You might remember Jeremy Piven from his role as the over-the-top, witty, and sometimes crass talent agent Ari Gold in the TV series “Entourage.”
In his new movie, "The Performance," he’s playing a very different character: A talented but underemployed Jewish American tap dancer in the 1930s whose attempt to revitalize his career ends up giving him the opportunity to perform for Hitler in the year before the Holocaust starts.
But outside of film and TV, Piven has a plethora of other experience on stage, including as a stand-up comedian.
His current tour includes a stop at Spokane’s Bing Crosby Theater on Sunday, April 27th at 7:30 p.m.
"Stand-up is is very needed right now," Piven told SPR News. "We all need to laugh."
So often, audience members often come to his shows thinking he'll be just like his Entourage character that he said he'll often bring it up it in his act.
"I address the elephant in the room, you know, 'I've been in your living rooms performing and there's some typecasting going on. Let's talk about it,'" he said. "And so I enter organically into stories about people thinking that I'm Ari."
But outside of comedic roles, Piven said he's always loved the art of stand-up.
"One of my heroes, Richard Pryor... he looked like an actor to me — a brilliant actor on stage telling stories. Yes, he's one of the greatest stand-ups of all time — if not the GOAT," he said. "But he also had really really great specific performance skills. He would enter into the characters. And then there are guys like Sebastian Maniscalco, who I love."
Piven spoke with SPR's Owen Henderson ahead of his show in Spokane.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: As someone well known for your acting roles, I'm curious, what draws you to stand-up comedy specifically?
JEREMY PIVEN: I've always been fascinated by stand-up. I've been drawn to it. I've been improvising on stage since I was a child.
It's all different forms of expression. I've been improvising and trying to get my own writing in on various shows. You know, when I played Ari Gold on “Entourage,” it was beautifully written and my job was to stick to the script, word for word.
And I would pitch jokes, and it became a bit frustrating in the way that — the role was perfect and it was a gift of a lifetime — and yet, I wanted a way to get my comedy to find the best place for it to be received.
And there's nothing like stand-up. It's just incredible. You know in real time if it's working, you have to adjust. People keep telling me that they, after they see my stand-up, that they didn't know I was this funny, which is a very interesting backhanded compliment. It's like being called a short king or ‘You look good for your age.’ You know what I mean? Something like that.
Because I've been doing comedy, you know, for so long. But it's a real shot in the arm to know that it's really working, and I love doing it. And then you can address all these things that are happening in real time in our culture.
People need to laugh right now. They're very confused and frustrated. It's just an honor to be able to try to make some sense of all this and make people laugh.
OH: You know, you talked about improvising on stage and some of the frustration with having to stick to a script sometimes. What performance muscles does stand-up work in you that you don't get to really flex in comedic acting or your stage work or vice versa?
JP: I feel very comfortable on stage because I've been there my whole life.
I'm very lucky. I come from two parents that are both actors and directors and teachers. It's in our blood. So I don't know if Malcolm Gladwell is onto something, but I do feel that 10,000 hours is a variable in your evolution as an artist.
And so I've been on stage my whole life and been doing all different types of acting from sketch comedy, which is basically improvisation within a group, and doing the classics, Shakespeare and Arthur Miller and anyone that I could butcher, from an early age. And so I think all of those years and hours and reps that I've gotten have allowed me to feel very comfortable on stage so that I can then do the material that I want to do as a stand-up and then tell stories and enter into the characters and do impressions. You know, it's storytelling.
And also, selfishly, it's a chance for people to understand who I am. And I talk about even with “Entourage,” running lines with my mother. That's how I was so prepared.
And people would never think, ‘Oh, well, that's, oh, isn't that Ari Gold? Oh, wait a minute, he's a stage actor from Chicago. That's a little different.’ So after they leave, they have a sense of who I am.
OH: So you star in the film “The Performance.” And I imagine part of that process was tapping into a different side of your own performance skills. Talk to me about the inception of that film, which I understand was 15 years ago.
