A stand-up sitcom guy

Karen Zekan

Friday, May 28, 1999 | 9:48 a.m.

Who: D.L. Hughley.

Where: Riviera hotel-casino's Top of the Riv.

When: 10 p.m. today, 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Tickets: General admission, $32.50; VIP tickets, $38.

Information: Call 794-9433.

As comedian-turned-actor D.L. Hughley sees it, sitcom success lies in the message more than the color of the cast.

But that's not to say that ethnicity isn't an issue. Because it is. In a big way.

Racial issues have been at the heart of "The Hughleys" -- pronounced "Hue-G-lee" with a hard "G" -- a comedic look at a black family's survival in an all-white suburb that debuted last season on ABC and wound up as last season's highest-rated new show on the market.

The show escaped the ruthless network ax and will be back next fall, bouncing from Tuesday nights to the 8 p.m. slot on ABC's Friday night "T.G.I.F." family viewing lineup -- a point of pride for the show's namesake who stars in it and wrote its hugely successful pilot and six of 21 "Hughleys" episodes.

Yet the show is more than just another up-and-coming sitcom. Aside from a few fringe channels' programs, "The Hughleys" will not only be next season's only Friday night sitcom with central black characters but the solitary programming option with a moralistic black family theme.

Despite the decades-long push for ethnic balance in America, fewer black-cast shows are making it on TV. So what's going on with blacks in prime-time these days?

Simply put, it's chemistry, says Hughley, in town tonight through Sunday at the Riviera hotel-casino, where he'll take to the stage with his comedy routine that for years has been selling out shows across the country.

A show, he says, has got to connect with Americans -- white, black or any color -- to be a hit in America. Quality, in essence, tops quantity.

"What is enough?" Hughley asks. "How many shows will be enough? I think it's incumbent upon us as African-American entertainers to speak in a voice that doesn't just speak to one people. There are not enough African-American viewers, and there are not enough African-American viewers with Nielsen boxes, to keep a show on. So, like it or not, you have to (play to a larger audience).

"Seinfeld can do a show and it can be number one in white households and it can stay on (the air). Me and the boys can be number one in black households, and the show would still be canceled. The numbers just don't match. There are 100-and-some-million white people living in this country, and some 30-million African-Americans. When you do a show with an African American cast, it just inherently has to have a broader appeal."

Ratings alone dictate that Hughley's found a winning path.

As the greats, such as Bill Cosby and Jerry Seinfeld, did before him, Hughley, 35, has built both his comedy routine and his television show from his life experiences.

He, his brother and two sisters grew up in a poor black family in south-central Los Angeles. His mother was a homemaker, his father cleaned planes for Western Airlines.

"The same things I'm doing now got me kicked out of high school," Hughley says. "My mother used to always ask me, 'What, are you going to jive your way through life?' I kinda went, 'Yeah.' "

A high school dropout, Hughley had no goals or aspirations.

"I was the guy who would talk about people in the classroom, in the barber shop, on the corner, on the school bus," Hughley remembered.

"One day I was in a barber shop in '88 and these cats were giving a concert. They said, 'Well, if you think you can talk about people, you should get on stage and do comedy.' They were doing a concert and said I could open for Robin Harris and, at the time, a group called Blue Magic. And I did. I picked up the microphone and I understood, that was what I was supposed to do."

He went from show to show -- "one ghetto club to another," as he puts it -- but never played mainstream comedy until about two years ago when he was booked at the Cleveland Improv in 1997, selling out the house eight times, he said.

His TV roles, meanwhile, were picking up. Guest appearances included a spot on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" in 1990 and "Late Night with Rita Server" in 1998. He landed his first series role in 1995 as Marlon on the short-lived sitcom "Double Rush" about bicycle messengers in Manhattan -- a show whose failure he attributed to a stifled creative process.

Hollywood helped create "The Hughleys" for Hughley, recognizing his potential as a comic talent and the viability for a show reflecting his stand-up.

He eagerly dove into the opportunity, writing at least a third of the show's episodes. He plays the role of Darryl Hughley, a vending machine company owner married to Yvonne (Elise Neal) and the father of a young boy and girl; Hughley in real life has been married 13 years and is the father of three children, ages 12, 10 and 8.

