From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend.
I'm Tanya Mosley.
Today, Arsenio Hall.
He grew up in Cleveland, dreaming of being the next Johnny Carson.
Kind of.
I wanted to do this show that didn't exist when I was a kid and I knew the talent was out there.
You know, I found Bruno Mars and put him on the show when he was two feet tall.
I wanted those things that Johnny didn't do.
And we hear from Jeff Ross, comedian producer and the man behind some of the most savage celebrity roasts on television.
But before all of that, he was a kid growing up in his family's kosher catering hall in New Jersey serving weddings and bar mitzvahs, one of which was his own.
My bar mitzvah was like something between a Super Bowl halftime show and like something Saddam Hussein would throw for one of his kids.
He gets personal and vulnerable in his new Netflix comedy special, Take a Banana for the Ride.
That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
This is Fresh Air Weekend.
I'm Tanya Mosley.
That's how America was welcomed into the party that was known as the Arsenio Hall Show.
His name stretched out the way his mother used to call him into the house when he was a kid growing up in Cleveland.
During its run in the late 80s and early 90s Time magazine called Arsenio hip brash and the new generation.
And some of the most important moments in American culture happened on Arsenio's couch.
Magic Johnson chose the show as the first place to speak after announcing his HIV diagnosis.
When Los Angeles burned after the Rodney King verdict, executives wanted the show to go dark, but Arsenio went on anyway.
And one night, a charming governor from Arkansas, running for president, showed up with a saxophone.
That appearance would go on to be credited as a turning point in the 92 presidential election, strengthening Clinton's hold on young and black voters who helped carry Clinton to the White House.
I was a teenager in Detroit, staying up past my bedtime to watch.
And I was not alone.
At its peak, the Arsenio Hall show was syndicated on nearly 200 stations, running second in the late-night ratings to Arsenio's idol Johnny Carson an unthinkable feat at the time.
And then just like that, poof, the show was gone.
But here's what I never knew until I read Arsenio's new memoir.
The show wasn't canceled.
Arsenio quit, walking away from a dream he'd been rehearsing since he was 12 years old.
The reasons were distinctly American.
White audiences thought the show was too Black, and Black audiences thought it wasn't Black enough.
And it wore him down in ways he's never told fully until now.
His new memoir is simply called Arsenio.
And Arsenio Hall, welcome to Fresh Air.
Well, thank you very much.
Wow.
What an intro.
Oh, Arsenio, you know, you have talked about the decision to leave the show before.
But this book, it really names things I haven't seen you name before.
You say this thing that was really poignant to me.
You said you felt insatiably black. and profoundly alone.
Take me inside of that to be 100% yourself and still that self be rejected.
Yeah.
You know, when I came up, I could watch a show like Johnny Carson or Merv Griffin And for weeks at a time, maybe never see a minority perform.
And you know they're out there.
So my dream was to one day grow up and show the other side of show business.
Unfortunately, you can't get the kind of numbers doing my show like to be on a network show.
You know, you can't be on CBS, ABC or replace the king when he leaves on NBC.
Johnny Carson.
Yes, yes.
So I created this show in syndication, which did very well.
And often Paramount thought it was too black because they wanted to.
Kind of dangle a carrot in front of me and say if you do the right show, you could be the guy to get Johnny's audience when he leaves.
But one of the reasons Johnny liked me is I didn't want Johnny's audience and I didn't want to do his show.
When you launched, there were essentially three players.
There was Johnny Carson, who was the king, and then Letterman, who was tucked away after midnight.
And then you were this scrappy syndicated show with no network.
What was Paramount actually asking you to be that you weren't?
I guess you know the example I like to give people is when Michael Bivens of New Edition first called me and told me he found this group and they're called Boyz II Men.
And I said, what are they like?
He says, they're like The Temptations, but it's four of them.
And I said, hey, I got The Temptations coming on this week.
Bring the guys by.
If their album's not finished, they can just come on now and do something with The Temptations.
So now there are nine black men performing in the center of my stage.
And...
I don't know how to describe it, other than there's, you know, one black person in the mix.
