STEVE HARVEY RETURNS TO THE APOLLO FOR ‘SHOWTIME’
STEVE HARVEY RETURNS TO THE APOLLO FOR ‘SHOWTIME’
By Stacy M. Brown (NNPA Newswire Contributor)
Steve Harvey has a lot on his plate these days.
The comedian, who is beloved by
millions, was recently busy preparing for the
reboot of the classic “Showtime at the Apollo”
talent contest that aired on Fox December 5
at 8 p.m.
Harvey’s schedule also includes his popular
syndicated morning radio show, hosting the “Family
Feud” and “Little Big Shots,” and recently cutting a
new deal to produce a new daily and yet to be titled
television show to be distributed by NBC Universal.
Working non-stop is just what the legendary King
of Comedy prefers.
“Steve just keeps it real all of the time,” his
longtime friend and former Steve Harvey Show co-host
Cedric the Entertainer said. “We’ve been friends a long
time. We have a good time, all of the time.”
Earlier this year, Harvey revealed in a candid
interview with “People” magazine that, while he’s
amassed a fortune north of $100 million, he was once
homeless and living out of his Ford Tempo.
“It kills me when I hear very successful people
say, ‘I always knew I would get here,’” Harvey said. “I
didn’t. I always hoped I would get somewhere, but this
is above and beyond. My imagination didn’t even go
this big.”
Last month, a “Los Angeles Times” feature on
Harvey explored how the star has become the new
“hardest working man in show business.”
The newspaper noted what happened when the
taping for “Steve Harvey’s Funderdome,” an upcoming
“Shark Tank”-style ABC TV competition series in
which two entrepreneurs vie for the approval of a live
audience, had just completed.
As the crowd started to leave the Television
City studio in Hollywood, Harvey, the host who has
unofficially inherited the late James Brown’s title of
“the hardest working man in show business,” made it
clear he was not done with them yet.
The entertainer, who has become a one-man force
of nature in the last 15 years with a seemingly endless
cavalcade of successes in the pop culture arena ranging
from radio and TV shows to books to film, wanted to
follow the fun with his message of faith.
“I imagined, when I was 10 years old, that I
would be on TV one day, and I believed in God and
got successful. You’ve got to believe. Don’t ever give
up!”
Born in Welch, West Virginia on January 17, 1957,
Harvey grew up in Cleveland and graduated from
Glenville High School in 1974. A proud member of
the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, the entertainer attended
Kent State University and West Virginia University.
In his earlier life, Harvey worked as an auto
mechanic, a carpet cleaner and for the United States
Postal Service as a mail carrier.
Harvey began doing standup comedy in Cleveland
in the late 1980s and, after becoming a finalist in
the famed Johnnie Walker National Comedy Search
in 1990, he was picked to host “It’s Showtime at the
Apollo.”
He scored his first television role on the shortlived
ABC show, “Me and the Boys,” before hitting pay
dirt with the successful and popular “The Steve Harvey
Show,” which ran for seven seasons.
Joining Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley and
Bernie Mac, Harvey launched a comedy tour in 1997
called “The Original Kings of Comedy,” which led to a
feature film directed by Spike Lee.
Harvey went on to appear in several movies and,
in 2009, penned the bestseller, “Act Like a Lady, Think
Like a Man,” which was optioned into a big screen hit.
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