Issue date: September 17, 2000

Outfoxing his audience

Actor-comic Jamie Foxx works hard at honing his jokes to reach out to all races. But he's fed up with today's disrespectful kids.

By Jeffrey Zaslow

In his quest to be a superstar comedian for all races, Jamie Foxx is willing to come to your town and tell jokes you won't find funny. "Here's my method," he says. "I'll go to Des Moines, an all-white audience, and do an hour and a half of my black material. Some of it goes great. Some they don't understand. I'll take the 30 minutes they understand and leave that in my act."

Then he'll take the topical material whites find funniest and deliver it to a black audience in Detroit. He tests every line, every bit of slang, and watches every blank face. By the end, he says, he has a full, funny act that'll play nationwide.

Foxx, who impressed critics last winter as the swaggering quarterback in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday, is back in theaters this week in a comic thriller, Bait. His WB sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show, is entering its fifth season, and he's slated to star -- opposite singer Lauryn Hill, he hopes -- in a remake of A Star Is Born. But what has him most excited is a new sketch comedy show he'll host on the WB at midseason. He's now on the road honing material. "It'll be an urban hip-hop Hee Haw with a splash of Flip Wilson, the pulse of The Carol Burnett Show and the ghosts of In Living Color and The Ed Sullivan Show."

At 33, Foxx himself is a mix of several worlds. Born Eric Bishop and raised by his grandparents in Terrell, Texas, he was a choirboy, Boy Scout and high school football quarterback. He describes his grandmother as a loving disciplinarian who kept him in line with belts and switches. He's grateful for it.

"Kids today don't have any discipline," he says. "When I was 13 and saw someone older, I'd call him 'Sir' and get out of the way. Kids come up to me and say, 'Wassup, fool? You're that dude Jamie Foxx!' I say, 'I'm not a fool.' Then, if I talk to their parents, they say, 'What's the problem?' They don't even understand.' "

Foxx has a 6-year-old daughter who lives with her mother near Foxx's home in Los Angeles. He says he's a tough parent. "I teach her to be respectful." The issue of respect is paramount for Foxx. When Bill Cosby and NAACP leaders criticized his movie Booty Call for negative portrayals of African Americans, Foxx says, he showed them great deference. "Those guys are older, so they have the right to say what they want. I respect them."

Though he's an adherent of certain old-fashioned values, marriage is not of them. "Hey, man, what's the use?" he says. "These days, people only stay together five, six years. Maybe when I'm 65 I'll do it." He enjoys his reputation as a partying ladies' man. His house is "like a floating club. I need to get a velvet rope and two big security guards." People hang out at his house at all hours. Why doesn't he send them home?

"Hey," he says, "you can't stop a party."

Contributing Editor Jeffrey Zaslow is an advice columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Photo by Wayne Stambler for USA WEEKEND.