Makes it look too black.
That's we've had research that points to that in our society.
And I wanted to do a lot of Busta Rhymes and I had Hammer on a lot.
I had everybody in the culture on.
And unfortunately, in America, you're never going to be number one if you have this insatiable desire to do Toni Braxton instead of Dolly Parton.
And by the way, I tried to do both.
I tried to mix it up.
I would put Dolly Parton on and then have something for the culture after it.
I wanted to do this show that didn't exist when I was a kid, and I knew the talent was out there.
You know, I found Bruno Mars and put him on the show when he was... two feet tall.
I wanted those things that Johnny didn't do.
And the things that you did.
I mean, while you weren't number one, I mean you were a close number two.
And in many, you know, in many instances over those years, you over indexed on an audience under 35.
And one of the One of the things that you write about in the book is, as you are receiving these messages from Paramount, that you were too black, that you needed to have different type of guests on and you were competing against this growing late night ecosystem.
It eventually broke through on air.
There's a moment on the show when.
Activists from Queer Nation heckle you during your monologue and they yell why don't you have any gay guests on your show?
And at first you answer politely.
You say, like, I have a lot of gay guests.
Maybe they just aren't out.
Maybe you just don't know their orientation.
But then they continue to push and then you become more agitated and then something in you just snaps.
And I want to play a clip from it.
Let's listen.
This is my show.
This is my show.
This is my show.
This is my show, man.
You think I haven't had somebody on the show because they're gay?
What's wrong with you, man?
I'm black!
I'm black, man!
I'm black, man!
I'm the biggest minority you know about!
I don't want to hear that gay trash, man.
I got gay friends I've had on the show, because you don't know them or it ain't who you want on the show.
You got a problem with it?
If you want to book it, get yourself a show.
Now sit down, sit down so I can do the show.
You've had your say and I've had mine.
God, it seems so long ago.
I think you become more angry and you become stronger when you realize you are right.
Because a huge part of my staff... was gay.
Many of my guests were gay, but it was at a time when you didn't always know it.
So the gay people on my show couldn't even come to my defense.
Ellen couldn't come and say, oh, wait a minute.
You guys don't know.
You know, Because she hadn't come out yet.
Right.
And Rosie was on the show a lot and a lot of people that may be still in the closet.
So I won't mention their names, but it wasn't my job to say ladies and gentlemen, balladeer and homosexual, put your hands together.
You know, it wasn't my job to introduce a singer that way.
And I think part of my anger was at that point.
I'm being told by the black community that it ain't black enough.
I'm being told by the paramount executives that it ain't white enough.
And now the gay community is going to attack me during the show.
You're going to take money out of my wallet and food off my family's plate in the middle of my job here, when you don't know what you're doing talking about.
You're going to blame me for something that is absolutely not true.
And I think I was sick of being criticized by everyone because everyone wanted it to be something else.
It's hard being the first black anything in late night.
My guest is talk show host, actor, and author Arsenio Hall.
We'll continue our conversation after a short break.
I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
You know you mentioned about holding a guest's hand, and something that kept coming up in the book were guests who were nervous in ways that surprised me.
You tell the story of Maya Angelou.
Coming to your dressing room before the show.
She needed like two shots of Crown Royale just to walk out there.
And Patti LaBelle, yeah, the night you introduced Prince, she was gripping your hand so hard.
Yeah, and she has these nails.
I still have a mark in my hand from Patti LaBelle.
I mean, that stuck out to me because it comes up so often in the book.
These are people who had performed for thousands and had been performing for a long time at that point.
What was it about your stage or you?
First of all, I mean, one of the things that Paramount hated is...
My audience would be predominantly black and young.
I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but it was a different kind of show.
Maya Angelou came to my room to talk to me and she came down and she told me how nervous she was and I offered her.
I said, I got a bar, and I opened this cabinet.
And she says...
Oh, baby, I wouldn't mind having a little bit of that.
And so we had a drink and I think it was the time that we talked about hip hop and how it was poetry set to music, but it was poetry of different poets.
You know the thing about the nerves.
