Terry Crews: The Man That Decided To Speak Out
When I tell y’all that we don’t deserve Terry Crews, I MEAN WE DON’T DESERVE TERRY “FLEX THE PECS” CREWS. Did I just give him a nickname I made up myself? YES. I. DID.
Anywho, this talented icon was born in Flint, Michigan (they still need clean water, btw) on July 30, 1968 to Patricia and Terry Crews.
After graduating from high school, Terry earned a Chrysler-sponsored scholarship at the Interlochen Center for the Arts (because Terry is an artist! [If you’re not watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, big mistake. HUGE]). Then he proceeded to receive an Art Excellence scholarship and a full athletic scholarship to Western Michigan University where he earned All-Conference honers and won the Mid-American Conference Championship in 1988.
So Terry gets drafted (naturally) by the NFL and while I could talk about his football career, I’ll be real with you: ya girl knows nothing about football at all, so I’d have no clue what the words I’m typing would mean and I’d be wasting all of our time with that *shrugs*. Simply put, Terry played for the Los Angeles Rams, San Diego Chargers, Washington Redskins, and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Now lets scoot on over to the acting portion.
Terry retired from the NFL in 1997 and, to pursue acting, moved to Los Angeles. His first acting part came in 1999 in Battle Dome, in which he played T-Money for 2 seasons.
But y’all know what the breakout role for Terry Crews was? I SAAIIIID DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE BREAKOUT ROLE WAS?! The classic 2002 Black film, Friday After Next.
Since then we’ve seen Terry portray a number of hard to forget characters in movies and show including: White Chicks, The Longest Yard, Everybody Hates Chris, Are We There Yet, The Expendables and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. We know him as the Old Spice man, he’s voiced animated characters, he’s hosted television shows.
Let me wrap this up. Terry Crews is an artist, a former pro-athlete, and an actor. He’s an activist, speaking out against sexual assault and harassment, writing a memoir concerning toxic masculinity and using his social status and platform to have the conversations that matter.
He found the strength and courage to discuss his own experience with sexual assault in the industry, facing a slew of male sexual assault jokes. But he also found a lot of support.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Terry says, “Until people start losing jobs, until people start going to jail, until people really start paying and fixing what they did, you are not gonna see any real change. I just really want to make sure people know this is a good, good victory. This is a validation of all the people who were totally invalidated, and I could not be happier for them—for them. Because [this win] really, really says, ‘You are a full-fledged human being, and you deserve to be treated as such.’”
So, again, when I say we don’t deserve Terry Crews, I mean it.
