Celebrity news, gossip, photos

FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2009 enter picture originally released by InStyle, Chris Rock is seen at the InStyle Lounge at the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto. (AP Photo/Casey Rodgers, InStyle)Associated Press

NEW YORK - How do you crowning a flavour in which you've prefabricated recreation of Oprah Winfrey to her face, joyfully butchered a artist saint and Garfunkel song during a telethon and prefabricated a guest appearance on Kanye West's mega-selling CD?

If you're Chris Rock, the next kibosh is Broadway.

"I ever look for everything," says the comedian, sitting at a plateau at the theater-district hangout Sardi's before rehearsals of his newborn gritty endeavor by author Adly Guirgis.

"You want to give your conference something queer or something beatific — that crapper be anything. It crapper be a play, it crapper be a movie," he says. "Hey, I was on Kayne's record! That's funnier than belike anything I've finished in a pair of years. You know what I mean? How crapper I be queer this year?"

The respond now is "The Motherf----- With the Hat," a endeavor that Rock describes as "'The Honeymooners' with drugs." It's most a Negro on parole and disagreeable to springy clean with his vaporific girlfriend, who is farther from sober. Rock, making his street debut, plays the man's drug counselor.

"Honestly, it was the prizewinning abstract I feature every terminal year. It was meliorate than every flick script, every book — it was meliorate than everything," he says. "I feature a pair of added plays and thought, 'This is easily the prizewinning digit I've read.'"

Director Anna D. Shapiro, who won a Tony Award for "August: Dhegiha County," says Rock is employed hornlike to mix with fellow actors Bobby Cannavale, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Annabella Sciorra and Yul Vazquez.

"The day is filled with a aggregation of happy and hornlike impact and generosity, and every of that is because of who he is," she says. "He's processing a power he already has. He understands the theoretical demands of that now every day meliorate and better."

Rock, 46, is meet the latest comedian to be drawn to street this season, joining Robin Williams, Ben Stiller, Jim Gaffigan, European Cook, Colin Quinn, Evangelist Leguizamo and Kathy Griffin.

"People want to work, man," Rock says. "They don't attain Sydney Pollack movies some more. They're not making 'Marathon Man' some more. So if you want to act — if you want to be in something of center — and you're not 19, it's hard."

Rock says acting on initiate isn't too farther from his roots doing springy stand-up or acting in films much as the recently released "Grown Ups" and "Death at a Funeral." He compares it to a gentler edition of his three years aboard "Saturday Night Live."

"'Saturday Night Live' is same athletics enclosing and this is actual boxing," Rock says. 'Saturday Night Live' is fivesome minutes: You've got stimulant cards; you've got a helmet — category of same athletics boxing. This is actual boxing. This is 12 rounds."

Above all, he says the news was ordered in inform day. "I ever say the worst digit text a black person crapper center is 'period piece,'" he says. "Literally, as an actor, I don't really tending most anything that happened before the politician 5."

Rock has had an engrossing some months. He teamed up with Tracy Morgan to sound "Scarborough Fair" on "Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert for Autism Education" and had a hilarious cameo on West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy."

He also mocked Winfrey at the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors, an period celebration of the subject in Washington. "No digit deserves this award more than Oprah Winfrey," he said from the stage, that trademark twinkle in his eyes, "but no digit needs it less."

Rock knows what he's in for on Broadway, having seen much shows as "Fences," "God of Carnage," "Rock of Ages" and "Race." He has grown a goatee for his newborn part and says he likes existence healthy to set downbound and handle the impact with the playwright.

"I same this impact because it values the writer. Literally, nothing's finished without the writer's support — and that's so assorted from the movies. In the movies, they category of hate the writers," he says, laughing. "The writers' organization needs a Rosa Parks."

Guirgis impresses him. "So some grouping crapper write and so some grouping crapper write chromatic collar. Nobody crapper do it," he says. He has another, more individualized reason to same the script, too: "It's weird. When it gets good, it sounds same me."

Being on street haw be stepping out of his comfort zone, but Rock points to added nowadays he has finished meet that, much as the TV exhibit "Everybody Hates Chris" or his documentary "Good Hair."

"You meet want to be involved with beatific work. It's not modify about, 'Oh, look at me: I'm doing a play.' I didn't do 'Good Hair' because it was documentary. I meet thought, 'I could do something beatific here.' Plain and simple. It's every comedy anyway. It's not every that different," he says. "It's a lowercase more dramatic than things I've done, but it's funnier than 'New Jack City.'"

Rock says that, so far, the undergo has been fun. He gets to enjoy a regular schedule after years of touring and verify his kids to edifice in the morning, though the grown language in the endeavor effectuation his digit girls, the oldest is 9, can't meet daddy at work.

"It's not a intense life. I got no beef. If it works out fine, I could absolutely do digit of these every once in a while," Rock says. Then he notes the title of the endeavor and adds: "If I do added one, it strength be a lowercase more kinsfolk friendly."

___

Online:

http://www.themfwiththehat.com

http://www.chrisrock.com

Source