Terry Crews - "Tough: My Journey to True Power"

Tough My Journey to True Power. So when I when I heard about the book, I was like, Tough my Journey to True Powers. Like, oh, Terry's writing it's like a weightlifting book. I figured it was just gonna be about muscles and everything, and yet there's basically nothing. It seems like this whole book is about you emotionally weightlifting. Yes, yes, I I had to redefine what tough was in my life. You know what I mean. Um As as a kid, I mean, first of all, I was filled with rage.

And I'm gonna start at the beginning just a little bit. Because my father was an alcoholic and he was addicted to alcohol, and my mother was addicted to religion, which created a really toxic relationship. And at five years old, I grew up watching my father not my mother, out on the regular um and it was something that changed me, I mean my whole thing. When I saw him do that, I was like, hey, man, it's your world, this, it's

your way on the highway. And I learned that that was the only way to be a man um and it was through rage, and it was I would rather be feared than loved. And it got me a lot. I mean I lived my life like it is a revenge movie. Okay, and a lot of people see me now, you know, as ohay, it's so funny and so great and the whole thing. But but this is the thing, man, I I was filled with rage, and I mean I used to snap on people. I read that in the book and I'm not even jokes, Like in the first

let's say quarter of the book. First, I was like, I'm scared to have Terry on the show because you like, in the book you talk about this this journey, you know, and you talk about young Terry you know, and I like,

it's like there's multiple Terries in this book. In your in your story, you talk about young Terry and you talk about your dad is old Terry, big Terry, and you know, you talk about the terror and the fear, but also the rage that you felt it being unable to protect your mom, unable to protect the house, and you were scared. But then it gets to a part of the book where one day you you developed enough and you you beat your father, like in ways, I

got him. And this was so wild because you know, growing up in that kind of household, with the intense alcohol and religion, the whole thing. I became a pleaser. I became a searcher for I wanted approval and I was addicted to approval. And the thing is is that if I didn't get it, it was it was one of those things that would make me very very, you know, angry.

And but one thing that I discovered once by the time I became an adult, and I said, you know, I knew I needed to get strong because one day I would have to kill my father. That was the vision that I always had in my head because he was such a terror. And one day he I mean and as a grown man, I was thirty years old, and I remember we called it the Christmas Christmas from Hell,

and I get a little emotional thinking about it. But I took my family home for Christmas and he told me that he was going to behave and I said cool, because they hadn't been around and my kids had never been raised with any domestic violence. And me and my wife go out and he decides he's gonna hit my mother in the mouth. And what was crazy? I get a call. We're on the road, we're aroot to go to dinner, and my mother, my aunt, calls me and says, your mother just got hit in the mouth. Her tooth

is sideways. Man. I turned the car around and I told him get everybody out of the house and just leave us alone. And I went and I confronted him and I said, hey, man, what are you doing. You promised And he said, oh, man, get out of here. Man, And and I hit this man. I don't know how long it was. I know I beat him from downstairs all the way up to his room. He's bleeding, he's he's screaming, and I all I can think about is this is revenge. This is what I always wanted, This

is what you made us go through. This is the revenge. This is going to fulfill every dream, every fantasy, everything is going to be in this moment, and I felt nothing. You talk about that, it's it's a severy moment where you you're wailing on him and then you cry at the end of it, and you felt even emptier than when that moment started. You didn't feel powerful, you didn't feel you didn't get the revenge that that that you thought you were gonna get. You can get the closure.