I mean, maybe that's just something that happens and we just don't see it.
But there's something about that that I think...
Maybe there was an environment that you were providing that allowed these guests to show a more truer or fuller version of themselves.
And I want to play another clip from an interview you did with Tupac in 1993.
At the time, he was promoting his new album and the film Poetic Justice with Janet Jackson.
And you ask him about promoting violence.
Let's listen.
When we were talking at the top of the show.
First of all, you did a little rap and it contained the word nine.
Now on the street, that's nine millimeter.
Right oh, you're gonna get some letters yeah, yeah.
And i'm wondering are you concerned that possibly it'll affect box office or record sales?
Because you're too close to the edge, you're too hard.
It's like this the masses, the hungry people, they outweigh the rich.
So as long as i appeal to the hungry and the poverty-stricken people, it's all good.
I'm going to have a job for life.
It's these rich people who are worried about fooling the poor people.
Everybody knows crime out there.
Everybody knows what type of situation we're in.
In the streets, all I'm doing is showing you and telling you.
You know what I'm saying?
Why get mad at the brother that bring you the news?
Get mad at the person that's making it happen.
Feel me?
It's like, you know?
You know, there's a weird game that goes on because now, as a result of your art, you're becoming one of the rich.
Yes.
Not rich, but they giving me checks more often.
That's Tupac Shakur on the Arsenio Hall show in 1993.
And, you know, this is kind of a serious moment.
You're asking him a real question, Arsenio.
Here's, Tupac is smiling.
The two of you are giggling through so much of it.
And watching it, I kept coming back to something that I can only describe as black boy joy.
It's something that we've been talking about lately, like over the last few years.
And so then I started watching all of the YouTube videos Will Smith Prince, Sammy Davis Jr, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, Eddie Murphy.
It goes on and on.
There was a giddiness, this looseness, a side of these men that we didn't see anywhere else.
And what do you think it was about your stage that made black men in particular feel free?
Wow.
There might be a different answer to that question for each artist.
Like Tupac and I, we had a lot of history.
The first time I met Tupac, he was with Jada Pinkett.
It was way, way back, and he was a dancer.
The next time he came, he came as a rapper.
The next time he came, he came as an actor.
I remember him calling me and wanting to come and just talk once, because he said that he was about to do poetic justice and they wanted him to take an AIDS test.
And he said, Arsenio, am I wrong?
I shouldn't have to take an AIDS test unless I'm going to really have sex with Janet.
Being Janet Jackson.
And it was funny because now, when I look back, now you may go on Instagram live or you may tweet something.
Back then, we didn't have the Internet.
We didn't have the blue bird.
We had the black bird.
That was me.
I was the place you come from.
And talk and air out your grievances and say what's on your mind.
And I think people knew it was that place.
So you get that boy joy.
You get that other side that you've never seen.
Maybe it's those guys knew that.
We were kindred spirits.
I remember Ice-T coming on when he had an album out called Cop Killer.
And I really wanted him to explain it, because when I use those two words together, it sounds horrible.
And the 9mm conversation with Tupac.
But these were poets from the inner city trying to give you a poem a little different than E.E.
Cummings.
And I remember Ice-T saying...
You watch a Schwarzenegger movie, but you don't think he's really the Terminator.
You don't think he's really killing people, right?
I am like that.
This is art.
I'm telling you about a problem that my people have in the inner city with cops.
And that's one thing I loved about the show is the masses are White.
America, let's say in the safety of their home, could look in this box and hear people talk and hear thoughts that they didn't hear in their homes.
And that's why I thought the show was important.
I want to talk a bit about just how purpose-driven you were as a young person, from a very young age, even in the single digits.
You hosted your first talk show In your apartment building basement when you were 12, and your musical guest was a kid from down the street singing along to a Temptations record.
Yeah, Junior Brown.
Yeah.
And seven kids showed up as your audience.
Absolutely.
And I used a folding card table as my desk.
And, you know, I had a little record player.
So I was like, Junior's going to sing Get Ready.
And I put the needle on the record and it started playing.
And Junior sang Get Ready.
