. “What would happen if I take Damon through these things, and he can’t do any of them?”

The way it was written, he did everything, and then he got really sore.

“In fact, better than that, not only can’t he do any of it, but I can do it ten times better than he does.”

When we did the final camera walk-through, I showed them some of the things I was thinking about. They were laughing so hard, they decided to change the whole script. I went home that night, and when I came back on Thursday, which was the tape day, I still didn’t know if we were going to do it as it had originally been written, or if we were going to try it my way. Well, they had totally rewritten the script, and it was so cool because that really improved my confidence.

I can do this
, I thought. Up until then, I’d always felt a bit like I was still a football player, and I didn’t really know what this acting world was all about, and so I should just keep my mouth shut and do what I was told. But here I was in a whole new style of comedy, doing this multi-camera sitcom, which I had never done before. And, maybe, I was good at it.

When the camera started rolling, Damon and I just went for it, and it was pure magic. We were in the zone. My name was Darryl, a gym employee who specialized in EuroTraining, which was this psychotic style of working out. Damon was making things up off the top of his head, and I was bouncing off of him, and finally, it was a whole new episode. When it was done, it was just like
White Chicks
had been, but in a TV show format. That experience changed something for me.
I can do this
, I thought. The world seemed to agree. That episode aired in late 2004, and it has always been considered one of the best episodes of
My Wife and Kids
. It currently has more than six million hits on YouTube, which made that one TV show as big as anything else I’d ever done at that point.