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could you do me a quick favor if you're listening to this please hit the follow or subscribe button it helps more than you know and we invite subscribers in every month to watch the show in person my desire to be strong was because i knew one day i may have to kill my father athlete artist actor terry crews that's right i've always wanted to be a superhero one of my earliest memories was my father knocking my mother out she'd be nursing a black eye and i would just dance in front of her and she just started cracking up in the middle of all that pain i saw the ability to make her laugh pornography numbered my pain i had this addiction for the longest time how did it impact your marriage she said i was different i damaged my family i damaged my wife you gotta own up to it you have to do what's within your power to make things right one thing i that that changed for me is i stopped competing with people and i said don't try to be the best be the only so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo usa edition i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] terry i i always start these conversations in a very similar way but having read your new book tough i feel like it's never been more relevant to what i'm about to say reading through your your new book especially in the first chapter it becomes so blatantly clear how our early context shapes who we become in many ways and there's never been a more glaring example of that so i feel like that has to be the place we start can you tell me about that context in which you were raised wow uh first and foremost um i was raised in um flint michigan and i was born in 1968 and and i just want to give some context in the fact that flint michigan was the palo alto of the united states what i mean by that is general motors was the most successful corporation in the world
and you know there were opportunities there were money there was homes and people were doing very very well and the city was growing and blossoming and my father was a foreman at buick um during this time he he was a poor kid who moved up from edison georgia a town of less than 300 people and moved and went up north to find to work in the factory and became a foreman and my mother was a housewife and she was raised born and raised in flint my mom had got pregnant with me before they were married and they shortly soon sooner after got married and what was so wild about that is that amongst all this you know kind of opportunity my father was very very abusive and you know one of my earliest memories around you know the time i was about four or five years old was my father knocking my mother out um and what was really crazy you know he was alcoholic um and here here you have a man who came from he really never shared his past with me i had to actually find out a lot about his past later on in my adult years but i never really understood him and he never really volunteered any information and then my mother however was very religious um she grew up in the church of god in christ which was what you would call the holiness movement and it was you know the term was holy rollers and you know she couldn't wear makeup she could she wore her dresses down to her ankles we were not allowed to go to the movies not allowed to listen to secular music not allowed to play sports uh basically everything that i ended up doing in my life i was not allowed to do um and it was we were in church probably six days out of a seven day week so
it was unindated with religion um a lot of guilt a lot of shame a lot of um you know god's gonna get you you know if you don't you know this is the way they felt they needed to keep you in line so there was a very toxic mix in my household because here you know my father was an alcoholic and my mother is religious and so they always went at each other because you weren't allowed to do what my father was doing and my mother was always challenging him and yelling at him about it and he would go off and and i just wanted peace man it was just violent you know i actually went to bed until i was 14 years old because it was not a peaceful night you know i would wake up to screaming wake up to glass breaking shouting my one time i woke up my father was bleeding my mother had stabbed him and the police came and in that day it was like you know there was no such thing as domestic violence just like there was no such thing as alcoholism you know it was just he can't handle his liquor uh i was kind of saved by my high school because it was it was a special school that allowed you to come because you had certain talents and it was from seventh grade all the way to my senior year and i had art ability and one thing about being in this religious household is that i had a really vibrant imagination because we couldn't do anything else so i would go to school and people would tell me about movies they saw and things that they were listening to and all this stuff so i would go home and draw it so because i wanted to watch it so bad and be there so bad and so i would start drawing and i remember you know one thing my mom did let me do was comic books and so i would copy the comic books and the heroes and they had muscles and i was like one day i'm gonna be like that and um but i also found out which was so wild a little bit later even in therapy was just that i found that a lot of my my desire to be strong
was because i knew one day i may have to kill my father because he was just that person and it was intense man it i i guess it was a very very intense upbringing um and i became this person who just wanted to keep the peace because it was i just anything to keep the peace i became what you would call a pleaser like mom what do you need to do i'll be a good boy i promise i'll i'll sing in the church i'll sing in the choir and then my father will come home he's like what you want another beer whatever you want you know i'll just make sure you you don't get angry you know and it was just about i was i was exhausted you know and i remember just being that tired um and it was it was a lot of work because i i lost all my like who i was um it was dependent on who was around and i was all of a sudden be what they wanted me to be did you ever try and intervene when your parents were having conflict did you ever try and intervene at a young age he was too big i mean it was one of those things where i felt helpless i felt 100 like i was so small and you just look and i say my father you know even says that you know we call him big terry he was always big terry and i was little terry and this is how we referred to each other all over the house and my my older brother is my half brother so he was smaller than me and we were just i just always felt tiny i remember just looking at his hands and they were big giant calloused hands and the way he'd walk around the house you just hear boom boom boom you know it was a drama you know it was it was like man this man could rip me apart and i had a desire to get strong i knew i had to protect one day would have to protect my mom protect my family because i remember the nightly news and they would always tell you all the horror stories you know so-and-so kills his whole family you
know i was always look at the tv and i would say you know i think my father could do that i mean this is not the thoughts a seven-year-old should be having but i remember thinking i wonder if he got mad enough would he how would he kill us all you know and because the rage would just flip and my father was two people it was um he would be sober on his way to work and then he would come home and when that car pulled up he was he would usually go to the bar first and he was a different person he was sad he was crying he was angry he would be listening to old soul music on the record player and this is one of my memories i even put in a book was just i remember looking at him and i looked at my father and i was i really felt sorry for him i just remember he coming home he's disheveled he's been drinking and he the pocket protector was all messed up shirt was all undone he used to have short sleeve shirts with ty and the tie was off and everything and he just sitting there and he got a beer in his hand and he'd just be sitting there and he just looks so sad and i just i walked over to him and i kissed him on the cheek and he looked at me like i had an eye in the middle of my forehead he looked at me with such disdain and contempt and i said i'll never do that again it was like oh man oh and i felt like he looked at me like it was the worst thing i could have ever done and i said okay that's it like we are clear you and i we're clear we know i know never to cross that you know across that line ever again i'll never forgot that i mean even talking about it now it just it shook me to my core
