Jeremy Piven ready to stand up to the mike at Irvine Improv
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Jeremy Piven grew up in a household of actors, directors and drama teachers, so the stage appeared to be set for him to pursue an acting career.
The Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor, best known for his role as Hollywood agent Ari Gold in the HBO series “Entourage,” continues to hold some of those early teachings close to him.
“My mom [Joyce] used to quote Shakespeare and say, ‘The readiness is all,’ and I do think the readiness is all,” said, rhe eferring to a line from “Hamlet.” “You can’t go, ‘Oh, nah, man, I can’t do that right now.’
“It’s like, ‘No, of course you can,’ you know, and you do it because you love it, and you throw it down, and then you’re known as the guy who can step up at a moment’s notice,” said Piven, who recently did voiceover work to promote the World Series.
An insatiable desire to showcase one’s range can drive an actor to take on a variety of roles. While Piven has more than 80 film credits to his name, exploring the arena of stand-up comedy was a later development.
On Tuesday, the morning after Freddie Freeman’s walk-off home run ended the marathon Game 3 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays, Piven discussed his journey into stand-up. He described it as a proving ground.
“I love it,” Piven said. “It’s the 18th inning in the World Series every time I get on stage.”
The Irvine Improv will host Piven for four shows over two nights next Friday and Saturday, Nov. 7-8.
“That’s a pretty incredible room,” Piven said of the venue. “Everyone stops through the Irvine Improv. You can get 2,000 or 2,500 people in a weekend over there. The room is about 500 people, so you do four or five shows, and you get to make a lot of people laugh.
“It’s one of my favorite places to go to. Each room has its own personality, and that room is like a very hot room for comics, which just means that it’s alive and it’s there for the taking.”
Whether it’s Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter or others, iconic roles often come to define a career. Piven shared his thoughts on playing Ari Gold on screen.
“I used to get offended when people would approach me as if I really was Ari, because my ego got in the way, and I immediately thought, ‘Well, wait a minute. Don’t you understand that I’m an actor?’” he said. “I’ve trained my entire life. I’ve been on stage since I was 8 years old, and I inhabited this character, and you’re then basically discrediting me as an actor and just thinking that I am that character.
“Then you come to the realization, ‘My God, I’ve been in their living rooms. I played the character authentically. I did my job, maybe so well that they think that I am that guy,’ so that’s a compliment, even though they’re yelling at you and smacking you in the back while you’re at the urinal. It’s all very awkward and beautiful, and that’s the way life is.”
Effectively, stand-up comedy, a talent Piven has honed for more than a decade now, is one more way — beyond his credits — to showcase his range.
“I can rail against the universe for being unfair and for people not understanding me, or I can solve the problem, and that’s what stand-up is,” Piven said. “With stand-up, you can spend the evening with me, and then get a sense of who I am, what I think is funny. I do bits, stories, observational humor. I do impressions, I’m all over the place, and I’m basically just trying to convey what I think is funny and having a great time. …
“I don’t care how you classify it, I’m going to make you laugh for an hour set, and if I don’t, that’s on me. That’s my fault. No matter who you are, no matter what the room is, no matter what the challenges are, I got to rise to the occasion.”
