Hart, Kevin

In a candid interview, the prolific comic and actor talks about taking a darkly dramatic turn in this Netflix thriller, and about getting support from his friend Dave Chappelle.Getting Kevin Hart’s attention occasionally requires some perseverance, but it is ultimately worth the wait.As he approached for our lunchtime interview last Thursday, Hart was in the midst of a phone call that he couldn’t get out of or wasn’t finished with. For a few minutes he walked the aisles of the MO Lounge at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in midtown Manhattan, a cellphone pressed to one ear as he strolled tantalizingly close to our table, then veered off in another direction as he continued the conversation.Then, in one seamless motion, Hart ended the call, slid into a chair across from me and switched effortlessly into face-to-face conversation mode.“Talk to me, let’s go,” he said.Hart, the 42-year-old stand-up and comic actor, keeps a relentlessly busy schedule and he seems to like it that way. You can catch him pretty much round-the-clock in lighthearted adventures like the “Jumanji” series; dramedies like “The Upside” and “Fatherhood”; animated features like “The Secret Life of Pets”; his commercials for Chase banking; any of his past stand-up specials; or his streaming talk show, “Hart to Heart.” Hours after we spoke, it was announced that the diminutive Hart will play Gary Coleman’s role in a live TV re-enactment of “Diff’rent Strokes.” And on Tuesday, his comedy album “Zero _____ Given” was nominated for a Grammy.To this expansive résumé you can now add the Netflix series “True Story,” a seven-episode thriller starring Hart as a celebrity who is racing to cover up a death he may or may not be responsible for.In “True Story,” which is scheduled for release on Wednesday, Hart plays a mega-popular comedian and actor known simply as the Kid. Following a misguided night out with his struggling older brother, Carlton (Wesley Snipes), Kid awakens in a hotel room next to the body of a dead woman — and then undertakes a series of increasingly reckless decisions in order to cover up her death and protect his career.In the series, Hart’s character and his brother, played by Wesley Snipes, get enmeshed in a murder.Adam Rose/NetflixYou might wonder if Hart can handle such a role, with its life-or-death stakes and occasionally brutal action scenes. He shares none of these concerns. As Hart explained to me between bites of French fries and sips of coffee, “True Story” was created to show that he is as capable of hard-edge drama as he is of any other genre. (Hart is also an executive producer on the series.)“When it’s all said and done with me and my career, people are going to realize that I’ve checked every box,” he said. “This is just to simply show, I got that. This is in my bag. If I get the itch to do it, I’ll create the thing to scratch it.”“True Story” arose from this ambition and from Hart’s conversations with Eric Newman, an executive producer and showrunner of the crime dramas “Narcos” and “Narcos: Mexico.”Newman, the creator of “True Story” and a writer on the series, said in a phone interview that Hart wanted to play a character who was similar to himself but who was driven to desperate measures by what he considered an existential threat.But, Newman said of the show’s protagonist: “His version of existential threat might be different than yours or mine. I might perhaps be driven to do something horrible if my children were in jeopardy. In the case of a celebrity, a famous person, if you take their career away, that is a fate worse than death.”“True Story” is largely fictionalized, but Hart’s real life has not lacked for drama. He is only two years removed from a car accident in which he sustained major back injuries, requiring surgery and rehabilitation, and which he has said left him a changed man. And it has been almost three years since he stepped down as host of the Academy Awards after some of his past jokes and comments were criticized as homophobic.While Hart has continued to reflect on the Oscars controversy, he has also received renewed public support from Dave Chappelle, his friend and fellow stand-up, who said in his recent Netflix special, “The Closer,” that Hart was treated unfairly. (“The Closer” has itself been criticized as transphobic, and dozens of Netflix employees walked out of the company’s Los Angeles office last month in protest.)Hart spoke further about his desire to make “True Story,” the facts and fiction behind the series and his understanding of the criticism that he and Chappelle have received. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.“Your biggest believer in what you do should be you,” Kevin Hart said. “Me wanting to do drama is because I know I can do it.”Ike Edeani for The New York Times“True Story” is far darker than anything we’ve seen you in before. What made you want to do this?The goal was to present a side of my talent that would never be expected. The best way to do that was to kill. How do I kill on camera? Blunt, just like that. In entertainment, the joy is doing the things that you can never do in life. Comedy has presented the opportunity to be funny in different ways. Buddy-cop movies. Action-adventure. It’s given me a world where I’ve been able to play and have fun. Well, this is the complete opposite. I’m still playing, but I get to be dark as hell.Is there a chance your audience won’t accept you in something like “True Story”?When you start doing it for the perceptions of others, you’re never going to win. Your biggest believer in what you do should be you. Me wanting to do drama is because I know I can do it. I know I’m good at it. So I’m going to do it and put this out there. I would never put that much power in someone else, to think that their opinion controls my narrative.What was it about “Narcos” that made you want to work with Eric Newman?Eric made you root for a bad guy. Although we all know how Pablo Escobar dies, you still found yourself rooting for Pablo when he’s running from the officers on a roof. You find yourself going, “Come on Pablo, get out of there.” For me, I said: “I have to be believable in this space. If I’m going to kill, how do I make people care about me in the same way?”The show’s depiction of celebrity life is informed by Hart’s own experiences.Tyler Golden/NetflixThe nonstop demands of the professional world that Kid inhabits on “True Story” seem pretty punishing. Is that how your work feels to you?When we were in the development process, I explained my world to Eric. Everybody’s giving you their energy, good or bad. Their problems. It’s: “I need you to do — ” “Can you — ?” “You know what’s going on with me, you think you can help?” When is it too much? Nobody wants to hear that you don’t want to, or that you can’t. So you find yourself getting pushed around.Do you find, as he does, that there are temptations to bad behavior around every corner?