because i expected love and oh man it was my son and it was disdain um he didn't know he didn't know how to do it and so that's what it was and my whole young life i knew i had to get out because i didn't want to be a part of this super hyper religious world there were so many things i wanted to do i had a lot of dreams i had a lot of goals um and one thing what was crazy is that my mother loved entertainment she loved it we used to sit around and watch the carol burnett show together as a family every saturday night and i remember watching her laugh like looking at what made her laugh what was gonna and she crack up at carol burnett and i said one day that's me like i'm gonna make her laugh like that so i would do things around the house and i remember her she'd be nursing a black eye that my father gave her and she'd have like some frozen peas on her face and i was just dancing in front of her and she just started cracking up and uh in the middle of all that pain i saw the ability that i had to make her laugh during all that and i said this is a power in the middle of this kind of pain that she's just she's literally in tears laughing at her son you know and i said okay this is how i'm gonna get by this beginning the pleaser just make everything better this is going to cool everything out right and that was that was most of my existence as a little boy growing up in flint michigan that's the context did you ever find out where that pain you saw in your father originated from i did i did um and you know what's crazy i only found this out literally like a year ago which is nuts cause he would never answer me there's so many things i never ever
he never answered i would ask but they uh no big deal you know and i did a show with henry lewis gates called finding your roots and he went into my family's past and i found out that my grandfather he abandoned his family so he abandoned my father and my father had an older brother younger sister and my grandmother had been abandoned by him now i knew my grandmother but again you're talking about in black culture in america a lot of these things were just too painful to talk about no one ever you could ask but you'd get a nod you'd get go play don't worry about it um and no one would talk but he found out that my grandfather had abandoned the family and he was basically had robbed a liquor store and was on a chain gang in georgia which is probably one of the most brutal uh punishments you could get at the time in america at the time it's a chain gang a chain gang is when they would make you build a highway um they would take prison populations chain them together and they would be the ones that would be clearing out forests um clearing out paths with with um stakes and shovels and and it would be backbreaking work all day long in a hundred degree heat and he did that for about two years but this was the strange this was where the pain comes from my uncle told me that they had to they took the school bus to school and they had to pass the train gang where his dad was and where they knew their dad was working and this was so traumatic for them because they didn't want people to find out they would visit him in jail but it was you know off and on and he would act like he didn't want to see him it was really really just painful and
he got out and he did a couple more things and ended up in jail again um and finally he died of epileptic seizure when my father was 17 years old and you're talking about never really want my father never felt wanted never felt he was his blood son but it just was any you know it was a pauper's grave um there's a headstone that's cracked right now so it's not even a headstone it's kind of like a just a block with his name on it edward cruz and it's broken in half and i plan on putting a proper headstone on that sometime this year but it's i started to understand i started understanding that pain and it drove my father to drink at a young age and you know one thing that we do as men is that we we we tend to to numb numb ourselves because you you know this is a part of you feel like you're being tough you feel like you're being strong like okay i don't feel that pain you know i can't show that pain i can't and drinking is a big big way of numbing your pain for me it was pornography pornography numbed my pain um and like i never i still to this day i've never been drunk i've never been high i don't i don't do that but pornography was something that took me out when did you make it into your life pornography when was the first time man i first discovered porn at about nine ten years old i was over my uncle's house and he had a chest full of pornography um and this is the thing you know it's funny because you know people have said well you know yeah there's nothing wrong with pornography you know with adults and the whole thing but the problem is is that you know you never find it as an adult i don't know anybody who found pornography as an adult
uh you always find it as a child it's everywhere and it's funny because i've been told hey man you know just mind your business it's all good you know keep to yourself that's your issue but porn never keeps itself to itself um i get texts today i get texts now people text to me it's something like us fishing and they text you porn and text you hot girls in your area now you're like i didn't ask for this you know what i mean but you start to realize that they know what they're doing they know they can get a hook and they know if they can get it in you and they know if they can get into young and this was the thing that attracted me to porn is that you would i would open up the magazines and they would have comics in them and the comics and different things they would have subjects like goldilocks and you know and snow white and all these story a jack and jill you know and you start to realize wow this is really like this is stuff i realized as an adult that this is um this is this is wired they're wired to get you young you know what i mean and to stay in there because they know it'll never go away you know and that was what attracted me i was and again i didn't even know what sex was but man all i knew is when i opened that magazine and saw those ladies in that magazine and how beautiful they were all my problems were gone like it was numb like i didn't know anything about violence about where i was it was just like it was i could zone away and every problem was disappear and i had to have it like when things got stressful whenever i'll never forget because again and here's another thing because you're going to resist just household so you know you're
doing wrong you know it was like oh that's bad you know but this was also time when pornography was in the grocery store and it wasn't seen as something it was just kind of like there we go and i remember telling my mom i'm gonna go in the store and get some milk and i remember just grabbing one of those magazines and i couldn't stop until she bumped she's like hey what are you doing and i would just she would take me out of this numbing experience i was having and i'm standing there in the store and i told her i would get some milk and there i was she's like i was waiting for you for a half hour what are you doing but i was stuck and that's that kind of power that was on me like and i i had this addiction for the longest time how long oh my all the way up until 2010 right from my whole life from 19 from literally from the time i was about 10 to all the way up to about 12 years ago and when you say addiction a lot of people might not know what that means a lot of people might think that means watching porn from now now and then or looking at a magazine now and then what did what did that mean in reality what was the if you've got an example of how bad it got for you yes um first of all it was it was i got a day off from the set so i'm usually on location and i could watch porn from [Music] uh probably 10 o'clock after my workout 10 a.m to 11 p.m at night 10 a.m to 11 p.m at night it wouldn't stop and i couldn't stop and i'll go from one to the next to the next to the next and it was
