If your lifestyle exhibits even a smidgeon of torpor or apathy, you might consider the business of being Kevin Hart to be — as Blackadder put it — a fate worse than a fate worse than death. It’s not that Hart constantly has work (though he does); it is that he is always working. He may be the human representation of perpetual motion, a body with the fierce energy and build of a track and field athlete and the mind of a sage philosopher, always pushing the boundaries of his self-worth and how he might one day improve his lot. Which is a bit of a surprise given his success both in terms of screen time — just shy of 10 movies and comedy tours in the past three years — and financial success: according to Forbes, his earnings were around $57 million in 2018, a figure no doubt buoyed by his Irresponsible tour, which sold more than a million tickets and is currently on Netflix (a must-see for all parents).
Kevin is a professional. At first greeting you might experience some short-term puzzlement, as you expect his on-screen Tigger-like gregariousness to be immediately apparent. What emerges instead is his polite but unassuming character, which is perhaps consumed by the 50 different objectives in his mind at once. My high expectations are certainly unfair; he is barely off a flight from Los Angeles, away from his family, and meeting complete strangers — we can hardly expect a stand-up routine. Still, when you are someone who has, in quite a short space of time (he only really became a leading man in 2014), injected a gaudy, audacious and unbearably funny persona into the comic sphere, one that holds its own against the wit of Will Ferrell and the awe-inspiring charisma of The Rock, you will have people all over the world who have been affected positively by it and dream of seeing it up close. Our interview was enjoyable, though in a cultural-media climate that thrives on negativity and mean-spirited hatchet jobs, the idea of my gaining his implicit trust from the first handshake was understandably unlikely.
