Being on stage brings its own unique clarity, according to Tracy Morgan.
"Standup comedy is the only place in show business where there's justice," Morgan said.
Hey, aren't you forgetting about a little show called The Marriage Ref?
"It's just me and you," continued Morgan, wisely ignoring us. "There's no band, there's no music, just me and you. That relationship is established."
Morgan's standup chops will be on display in his new special Tracy Morgan: Black and Blue, which debuts Saturday on HBO Canada. The show was taped in September during Morgan's live appearance at the Apollo Theater in New York.
We're confident things went better for Morgan at the Apollo this time than they did back when he was a young comedy ingenue, prior to his star-making turns on Saturday Night Live and, currently, 30 Rock (Thursdays on NBC and Citytv).
"I got booed at the Apollo," recalled Morgan, a New York native. "That's what gave me my balls.
"If you can survive getting booed at the Apollo, then everything else is a cinch. That's the attitude I had when I went to Saturday Night Live. 'I'm tough, I got booed at the Apollo.' "
Sometimes they actually yank people who are bombing on amateur night.
"I didn't let them do that -- I ran offstage before that happened," Morgan said. "The sandman wasn't getting me."
According to HBO, this marks the 10th time a product of SNL has had a special on the network. Morgan joins a list that includes Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller, Will Ferrell, Billy Crystal, Janeane Garofalo, Joe Piscopo and Laura Kightlinger (yes, we had to Google her, too).
It will be interesting to watch Morgan returning to his standup roots, since his character on 30 Rock is named Tracy Jordan and to most fans it has become impossible to separate Morgan from Jordan.
Even back in his SNL days (1996-2003), there seemed to be a fine line between Morgan's characters and the man himself. In the tradition of the most boisterous SNL cast members -- Murphy, John Belushi, Chris Farley, etc. -- you never were sure if Morgan merely was playing a version of himself.
But we give Morgan a lot of credit for his 30 Rock character in this regard:
In the hands of many comedic actors, a character as random and disconnected as Tracy Jordan would become very annoying after a short time. But somehow, Tracy Morgan keeps Tracy Jordan compelling in an insane way.
Of course, the writing has a great deal to do with that, too.
"That's my baby," Jordan said when the subject turned to 30 Rock star and creator Tina Fey.
However, the wording of our next question accidentally struck a nerve with Morgan. We asked if he ever thinks back to the first day he met Fey and if he imagined how fortuitous the relationship would be for both their careers.
Morgan didn't hear the "for both careers" part. He already had jumped in to say, "I'm quite sure she feels like that about me, too, because I was on Saturday Night Live years before her. When she came on Saturday Night Live, I looked out for her, too, you know?"
We get the sensitivity. Morgan loves Fey, but he bristles at even the accidental suggestion that he owes his career to her.
Anyway, neither Fey nor anyone else will be around to help during Tracy Morgan: Black and Blue. As Morgan said, it's just him and the audience. At a certain raw level, that's the way he likes it.
"People love 30 Rock, but when I get on stage, it's like (Jerry) Seinfeld said," Morgan observed. "They give me 10 minutes of, 'We love you, we love you.' And then they go, 'What you got now?' "
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