I did it, and I'm like, this is supposed to be the end of the movie. Did you know at that moment that Terry had anger issues or did you think that was an isolated incident. No. No, My wife was telling me the whole time. She's like, you got you are really angry, And I'm like, what do you mean, I'm angry? You know I'm getting angry and you're telling me I'm angry and I never saw it. You understand, it's something that's so imperceptible because you have it tied

in with your manhood. This is something that's tied into you and you go, hey, man, this is what you do somebody. I remember when one man disrespected my wife. I picked him up, put him on his head on the concrete, and I'm and my wife is like, no, you promise me you will never ever do this again. And I'm like, but I have to. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is how I prove I'm a man. This is what I'm put on earth to do. How did you How did you change that? That's what

I want to know. Like people talk about the change, but how do you change that? How does Terry go from being the person who snaps, the person who's angry, the person who proves himself to the person who says, I'm not going to react Because I'll jump to another part in the book that some people know about as a story, but you you've never told it in in as much depth if he hasn't as you have in

the book. Is the now infamous story where you are in a hollywo You had a Hollywood party and one of the most powerful agents in the business is there and he comes up and he grabs your crotch, you know, and at first you're like, oh, was that a mistake? What's going on? And he laughs and he grabs your crotch again in front of everybody, and he just laughs

it off. And you didn't do anything, And the irony of the whole thing is Then people online were like, man, Terry Crews, you're gonna have all those muscles and you're gonna do ship and someone grabs your dick, You're not gonna punch you what you know what I mean? And then they're like with these fake muscles and inflatable muscles, people roasting you. But you talk about in the book how you didn't want to do anything that's right. Explain to me how that change comes about? What? What? What?

What shifts in your perspective? First of all, it was seen and I'd already been through seven years of therapy. UM my wife left me in Um. First of all, I had an addiction to pornography, I had anger, I had all kinds of stuff, and she was like, you know what I'm done, And this is the thing. I was very successful, you know what I mean? Like I mean, I had movies and TV and everybody knew who I was and and my trick to life was fake it till you make it. But the problem is you make

it and you're fake, You're still fake. It was an image. It was the Terry Crew's image is what everybody fell in love. And my wife ended up married to that image, but the real me was still messed up, broken and and and she left me. It was the highlight. It was like, wait a minute. And first I was like, go ahead, I'm Terry Crews, show give me another woman. And it was so stupid because I heard myself talking like this and I went, maybe it's me, Maybe it

is me. And dude, you gotta understand. I got the best advice I ever received in my entire life. A friend of mine said, hey, man, I can't promise you you're gonna get your wife and family back, but you have to get better for you now my whole life. Therapy, especially in in male culture. In black culture, therapy was looked at as quackery. I mean they were like, you can't care crazy, you know. And that was that was said a lot, you know. Uh. In fact, my father

went to go see a psychologist for his alcoholism. The psychologist killed himself a week later, and I was like, oh, that don't work. Damn, I'm going what But this was the thing. I'm at rock bottom. I have nothing. And that was the D day. And I went to therapy and I discovered this anger and where it was coming from and this this you know, this need for people's approval that would send me through the route that would make me a high achiever. You understand what I mean,

Like you you need to go. Yeah, I mean that's where the success comes from. But the disapproval brought the rage. So now Terry Crews has this rage, he's working on it. He goes to therapy. Sometimes I feel like what happens to people, though, is they don't understand that anger is a natural part of being a human being, and so when they come out, they go, now, I have no anger. The universe is my spirit. And so now how do

you deal with anger? How do you, like, everyone gets angry, how do you now deal with What did you learn as a healthy outlet for your anger? First of all, yeah, I did come out like that. The first year. I was like piece to everyone and it was the baddest acting I ever did. Like set your ass down, love, you know, it was bad. Yes, it was hard, right, but I actually got to understand. Remember, now this is the whole thing you can You can be angry and sind not it's a it's a biblical phrase. And the

whole thing was righteous anger. It's a good thing. And it was about accountability holding people accountable is how you deal with your anger. It's like there's a legal way to do everything. My answer to everything before was like playing chess, turn over the chessboard, like if I can't get a problem. And what I learned was wait, wait, wait, wait, I gotta use wisdom here. I have to figure out this problem. Maybe going backward, I can go forward two steps.

