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This shouldn't be funny, but apparently it is after years of standup comedy, and being associated with rubber-faced laughs for his work with Jim Carrey and The Wayanses on In Living Color and in movies like I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka.
Nominated for Tony
"I was performing at (the New York club) Caroline's, and I say 'Y'know, I started out here on Broadway. In fact, I was nominated for a Tony ..." the co-star of the new sitcom Life With Bonnie told us at this city's Just For Laughs festival.
"And people burst out laughing. And Joel Siegel (who wrote the Jackie Robinson-based play The First, which earned Grier his nomination) was in the audience and we looked at each other and kind of shrugged. I mean, it's like you change careers and your other life is gone. Not like I'm the tortured clown with a squeaky nose crying in the mirror or anything. It's just kind of strange where life takes you."
Serious work wants to reassert itself in Grier's life, but whackiness always intervenes. He was set to do Shakespeare In The Park in New York this past summer when the call came that the Bonnie Hunt pilot had been cleared for a series. So it was regrets to the Bard and hello to Bonnie, a friend of Grier's since they appeared together with Robin Williams in Jumanji.
"Bonnie wrote this and it's a really small-town type of story though it's set in Chicago." (The show bounces between Bonnie's family life and her TV show). "If you think about Regis And Kelly, Bonnie's the Regis and I'm the Gelman (the producer and sometime butt of Regis' jokes). In the context of the show, Bonnie and I have been partners for most of our careers going from show to show. We're like bickering siblings. If you looked at our characters' resumes, you'd see we'd done a ton of stuff, all in Chicago.
"Every city has people like that. I grew up in Detroit, and there was some guy named Bill Bonds who must have been the anchor guy there my entire life. When I was a little kid, the local anchor, that was a big star to me. The weatherman, Sonny Elliot, all those guys who never left the market. They're a big deal." Though he's had several TV shows, he hasn't hit "big deal" status himself. "I haven't wound up at the Ferrari dealership yet," he says with a laugh. "I get a lot of 'Didn't you used to have a show?' "
'LIKE SOUTH PARK'
In fact, this season he has two shows, and the other's not exactly Shakespeare either. Besides Life With Bonnie, he's one of the key characters on the Comedy Network's Crank Yankers (debuting Oct. 31), a series from the producers of The Man Show that has puppets making actual crank phone calls. Grier voices "Danny," one of three black puppets. The other voices: Dave Chappelle, Tracy Morgan and Denis Leary.
Danny's forte: he vomits repeatedly when he makes his calls. "I'm sorry," Grier says with a laugh when I tell him the show -- which has been on the air in the U.S. for months -- is finally airing here. "It's like South Park, I'm a Ren And Stimpy man myself."