And then I interviewed him.
And I had seen a comedian open for Al Green when I was a kid.
And all he had was a towel on a stool and a glass of water.
And I was like, God, I think I could be a stand-up.
Because sometimes when I would talk during my magic act, I could get laughs.
And one time, my dad was preaching a wedding.
My dad was a Baptist preacher.
And I said something during the wedding and got a laugh from the audience.
But my dad was mad at me because we were there.
He brought his son to do a wedding and i'm trying to get laughs.
I the, the bride and the groom kissed and it lasted a little longer than normal and i, at five years old, screamed out kiss her, don't kill her.
And I got a laugh and it was like a drug that I chased the rest of my life and I'm still chasing.
I love the laugh.
Your father, as you mentioned, was a preacher and he thought that show business was the devil's business.
But you write about watching him preach.
I mean, and if we know preachers, they're prowling the pulpit, they're whispering and shouting and women jumping up and down and dancing in the aisles.
That's like a real sanctified type church.
So in many ways, we're watching a performer and your dad.
Do you think he ever saw himself that way?
He had to know.
And he was part of my dream.
My dad.
When I was four years old he took me holding my hand into the pulpit because you could get to the church pulpit from his office or, as they called it, the pastor's study.
And he sat me behind him.
So my POV. was this church and this crowd.
And I watched how he moved them with just his voice, with just the gospel and his ability to entertain and preach.
It was scary because now, when I look back, That was the most important Sunday of my life when he let me do that.
Eventually in coming to America.
I got to be a preacher because he always wanted me to be a preacher.
He wanted that to be the family business.
And I think he would have enjoyed Reverend Brown in coming to America.
You're right.
That's all I wanted then and now.
I wanted my dad to be proud of me.
Do you think that the Arsenio show was in some way for him?
You know, I've never thought about that angle.
I've never had anybody ask me that, but...
Maybe you're right.
My father was not a part of the secular world.
Like I said, he didn't even want me to go to Hollywood because he thought that Hollywood was a horrible place.
And I get where he was coming from, which is probably why I've tried to live my life in a way that would make him proud.
And I've fallen off course. the wagon and tripped from time to time.
But for the most part, I think he would be proud of me.
And I think every parent just wants their child to be happy.
And happy is often success.
It's hard to be happy and content in this world we live in.
Thank you, Arsenio.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you.
Talk show host and author Arsenio Hall.
His new memoir is called Arsenio.
Terry has our next interview.
Here she is.
If you're a fan of celebrity roasts, you probably know my guest, Jeff Ross, as the Roastmaster General.
He loves to make people laugh by insulting the guest of honor, as well as the roasters.
But his new Netflix comedy special is very personal and autobiographical.
It hits lots of emotional notes and reveals a more vulnerable side of him, beneath the tough skin that's gotten him through tough times.
He talks about his family.
His great-grandmother founded the popular New Jersey catering hall Clinton Manor, which Ross's father eventually took over.
It was known for its weddings and bar mitzvahs and for the food.
One of the people who aspired to have a wedding there was the main character in Judy Blume's 1978 novel Wifey.
While Jeff Ross's friends were out having fun, he was cutting brisket for the next catered affair.
It was a tight-knit family, but that kind of ended when Jeff was young.
His mother was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 12 and died when he was 15.
Five years later, his father died of an aneurysm, leaving Jeff and his younger sister orphaned.
In his early 20s, he lived with his grandfather and became his caregiver until he died.
If you know what Jeff looks like, you know he's bald.
It's not a fashion statement.
It's a result of alopecia, a condition in which you lose your hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes.
Shortly before he started preparing his one-man Broadway show in which he talks about all of these things, he was given a far worse diagnosis that he added to the show, and that was stage 3 colon cancer.
It required surgery and several months of chemo.
His new Netflix comedy special is a filmed version of that show, which is called Take a Banana for the Ride.
The special begins with clips of him from a couple of roasts, including the now famous or infamous 2024 roast of Tom Brady, which Ross produced and co-hosted.
Here's Jeff Ross.
Snoop, love you, man, so much.