And all of a sudden, my my, everything about the energy towards anyone that I was angry at was a thoughtful, methodical move. And this is what I did with ad him vinit. It was. It changed everything because I knew because my wife had made me promise too. She was like, don't you ever do and I was like, yeah, I probably, but that was the test. And I remember taking her hand and we went into the car and I drove home.

And now, mind you, my first mindset was to drive back through the club and like terminator and you know I was going to do it, but I went home. But you got to understand this, because this is the support that I had. The whole time I was driving home. My wife said, I'm proud of you, Terry. I'm proud of you because she saw me throwing people around. She seen it, and she was like, I'm so proud of you that support that said, I'm doing this right. I'm

doing this right. And then I went legal and I went to the head of William Morris Endeavor and I said, what are you gonna do about this predator that you have running in your hallways? And they were like, well, you know, he's the big man, so we can't do anything. And I was like, hell no, I said, dude, you work for me. And he laughed. He laughed in my face, and I said, wow, okay, And you know what, it

made me more emboldened and I got stronger. I went like, all right, you want to play this game, We're gonna play it. You're gonna play it all the way out. And what happened is quiet has kept other people joined my case because you don't rob the biggest bank in the you know, in the state right now, you always dropped little banks. And what was happening is there was little There were all these other people that came out and say, hey man, he did the same thing to me,

and they joined my case. And he was like, oh, white black, I'm out of here. I'm going to retire. And I didn't want any money. I just said, man, you cannot molest the clients and go back to work. That's all I said, dude, that's all I wanted. You cannot do it, and you can't go back to work. And he's out and he's out, and this is the thing, checkmate. So so so great. I remember that moment distinctly because you you know, you came out the me too movement

was happening. You know, you spoke about your case. People were shocked, and you know, and a lot of men went bolden to say like, hey, I've also had this issue, and yes, you know, statist stickle men are miniscule compared to women. But it was an interesting story that that gave a fuller complexity to what we're trying to get rid of in society. People loved you that Terry Crews on Twitter. It was amazing, And then you talk about

this in the book. A few years after that, Terry Crews on Twitter became one of the most hated individuals. Almost overnight. It was people like, he's a cool he's he betrayed black people, he was and it all came

around Black lives matter. That's what That's what came around was black lives matter, and you said something and I paraphrase it, you know, because in the in the in the book you talk and you lay out the tweet was where you say, you know, essentially, I don't want white supremacy the same way I don't want black supremacy. I want us to all be equal as people. People were like, oh, really, terry black supremacy, and I mean,

they tore into you. But in the book you talk about how you didn't even know that that was a talking point some people use. And secondly, you weren't trying to say what people thought. You were trying to say, well, this is the black supremacy has nothing to do with white people. When I was in Split, Michigan, the drug dealer was a black supremacist. The gang member I was scared of, and we could not move around. What's the black supremacists? And what I meant was, it's this whole thing.

If we don't start this movement with the idea of reconciliation, we are just postponing a greater war. And my whole thing is I didn't hear a lot of reconciliation because reconciliation doesn't mean agreement. You know what I mean. It's one of those things. I want to bring this up because there's a story about the wisest man in the world. It was Solomon, and two women came to them and they brought a baby, and they said, we have this baby,

and the baby is mine. And so Solomon, the wisest man, says, Okay, what we're gonna do is cut the baby in half and I'll give you a half of the baby and you get the other half. And one woman said, yes, that's the way we do it. But the other woman said, no, no, say this baby. No, in fact, give it to her. Give it to her, and said, that's the moment. That's recon afiliation. It doesn't mean you get the result you want. It means you're saving it, because dividing it is going

to kill it. But when I look at America, dividing it's going to kill it and the whole thing is reconciled. We have to reconcile. We have to white and black, male and female, Republican Democrat, we have to buy a way to reconcile, or we're going to kill what we have. It's beautiful as a thought, and I agree with it. I think the issue. Yeah, I think the issue some people had, you know, is reconciliation cannot take place before there's any type of accountability. In order for us reconcile,

