I've said no to 'Celebrity Big Brother,' 'Strictly,' and the American one, 'Dancing With The Stars.' I don't feel it's right for me. I've been asked to do reality TV a zillion times. No way. No way. Nobody's going to get into my living room and see me there.
I've been asked by 'Big Brother,' 'I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here!,' 'Strictly' and 'Dancing on Ice,' but it's not for me.
My agent said, 'Jerry, Dancing With the Stars - they want you on there.' I said, 'Ain't no way. I'm not going to do that.' Then he came back to me again, and he kept putting pressure on me. I said, 'All right, I'll give it a try.'
I was completely with the reality TV boom for a while. I really liked a lot of the reality TV, and the one that lost me was the ballroom dancing one they do, 'Dancing with the Stars.' That was the one where I watched it and I was perplexed. I thought it was really boring.
Once after Barefoot In the Park had been playing for about a week I went back to see it, watching the audience, which was just falling over laughing except for one guy sitting the aisle. I was transfixed. I said to myself, there seems to be no way to get to him. No one else would I watch except this one man. My wife joined me about 20 minutes later and asked me how it was going, and I said, terrible. I really meant it. There was no way to get to this man. It destroyed me.
I started out dancing on a reality TV show, but always with the intention of making my way over to film. I transitioned into the film world by doing certain things that my fans had been used to seeing me do. My dancing and singing gave me the confidence to act.
I'd heard of the name 'Big Brother' before. I didn't realize that it was on TV for 20 years. My manager told me, ''Big Brother' wants you.' I said, 'I don't feel like watching it, and I don't know what I'm getting into.'
But I'm mindful in a free society that people can worship if they want to or not. You're equally an American if you choose to worship an Almighty and if you choose not to. If you're a Christian, Jew or Muslim you're equally an American. That's the great thing about America is the right to worship the way you see fit. Prayer and religion sustain me. I receive calmness in the storms of the presidency. I love the fact that people pray for me and my family all around the country. Somebody asked me one time, how do you know? I said I just feel it.
I stopped in the full force of a patch of sunlight in the lobby window and let my skin soak up the energy. I hadn’t realized I needed it until it reached inside and stilled me in a way that only David’s touch had been able to achieve. “Why does that feel so good?” I asked. “And don’t tell me it’s because we’ve been shut in a room for days.” “Like calls to like,” he said. “You’re made of fire now.” “So I’m going to feel like this every time I pass an open flame? Great. Firegasm.
When I was learning how to box, that was the number one thing my trainer taught me. He said you can't get angry at every single time I hit you because that's why you're here. You're going to get hit. Acknowledge that you're going to get hit and now focus on how you're going to fight properly. And living through the times is exactly the right way to put it because I have seen a slice of this only on a different continent.
How many times have we seen reality celebrities fall from grace - often through no fault of their own - and then go on a show like 'Celebrity Big Brother' and say, 'I want to show the public a different side of me.' And I'm screaming at the telly going, 'This is not therapy. This is voyeurism!'
You know, a friend of mine asked me before I got here... it was when we were all shipping out. He asked me, 'Why are you going to fight somebody else's war? What, do y'all think you're heroes?' I didn't know what to say at the time, but if he asked me again, I'd say no. I'd say there's no way in hell. Nobody asks to be a hero. It just sometimes turns out that way.
Dr. Dre, my oldest brother, he paved the way for me and Snoop to get a chance to get into the studio. I asked him to show me how to work the MPC-60... I was about maybe 17, 18, right around there.
I would be on the 'anti-reality' show. I can't stand reality TV. I can tell you one that I absolutely would not be on, and that's 'Dancing With the Stars.' If you ever see me on that show, just please understand my family is starving to death, and things are really bad in the Church household.
I grew up in a town with no movie theater. TV was my only link to the outside world. Film wasn't such a big deal to me. It was TV. So much so, that when I meet TV stars now... Not my co-workers, but real TV stars, I get nervous. I freak out around them.
Nobody in my life has ever known me the way you do. Nobody in my life has ever made me feel as good as you do. You know me, you know everything about me, and when you leave me, you're going to be leaving the real me, the me nobody else has ever seen, that's who you're going to be rejecting.
I feel like a lot of people that have been in similar situations as I have, reality TV stars, you can make a packaged version of yourself if you want to - I just don't work that way. I can't do it.