The only person that's inhaled more smoke than Snoop is Pete Davidson's dad inside the World Trade Center.
Thanks, Pete.
Tom, I really wanted you to be our first goat to be roasted, because you're an example to future generations that if you work hard, eat right, film the other team's practices, deflate the balls and have the NFL make new rules just for you.
Then you too can be the third most famous guy in a Dunkin' Donuts commercial.
Jeff Ross, it's great to have you back on the show.
And that stuff is so funny.
Terry, thank you.
I so enjoyed hearing you ramp this up.
I can't even tell you what a full circle moment for me.
This is my record-breaking third time on.
I don't know how many comics have had this privilege, so I'm thrilled.
Oh, it's great to have you.
So to the extent that you're comfortable talking about it, how is your health now?
My health is 100%.
Thank you for asking.
Oh, that's such great news.
I just had my chemo port removed.
Oh, great, because you still had it on when you were filming the show, the Broadway show.
So it's really important for people to know that I'm doing okay.
I'm doing better than okay.
And don't worry about me, at least right now.
I feel very fortunate.
And to the people listening who are going through chemo, it's...
You can do it.
You can do it.
I want to talk now about how you became you.
Yeah.
So let's start with the catering business.
My parents were such veterans of catered affairs, weddings and bar mitzvahs at various catering halls around like Queens and Brooklyn.
Yeah.
Um, so let's start with your grandmother.
She founded this successful catering hall in Newark, New Jersey, and then you moved like the business and your family moved to which part of New Jersey after that.
Newark was on Clinton Avenue.
It was Clinton Manor and eventually moved to Route 22 in Union, New Jersey, where I worked there as a boy and a young man.
I want you to describe what the typical bar mitzvah was like when you were working in the kitchen.
I would ride my moped on the egg-turning lane of this highway 12 months a year to go to my family-owned catering hall where these lavish affairs would happen.
So I saw—
Human nature, people at their most nervous brides grooms, mother of the bride, father of the groom.
You saw people at their most intense.
I would watch the bands from a window in the kitchen.
You know I would like peek out as a 13 14 15-year-old, working weekends and summers making fruit cup and salads.
And you know, I played high school football but I had red fingernails from the cherries that I put on the fruit cups.
Oh, maraschino cherries.
Everyone thought I was wearing nail polish.
And since I was the center, the pun center, they all stared at my hands.
So there were a lot of funny crossovers.
I worked parking cars there.
My grandfather and I ran the parking lot sometimes.
I worked in the hat check, like taking people's coats as a boy.
As a little boy, I rolled meatballs.
I would just sit on a big barrel of salt, metal canister, and I would roll meatballs for hours.
Or in my teens, I would feed the workers.
I would make matzo brie. for 80 people on a Sunday morning.
The servers were all Scottish and Irish.
There were Haitian people.
There were Hungarian people.
There were French people who worked there.
So I got a real mix of ethnic humor and different senses of humor.
It was a very enriching time for me.
I just have to briefly ask you about the food.
My parents grew up during the Depression and their parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, so there wasn't a lot of food early in their lives or in their parents' lives.
So when they'd go to like a catered wedding or bar mitzvah, they would just like eat and eat.
And there's so many stages of food.
Like at the catered affairs they'd go to, there'd be a smorgasbord.
Which would have like sculptures of chopped liver and like Charmaine was the Chinese dish.
There were Swedish meatballs and – Duchess potatoes.
Duchess potatoes.
Yes, and some kind of like chicken and other side dishes and salad.
Then you first sat down to the meal.
And on the really lavish ones, like if you're going to somebody's you know catered affair who had more money, then after that there'd be what was called the Viennese table, which was breakfast.
Yeah.
So it was like three meals in one event.
And then everybody would have like a very sore stomach afterwards.
But you left there like everyone felt like a king when they left, you know.
The Viennese table was dessert.
Wasn't the Viennese table dessert?
Halava and ice cream and cake and?
Oh, maybe.
Maybe it was dessert.
Jello molds.
But then after that, I remember once there was a breakfast.
I mean, and I thought, this is insane.