and and the fact that i knew that no i was in a different place and no one would know me and no one cared i could indulge and just it was a it was what you would call a splurge like it just couldn't stop i couldn't when day turns into night and you're still watching i knew i had a problem i knew i had a problem and and when you tell yourself you not that like i'm not gonna do this anymore and then you go right back because what was happening i found is you know with the porn it was like i need i would say okay i'm done with that whatever and i would feel guilty but with guilt comes shame and with the shame shame says and shame doesn't say you does you've done something bad shame says you are bad like you this is who you are you're just bad so what you would do is do a bunch of good things and you would just work hard and i go good for like three four days and then you need a reward and what is that reward because you did so good it's porn and so you go back in and the cycle starts all over again and i found it would just keep going on and on and on how did it impact your marriage because you got married in 1989 listen it first of all i got married in 1989 to the most beautiful woman on earth and rebecca i met her she's from gary indiana we met in college i actually met in church which was wow because i vowed i wasn't going to be religious but what was wild is that i couldn't get away from the things i felt and the things i was used to um and so i went to church and met her and she was on the piano and she was the the church leader the worship leader and she had a child just like my mom had a child and uh it was a little girl and she was only six months old and we
got married when she was two and this was the thing i thought that once i got married the porn would go away i said man i got a real woman now oh i don't have to tell her about anything we just gonna you know it was a phase i'm gonna be out of it it's gonna be great and then the first argument the first well you feel like it no i don't feel like it tonight okay i'll be right back oh the first sexual conflict i'm going out to get pornography um and i thought it would free i thought it was going to be my answer to what it was but i realized it didn't i decided that was gonna be my secret and then you develop a thing where you think if you're in secret everybody's in secret like i'm sure you know this is just the way everybody is you know it wasn't until i got into therapy that i realized i said no no not everybody's like that terry i was like wait wait what what do you mean like you don't do that you know it was a surprise to me um but it was no different than any other thing that would numb you be it alcohol be drugs and this is the thing too um [Music] you know what what i learned what i thought was awesome was the 12-step program 12 steps was really established by alcoholics anonymous but it works for basically a lot of different addictions i mean and the you know starting with the serenity prayer which is you know god helped me accept the things that i cannot change and the courage to change the things i can and the wisdom to know the difference well the thing was that what i got backward in my whole life was that i was trying to change things i couldn't change at all
and the things that i could i felt i was powerless so if you have those things backwards it's not wisdom you know and what was so unbelievable to me i i just remember because the the wake-up call of all wake-up calls was what we call d-day around our house and it was february 2010 and my wife uh was basically you know over the years she was always suspicious but what had happened is 10 years earlier basically in 2000 i had went to a massage parlor and got a hand job and cheated on her and man i vowed vowed that i would never tell a soul like i was so hurt i couldn't believe i did that like you know you think i would no i could only do this and that you know it's gonna stop here but it just fueled the walk for more and i actually crossed the line and when i crossed that line i couldn't believe i did that and i knew i said i'm gonna go to my grave with this i said no one's ever going to know and that's just the way it's going to be well years go by like and but my wife was always suspicious like you know what what's up with you terry and i'm like i'm good i'm good and i remember starting arguments so she would stop talking because what happens is one lie turns into two turns into a hundred and over ten years you forget you start to forget which lie you told you know things start to conflate and what makes you like mixing up and and the pornography never stopped it would it would be at a low but i you know i go like a month and be like oh wow i'm good and then and man it all culminated i'll never forget february 2010 she was like
what is it i don't know about you terry crews there's something i don't know i can't man it broke me because we were on the phone literally i was in new york she was in california and i was working on a project and now this is another thing i want to say i was very successful very successful you talking rich making money famous popular everybody loved terry crews it was like wow you know mr white chicks mr this this didn't you know it was phenomenal money was rolling in we were doing well and i'm like what she has to complain about you know it's a good life you know and the question i would ask her and i would literally ask myself was like why doesn't she believe me when the question i should have been asking is why am i lying it's two different it's the context the same two different views you know and i had blamed her for not believing me that's that's how deep it goes and i'm gonna tell you success is the warmest place to hide because no one's going to call you on your [ __ ] nobody's going to say hey maybe you should you get a lot of psychopaths you get a lot of people telling me you're telling you you're right you're right i had tons of people like man you good in comparison to everybody else oh my god you never hit your wife you never you you bring the money home you do all this stuff but but i was not real i was a lie i was living a lot and when i told my wife i heard this gasp on the other end [Music] and i was like oh boy i think it's over and she said you know i'm done she's like i don't know who you are i have no idea because see to me it happened ten years ago but to her it happened today i had a few words to say about one of my
sponsors on this podcast as the seasons have begun to change so has my diet and um right now i'm just gonna be completely honest with you i'm starting to think a lot about slimming down a little bit because over the last couple of probably the last four or five months my diet has been pretty bad and it started to show a little bit really over the last two months i go to the gym about 80 of the time so i track it with 10 of my friends in a whatsapp group and this tracker online that we all use together we call it fitness blockchain and i'm currently at 81 percent um so 81 of the days i've done a workout in the last 150 days right so i'm going to the gym about six times a week that's been a little bit impacted by the derivatio live tour but i'm trying to stick to it and so one of the things i'm doing now to reduce my calorie intake and trying to get back to being nutritionally complete and all i eat is i'm having the heel protein shake thank you hill for making a product that i actually like the salted caramel is my favorite i've got the banana one here which is the one my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one what did you tell her i told her that i went to a massage parlor in vancouver and i got a hand job and i said it happened i told her i was like 10 years ago it was a long time ago this is the one thing you don't know why did you tell her on that day because she always asked me like this was the first time you know it was a course of like you're doing something i'm not doing anything what are you doing like leave me alone i'm not like i said why won't you believe me but it became to a point where we were on the phone for so long and she wouldn't let it go a little bit it was like she wore me down to the point of you know like here and let me tell you the shocking thing about me telling her that revelation
