Tracy Morgan on NPR Fresh Air
I’m a huge Tracey Morgan fan. Like most people who are familiar with Tracy Morgan, I think of his run on TV shows Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock and his various YouTube clips acting out, making the interview job painful. But there’s one interview (I’ve read and heard nearly all of them) that really captures the pain and struggle of his formative years in Brooklyn, NY. It’s an NPR Fresh Air interview promoting his memoir I Am the New Black. During the 40 minute interview, we learn about Tracy’s time as a crack-dealer, his father’s death of AIDS, and how he ran away from his mother. The interview was so emotionally powerful that Terry Gross named it her 2009 interview of the year.
Without a doubt, the saddest part is around 13:00, hearing Tracy weep as he described returning home to take his siblings away from his mother:
“…that was the hardest day of my life, and I heard my mother cry…and it just broke me down…and I think about it now…I never meant to hurt my mother.”