You know, I think we might be finding a direct connection from the kosher catering business to me getting colon cancer.
Yeah.
I think we just figured it out.
We're listening to Terry's conversation with comic and roast master Jeff Ross.
He has a new Netflix comedy special called Take a Banana for the Ride, a film of his autobiographical one-man Broadway show.
We'll hear more after a break.
This is Fresh Air Weekend.
Were you brought up religiously or culturally Jewish?
Culturally.
Bar mitzvahs, all that stuff.
I did it, but it was a struggle.
What was your bar mitzvah like?
Was it lavish?
My bar mitzvah was like something between a Super Bowl halftime show and something Saddam Hussein would throw for one of his kids.
Every favorite in New Jersey was called in.
The best band, the best florist, the best of everything.
It was like...
My dad, my mom, they really went all out for my bar mitzvah.
It's a core memory for me.
And, you know, talk about a Viennese table.
People are still talking about it. the desserts, the cheesecake, the babka.
It was a beautiful bar mitzvah.
I remember the first three words of my Haftorah.
So religion, it was not the focus for us.
It was always cultural, like jewish pride, jewish strength, jewish food, jewish music, jewish laughter.
That was sort of my upbringing.
When you were 12 um, your mother was diagnosed with leukemia.
She died when you were 15.
Were you very close?
We were, we were.
What was it like watching her suffer when you were so young and you probably hadn't seen someone suffer like that before?
It was hard.
It was hard.
It was hard to see somebody so tough it was so full of laughter such a positive person suffer.
And yeah, it made me realize that life is very unpredictable and we were responsible all of us are responsible for our own happiness.
What caregiving responsibilities filled to you.
Your father was really busy with the catering business.
Besides the having to take care of yourself for her, you know she wanted to make sure, while she was in the hospital, that I was my sister and I, you know I was playing football.
I was washing my uniform every night and making my own dinner and just being a good boy.
We couldn't visit her very often because the hospital was in New York and we lived in New Jersey.
So I would write her letters, and that was a big part of my mission, to cheer her up.
I'd write her funny letters.
And I found a bunch of them recently.
I couldn't find what I wrote to her, but I found the one she wrote back to me.
And she's like, all the nurses had a good laugh.
And she's like, you know, had some funny Nazi name that I must have used.
I think I wrote my mom a letter as a Nazi general at the hospital.
And I remember going to visit her one weekend and she was losing her hair from the chemo.
And she was very upset about emotional telling my sister and I that she'd be losing her hair.
And I remember...
Hugging her and making Kojak references.
And, you know, we're the only kids at school whose mom looks like Kojak.
And we had just seen The King and I, my sister and I and my dad would take us to Broadway shows to cheer us up after the hospital visits.
And The King and I, Yul Brynner, you know...
So I made a joke about that, that she would look like Yul Brynner, who was awesome.
And bald.
And bald.
So I take some satisfaction in knowing that I made her laugh because I found the evidence, the letters,
You know how time works, Terry.
It's like, you know, you start to go, did this happen?
Did I dream this?
Did I exaggerate this 20 years ago?
And then when you find, you know, I kept digging and I found a letter that my dad wrote to me when I graduated high school.
It's the only letter he ever wrote to me.
And I read that in the show.
And...
There was some debate in my head whether it belonged in the show or not, because we'd kind of moved on from my dad after he kind of dies in my life story.
He dies from cocaine, from having too much fun.
And so I read the letter and you really get to—it gives a chance for redemption for my dad for some of the stuff he missed.
He apologizes to me if he was out partying too much or if we didn't talk about my mom much after she died.
And I want to inspire dads to be communicative with their kids.
And there were a lot of dads with their kids there at the Broadway show this summer.
So I'm glad I'm reading these letters.
There's a part of me that goes should I be talking about my parents like this when they're not around to laugh along with it?
But I do think the greater mission is to inspire people and give people hope about whatever's going on in their life.
This is something I think about a lot.
I don't believe in an afterlife or anything, but there's part of me that really thinks the people I've lost in my family are somehow hearing what I say.
And there's something that they really want kept private.
