![]() ![]() As soon as we walked on stage, you could hear a pin drop. We worked everywhere - the Chitlin' Circuit, all-Black clubs, all-white clubs, Polish Legion Halls - anywhere there was an opportunity to stand before people. We wrote a book called Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White. ![]() Q: You tackled race head on, as a Black man and a white man.Ī: Not only did we tackle race, race tackled us. Finally, I met Tom Dreesen and we formed a comedy team. I didn't think about show business again for a long time. Then when I graduated from college, I went to work. She would always tell me, "Junior, tell that story about when So-and-So was here." So from about ten years old to this day, I've been plying my wares as a storyteller.Ī: I played the priest of Zeus in Oedipus Rex - that started me acting in school. My grandmother ran a boarding house and sold whiskey illegally and ran the numbers, so there were a lot of characters coming and going. Q: Tell us a little about growing up in Virginia.Ī: I was taught very early to be the storyteller in the family. The entire interview can be screened at / Interviews. The following is an edited excerpt of their conversation. The interview was a coproduction with the American Comedy Archives at Emerson College. Reid was interviewed in May 2021 by Adrienne Faillace, producer for The Interviews: An Oral History of Television, a program of the Television Academy Foundation. They sold the property in 2015 but still support the next generation of storytellers through his Legacy Media Institute. ![]() He explains: "That's when I knew that I had to be more involved in the creation of images, and even spend my own money to make sure the people responsible for my being who I am had an opportunity to be seen." As a result, he and Daphne founded their own production studio in Virginia. He earned two Emmy nominations for the series in 1988, one for outstanding comedy series and the other for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series.īut after a brief, but life-changing conversation with CBS chairman William Paley, Reid decided to take an active role in creating the kind of work he wanted to see onscreen. In 1987, Reid executive-produced and starred in CBS's Frank's Place, which also starred his second wife, Daphne Maxwell Reid. The show lasted until 1982, by which time Venus had assumed cult-figure status. From stand-up, Reid made the jump to television, joining the ensemble cast of The Richard Pryor Show and eventually landing his role as Venus Flytrap on CBS's WKRP in Cincinnati in 1978. This was in the late 1960s, when the sight of a Black man and a white man working the cabaret circuit together was an anomaly, and the pair paid a price for their courage. But defying stereotypes has been a lifelong pursuit for Reid, an actor-writer-producer-director who began telling stories as a child in Virginia, at the urging of his grandmother.Īs a young man, Reid had a stint in the business world before creating a comedy duo with Dreesen. "I guess we didn't get away from any stereotypes in the pilot, did we?" he cracked in the memoir he penned with his former comedy partner, Tom Dreesen. After this word from Shady Hills Rest Home." So let's get down, pretty brothers and sisters. "It's the hour of darkness, children," he intoned as DJ Venus Flytrap, while the closing credits of the pilot rolled, "and Venus is on the rise in Cincinnati. When Tim Reid first appeared in WKRP in Cincinnati - the show that would jump-start his career - he was sporting a purple suit and hat, a full-length white leopard-spotted coat and a towering afro. ![]()
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