On Late Night, Terry Crews talks the future of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the NFL, and his turn on Twitter
Aux Features Clips
Calling guest Terry Crews “the most positive, optimistic guy,” Seth Meyers brought on the Brooklyn Nine-Nine star, former NFL player, and pal of Muppets everywhere on a week where even Crews’ signature, indefatigable enthusiasm has hit a wall. For one thing, Crews told Meyers that he and his Brooklyn Nine-Nine cast members have been having some seriously soul-searching talks about what the next season of a hilariously goofy show about a diverse and ethical team of New York police officers will look like after the actual police (in New York and elsewhere) have provided so much glaring proof that feel-good fictional cops are just that. Crews didn’t mention anything about following costar Stephanie Beatriz’s lead and donating his cop show salary to Black Lives Matter-related causes, but it probably came up. Instead, Crews told Meyers that the Brooklyn Nine-Nine Zoom calls have been full of “somber talks” and “really eye-opening conversation,” so here’s to the writers room in their attempts to balance pepper-spraying, suspect-murdering, intransigently racist reality with breezy half-hour network comedy.
Eye-opening itself was Crews’ take on his time in the National Football League, where the notoriously imposing former linebacker told Meyers about the “plantation” mentality under which he and other black players worked. Sure, it’s decent money (although not necessarily if you’re a well-traveled journeyman player like Crews was), but he told Meyers about an entrenched culture where a white coach thought it’d be a hoot to rechristen Terry as “Tyrone” for a season, where black players were uniformly thought of as fakers and malingerers when it came to injury, and where he—while playing for the Los Angeles Rams during the 1992 riots—was held at gunpoint by two cars’ full of officers during a routine traffic stop. Telling Meyers that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s recent apology for the league punishing and denigrating black players protesting police violence was akin to President Obama’s first inauguration (in that he thought he’d never see it), Crews joined those in blasting Goodell for not once mentioning Colin Kaepernick by name. Calling the blackballing of the vocal quarterback “still the most glaring example of racism that the NFL has ever had” (and Crews would know), Crews said that words are nice, but until Kaepernick gets back on an NFL field, that’s all they are.
Speaking of getting roasted, Crews also addressed his current time in the Twitter doghouse over posted criticisms of what he termed a (deep, wincing sigh) “black supremacy” element in the current, worldwide protests against racist police violence. Meyers isn’t wrong in pointing to Crews’ characteristic optimism and positivity in turning his life into a daily billboard for self-actualization and improbable midlife musculature, but this time, his desire “to be the solution” rather than a problem saw him angering a whole lot of people in the Black community. And while a lot of the Twitter discourse has been predictably, um, blunt, Crews’ calls for “love” and “reconciliation” have been viewed as both facile and wrong-headedly critical of those (most without a lucrative second career in show business) on the literal front lines of what has become a daily and dangerous fight for a substantive change. Still, Crews wasn’t backing down on Late Night, saying, “It’s Twitter,” and “taken out of context, anybody can roll with anything,” while at the same time playing defense against those calling him out for what might be charitably called an overly rosy position of privilege. “I do not want to see us get more and more extreme,” explained Crews, while calling out those “gatekeepers who decide who is Black and who is not,” who have, according to Crews, “determined I have been rendered moot because I am successful.”
Anyway:
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74 Comments
I have defended Kaep for years. However, unless he is able to ball out, he should NOT get on the field again. He hasn’t played in an NFL game in 4 years, and the worst thing that could happen at this point is for him to get back out there and have a Nathan Peterman kind of game. If this had all happened 2 years ago, then I’d agree, get him back in the league. You know which QB needs an NFL job now? Cam Newton.
Good job not completely missing the fucking point.
I think you may have missed my point. I hope when the NFL comes back, every single player and coach kneels during the anthem and every racist fan’s head explodes. However, a very vocal contingent of racist shitheads have long contended the reason Kaep didn’t get get another chance was because he wasn’t good enough. Now, those of us who then watched Nathan Peterman (super nice guy, BTW) have one of the worst NFL careers on record, argued that Kaep was better than that, but you couldn’t convince them. However, the QB play in the league is much improved in the last 2 years. And Kaep hasn’t played in 4. It’s entirely possible that at this point, he may not deserve a starting job on merit. And if he goes out there and has a below average game or even, heaven forbid a Nathan Peterman-type game, all the racist shitheads will wrap themselves in their flags and crow about how they were right and everything Collin did was just “Attention-getting racebaiting.” They will conveniently ignore that just because he maybe can’t do it now doesn’t mean he couldn’t have done it 3-4 year ago. I very much agree with Terry that the NFL OWNERS owe Collin a very public apology for what they did to him.
frankly, the least interesting thing about colin kaepernick is that he played football.
“You know which QB needs an NFL job now? Cam Newton.”THIS. As a Bears fan, I’d much rather have picked up Cam than Nick Foles, who has not exactly been great anywheres outside of Philly.Then again, Cam probably wants more money than Nick got. And if Cam signed, that would pretty much be the end of Trubisky, who this FO is desperate to cling onto.
Honestly I’d be happy with him having a nice, unremarkable career as a journeyman 2nd or 3rd stringer on a handful of teams until his early 40s at a few million/year and I suspect his tendons and ligaments wouldn’t be too put out by that plan either.
That’s a good point, as I mentioned to another poster, I don’t know if the risk is worth the reward in that scenario, but he certainly should have the right/opportunity to do whatever he wants.
Eh, the team in Washington signed Josh Johnson and played him in 3 games in 2018 after having not played a snap in 5 years. Kaep could still be fine, especially as a back-up. Even with the layoff, I guarantee he’s better than at least half of the current back-ups. Going off this list (https://www.ourlads.com/nfldepthcharts/depthchartpos/QB), I’d rather have him than 2o or so of those stiffs.
Probably, but I don’t know if the risk is worth the reward in that scenario.
They should just give Kaep Goodell’s job and call it a day.
No one is demanding that Kapernick be a starter. But there’s really no reasonable stance that assumes he couldn’t possibly be good enough to be third on the depth chart somewhere, and the only reason he’s not is because the NFL is managed by a racist cartel.
No, I wouldn’t assume that he isn’t capable of being a backup at all. I’m saying that the analysis of his play will be so loaded(Potentially unfairly) that the risk may not be worth the reward. However, as I said earlier to another poster, he absolutely should have the opportunity to do what he wants.
Kaepernick wouldn’t be unique in being a QB who came back from a multi-year layoff though. Josh Johnson was out of the league for almost 5 years and managed to get 3 starts with Washington when they needed a QB.
Is Kaep a starting QB? Probably not after all this time. But there’s a fair chance that he’d be a decent backup.
Ah yes, my favorite part about AV Club comments sections: The part where someone reads one thing that they think they have some personal feelings about, skip the rest of the article (and the main point), and slather their dumb opinion about what they think is relevant down here. Choice work, here.
In my opinion, I think B99 should probably have just one last season and call it quits.
“Terry loves bringing series to a close at the appropriate time!”
Normally I would agree with shows tending to run too long, but last season of B99 was no better or worse than any other season—-until it starts to show a loss of quality, why bother ending it?Unlike say, The Office, which began to show decline as early as Season 6.
Because the idea of liberal, loving cops is a bad joke in the face of the current day?
It’s not a bad joke. It’s an example of how things should be. To end it because of real events being tragically vastly different would be missing the point. In order to change society, you need to show people what it should be changed into.
EDIT
But again, they aren’t remotely realistic cops. They never were.
But people will always say “no, cops are good like on all the TV I watch. Not bad, like all of the… hundreds of instances of live footage of them abusing their authority in order to hurt people.” It’s long past time to call TV to task for profiting off this polite fiction.
The Archer suggestion up top would work great. The ensemble is fantastic, the writing is very tight and the casting is so unusual that the two Latina stars both assumed they hadn’t gotten the role when they heard the other cast because what network show would have a whole two Latinas on it?
It’s a good show run by good people. I would give them a few months to figure out what comes next before preemptively cancelling it.
Because it’s hard to watch a sitcom about the NYPD when the real NYPD is running over protesters. Better to let the series end now at a high point than have it be burdened with the real NYPD’s controversies in the long term.
It’s not just a sitcom. It’s an ethical instruction manual.
It’s a fictional TV show that softens the image of the NYPD at large. Also, you think the real NYPD cares about B99’s message? Because last I checked they’re still running over protesters and arresting journalists.Do not get me wrong, I like the show to. But the show is part of the NYPD’s propaganda arm and you need to accept that.
I don’t need to accept anything if I don’t hold it to be true. The show is a TV show produced by a production company and commissioned by a TV station. Nothing about that has necessarily got anything to do with the NYPD as a real-life institution, nor is it something that the NYPD itself has created. So calling it ‘NYPD propaganda’ doesn’t make sense. It would be, if it were stating that the NYPD is actually currently like that and should be respected. But the show has stated on numerous occasions that cops need to earn respect, and I don’t think there is any intent to try to convince viewers that it isn’t fiction.
Presenting a vision of an ideal world in which cops behave ethically is just as much a form of progressive freedom of expression, and encouragement for people to behave better, as is standing in the street holding a sign. In fact it’s arguably more effective, because casual observers are more likely to care about well-told stories than they are about well-meaning protesters, and thus come to understand that there are endemic societal and prejudicial problems that warrant addressing. No form of trying to bring about a better society should be dismissed. The more attempts, the better.
Yeah guys, like remember how we watched The West Wing for seven years and it fixed politics?
So, what, we should stop trying to show society how to behave because it hasn’t worked yet? No thanks.
I just think you might be overestimating the power of a sitcom.
Yeah this is a very idiotic view. One sitcom is not going to make the NYPD magically not racist anymore.
If you find it hard to watch a sitcom, why not stop?
Ehhh, maybe if the show was remotely realistic I could see drawing a parallel between reality and it, but it is so off the wall and out there, other than the uniforms there’s not much relatable to the actual police. Whether they are behaving or not.I mean, B99 annually shut down the entire floor for the Halloween Heist.
“last season of B99 was no better or worse than any other season—-until it starts to show a loss of quality, why bother ending it?Unlike say, The Office, which began to show decline as early as Season 6.”Uh, was there a national crisis of Scranton paper vendors killing black men? Because if there wasn’t, comparing the situations of Brooklyn 99 with The Office seems to miss the point…
Its not like the show glorifies police—-the characters on the show are so far removed from actual police men and women, you could change the setting to “Brooklyn Pancakes” and there wouldn’t be much of a change.I also don’t think anybody in their right mind believes that anything Jake and company do weekly has any actual parallel in real police work.
While I enjoy the show, and don’t see the problem, it certainly seems like the people who make the show are unhappy with the fact that it is set in a police station and features cops and detectives. From the article: “Crews told Meyers that the Brooklyn Nine-Nine Zoom calls have been full of “somber talks” and “really eye-opening conversation,” so here’s to the writers room in their attempts to balance pepper-spraying, suspect-murdering, intransigently racist reality with breezy half-hour network comedy.”
Even if the show significantly declined in quality I would want to keep it on the air, because of the message: cops do not have to be the bad guys, and should work at being the good guys. I feel like that’s a very important message right now.
Counter argument: what if it ends with a nine episode ninth season?
Nine nine! One of the little touches I love about B99 is that Terry Crews came up with the “nine nine!” rallying cry to build team morale on exhausting location shoots, and then it started getting written into the show.
I always love tidbits like that. Apparently the actor who plays Scully came up with the idea that he should be casually powdering his feet in the background of so many scenes.
Someone on twitter was suggesting that they just pull a full Archer: with no explanation, have the exact same cast and characters except in a completely different setting.And seriously, I’d totally watch Brooklyn 99: ER or Brooklyn 99: Post Office.
They could do what they did with Scrubs and turn all of the characters into instructors. B99: Police Academy!
That worked so well for them!
Actually, having them all resign from the NYPD and become a detective agency would be interesting.
Have Holt become commissioner and successfully institute sweeping changes to the way New York policing operates. Serve as an example of how to actually be a police department responsibly, considerately and inclusively, like they’ve been doing for seven seasons but on a wider scale.
But that assumes that the police want to change or have any interest in it. While the show has advocated for police to take on a more positive role in the community, at the end of the day it’s still propaganda as it serves to soften the image of the NYPD and police in general. I like the show too, but it only serves to downplay the real harm police have caused and your hopes of it actually making a difference of providing real change are at best naive.
You seem to be misunderstanding the word ‘propaganda’. Propaganda is what happens when an institution actively sets out to convince people that it is a good and honourable institution and should be celebrated. An openly fictional story about people from a real life institution behaving decently does not qualify as propaganda, especially when the people responsible for its existence are not from that institution or being commissioned by that institution. Hoping for a progressive voice to make a difference is never naive. It’s only by speaking up and by normalising a particular ethical code of conduct that real change will ever occur. Taking a fictional show off the air because it doesn’t reflect the reality it’s attempting to expose as ethically insufficient is a microcosm of ending your protest because the thing you’re protesting about exists. It doesn’t make sense, and won’t help. It’s Rosa Parks moving on a small scale.
You seem to have deluded yourself into thinking one good sitcom is going to make the NYPD not want to run over protesters. Which is naive at best.
It’s much better than naive, and certainly not delusional, to want to normalise decency.Every possible tool of political pressure is a good and desirable thing, whether it works or not, including keeping the conversation in the background about how things should be. What you’re telling me is the equivalent of ‘one person cannot make a difference, no matter how big a screwball she is.’ Try telling that to Rosa Parks. The principle still holds, even when applied to background support for decency as opposed to direct real-world action.
This is honestly the best option imo. I don’t watch the show because despite the charming ensemble and great writing for a network sitcom the cop thing got really too grating after 3 seasons. The best bits were always when they fucked around and the cop stuff got sidelined, it’s not integral to the show, and the Archer situation changes really extended that show’s shelf life.
Brooklyn 99: Nuclear Technicians!
Make the B99 gang the only still-working people in a post-defunding-and-reconstruction public-safety agency that has replaced the NYPD in a couple of years? Maybe you couldn’t justify keeping Hitchcock & Scully on, but they keep on coming in out of nothing to do, or they think that they’re P.I.s now?
Have it set in post-apocalyptic New York, with the 99 squad taking on the role of helping society rebuild.“Terry loves nutrient rich protein slurry!”
…so basically season 8 of Brooklyn 99 becomes the never-filmed season 3 of Sledge Hammer?Yes, this is brilliant. Do this.
I’m sorry, but someone needs to hold Terry’s feet to the fire for what he means by “black supremacy” because that phrase is nothing but red meat for white supremacists. I’m as disappointed in Meyers as I am in Terry.
Like, I need him to diagram it and explain to me like I’m five how he got to “fighting white supremacy without white people = black supremacy” because from where I’m sitting, it seems like Terry Crews has brain worms and is up to his old tricks of desperately trying to remain employable to the old white dudes who sign his cheques.
I got the impression – possibly wrongly – that his comments were aimed at specific reactionary statements he’d come across.
Certainly, without this assumption, his comments seem to be a particularly hyperbolic strawman.
I don’t really want to put words in his mouth, or even put forward my own narrow take on something far wider and more nuanced than I’ve had a chance to reconsider over the last weeks:
But one (maybe charitable?) interpretation of what he is trying to convey is that in a healthy and free democracy the people are governed and policed by conscientious consent. For any one racial group to unilaterally impose a sociopolitical order is destined to cause unrest because, in lieu of consent (‘white people fighting white supremacy’ in this specific context) it is reliant on apathy or acquiescence, and thus lacks the mandate needed for stability.
Or, to put it another way: Winning political battles can change circumstances; but if you don’t win the arguments, you cannot change minds and thus win the political war.This is just one way of maybe looking at what he was getting at, again, I can’t say how accurate, or even how useful, it is.
Maybe there’s more to Crews’ stance than he was able to articulate, and maybe he was actually driving at a point that merits some more sympathetic consideration – I personally don’t know, and maybe people more familiar with Crews as an individual, the Twittersphere as a phenomenon, or the wider cultural issues in general could bring a more definitive answer to this.
Honestly, this is thoughtful reply and I have hesitated to respond because I don’t want to come off as dismissive. Basically, I don’t think it’s any of that. Terry Crews has loudly and publicly gone out of his way to downplay and dismiss Gabrielle Union when she spoke out against racism occurring behind the scenes on a show that he also worked on. It was only after repeated criticism (which came about because of his doubling and tripling down on his statements) that he offered a halfhearted apology and a promise to listen more. Now here we are and Terry Crews is once again espousing another opinion that aligns himself with the racist status quo, and I’m not at all surprised; this is a man who seems genuinely ignorant and willfully so.
But, that isn’t what’s happening and it’s really obvious if you just watch the news one day. So, why would he say that when it isn’t what is happening?
But, that isn’t what’s happening and it’s really obvious if you just watch the news one day. So, why would he say that when it isn’t what is happening?
Had the same initial thought, but I don’t think Seth Meyers is the right person to publicly confront a prominent Black man right now. Seth would have to be able to counter whatever bullshit defense Crews could conjure, and Gabrielle Union already has that part covered.
Someone should definitely have an intense conversation with Terry Crews about the implications of what he said.For what I hope are pretty obvious reasons, I’m not sure Seth Meyers is the appropriate person to do that.
Seth Meyers isn’t. Amber Ruffin could be.
Calling the blackballing of the vocal quarterback “still the most glaring example of racism that the NFL has ever had”I’m amazed at this continual perception of Kaepernick’s situation. He was probably destined to be backup for the rest of his career until Trump made him his target. Now, he huge endorsement deals and it’s very unclear if he even wants to play or not. He gathered some interest from the CFL (where he would have been a starter, and probably a star) but he refused to even listen to them. He’s earning more money than if the controversy hadn’t happened and he never has to take the risk of being injured again. For an anti-racism symbol that didn’t even bothered voting against Trump, he’s doing rather well.
Brooklyn 99 has dealt with discrimination against non-straight people and they have done at least one episode about Terry being stopped for walking while Black in his neighborhood. So I hope that they can find a way to deal with the institutional problems with police.
What I really want is for all the other cop shows to reassess their shows.
They had that one episode where Holt and Amy tried to do a recruitment drive by putting Amy’s face on posters and they got defaced with lots of valid criticism of the police, so instead Holt put out posters with the slogan ‘we know we can do better; tell us how’ and his email address.
I appreciate that on B99 Captain Holt’s unit has always been, as intended by him, a community-friendly and rule-following model for the rest of the NYPD, which the show is well aware is neither of those things. I also love the diversity and mutual respect among the show’s found family, with “its two black dads, two Latina daughters, two white sons, and whatever Scully is–a giant baby?”
He’s like the family dog
Wait, is it his dog or his wife?
Hitchcock is the creepy uncle everyone just barely tolerates.
Haha, yes that’s exactly what I was thinking too
Gina is the cousin who just comes and goes from family functions as she pleases and nobody can remember how exactly she’s related to everyone in the first place.
Scully is clearly that guy who your dad served with in the army and you called “uncle” when you were a kid despite not being related, and now he just turns up on holidays, and you hear your dad saying to you mum, “I know, but he’s got nowhere else to go, and things have been rough lately.”
I’ve never seen anyone generate more anger with less material. Terry Crews tweets the most obvious, innocuous stuff, where I’m like why do you even bother tweeting that the sky is blue, Terry, but ok whatever, and twitter just goes completely bitchcakes on him, every time.And I’m sure the NFL is terrible. I mean, the way college football functions, as I understand it, is basically a reboot of slavery, where rich white people and their institutions make billions of dollars off of black kids playing football, and don’t compensate them at all, ever. I guess that just changed a few days ago and now they can have some licensing too? But that whole football career path seems to be plantation adjacent.