And I tell somebody they know it, you know, like the people who have died, like they know it.
And I know that they that they're not alive.
I don't believe that they're in the room with me.
But there's a part of me that really believes they're hearing it.
And I wonder if you feel that way when you're on stage.
Not in my family.
There's no getting offended.
I have a bunch of wackos in my family.
Like, I remember... Oh, God, I don't know how to tell this.
My...
My Aunt Dawn and Uncle Joe lived in Iran and Japan in the 70s.
They were teachers.
And eventually there was an overthrow in Iran and they moved back to America with their baby daughter, my cousin Melinda.
And I remember the whole family meeting the new baby and it was such a big deal.
They'd flown a And they have this new baby that was born over there.
And now here it is in this house in New Jersey.
And we're all just admiring, you know, the beautiful Melinda and the baby's naked.
And my dad goes, you know, to his sister, he goes, Donna, she has your blank.
Yeah.
I remember my Aunt Donna.
Here I am, a little boy, hearing my Aunt Donna holding this beautiful baby, shrieking, laughing.
I saw the sense of humor of my funny family early on and that almost nothing was off limits.
We never want to hurt each other.
It's all in good fun.
It's all to snap out of sad times or awkward times.
So, like, humor is so healing.
You know, it really is.
When your parents both died, you lived with your sister.
And then, when she left and I think this was when you were still in high school or after college you moved in with your grandfather and you became his caregiver until he died.
What was it like for you to be taking care of him?
I know you liked him very much.
You were close.
Well, that was my... I felt experienced.
I understood...
You know, a lot had changed.
My family was all spread out.
My sister was in college and here I was, a recent college graduate, living with my 79-year-old roommate, who happened to be my best friend for my whole life.
As hard as it was, it was also kind of great.
I loved him.
We had fun.
We ate every meal together.
All my friends became his friends.
We were both single.
I was 23 and he was 79.
And he would meet women at the senior center.
I'm the only one that can drive at night, he would say.
And that was his big, you know, that's how he would meet these women.
And he would just talk about his life, girlfriends and dates and encounters, and I would talk about mine.
And, you know, we were like, almost like brothers.
My Pop Jack, like he was a retired construction worker from the Bronx, like a real blue collar Jewish tough guy, patriotic but cynical.
And I was, like, loved living with him.
It didn't feel like a burden until sometimes it just was, you know?
He got sicker and sicker.
He'd hallucinate, and I would take him to his doctor appointments every day.
And then at night I would try to go into New York.
I would take the bus or drive into New York and try to get on stage.
And he would always give me a few dollars for the bus and a banana.
Take a banana for the ride.
That's where the title, the inspiration for the show comes.
To him, it was like a tough guy's way of saying, I love you.
I can't go with you, but I'm on this journey with you no matter what.
Having had three deaths, your parents and your grandfather when you were young, and being raised culturally but not religiously Jewish, did you sit shiva?
Shiva is the Jewish tradition for seven days, not doing anything.
You sit on a hard bench if you're seriously observing.
You cover all the mirrors because it's no time for vanity.
And you just, you know, talk with people and cry and laugh about the person who you're grieving.
Did you do that?
Yes.
My mom died slowly.
My dad died suddenly.
And the one I remember is my dad's Shiva was, it was so absurd that this guy was dead.
He was such like a big shot.
Everyone loved him.
He ran this very popular catering hall.
He would go down a Atlantic City and Gamble and everywhere we went, people knew him because they'd shared their you know parties with him.
And, you know, Ronnie, Ronnie Lifsholtz, he had a Cadillac.
And when he was just suddenly gone, like.
My sister and I, who's a year, 16 months younger than me, it was just like, it was almost funny.
Like, how could this be?
His estate was a complete mess.
He had sort of two wills.
I burned one, my sister, because we didn't want our uncle Jerry as our executor, because we knew he was not up to it.
And so I hired my own son. accountant, and that was a total mess.
We never collected my dad's life insurance because it was contested by the life insurance company over his smoking, his cigarette smoking.
There was no recourse for two teenagers back then.
