“You don’t have no job, Tommy!” was a common phrase you heard on the hit ’90’s TV sitcom, “Martin” with Martin Lawrence, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Tichina Arnold and Carl Anthony Payne. The late Thomas Mikal Ford who played Tommy Strawn, Martin’s main man on the show may have appeared to be perpetually unemployed on Martin, but in real life, that image was the source of endless anguish.
“We got back for our second season, and we hadn’t been back for several months,” explains Ford. “And we’re sitting around doing a table read [of the script] and the idea comes up: Maybe Martin meets Tommy after work.”
“And then Martin stops reading and goes, ‘Wait a minute. Tommy, what the hell do you do?’
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“He wasn’t in character; he was being Martin. He says, ‘You have a job?’
“I said, ‘Of course I have a job!’ And I’m startin’ to explain but everybody’s like ‘No no no no no! Don’t explain. We love it!’
“But I’m like, ‘No, we don’t love that. I got to have a job,’” Tommy continues.
“My dad was an MP, Military Police, in the Navy. His motto was ‘Nothin’ comes to a sleeper but a dream. Get off your butt and do somethin’!’
“For me, the biggest insult I could imagine was a man who had no job.”
On the show, Tommy did everything from dating Pam and moving in with her, to getting jumped by…
…Bushwick Bill of the Geto Boys over a girl. Loved him! Since then, he’s also done a wealth of TV work. Right after the show, he had a regular role as Lt. Malcolm Barker on New York Undercover, and appeared in a recurring role as Kim Parker’s father on “The Parkers.” He also worked on a show called “Who’s Got Jokes” from 2006-08 and just finished working on two films the year of his death: The Ivy League and Unspoken Words.
Tommy also had one of the greatest and most rewarding jobs of all time: That of being a father.
He is missed and will be missed. Rest in Peace Tommy.
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