Veteran comedian Aries Spears ate a hefty slice of humble pie during a recent interview with Comedy Hype where he expressed his regret for criticizing fellow MADtv alumni Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele of the Key and Peele show.
In a 2016 interview, DJ Vlad asked Spears his opinion on the two comedians, prefacing the inquiry with comments Russell Simmons had previously made about the pair.
“They are (Key and Peele) just very funny Americans who happen to be black, and really we need them too, but I don’t want it to be them to the exclusion of everything else,” Simmons told Vlad.
Spears took things to a new level with his remarks by criticizing the comedic duo and alluding to the fact they don’t have the “authenticity” that “real niggas” like Dave Chappelle have.
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“There’s an authenticity to Dave, that when black people look at him, they go, we can see it, [sniffs] we can smell it, you a real nigga, know what I mean,” Spears started.
He went on to express several of his opinions about the comics in depth and even compared their feature film Keanu, to their real lives in a way that both commended them for their work and threw shade at the same time.
“They playing up two black dudes who are black (rubs skin) but are so white internally, that they are uncomfortable in that black surrounding – and it’s a brilliant move because they are really like that,” Spears said.
“If they walked into a room full of real niggas, real niggas would go, [sniffs] something don’t smell right.”
Three years later, Peele has notched two hit films with, Us, which has amassed nearly $175 million to date, while his directorial debut Get Out boasts $255 million, and Spears says he wishes he “could take it back” but not because he didn’t believe what he was saying, but because of “the way this business works.”
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“The stuff I said about Key and Peel on Vlad, again, if I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t have said it, but if we are being honest, trying to advance your career to a certain place, what you say, once it’s out there it’s out there,” Spears stammers.
“And people, you know, even if you assume or you would like for them to take what you said the right way, they to take it how they take it — or if someone gets in their ear, (smacks lips” ‘Ooooooo’, you fucked yourself. Like Dave Chappelle, when keeping it real goes wrong.”
He also suggests he may have lost the role because Cedric The Entertainer was also auditioning and was obviously the bigger name, but also admitted the situation was a double-edged sword.
“In all honesty, I didn’t expect to get it, but the mystery is, did I not get it because simply Cedric was Cedric, or because of that, I don’t know, but, being smart going forward let’s assume it was because of that,” Spears says.
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Watch the full clip of Aries Spears interview with Comedy Hype above.
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