i was like she was like i'm gone that's it i'm out and i was like fine leave great thank you now we know because i was still blaming her i was like so you're not gonna stick with me cool you know what i'm terry crews i'm like i'll get another one just like that first of all hollywood does not care if you lose your family in fact i'll get three more movies they're like hey man you have to go home just go right this one set to the next i said since when is hollywood cared if you lost your family since when has that been a career breaker never in fact you get a divorce that's just power for the course and i was like cool you can't handle it you know and i had all kinds of excuses where you know you don't understand my upbringing i got high sex drive um you know this thing you look at all the women i could be having none of that stuff worked man and all of a sudden and she left i remember hanging up the phone and said don't come home i'm still i'm not and then there i was by myself i remember in this hotel room and i was with my little thing like there it is it's over and then a little voice was like maybe it's me i was like who is that you know i was like no no first of all i just gave you the rundown on all the excuses on why it it i had to do what i had to do because that's what i needed it's you terry she's got nothing to do with this and man it was like cracking an egg and i was trying to seal it but the goop was going all over the place and i'm like uh uh i'm trying to put an egg back together and i can't do it i went damn it it is me it is me like i lied like i was lying the whole time
and what i presented to my wife was an image and she was married to that but she wasn't married to the real terry crews she was married to the picture she didn't know and let me tell you man one thing i learned which is so important and incredible after all this and once me and my wife rebuilt our marriage like we're literally from the ground up i learned that intimacy is the only thing i'm looking for and when i say that intimacy really means that someone knows you all your stuff everything about you good and bad and loves you anyway that's all every man is looking for first of all your mama does that your mama knows everything and she loves you anyway that's why your love for your mother will never dissipate a good mom a good mom is always somebody that you like you put on a pedestal why don't men invite or allow that level of intimacy well first of all it's it requires vulnerability it requires you you can't get intimacy without vulnerability it's impossible because you're going to have to tell your stuff and imagine imagine the problem because if you can't tell you'll never find intimacy so but that's the only thing you're looking for so what happens is you get sex sex and love two different things lots of sex and it's always unfulfilling because you're not getting what you need you know what it's like drinking salt water
you drink salt water tastes good feels like you're getting hydrated but you're slowly but surely dehydrating yourself there's this almost apparent paradox between when you're a man you think that masculinity is the opposite of vulnerability right and you think masculinity is attractive and also in your case it can it can be our self-defense through the hardest of times so the thing that ends up being was our self-defense and helped us to survive ends up thing that being the thing that stops us from being able to thrive right in there in their world and that like at some point i see it on this this this podcast the example i give is patrice evra who was the famous manchester united football player champion you know won all the titles tough guy right grew up on the streets of france where there was gangs and he was sexually abused and he was in a household where his brother had an overdose and he was around that environment and he built this like tough exterior to help him get through that yeah but then he gets into his later life and has kids and he's cold with his kids and he's cold with his partner and then one day his wife's nagging him and saying what's wrong with you what's wrong with you want any cracks and at 40 odd years old or whatever he was at the time he for the first time ever tell someone he was sexually abused by his headmaster and and about all that pain that he had been you know he'd held behind that shield of his masculinity and until then he describes the same thing until then he wasn't able to have a real intimate relationship with anybody right and i think it's interesting because so many men listening to this you know and i was definitely one of them um um would have used masculinity or what we think masculinity is as a way to survive and to fit in and to get get through and then it gets in our way yeah later well i mean everything works until it doesn't drugs work until they don't my pornography addiction worked until it didn't did you tell her about that yes
i told her everything you know we had a thing and this is what was we required in therapy was the term is disclosure and you have and you have to answer every question she has truthfully and honestly and i'ma tell you man it was like shooting her it was like shooting her um it was wild i remember in the nfl that i look back on and i thought were you know moments of camaraderie but they were really it was really disturbingly twisted and that you know we would land a plane you go to the strip club and all the guys be you know you feel like okay they're like i mean we're going to the club we're going to magic city atlanta we're doing it and you're like okay are we going down there and you go into the club and all of a sudden there's girls out there and they're doing their thing and then all of a sudden one of the girls would come off the stage and then they'd want to talk to the players and it's like hey how are you doing you know i got my kids and i'm doing it it's like ah stop stop stop stop stop you're ruining it because she's talking kids she's talking life she's talking stuff the problem was she was becoming a human being before our eyes just get back up on the stage and be a doll be a picture because pictures don't talk back you know what i mean like you humans do but you be a mannequin and you can we can manipulate you in any way we want but don't talk because you're ruining it and when i say i've said this before and a lot of people got on me but um there was there's it was a thing where we didn't really think women were as human as men were
that's that's a horrible thought but it was everything that i was taught um in my culture it was like hey man when you got understand growing up in flint in the hood the whole thing was like hey man you better get your you better tell your girl something better get her in line and you you were you owned your family not like you served them you owned them you owned your girl or girls you know the pimp mentality was praised oh what's up pam oh that's my pimp right there i mean these are father's kids one of my best friends you know his dad took him to a prostitute just to make sure he wasn't gay huh you're talking about severely abusive behavior i don't even you know this is another thing i even bring it up in the book you know this was another thing even amongst the women you know my mother there was one time my mother felt like she owned us and i remember she made me she she called me in the room and she said you got hair down there i was like what head down there she said yeah she said you have yes you have hair down there i said down where what are you talking about there and she points at my privates i'm like yeah i guess and she said pull it down let me see put your pants down what pull your pants down let me see man i'll never forget it you know pull them down i'm looking out the window i'm just like trying to be somewhere anywhere other than here but it was that extreme religious controlled vibe where it was like i control you to the point where i can just make you pull your pants down inspect you and listen i don't think it was it wasn't sexual in