[Expletive] yes, it’s still there! It’s so easy to do dumb [expletive]. It’s available whenever you want it. Doing the right thing, living life correctly, there’s a conscious effort behind it. And it’s work. Not to say it’s work in a bad way, but you’re working constantly to make sure that you’re doing things correctly, appropriately. You need a good team around you that’s OK with saying no.How did you get Wesley Snipes to play the role of Kid’s brother, Carlton?As we really started to get into this character, we realized he was such an important piece of the puzzle. We need a real good actor that can pull Carlton off, and Wesley Snipes’s name came up. We were like, “Do you think we can get him?” I was like, “I’m going to reach out.” Wesley thought it was a comedy at first; he was a little distant. I had to explain to him that this was serious and I wasn’t joking. When he latched onto the material, he said: “OK, you’d better bring it. Because if I do it, that’s what I’m expecting.” I said, “Say no more.”[Hart excuses himself to go to the bathroom. When he returns, he is again speaking on his cellphone, this time to the filmmaker F. Gary Gray, who is directing Hart’s upcoming heist movie, “Lift.”]Is this how many balls you have to juggle to make it as an entertainer these days?My reality is insane. The amount of things that I’m able to manage and delegate and operate at the same time, it’s mind-blowing. It’s a talent within a talent. I can multitask like nobody else’s business.I assume you could dial this all back if you wanted to — just do one or two projects a year?Then what am I supposed to do with the rest of the year? [Laughs.] I’ll be twiddling my thumbs. I’ll go crazy, man.Dave Chappelle spoke in your defense at the end of his new Netflix special, “The Closer.” How did you feel about that?That’s my brother. My relationship with Dave is one that I value, respect and appreciate. In our profession, it’s a crab-in-a-barrel mentality. There’s this perception that there can only be one star or one funny guy, and we’re always pitted against each other. When you have that confidence and security to embrace another talent and stand by another talent, it says a lot about who you are. Chappelle’s operating at a different frequency, man, and I couldn’t be prouder of him.Were you concerned that his mention of you would reopen your old controversy, or put you in a position of having to defend Chappelle from the criticism he has received?In what world is a friend not going to be a friend if he wants to be a friend? With Dave, I think the media have an amazing way of making what they want a narrative to be. Within this conversation attached to Dave, nobody’s hearing what his attempt is. They’re hearing a narrative that’s been created. So the conversation is now amplified into something that has nothing to do with the beginning of what it was. That’s where it gets lost. Everybody needs to come down off the soapbox and get to a place of solution.But where is there a middle ground between Chappelle and people who have felt hurt by “The Closer”?That man don’t have a hateful bone in his body. And I don’t say that because it’s hypothetical — I say that because I know him. I know his world. I know that he embraces the LGBT+ community, because he has friends who are close to him from that community. I know that his kids understand equality, fair treatment, love. I know that his wife embeds that in their kids. I know why people embrace him. He’s a good dude.Do you agree with the argument — as some of Chappelle’s defenders have made, and as often comes up when a comedian is criticized for insensitivity — that anything said in the context of a joke is permissible?You can’t say that. “It’s just a joke,” right? I understand why people would want that to be the case. But it’s not the case. If there is a joke, there’s an attempt to be funny. You can find a joke tasteful or distasteful. If you’re a supporter of a performer, then you’re probably OK with whatever’s happening. And if you’re not a fan, you’re infuriated and you’re outraged. Rightfully so — you have every right to be. You also have a right to not support it. But the energy that’s put into wanting to change or end someone, it’s getting out of hand.Has this experience given you a new perspective on when you were criticized for your remarks?I can only relate because of what I went through. The difference in what I went through: I learned a lesson in ego. My ego blinded to me where I couldn’t see what the real thing was about. My ego had me thinking: You want me to apologize? I already did. This is 10 years ago. Why are you asking like this is me, now, when I said these things?But it wasn’t about the people that may or may not have known that I apologized. It was about the people who wanted to know that I don’t support violence in any type of way. Because I missed it, that doesn’t make me a person who hates — that makes me oblivious to a moment because I was wrapped up in my own [expletive]. I was human. You can’t lose that. And that’s what happening today: We’re losing that in the attempt to say, “I’m right and you’re wrong and that’s it.” I don’t understand how we ever evolve.Does it feel strange that comedians should be the focus of this much attention — that their words should carry this much weight?You can’t ignore the attention that comes with the stage that we’re on. The one thing you have to be conscious of now is that words have impact. You have a choice to make, as a person who has a platform, when you speak. If you want to say things, that’s your right. With those things you choose to speak on, there can come backlash. If you’re OK with the plus and the minus of it, then that’s your choice.I’m much more aware today than I was yesterday, and I’m conscious of the things that I say. I’m making sure that I’m on the side of understanding. That doesn’t take away my ability to be myself. It just means that in being myself, let’s just make sure we’re respectful in our approach. More