His story lines have explored emotions and racist attitudes through episodes built around his white neighbors. His favorite episode, "Jungle Gym Fever," was about his daughter on the show getting her first crush on a white boy and the reactions from his white neighbor, who encouraged him to be tolerant until the man learned that his own wife had dated a black man.

The episode stirred arguments within the production team because of fears that characters would be misunderstood. The stumbling points, however, were exposing real-life issues -- and, Hughley says, "keeping it real is what it's all about."

Overall, Hughley's proud of the show's success, although he admits that he didn't always get it right every step of the way.

"We were ABC's number one comedy," he said. "We didn't get a lot of promotion, and we didn't get a lot of air play, and we weren't the critics' pick and we weren't the network pet show, but we still found a way to ... score an audience when no one was trying to get us one."

Matt Roush, critic for TV Guide who was formerly with USA Today, largely credits Hughley's stand-up success as the anchor for the sitcom's bright moments, yet fears that the T.G.I.F. slot could marginalize the show in terms of creating a buzz.

"The Hughleys" will lead off the night, followed by "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" and "Boy Meets World."

"T.G.I.F. sells itself to the younger spectrum of the family audience," Roush said, "and usually means you soften the comedy to make it more family friendly."

Impressed by the pilot's great jokes, Roush said the show's solid concept and good casting made up for writing that seemed uneven from time to time throughout the series. Yet Roush hailed the show's achievement, considering that it survived Tuesday night -- one of the most brutally competitive nights across the board.

"Here you've got a show about a black family trying to hold on to its identity in a white world, and the show itself is in a schedule that couldn't be whiter all around," Roush said.

"If you look at the new season schedule that just rolled out, it is almost minority free, with exception of the fringe networks. So here you have, on a major network, one of the few vestiges of a black identity or any kind of ethnic identity at all. The fact that they use that as part of their comedy because of the strange tensions that exist between their family life and the suburban, very white world in which they live, the show itself is kind of a metaphor for its own place on the schedule."

Hughley is confident that Friday nights will draw a larger audience and favors the chance at being the lead show in the T.G.I.F. block. He's considering future episodes exploring gun control, expanding the characters of next-door neighbors Dave and Sally and developing the children's characters.

"We live in a society where our children have more, but now we worry about things we never did before," Hughley said. He heard in President Clinton's recent speech that parents are now spending 22 hours less a week with their children. "That's got to have some kind of effect. Parents and children have to feel that, and I believe that's a story."

Broader issues, indeed, and issues speaking to America as a whole.

Hughley says he's found creative freedom on the show, rarely meeting resistance from the networks. There were moments of philosophical disagreements, but never an iron fist.

Beyond capturing ratings, it can be a mixed bag guessing what networks want. Sitcoms by the dozen make it one season and are cut the next, their casts forever nobodies.

Hughley's show survived and carried its own weight -- which made it only that much more of a slap in the face when the now-defunct "Home Improvement," which ended its eight-year run Tuesday, was being hailed as the last of the family sitcoms.

"That was insulting to me," Hughley said. "We're a family sitcom that kept 96 percent of (its) audience."

And they did it all as a rarity, given its black cast.

"It seems like there has been some stagnation in terms of working minorities into prime time, and not just African Americans but also Asian Americans and Hispanics," said Barry Garron, chief TV critic for the Hollywood Reporter who previously spent 13 years as a critic for the Kansas City Star.

"Surveys show that (Asians and Hispanics) are more under-represented than African Americans. Hollywood is very much a business, and it's not necessarily a cultural decision to exclude African Americans, but as viewing channels multiply and cable channels proliferate, the market is becoming smaller and smaller."

The reality, however, doesn't discourage Hughley. His goal is only to maintain a solid, thoughtful show that works for the largest audience.

And he hopes he's doing it on his talent. Because it's bothered him since six months into production when he noticed that comedian Chris Rock was still being listed as executive producer of "The Hughleys" yet has neither produced a show nor contributed to the stories.

Rock had apparently been supportive when the idea of a show for Hughley was being shopped around -- and that's where, word has it, his involvement began and ended.

Appreciative of the support and respectful of Rock's "brilliant" comedic talent, Hughley says he doesn't understand why a comic he's met maybe four times -- and three of those times before he got his show -- would actively try to keep his name on the show. Hughley said his requests to take Rock's name off the show have been rejected.

But, the Rock issue aside, Hughley's excited about next season.

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