nature but it was definitely abusive in nature and it was to let me know that i run this and i remember pulling my pants up and trying to forget it for years for years and i confronted my mother about it i remember when i was grown and again already successful but i had already went through d-day with my wife and going through therapy and i called my mother i said do you remember when you when you made me do that she said do what i said ma remember she said i didn't do that i said mom you did that and she denied it and then my sister came in and was like why are you trying to break up the family are you trying to do all this stuff in it i was like i didn't make this up and she said well if it if it did happen i was young and stupid and you know and she just tried to excuse it and this thing because it's too painful it's too painful no one wants to know they hurt their kids but it happened and it was part of me getting through every little bit and see i called the book tough because remember i brought up the fact that you know the courage to control the things you can you can there's a lot you can control about yourself see i was hope like literally helpless to do like whichever way the wind blew terry crews was going what else can i do this is another thing where you could bait me into anything i could you know another thing here in my culture it was that you know if somebody called you [ __ ] you knock them out no matter what no questions asked don't even hesitate
you supposed to and they would tell you hey man you anybody call you [ __ ] knock them out well the thing is though is that usually when you do that you go to jail you can't prove somebody calls you a [ __ ] unless it's recorded and then it's like your word against but somebody's laying on the ground you just assaulted somebody it's no different than if you go to a football game and somebody does a cheap shot and you hit them back who gets ejected the jail is full of black men who were baited by a word and had to have to follow the rules we got to follow the rules right so anybody call you [ __ ] you get knocked out but here's the point and here's the thing that changed for me and this is where i learned what i could control there are no [ __ ] no such thing you might as well call somebody a leprechaun there's no such thing as a [ __ ] and i said holy cow i can get mad about someone calling me something i'm not like the thing i like to say is bill gates if you call him broke he just look at you and go go in his helicopter and fly away you know what i mean he wouldn't even be threatened by that but here's the thing if you really do think you're a [ __ ] that's when it affects you that's when you want to fight and i said but i'm not a [ __ ] and i realized that there was so much i could let wash off because i examined it and i and i put it to the test but you got to be tough to do that when you look back on that period what was your lowest moment i would have to say that the day i went to [Music] that massage problem it was law i wrote i write about in the book i just think
it's just and i describe it in detail just because i never thought i would do something like that on my wife like how did i end up here you know you just look around like what in the world you know it's like um it's almost like having a faulty instrument panel and you're trying to get to seattle and you end up in mexico you're like what in the world how did i do this it was low like i that was the real moment i actually considered suicide like for a minute i remember thinking what if i just found a way to die and then make it look like it was an accident you know like i was kind of thinking of things you know after the massage parlor yeah or the ten years ten years later when you start speaking no no that was after i mean that 2000 was a dark time that's why i was like to me d-day 10 years later was actually an awakening because it all happened in one day it was like denial and then all of a sudden acceptance that i got it screwed up um i don't i don't look at d-day as a low day at all i look at it as the day i woke up the day of like wow i was forced to see myself as i really was because i i had a great image of myself and it was like oh i'm this i'm and i'm not that bad because i'm in comparison to everyone else i'm great but it didn't it did not pass muster because she had to be the one to dictate that one of the other symptoms of being tough is introduced in the prologue section of the book where you talk about the day where you get in an altercation and there's extreme violence i mean violence shows up there but but you also see it throughout your story and the other key moment that really stayed in my mind and it was a very graphic scene is when i believe you're on the way to dinner with your wife and you get a phone call saying that big terry your
father has punched your mother again and her tooth is turned in her mouth tell me about that phone call man first of all i i made my father vow i said man look i'm bringing my kids this is the first time i'd actually been in hollywood this is post nfl i have already had a job but my first job was a tv show called battle dome where i basically beat people up uh it was like american gladiators on steroids um they put me in a cage set the ends on fire and i would take three contestants and pummel them it was i mean hey look i know about violence okay and i could do it um and so i came back home for christmas and we call it the christmas from hell and so we were there and we're going out to dinner with some friends and detroit is about 45 minutes from flint and we were driving to detroit with me and my wife to go see our friends and we get a call we're literally 10 minutes into the ride and i get a call from my aunt she's like oh my god you know your father hit your mother and i'm like what he was drinking somehow the holidays brings out the alcohol you know everybody wants to drink on alcohol it's really activating triggering for alcoholics and i said did my kids see it she said yes terry they saw it they were real kids my kids were there how old were you oh i was uh i just started so i was about 31 32 years old and um yeah man it was i couldn't believe it because i told him i said man my kids have never came up in this they've never seen this you know and and i have three daughters at the time not five now but i couldn't believe and they were they were just shocked they had never been in that and all i remember is just the the the feeling of surreal terror you know what i mean like this big man is beating my mother up what do i do i
don't know you know and then they were in there like why is he doing this like they never seen it and i said damn it man i turned that i did a u-turn i said listen take the kids take them over your house make sure it's just me and victoria in that house understand make sure of it she got the kids out whole thing dude i roll up in that house i say hey man didn't i tell you he said oh man shut up man get out my face pow hit him dead in his mouth and there it was i was like man all those times you beat my mother up all those times i was running around five years old scared couldn't do nothing froze up i'm bigger than your ass now huh how you like that pow pow he's screaming at me to stop he's bleeding he's screaming and i'm just wailing on a man and i'm like no how you like that how this is how she felt and you're crying while you're doing this i beat his ass and i'm in tears but listen to me man it was nothing it was empty like nothing i i thought there it is i got revenge revenge is complete and it was hollow it was like an empty box it's like a big box with a giant bow on it what now i was like you just beat up your dad big deal it didn't settle the score didn't change him didn't fix my mother's tooth didn't do anything my mother moved right back in i was like what the hell and so i didn't come back home for 10 years after that i was tired i i remember just being shot like this this was supposed to be so good this was supposed to be so sweet
