During the worst period of his career, former NFL star and actor Terry Crews likened his real life to a Hollywood spy movie … one in which he is being followed and his phones are tapped. People were out to destroy him, he said on the “The Clay Cane Show.”
Career sabotage, Crews said in the radio interview, was part of the backlash from Crews’ willingness to speak out during the pinnacle of the #MeToo movement and disclose that he, too, had been sexually assaulted by his male agent.
When the 50-year-old father of five was asked by Clay Cane if he felt that he had escaped the plantation, Crews answered in the affirmative.
“I do simply because I’m free,” said the Flint, Mich., native. “I ran away, I’m a slave who ran away. There a lot of people still caught up in it because of what they can do. You got to understand, I was being followed, phone was tapped … you talking a lot of money, a billion dollar industry. The whole point was to find dirt on me that they could use against me.”
Despite not being able to defame him personally, Crews said the industry temporarily but unofficially blacklisted him as a vendetta for filing a lawsuit against former agent Adam Venit for grabbing his genitals at a party – and molesting him in front of his wife, no less. The man who was catapulted to fame in the Friday After Next film opposite Ice Cube and Mike Epps said the movie and TV roles dried up overnight.
“People don’t understand that Hollywood is a very violent place,” said Crews, who has also starred in White Chicks, Training Day, “Everybody Hates Chris” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” “The best way to put it is that it’s like a plantation. You use extreme violence. You see a lot of people who never work again. For even speaking up the whole thing is that they cut your head off so that the next person doesn’t speak.”
The concerted effort to silence him and others did not work as Crews is the new of host “America’s Got Talent.”
“They don’t want to see me comment, but I’m not going anywhere. They lead this thing through shame. [They] shame you so you feel like you gotta hide in the house. … [But] once you get rid of shame, you get to step off the slave plantation. And I get to be free. This is a good thing,” Crews said.
Listen to the interview in full below:
Big thanks to Terry Crews (@terrycrews) for being on the #claycaneshow on @SXMUrbanView. Check out the clip below where he talks being off the Hollywood plantation and the term ‘toxic masculinity.’ Listen to the full show on demand! #claynation pic.twitter.com/6gDvPqRnxq
— Clay 'Critical Thinking Theory' Cane (@claycane) June 26, 2019
If you recall, in June 2017, Crews testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights. Crews discussed the “the cult of toxic masculinity” and how it had negatively impacted his career.
WATCH – @terrycrews full opening statement: "I am honored to use my platform and story to help create additional civil rights protections for survivors across the nation under the Sexual Assault #SurvivorsBillofRights."
Full video here: https://t.co/RGjyB1WSAm pic.twitter.com/ezi14zs3mY
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 26, 2018
