Tracy Morgan Is Better Than Ever: 'This Time I Came Back Bearing Gifts'
Tracy Morgan (Photo: Getty Images)
Seventeen months after a car crash that nearly left him brain-dead, Tracy Morgan has made a miraculous recovery and is now getting back to work — and we’re not just talking about how he hosted Saturday Night Live last month. He’s in this week’s The Night Before, and next year he’ll be touring the country with the aptly named Picking Up the Pieces Tour.
The 47-year-old also is stating outright that he’s back and better then ever in a set of new ads for Foot Locker’s Week of Greatness. Yahoo Celebrity sat down with the former 30 Rock star to talk about being “back” and looking to the future.
Yahoo Celebrity: For you, what’s the definition of being back?
Tracy Morgan: Well, coming from out of a coma, to me being back means coming out of a coma. That’s being back. When you’re in a coma, you’re pretty much knocking on the door, so to ask me that is a different definition [of being back] than normal people who’ve never been in a coma. The most important part of my recovery: coming out of that coma. If I don’t come out of the coma, there is no recovery.
People have been amazed at how quickly you’ve made such progress…
I think people are more just amazed that I’m alive. You could look at it as me being funny and all those things, but in my mind and in my eyes, people are just happy that I’m alive and that I survived that crash. Nobody wants to see anyone die like that. That was really terrible what happened to Jimmy Mack [Morgan’s friend James McNair who died in the same crash].
People see something like that happen to someone so high profile and it makes them think about their own lives.
Mortality. And if it could happen to Tracy Morgan it could happen to me. I’ll be on the road sometimes, I see people tweeting and texting and … some people just don’t get it. And then there are a lot of us that do, but to have the opportunity to do Foot Locker’s Week of Greatness is appropriate because I am back to doing what I love to do, like stand-up and commercials and show business period.
When I was at the Emmys, my community, which is the show business community, welcomed me back and that just felt really good and it did a lot for my confidence like, “Yeah, brother, look at Jon Hamm!” Like, “Yeah!” It felt good to see Tina [Fey] and LL [Cool J] and all these people welcomed me back and being just happy generally for me surviving that. For me to have the honor of making you and everyone else in this room laugh again, it’s an honor for me. It makes me feel like, yo, I came back, this time I came back bearing gifts.
So take me to the SNL stage: What was it like being back there hosting?
The first show, which was the dress show, I was sort of in my own head, thinking that people were feeling sorry for me. And then I spoke to [creator and producer] Lorne Michaels in between the dress show and the air show. He said, “Tracy, forget everything. These people are just happy to see you here.” And then I saw the young cast giving me everything that they had and I saw the audience loving the fact that I was just there and alive and well. Then I said, I’m going to give these people everything I’ve got and I let go and I let God, simple and plain. It was a great show. You’ve got to understand, this time last year, I didn’t think I was ever going to do that, so I’m here.
Tracy Morgan and wife Megan Wollover kiss their daughter Maven at Foot Locker’s Week of Greatness event. (Photo: Getty Images)
What is it about sneakers that people get so into?
People can tell really what type of person you are just by your kicks. When you look at somebody, you’re sizing them up, you start with the feet. When I get dressed, every day all my life, I start with my kicks first. Then I match everything up according with that. That’s big time in my community.
How did this come together, you doing their ads?
They chose me to do this, to represent them and I was happy. … One day I got the phone call from my agent, “Foot Locker wants to team up with you,” and I said, “Done, we don’t need to go into details.” It was sort of like Bruce Lee with Kareem Adbul-Jabbar when they made Game of Death. They were friends already and one day Bruce Lee called Kareem Abdul-Jabbar all the way from China — it was like three in the morning here — and said, “I’m doing a karate movie.” Kareem said, “I’m in,” and that was it.
What’s the number one thing you look for when you’re buying a shoe?
For me, I can’t speak for anyone else, for me it’s all style. I don’t have a need for speed; I don’t work out. For me, I like to show up and everybody goes, “Wow, those are fly. Where’d you get those from?”