it was nothing it didn't work and you know one thing i discovered even in writing this book was that you can either have success or revenge but you can't have both it's success would have been transcending that moment taking your mother out of there and just leaving him onto his own devices because that's a punishment you let these people do you know these kind of people that stuff doesn't work because it just makes them more angry you know me makes the whole world blind doesn't it it makes the whole world blind but success is when you leave but revenge is quick i'm gonna have to say this because there was a time when i was will smith when you could say something i would have walked up on that stage and smacked you but when i learned how to be chris rod when i learned how to keep control and actually not let things descend into chaos because that's what that could have been when you look at chris and if he'd imagine if he'd have fought back there would have been no recovering that would have been the end of the academy awards i already was by the way but it would have been complete bedlam quick one as you might know crafted are one of the sponsors of this podcast and crafted are a jewelry brand and they make really meaningful pieces of jewellery and this piece by crafted when i put it on for me it represents courage it represents ambition it represents being calm and loving and respectful and nurturing while also being the antithesis of that seemingly the antithesis of that which is um sometimes a little bit aggressive with my goals and determined and courageous and brave the really wonderful thing about crafted jewelry is it's super affordable it
looks amazing the pieces hold tremendous meaning and they are really well made what was the process for you to become that man to take on your ego and i remember reading about the moment when you're on holiday and your daughter spills her drink and yeah and you would have reacted it was actually my son it was my son yeah spills his drink and you would have normally reacted with anger or being mad at that moment but your your wife actually noticed that you didn't and she said to you you've actually changed that was the moment wait first of all what was it that changed you what was the process you know remember this was years in okay and it was small minor minor changes just one after the other one after the other it was a process of constantly examining you got understand like there was a moment where i would walk outside and it would look different like oh like the sun would look different and it was weird i'll never forget um coming out of therapy and this guy was like they were like terry you have to learn how to tell people no because i was a pleaser and so i remember being at dinner and people were like can i get autographs i'm like yeah and i would sign autographs for an hour with my family there and my my wife was like terry we're here we can't even enjoy it i said yeah but these are my fans these are the people that pay our bills and then she's like you got you can't tell them no just for an hour and i couldn't because i was like i got to play and there's i remember being in counseling and the counselor asked me she said what if a director told you to do something you didn't want to do i said well i have to do it and she said no you don't i said yes i do she said no you don't terry i said well i'm an actor he said yeah but you don't have to do what the direct everything the director tells you to do i said yes i do because i'm an actor and she's like no
no you don't she said terry you don't have to do that i said but i would lose my job and she said well get another job i said but i'm an actor and she said terry you don't have to do what you don't want to do i didn't know especially since i was such a pleaser it was one of them things well yeah yeah and i'll never forget this guy came up to me saying man can i get an autograph and i was gonna do it i was in practice i said and i looked at him i said no he said come on man come on man i said no no no and i went crazy the guy was like dude relax man and i was like shaking it was the first time i was exercising this no my no no and i was shaking i got back in the car and i said you guys i was going i thought i was going crazy i thought i was going crazy but what i was doing was dissecting and piecing and understanding who i was and what made me tick and it's so thorough and it got so thorough to the point where i was like oh that why do i feel angry if someone says that or why am i why am i insulted why is it me or is it them and see and once i started asking these questions i could let it go and i was like oh man that's got nothing to do with me but whereas before it was just you insulted me and dude the process of doing this kept going on and on and on and on and on and on to the point where when my son spilled that water i knew he was innocent whereas before he would be guilty whereas before man watch where you're going you got to pay attention if you don't pay attention now then you spilled this water all over the place and then you know how much this cost then i would have went all you know how many i can't count to you how many family gatherings are ruined
how many you know theme park outings i've crushed people in tears i'm going back to the room because i just everything had to be perfect everything had to be the way it's supposed to be and then you didn't do it the way i wanted it was it was hot my way or the highway but dude that moment he spilled that water and i was like oh man it's okay it's all right dude everybody on that table was like are you serious and my wife looked at me she looked at me she said i was different and i knew i was after all we've been through i'll never forget she said terry you're different terry i'm with you she said i love you i said oh god i stuck with you because you were willing to do the work and it was uh that's what i knew that's what i knew and that's one of the biggest reasons why i have to tell it simply because i don't want people to feel like they're alone i don't want men to feel like they're alone i want men to feel like it's just them and they don't know any way out in the whole thing i said i have to be vulnerable i have to share this part so that you know how far i came you know this i have no interest in showing that image anymore i have no idea like i said i i told you earlier i've moved from fiction to non-fiction why did that mean so much to you when she said that wow because i knew i wanted to make it right it's not enough to say you're sorry it's just not enough it's like it's not enough to hit people in your car and go my bad and pull off but you have to understand in the world
today you said my bad i said i'm sorry bye and you leave people broken you just hit somebody with your car and you pull off and go like my bad yell it out it's not enough not enough i damaged my family i damaged my wife and that's when i knew when the person i hit can come back and tell me they love me and they hug me and they know that i was truly sorry that's the forgiveness i always wanted that's what i wanted and you have to make amends you have to do what's within your power to make things right and again a lot has been said for just yeah i said i'm sorry and the whole thing but man it's just never enough you have to do the work and and you have to pay the price like you have to stay by the stay by whoever you hit you got to wait till the ambulance comes you got to wait till the police comes you got to fill out the police report you got to own up to it and that's what i did what do you think your life would be like if you hadn't looked yourself in the mirror and started to own up to and confront that i i don't believe i'd be here today i really don't um my temper i would have went off on somebody um i don't i don't i honestly can't say i know i wouldn't be married i probably you know the division is you know hollywood and relationship to relationship just trying to find somebody that would stick with me long enough for the pictures um not love man you know this whole thing it's wild because unless somebody knows who you are
