Starting out in showbiz is rarely ever easy. Michael Ealy starkly remembers, as a newbie, what it was like to work with Chris Rock at his peak. “He was just an a**hole.”
According to Ealy, he started his career in New York. He was waiting tables and bombed an audition for Bad Company, a movie with Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins.
However, in an interview with Chicago Tribune, Michael Ealy mentions that — although he didn’t get the auditioned-for role — the movie director liked his vibe and wrote a part specifically for him.
And it placed Michael right alongside Chris, as his “best friend.” Yet, Rock’s attitude toward Ealy would prove to be completely, ironically the contrary, explained Ealy.
“Everything went well…But Chris Rock was a little cold. He was probably at the height of his career at this point and I idolized him — I had watched all his stuff and thought he was so funny and I really respected him — but he was just kind of indifferent to me.”
Then, Rock Apparently Showed Ealy How Much He DIDN’T Care About His Presence
According to Michael Ealy, the part the director included wasn’t a huge role.
“It wasn’t much, it was a bit part, but I was very grateful,” Michael elaborates in the interview. “The movie was shooting in New York and Chris Rock played a street hustler — like, he’s that guy who’s doing three-card monte in the park — and I played one of his best friends. I’m a young actor and I’m thrilled because this is my first movie.”
“We had to do some reshoots for the end of the movie so they asked me to come back a couple months later — I’m still waiting tables, so I take a day off from that — and we’re doing this wedding scene between Chris and Kerry and I’m the best man. So we’re about to shoot this scene, I’m in my tux, I come on set and Chris and Kerry are standing there and Joel is telling me where to stand. And right before he says action, Chris looks over at me and he says: ‘Oh (pause). Still in the business, huh?'”
“And when he said that, it was like a Mike Tyson left hook,” Ealy mentions. “And I knew he wasn’t joking around. I think maybe he was trying to disguise it as playful teasing, but it was a dig. For whatever reason, it was a dig: ‘You still in the business, huh?’”
But Chris Rock Still Wasn’t Done With Michael Ealy
“Some people don’t get it when I tell this story, but to say that to me was beyond disrespectful — to the point where Kerry was like (laughs), ‘Chris, no,’” Michael Ealy continues. “I still love Kerry to this day because she was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? That was just wrong.’”
“He had an entourage of people and they were very nice to me, but he was just an a**hole. You never know what somebody’s going through. Wherever he was in that point in his life, he probably wasn’t very happy.”
Of course, that experience stuck with Ealy for years. Resultantly, he held a serious grudge against Rock, though having admired him.
Nevertheless, they crossed paths again…
In some years later at the Golden Globes, Michael was nominated for Sleeper Cell. According to Ealy, he ran into Chris on the way to the bathroom.
“And you know what he said? ‘I love your work and I apologize for what I said,’” Michael recalls. That’s when he said he went into tears.
“He somehow remembered what he said to me and that it was wrong — and he owned up to it and apologized and told me he loved my work and he was a fan,” the actor recounts.
“That’s when the crying happened [laughs]! For him to acknowledge it was huge — it meant everything to me. And he’s kind of a dope person because of that. I forgive easy, but can you imagine if he hadn’t remembered that we had worked together on a movie before? That would have been the second punch, right?”
