Hughley: Comedian rose from tough streets of L.A.
| • | Actor Morita returns to Hawai'i's comedy scene |
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer
Chances are you're familiar with at least one of the two sides of his personality that comedian D.L. Hughley shows to the public.
On UPN's "The Hughleys," he plays the similarly named Darryl Hughley, a successful, self-made businessman raised on the tough streets of Compton who moves his family into an upper-class Los Angeles suburb. About to commence its fourth season, "The Hughleys" was inspired by Hughley's own Compton youth, slow rise up the social ladder and current experiences as a parent.
Funnyman D.L. Hughley, above, will team up with funnyman Pat Morita and offer a night of laughs at Hawai'i Theatre.
Then there's the razor-sharp D.L. Hughley who co-headlined 1999's $37 million-grossing Crown Royal Kings of Comedy Tour, which spawned a Spike Lee concert film and quietly became the highest-grossing comedy tour ever. Lee's "The Original Kings of Comedy" features the comedian, among other slightly blue bits, riffing on everything from anorexia as a syndrome that could only be spawned from white privilege to the differences between the way white and black people quit a job.
"White people will give two weeks' notice before they leave a job," Hughley says in the film. "Not blacks. We will walk in that day and say to the boss, 'Let me holler at you for a second: I QUIT!' "
In real life, Hughley (pronounced HUE-glee) really is a compendium of both personas. A quick-witted, often brutally honest, observer of the black and white experience in modern American society, and a successful businessman/husband/father who counts among his fears people thinking he's lost touch with where he came from.
D.L. Hughley
With Pat Morita
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8 p.m. Sunday; doors open 7 p.m.
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Hawai'i Theatre
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$36.50, $46.50
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528-0506
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Also: "The Hughleys" season premiere is at 8 p.m. Monday on KFVE Channel 5
The 38-year-old Hughley headlines a Hawai'i Theatre stand-up date with "Hughleys" co-star Pat Morita on Sunday.
Darryl Lynn Hughley was born the third of four children to Delta Air Lines maintenance worker Charles Hughley and homemaker Audrey Hughley. Intimidated by his teachers and floundering in his schoolwork, the young D.L. would play the role of class clown to make things easier. Expelled from school in the 10th grade for fighting, Hughley began running with the L.A. Bloods street gang.
"I watched people do a great deal of physical harm to each other," Hughley, who eventually earned a high school equivalency diploma, told People Weekly in 1998. "You know it's wrong, but you don't have the courage to be different." Hughley left the gang after his cousin — a member of the rival Crips — was shot, killed and dumped on his aunt's doorstep in 1983. "I was afraid I'd do something you can't turn away from. I wanted to be someone that counted."
Hughley sank himself into a telemarketing job he was already holding with the Los Angeles Times, where he met wife LaDonna. The couple married in 1986, and Hughley was eventually promoted to a middle management position. Taking a cue from his wife and friends — who had continually pestered the somewhat reluctant Hughley to take the humor that was keeping them in stitches at home to L.A. stand-up clubs — Hughley sought and won a spot at a local comedy club.
"I picked up the microphone," he told People, "and I knew this was what I was supposed to do." His career taking off with a steady stream of gigs, Hughley left the Times and a life of nine-to-five for good in 1991.
An appearance on "HBO's Def Comedy Jam" led to a gig as host of Black Entertainment Television's "Comic View" and soon after brought HBO knocking once again with an offer of his own half-hour stand-up special. Hughley has since done two other specials for HBO, 1994's Cable ACE-nominated "HBO Comedy Half-Hour: D.L. Hughley" and 2000's "D.L. Hughley: Going Home."
The comedian created "The Hughleys" in 1998 after his first network sitcom foray, CBS' 1995 "Double Rush," was canceled after a single season. Picked up by ABC for its first two seasons, "The Hughleys" was inspired by the move of Hughley's own brood — he and LaDonna have three children — from L.A.'s Baldwin Hills suburb to the swankier West Hills, and his continuing misadventures in fatherhood. On UPN since 2000, the series' humor continues to burst with co-writer Hughley's personally inspired homefront witticisms.
"We have a lot of issues that families deal with," Hughley told Ebony magazine in 1999. "They're not the 'Father Knows Best'-type of issues, but what families in the '90s are dealing with."
Besides "The Original Kings of Comedy," Hughley appeared on movie screens in the spring 2001 sleeper "The Brothers" with Bill Bellamy, Morris Chestnut and Shemar Moore. Still, stand-up remains Hughley's first love, career-wise.
"Every group has its idiosyncrasies, but at a certain point we all are human," Hughley has said, explaining his equal-opportunity riffs on black and white culture. "We all have the same aspirations, visions ... We all want to keep our cable on. We all want our kids to eat. My comedy is very 'relatable' — that's one of the greatest things I've ever been told."