and and really really is willing to love you um you know hollywood doesn't do that he doesn't operate like that in fact what's so crazy about hollywood is that they'll make movies about love like there's the main star will be like the star will be talking about oh my god you know there'll be like this great movie that was all about this lovely relationship and he's a rapist that's this town you know what i mean and it's wild but it's real uh i mean they don't make no it's the same thing that happened to me when uh my own agent assaulted me and i went to the head of the motion picture department and i was like hey man i said this dude you can't molest the clients and the guy looked at me and said he's a partner yeah yeah he can your agent at a party well documented yes came up to you and started great grabbed my private she grabbed my dick basically and i'm like yo i look i don't know what he was on because he wasn't drunk but he was on something okay i don't know what it was i have no idea but he was not acting himself he was licking his tongue out and acting all funny and weird it's like he was tweaking this nervous weird energy like somebody had a molly or something crazy he was not there okay and i was just like man he was looking at me like oh my god i don't know what was and his wife was there and my wife was there and again it was really weird because here we are and this really you know hollywood party hot famous people everywhere and here he's listen he's the lones agent he's eddie murphy's agent he's adam sandler's agent he's the head of the motion picture department at william morris endeavor and he lost his mind and look i pushed him off he comes back
again i push him off again i'm like yo man [ __ ] off me man and he starts laughing ah and i'm going what now i'm feeling so crazy now i'm about to put my hand through his head and my wife i looked at her and she's and this is where i went to because my wife has seen me there's a long trail of people who've been knocked out by terry crews okay so she looked at me but there was a time a long time ago she made me promise that i would not be violent anymore and i was part of the therapy it was part of what we're doing and i realized this was another trial this was no different than being called [ __ ] this was no different than a pull and a bait that if i went for it and what's so crazy is i asked people the question like if i had knocked him out because a lot of people said you should have just done it man what's wrong with you man you're weak but i go would you believe me no no you even you the people who say that i should have done it would you have believed the story that this guy grabbed my balls and i just whale and i wailed off on him and he happens to be the head of the motion picture department why would he do that terry crews big superstar probably got drunk probably knocked him out because he got angry hey man nobody would believe that but you believe me now [Music] because i didn't do it when people take that you took that to your agency the head of your agency and you told him what what had happened and he said he said well
he's a partner and he said listen this is what i'm gonna do terry he said i'm gonna take his title and he's going to be suspended for 30 days and i went huh so you're going to send him on vacation was he giving you that fake energy you know when they're fake handling it was this fake it was like dealing with the devil and he first of all when i met with him he was like i'm going to give you a meeting as if the he was going to grace he was going to let me grace his presence because you know he owns all these people in hollywood and i'm like what the hell when people talk about why they didn't come forward they often mention an element of fear yes for what that powerful individual might do to their career or their life or what happened even right after it happened he told me the other day did adam bennett called me he was like i'm sorry i was broke and you know what i said hey man you got to be held responsible for what you just did i don't know what's up so what's up and so everybody told me we're taking this very seriously and we're going to be we're going to get back to you with some with what's going to happen nothing happened right so a year later when the metoo thing happens i snapped because i knew nothing was going down they let them get away with it and so when i when i met with ari i said hey ari i said man first of all you wrote a letter to mel gibson demanding that he be kicked out of hollywood for anti-semitic remarks you wrote a letter to the huffington post you can google it right now and it tells how he needs to be kicked out i said look anti-semitic remarks as reprehensible as they are are not illegal i said but sexual assault is
i said you i don't you're talking about a a a 30-day suspension i said man you can't molest the clients and come back to work ever i said if somebody in the mail room did this they'd be out how much more the head of the agency a partner i said what are you saying he said it's different and you know what it reminded me of it reminded me of the standing happened to will smith it's different it's well smiled chris rock standing over there nobody goes to him he's standing all by himself but who's bigger who's got the best light ah we love well it's different and i said dude no it's not no and i said all right man i said you really want this and he said hey man it is what it is i said okay i see you when i see you and what happened was i decided to sue i spent 500 000 of my own money suing william morris endeavor and what was crazy is that they bought me every step of the way until people came out of the woodwork people like terry he did this to me too let me join your case i was like because remember you don't rob the biggest you know bank on the in the city you start out with the branches you start out smaller and all these people started to come out of the woodwork about what this man had done and then all of a sudden they were white flag our bad and he decided to do we they decided to retire him so he basically retired you're not allowed to say fire but he was retired and i was like good and i didn't want any money i never
wanted money in the first place because their whole thing was they were scared of while you were what how much do you want i don't want to die i said dude i would spend a million dollars to win one dollar so what do you want to do and so what they did i got my my attorney fees back he was gone and but that's all they should have done in the first place because it's unacceptable remember it's not enough to say my bad you can't tell me you can't grab me in front of my wife and all this and be like oh my bad i got high that day that's not enough does will smith remind you of who you used to be in that moment because this is why listen i love will and i love chris you know i love will and all i could think about was like oh my god that's me that was me and does that give you empathy for yes yes yes i hope that's what everybody's getting from this interview because i had nothing but empathy for will at that time because i'm going no no he got pulled in he got baited you know a joke now again it wasn't funny it's not even one of chris's best jokes it wasn't even and i looked at that thing and i went oh no well no and and it didn't hit me until he was back in his chair and you saw he lost it and he was saying these things and i said oh no because it reminded me of it just reminded me i would have done that man i would have done worse than that i'll be honest what will what will did was nice compared to the stuff i did one of the things that you say in your book in section 2 which is titled shame is that your overachieving came from insecurity which is the other side the other
