George Lopez: Truth, Comedy and Moving Forward

Comedian George Lopez sat down with SiriusXM host Ron Bennington in front of a live studio audience to talk about his new FX show, “Saint George” and answer audience questions. SiriusXM subscribers asked Lopez questions about his former late night talk show “Lopez Tonight,” his ABC sitcom “George Lopez” and his first time on stage. He also spoke frankly about his recent “TMZ” incident.

Only a month ago, a photo of Lopez passed out on a casino floor made it to TMZ, making big headlines– such big headlines in fact that TMZ was waiting for Lopez as he walked into SiriusXM for the interview. But where some celebrities might be uncomfortable talking about an incident like that, Lopez isn’t afraid to address it. “I woke up in the morning and saw that it was a story, and then I saw the picture and I was like holy shit, the day I didn’t wear my spanx,” he told the audience. Pain, he explained, is a part of comedy– a valuable lesson he learned from his friend Richard Pryor. In fact, after the picture hit the news, one of the first people to reach out to Lopez, was Pryor’s widow who reminded him that Pryor would have used the incident to create more material.

Pryor was a friend and influence, but it was Freddie Prinze Sr. who first inspired  Lopez  to be a comedian in the first place.  He  heard Prinze do standup for the very first time when Lopez was only 11. “He had done stand up and he was from Washington Heights,” Lopez said, “and I saw him, I saw a Latino for the first time, young dude, handsome guy in control…I was turned on.”  In fact, he had such regard for the Chico and the Man star, that when Prinze killed himself, Lopez was distraught. So distraught, that he would spend time at Prinze’s grave, and even stole his headstone, just to have something to keep close.

When he was laid to rest in Forest Lawn, I used to go see him, you know, and I used to go talk to him. One day I noticed that one of the bolts to the headstone was loose, and I pried it and broke it off, and I stoled his headstone from Forest Lawn, and I took it with me, and I kept it in my house. I kept it between my mattress and my bed.

Lopez also talked openly about some of the criticism he’s been hearing for his new show, Saint George.  It’s a different show than his former ABC sitcom, he cautions his fans.  “A different time and a different tone.”

The crazy thing about Saint George is— my first show, god bless it, you know I’m honored for it to still be on–  and Saint George is an exaggeration of life.  When you see social media, you’ll see, ‘man, Saint George, that bullshit’ ‘that’s unbelievable man you sold out, you jumped the shark’; or punked. Listen, to think that a Latino would become successful and marry a white woman,  and have a kid he didn’t connect to, and get divorced and lose half his money, and have his family still try to pull him back to the old life when he’s trying to find his way being divorced and start a new life,  then I’ll take my future in the unbelievable world then.  Because that happens very day, and you have to find out who you are, and marrying somebody who guys perceive as a prize is not always the prize.  So I’ll take the criticism.

“Saint George is a funny show,” he said, “and I think people will like it.”  Watch all ten episodes, he says, because the cast is great, particularly Danny Trejo.

“Trejo… Machete… is a badass  is playing a fumbling bumbling uncle who never has a shirt on, and is always drinking a beer, to me, is the most impressive thing. I don’t care about me.  That’s the character that I would watch.  That one.”

When he was asked if he had any regrets from his career, he talked about one aspect of  his TBS late night show Lopez Live, that he regretted.   Although he loved talking with guests, the gossip aspect of doing a talk show was something he hated.

To be honest with you there’s a thing about talk show hosts, where you have to make fun of people and their personal lives. The one thing I don’t miss, is having to blow out people every night in a monologue and then trying to dig deeper and kill them every night. It crosses a line sometimes. That one part of the talk show– I’ve never told this to anybody—that I didn’t like, was fucking with people who were famous because of the shit that went wrong with them in their lives.

And, he told the audience, the competitiveness of late night, and the rise of the internet has made it even worse.  “There is a meanness to comedy that wasn’t there when I started,” Lopez said, “and a disrespect of people’s private lives that I prefer to live without.”

Those feelings, no doubt are heightened by own experiences, but he’s moved on.  “I don’t drink anymore…..because of what happened in Canada about a month ago.” he said.  “I thought it was a great end to that first run, it’s like falling asleep in a casino, getting a picture in TMZ having everybody see it,  and then getting up and then saying I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since  I got up in that casino in Windsor,  is what Richard [Pryor] would say, is better comedy material, better comedy landscape.”