JP: Tapping in. I like pun intended. Yeah, I play a Jewish tap dancer in 1937 that hides his identity and dances for Hitler for momentum in his career.
And, you know, again, that's another perfect example of ‘Here's a character that is more like me than any character I've ever played in my life.’ And the reviews are the best of my life. And they all say ‘He disappeared into the role.’
And I didn't disappear. I reappeared because this is who I am. You know, I am a performer.
My mother gave me the short story, “The Performance” out of The New Yorker. I hired my sister to adapt and direct it. It's the best work of my life.
I can't wait for people to see it. This film takes place in 1937, just before the Holocaust. And it's, and it's never — I've never seen anything like it, because my character is really doing everything he can to convince himself as a Jew in Germany at that moment, he'll be fine.
And everyone's going, ‘Get out.’ So he — it's a very interesting little duality that my character is navigating. And people come up to me, and I love it because I think what we achieved, I know what we achieved is something that I thought if we could do this, this will be incredible.
And this will be my legacy. I know it sounds crazy, but we get to expose the hypocrisy of antisemitism in a way that only storytelling can. And I can't tell you too much, but I think it's going to spark these debates.
The question — and I'm glad you didn't ask it — but the question I get the most is ‘How much are you like Ari Gold?’ I can't wait for this film to come out because — and I get it. People want to know who you are.
And I love that. I think artists, we try to stay away from that, not because we're hiding from you. It's just, you know, we take on all these different characters and that's what we do.
So we want to keep a bit of a mystery so that you can have that suspension of disbelief. But I will say that this character is more like me than anything I've ever played. And maybe that's why it's the best work of my life because I connected with it so profoundly.
And no, I wasn't a tap dancer. I've been a drummer my whole life. So I understand rhythmically how to enter into the character.
And we, you know, it took me 15 years to make it, and 10 of it was trying to get the money. And every year they said no, I just kept tap dancing until I was good enough to do the role.
OH: I did want to ask about your tap training. I'm curious about your experience rehearsing for a type of dance where every mistake you make is not only visual, but audible.
JP: It's just a great test. We're all being tested in this life. You know, people kept saying, ‘You know, man, you got to give this up,’ and ‘You have to — you have to walk away and stop paying for the rights.’
Every year I paid for the rights for this film. And I never wanted to give up because I didn't want to give up on myself. And that's what it would be.
So tap dancing is — yeah, you're right. It is very physical. And also the reality is you're playing the drums with your feet. And if it doesn't sound right, that's on you. And I was very lucky that I have loose ankles because I've been playing the drums my whole life.
So I could do triplets from the jump and they were like, ‘Oh, okay.’ So I was a little bit ahead of the game in the way that I've been playing the drums since I was a child. So that helped.
It still was, you know, incredibly challenging. And I just — I just stayed with it. You know, I just was very lucky.
And, you know, for whatever reason, I've been doing the two hardest things that you can do creatively. I've been doing stand-up comedy and tap dancing. So I don't know what my problem is.
But the reality is once you, once you walk through that and are able to express yourself in these lanes, it's pretty exhilarating.
The dance sequences were incredibly challenging just because I've never really done choreography. I've — you know, the choreography of a scene is one thing, where you go, the staging of it: go downstage, stage right, stage left.
But the different language of the choreography, your brain is like — and the rest of my troupe, they're all professional, brilliant tap dancers. So the reality is our rehearsals were humiliating for me because I was one step behind or 12 steps behind everyone at all times.
And so, you know, the reality is you got to put your ego aside and go, ‘Okay, this is humiliating. I'm just going to keep going. I'm going to get there.’
But that's the way life is. If you're willing to walk through it and be humiliated, there's greatness on the other side. But you got to be willing to do that. And listen, we're human.
Most people don't want to be humiliated. I understand it. It's not fun, but I know, my God, ‘If I work through all that, then there's something really there. It's going to be insanely rewarding.’ Now we just got to get the film out.