there has to be some sort of accountability. People have to say this is what is happening, and this is what we're going to do to rectify that situation. Just like you talked about reconciling with your wife. You know, in order for you, guys to reconcile, you had to fix you had to acknowledge, you have to say I have a problem. And I think what a lot of people thought in that moment is they felt like I

understand when reading the book. Now you you are saying something that, in my honest opinion, is almost a step ahead. But people were going to have a terry right now. We're looking for accountability first. Right now, Black people in America are saying, hey, can we just have an agreement on how America does not treat everybody equally? You know, we don't want everyone to be treated equally badly, We want everyone to be treated equally, you know, totally agree.

And it felt like to some people you had you had skipped you were just like guys guys, kumbaya, I'll just be together. And you know, I totally understand that. But this is another thing, and I agree, and you can't have a nuanced conversation on twitter. Oh yeah, that's mistake. The biggest mistake. That was the first any accident that was it. That was maybe one of my favorite pe when you talk about because you tweeted that and you can tell when someone things that got swagging and tweet

you were like, let me tell you something. What we need to supremacy, black spacy all come together band like you made. You made a salvage. I can't believe you me. I went, oh, no, that's what. That's not what's going on. You know what I mean. But but but you can't have that. I totally understand that. Um, and I think you're right, and I know you're right, and I actually one of my things was it's just when I know

my people and I love my people. And the big thing was black people need to hold other black people accountable. It's see what because accountability right, and we do and we do and I'm not saying we don't. Uh, but but my thing is as a black man and as a man who had been in these kind of situations. Um, I just knew that it needed to be said by someone like me in order because what my thing is, I just wanted peace. And I guess it goes back to my approval. Yes, it goes back to my need

for approval. It went back to that. Um. And again it was a mistake. It was it was a mistake to tweet that out at that time. And that was that was the thing. Funny enough, because you know, Martin Luther King Jr. Has talked about black supremacy. Nelson Mandela himself was one of the people who said, I do not look for the oppression of white people. I don't look for the oppression of black people. I don't want

anybody to be oppressed. Right. But the timing, I think was this, Yeah, you know what I mean, say that in the book. Yeah, you were going, that's not what I was trying to do. And I think, you know, this is one of those moments where I was like, that's why books over tweets. It is no, it is that the book. You made it out. You were a human being. We don't mist understand each other. I honestly I appreciated your just like your vulnerability, your your your

ability to say this is where I messed up. This is what I was trying to say. Because I was reading it, I was going like, man, I was like, why did you send the tweet? Why did you trust Twitter? But it doesn't try to understand you do, it does know. And I, first of all, I learned my lesson big time, first of all. But but I do feel like again because of this need for approval that I was addicted to. Um, it's it's a matter of also exercising the will to

take disapproval. You understand what I mean. Where really sometimes standing up for the right thing, not everyone is going to like you. And and again I still know who I am. But at the same time, I mean, I would never ever tweet again, to be honest, It's all gonna be cat videos and promotional uh. And I again and I really, I mean, even on this show right now.

And I'm gonna let you know, I really do want to apologize to anybody who was offended by these tweets and was hurt deeply because as an example, as a as an African American man, a black man here in this country, I did not want to give the perception that we're supposed to gloss this over and and forget the death of George Floyd. The murder of George Floyd. And I want to apologize to everyone right now who

has ever offended, because it hurt. And and even back when I was trying to explain, it just got worse and worse. And this is where the book came in, because the need is for us as a people to actually come together and really really be what we need to be to this country because this is our country. This is our country. We die and fought and I'm not giving it away. This is our inheritance. I love you, Tim first for real, you know, thank you, no, no, no, what what I what I always say to people is

find a person who has tweeted. You will find somebody who has messed up, and you will find someone who's been misinterpreted. Thank you so much for thank you, thankful already more. Thanks. Harry's book, My John, It's a True Coll is available now. What's the Daily Show weeknights at eleven tent Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast