D.L. Hughley remains a ‘King of Comedy’ at age 62

D.L. Hughley was part of one of the most popular stand-up arena tours of all time more than a quarter-century ago. The Original Kings of Comedy, which also featured Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer and the late Bernie Mac, grossed $37 million in revenue over two years.

It became a hit concert movie directed by Spike Lee and a template for arena and theater tours featuring multiple stand-up comics.

Comedian D.L. Hughley, pictured discussing his book "How Not to Get Shot: And Other Advice From White People" in 2018, said he is working on a book about how his late father, Charlie, impacted him. (Michael Loccisano/TNS 2018)

Hughley, now 62, will occasionally join one of those tours but prefers solo shows in smaller venues, including four City Winery Atlanta shows Thursday and Friday with tickets priced $50 to $70 at citywinery.com.

Atlanta is an easy place for the Los Angeles resident to visit. “I get a chance to see my grandkids who live there,” he said. “I get to eat some good food and drink a lot.”

He can also go over to Radio One Atlanta’s downtown offices and tape his syndicated afternoon radio show, which can be heard on Atlanta’s Classix 102.9.

Hughley’s 35-plus years doing stand-up mean he has no fear when he goes on stage. He is the type of comic who only has a loose sense of what he’s going to say before the show begins. He’ll riff off the news if need be.

“Every audience and every experience is tailor-made for me,” he said. “I pretty much try to do whatever I feel like at that moment.”

He is well aware of the popularity of stand-ups doing crowd work for social media videos. But he isn’t really chasing that audience.

“I used to be really famous for that,” he said. “I love crowd work. But after awhile, you want to show people you are tapped into what’s going on. I don’t do it as much as I used to. The older you get, the more you’ve been around, you rely on other things.”

D.L. Hughley, pictured hosting the 39th NAACP Image Awards in 2008, may be best known as one of the four comedians who toured together as "The Original Kings of Comedy." Performances during the tour were filmed by Spike Lee and turned into a hit stand-up special/documentary in 2000. (Kevork Djansezian/AP 2008)

The Original Kings of Comedy cannot be resurrected, he noted, because Mac died in 2008 and Harvey, who hosts the Atlanta-shot “Family Feud,” retired from stand-up comedy in 2012.

“We didn’t do a sequel,” he said. “We let it rest. Nothing approximates your first kiss. Nothing is quite as dynamic as that one.”

To him, with so much time having passed, thinking of the tour is “like flipping through your wedding album,” he said. “It’s a fond memory, but not something top of mind. I’m still very proud of what we did then.”

D.L. Hughley is an executive producer and actor on the Bounce TV show "Johnson," though it's up in the air in terms of if a fifth season will be filmed. (Screenshot from Bounce TV)

He is an executive producer of Atlanta-based Bounce TV drama “Johnson,” which is about four 30-something friends in Atlanta who all happen to have the same last name but are not related. He plays a wise uncle who dispenses advice when need be. The series has lasted a respectable four seasons but as fewer people watch broadcast TV, Bounce TV has scaled back on original programming.

As a result, Hughley said he’s in the dark about the future of the show, which aired its last new episode on Oct. 5 of last year.

“Television is very much in flux,” Hughley said, noting he has another project in development at CBS and is waiting to see if anything comes to fruition.

Between stand-up shows, he is enjoying his syndicated radio show, which he began in 2012 and is heard on about 100 stations nationwide. In fact, he prefers it over the trendier world of podcasting.

“It’s the closest thing to stand-up in terms of the medium,” he said. “There’s the immediacy of the microphone, the material, the conversation. It’s ‘stand-up-esque.’ It scratches that itch. I have good people around me. It’s something I look forward to doing every day.”

Hughley is working on a book on the impact his late father, Charlie, had on him because he never got to have that conversation with him before he died.

“I hear his voice when I do something right, but not when I do something wrong,” he said. “He was a complex man, a good man. I don’t think he understood the impact he had on me. He’d be surprised I have 50,000 words to say about him.”