consequence of the context in which you were raised right the other the other side of it so you've got the one side which created anger and all of these other things and these the escape of pornography but the other side of it the thing that everybody claps for which made you an anomaly as well and gave you that drive and that hard work was was your success and that came from the same place and that's sometimes funny when you think the thing my light side and my dark side originated from the same catalyst yes right yes it and it's um it it's it's kind of wild because these things you know if you get a lot done when you are running off shame or even even revenge these kind of things you get a lot done like this energizes like okay i gotta prove that i'm this i gotta prove it and again it's it's typically i would i you know i've seen women do it too but i would say for men it's a typical move where we feel bad but then you have to find a way to feel good about yourself you know what i mean and you have to find something to feel good about so you immerse yourself in work you know is that what you did i did oh definitely were you like a obsessed or a worker oh my god i mean hey man you talking about i used to i'm the kind of guy who would work out until you passed out like like work out to every muscle in my body cramped up because i'm trying to figure out you know you came you're an nfl player it didn't go great for you there right and then you arrive in la and without acting training like extensive acting training without coming from hollywood in your 30s you managed to build this career and become a really successful actor you spend the first two years in la you know pretty pretty broke working jobs people want to work but then you rise from that point to become this tremendously successful actor in a
completely different field at a time in life where people would consider pretty late to get into acting in your 30s and i'm looking at that thinking what was it about terry that made him successful in that discipline when that where that's not where he came from he came from the nfl he came from art school right but i have to say um it was the only thing i could feel good about myself for you know what i mean like it was one of those things where all my self-worth came from it that's why when she said you know what what if a director did something you didn't want you to do i said i have to do it because everything i was wrapped up in their opinion of me you see what i mean so you go farther than that you do that you you it was people going around block once i go around the block four times so i remember even being on security you know we would stand for 12 hours straight you know and so i remember just being this person who you know they were like we can break you for lunch but i would bring my own lunch and have a stand right there right next to me and i would jog in place you're a joke in place oh yeah oh yeah i mean i was gonna get the workout in and i said i'm never gonna let my body get down i'm gonna because see remember like mom i'm gonna be the best kid i'm gonna be the best kid in the church that you've ever seen because of the pleaser thing and the whole thing and then the shame would make you bad again and always knowing and feeling in your heart that at your core you're bad so you must never get there in fact do so much you never be alone you know i mean do so much that you don't have to face yourself because then things start to fall out then things start to fall apart so
dude you know i had i had like three jobs at the same time there were times i was like i would sleep in four hours and i would get up and do the security job then i'll go to my bouncing gig and i would do two or three i would try to get another gig on the other side and then even as an actor it was it was actually illegal i was doing three movies at the same time one time you can't do that but i didn't tell anybody but i was that focused i was like man i'm here i'm here and i can show them i can be i can be beyond and see for me it was like you know you have to understand the nfl you know for me it was now about catching ability throwing ability it was my ability to take tremendous amounts of pain that was my skill in the nfl i could take a lot of pain i could endure a lot and so i was like i'm going to i'm just going to be unstoppable when you start doing the work with the therapist and you start unpacking a lot of this stuff how does this change your relationship with work oh it became where hey man you're good because you're because you're you and then the default because this is another thing i had to and one thing that our therapist would really highlight for me was have you ever seen a a child is not bad and it hit me that if that was our state then children would be evil you know all children would be evil but no no all children are good and it's programmable and so what i did i put a picture of myself on my desktop in my computer and then i had even printed it out put it in a little frame and it was me at six years old like my little two teeth missing
and i was like that's you man i get i get choked up looking at it because it's like even i think about it i'm like that's still you hello good little boy what would you tell him if he was sitting right next to you if he was sitting right next to you what would you tell him you would hug him you know the little boy who kissed his dad and got shunned out the room you would be like man it's okay i love you man you're a good boy you know i'm the same person i'm still him i'm still him i got in touch with that dude and i said that's who i am and that got rid of the shame now guilt is good guilt says you did something wrong and you need to fix it but you need the shame ain't working you ain't got nothing to be shamed about nothing you know it's funny because that people make i remember being in high school and you do something dumb and fart by mistake oh and they're like ah i don't fart i know people literally say that man i never farted ever and you're like oh man you don't fire oh man am i the only one i started to realize man that shame stuff it's manipulative it's people use that stuff i never did that and now all they're doing is trying to one-up you and i realized man just be you you know what one thing i that that changed for me is i stopped competing with people and i said don't try to be the best be the only be the only there's only one terry crews if you want terry crews you got you got to get terry crew you know you see in scripts they're like terry crews type you know i i don't know i love everybody i love to rock i love kevin hart i love all these other guys but i'm terry crews you never be like me
and i'll never be like them i'm the only and by being the only you are the best that's it and i went oh my god like that was watershed so much pressure off you see what i'm saying it's like whoa now i'm working because i like it i'm not working because i gotta prove it and keep up with all of this he's got two houses i need three because this is another thing i started to ask myself what am i missing am i missing anything i'm not if i got one house am i missing something no if i have one wife that loves me am i missing something because i don't have 10 girlfriends i'm telling you it's it's powerful terry thank you thank you um a very necessary book in our time that's the best way i can describe it because and i feel privileged to have had the joy to read it before it's come out but a very necessary book for all the reasons that i'm sure are evident for everyone listening today but you know there's a lot of men and women because this is you know it takes two to tango but it also takes two to understand um there's a lot of men and women suffering from the consequences of the things that cause the insidious toxic corruptive behavior you see in people in men today and your book is tackles that head-on in the most vulnerable honest important way and the only way to be honest you are a man that represents for many especially in movies being strong and what you do in this book is you redefine what being strong means and that's certainly something that i took away from it and will have a big impact on my life going forward so thank you so much for your time and everything and writing such an important book i think it's going to be an absolute tremendous hurt especially for the people that listen to this and we do have a closing tradition on this podcast which is the last guest writes a question for the next guest so in a weird way they all have a conversation with each other okay and i don't get to read it until open source what is your mood right now my mood right now
is satiated that's the only way i can describe it it feels feels good it's just get it out talk about your life the way you want to talk about it you know what's i think social media pulls everything out of context and so compu you mean something and someone can say it means another thing but this is it's a very satisfying and satiating feeling to be able to talk and tell your story and not have it be taken out of context so beautiful that's my mood right now terry thank you thank you thank you [Music] oh [Music] [Music]