There was no GoFundMes.
You put in whatever fight you could, but We were just like victims of circumstance.
And I just didn't want to be a victim.
I wanted to be a winner in life.
I wanted to have a positive outlook.
I wanted to make the most of my life because as I saw, it could end any second.
Right.
I'm seeing you in such a different light.
You know, I'm so glad that you did the show and are showing us this side of yourself.
It's like so a kind of complex and deep knowing all that you experienced.
When you went to college, which was in Boston, after having lived your life in New Jersey, did you use that as an opportunity to rethink who you were and remake yourself into the person who you wanted to be or thought that you were?
You know, college is like a reboot for everybody, right?
So some people change their name, they change their look.
You know, for me, it was a chance to really be with other creative people.
I immediately started working at the college radio station.
I eventually became the music director.
I was playing in punk rock bands.
I had this creative liberation.
Were you the guitarist or what?
I was a very bad guitarist.
I still am.
And I was writing, you know.
I didn't really understand comedy yet.
It really wasn't until...
After college, a couple of years that I understood that comedy was what I should be doing.
How did you figure that out?
I didn't.
Someone did it for me.
My friend Mark, who I name, check in the Netflix show.
He was taking a stand-up comedy class, taught here in New York by a guy named Lee Frank who was a comic.
And he said, I think you'd be good at it, Jeff.
You should try it.
And I tried it, and I loved it right away.
Not since karate had I felt like a connection to something.
I was obsessed where I could do it all day, every day.
And that was it.
I was trying to get on stage three, four times a night if I could.
I just wanted to get my hours in my five-minute increments of just expressing myself, talking about whatever I wanted.
It was crazy.
So cool.
Like it was all like mind boggling to me.
It was punk rock.
It was free speech.
It was like shouted out loud.
I didn't understand that I could be a comedian.
I understand that I loved.
Comedians.
As a kid was like Steve Martin, the Blues Brothers, Eddie Murphy, these rock star comedians.
Eddie Murphy in a red leather suit.
That was a comedian.
I didn't know it was a comedian.
The Blues Brothers were playing music, but they were comedians.
Cheech and Chong were playing music and doing sketches, but at the heart of it, they were comedians.
I didn't know that word, comedians.
I thought comedians were, you know, on Johnny Carson, my parents' generation comedians.
You know, and I got a lot from that, too.
There was like I remember just, you know, listening.
I would never watch because it was late.
But I remember hearing Buddy Hackett and Don Rickles on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
I would sit at the top of the stairs where my parents couldn't see me and I would listen.
I could hear them laughing at comedians laughing.
So I think it rubbed off on me.
You knew some of those old school comics.
You knew Buddy Hackett.
And you knew Don Rickles.
You joined the Friars Club when you were how old?
Oh, boy.
I was probably in my early 30s.
And...
That was the coolest.
I would play poker there with Greg Fitzsimmons and Elon Gold, and they had a poker room, the George Burns poker room, where we could order lunch and play poker.
And then they had a billiards room, and then they had a steam room and a gym, and then they had a dining room where you might see Milton Berle or Buddy Hackett sitting under their own portrait.
So we have to wrap up soon, I regret to say.
But I have a request.
Anything.
Okay.
You might be sorry that you said yes.
Here's what I'd like you to do.
I want you now to roast me and go hard.
You've listened to the show, so you know something about the show and about me.
And then I, in turn, will let you know how it made me feel.
Oh, wow.
On a scale from really grateful for the hilarity to I will be subconscious for the rest of my life.
And if I really hate it, I can insist that we edit it out.
Terry Gross.
Terry Gross has been around so long, she interviewed Ed Sullivan.
I wish I did.
Terry Gross, a barely living legend.
That's great.
Well, it's been a pleasure to talk with you again.
Really always, always enjoy this.
You always find something in me that I didn't know was there.
Jeff Ross speaking with Terry Gross.
His new comedy special, Take a Banana for the Ride, is now streaming on Netflix.
Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Bea Chaloner.
Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler.
Our digital media producer is Molly C.B.
Nesper.
With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Loosley.
