Sure, comedy is good for the soul. But for Justin Hires, it shielded him from the bullies at his Tampa Bay-area high school.
“I developed my humor as a defense mechanism because I’m short,” said Hires, who didn’t hit his growth spurt until his junior year.
He’s 5’6 now.
“When you’re the short kid, you naturally get picked on,” he continued. “So I used comedy as a defense mechanism to get people to stop messing with me and picking on me. I was like, ‘well, I’ll talk about them or I’ll get the bullies on my side.’”
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Hires is CBS Network’s new funny man in their reboot of the Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan Rush Hour feature film trilogy. Set for a March 31 premiere, the TV remake follows slick-talking LAPD detective Carter (Hires) as he tackles crime with a fast-moving Hong Kong police officer – very similar to the films.
“Rush Hour” will air every Thursday at 10 p.m. EST.
“The first episode is a re-do, somewhat of the original Rush Hour film,” Hires told BlackDoctor.org. “But every episode after that is a completely new story that isn’t related to the film franchise. So people will see brand new content, brand new storylines, brand new jokes and brand new action.”
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Hires is honored and excited to follow in Tucker’s footsteps. A few years ago, Tucker was in the audience for one of Hires’s stand-up comedy shows. He stopped his show to tell Tucker how much he loved him.
Imitating Tucker’s voice, Hires’s said Tucker yelled back, “I love you, too, man!”
Hires said he weighed about 132 before the show got picked up by CBS. But one of the show’s producers told him he needed to get his weight up – literally.
“When the show got picked up, I got a call from one of the producers saying, ‘make sure you’re in shape because you might have some shirtless scenes,’” Hires recalled.
His six-pack needed to be on fleek.
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“Before we started shooting the series, I was up to doing 700 pushups a day and 1,000 crunches a day,” Hires remembered. “I would do reps of 100 [pushups] and then reps of 200 crunches.”
Sometimes, while shooting the series, he would drop down between takes and do 50 to 100 pushups. Bulking up, for him, required consistency and even forcing himself to eat.
“It’s a little harder for me because I’m little and I have a fast metabolism and I’m not the person who loves to eat,” Hires said. “Some people love food. I’m one of those people where I just eat because I literally have to – to live.”
Outside of physical health, Hires believes in emotional wellness as well. The greatest thing about comedy, he says, is bringing joy to someone’s life when they’re having a bad day.
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“Everybody knows that stress can cause you to become physically ill,” he said. “So if someone is having a bad day or someone is going through troubling times, and they’re able to come out to a comedy club or watch a YouTube video I did in the past and laugh, I think it’s a tremendous thing.”
Watch the “Rush Hour” Season 1 trailer below.
Tiffany Walden (@Waldens_Block)
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