K
evin Hart has a dossier on his business ventures that is a thousand words longer than this profile. It breaks down the movies, TV shows, and other productions on the burner for Hartbeat, his flagship entertainment company valued last year at $650 million. Also on the document: Hart’s venture capital firm. His tequila brand. His restaurant chain with the plant-based burgers and shakes. His autobiographical self-help books. His line of superfood supplements stocked at Walmart. His partnerships with companies from JPMorgan Chase to DraftKings, Audemars Piguet watches to the sportswear line Fabletics, a portfolio that has Hart chirping along in seemingly every other commercial on television.
All these bullet points and brand names tell the story of his career over the past decade. Hart’s been telling it too.
It’s 8:30 a.m. and he’s at home in Los Angeles. He got up at 5 for a workout, three hours after his plane landed from a performance in Connecticut the night before. He pauses an interview midsentence when his 3-year-old daughter, Kaori, wanders in—“C’mere, mama! Come give me a hug!”—then completes his thought after the youngest of his four kids moves on. Next up, a 10:30 meeting with Hartbeat employees about the company’s 2024 agenda.
Lots of comics have morphed into screen stars, but there’s no precedent for Hart’s hyperactive level of entrepreneurism and dealmaking. Same for his self-declared quest to create an empire and become a billionaire. But because of Hart’s blitz into ubiquity, it’s easy to forget that it all started with—and still revolves around—the most basic thing in show business: a man with a microphone, alone on a stage.
Hart’s firepower in stand-up put him in the vanguard of solo comics who can routinely sell out sports arenas and the occasional stadium. Now that part of his trade is coming back to the fore when he accepts the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in March. It’s the closest thing the comedy business has to a lifetime achievement award, which the Kennedy Center has bestowed on recipients from Richard Pryor to Adam Sandler, another mass-market talent. Hart is the 25th and, at 44 years old, one of the youngest.
Here are a few things Kevin Hart revealed to WSJ. Magazine…
Hart on his business-side success
“That’s the business. The business of return,” he says in the default exclamation mode he’s known for. “Sometimes people don’t respect the ROI—the return on investment. I’m a secure investment.”
Hart on the debate between his commercial clout vs. skill and craft
Hart’s own opinion is this: Art and commerce should be part of the same sentence in any conversation about his place in the comedy pantheon.
“I do know what I’ve done for the craft of comedy. By that I mean I’ve changed the business of stand-up comedy,” he says. Namely, he leveraged popularity in that realm to diversify into other industries (emulating friends such as LeBron James and Jay-Z) and created a model for other stand-ups, he says. “Whether you’re a fan or not, you have to respect what I’ve done. Point-blank. Because you don’t do it by accident—and you don’t stay here by accident.”
Hart, when reviewing a recent standup show
“That was a tight 59 minutes. I’m going to get to an hour straight. I’m going to move three to four things, where I want to hear the laughter be as loud as it is in other places. I should be able to feel the laughter from the top to the bottom.” Snapping his fingers, he says, “It’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun. People look up? It’s been an hour, but it didn’t feel like it.”
In the act he’s refining now, he wanted to eye the backstretch of his 40s and beyond, he says, including “my transition as a father, my hope for family growth and gain, the idea of old age.”
Hart on his stature
He was closing in on his 5-foot-4 peak by middle school. “In the beginning, I was tall. Then people started to shoot past me,” he recalls. “That’s when I was like, Oh, shit, this is my reality.”
Keith Robinson, a veteran Philly comedian, who mentored Hart in the business of stand-up on Hart’s early days
Hart wasn’t using words like brand and empire when trying to establish himself on the club scene. “We would’ve kicked his teeth right out of his mouth,” Robinson says with a cackle. “I mean, can you imagine that idiot telling us, ‘I’m gonna be a mogul?’”
Hart on the LGBTQ controversy that got him booted as Oscars host
Kevin Hart, who sustained major injuries in a car accident less than a year after the hosting fiasco, looks back on the episode as “a come-to-Jesus moment,” he says. “Sometimes it’s OK to take a step back and to be educated. I got a crash course. It was one that was necessary and needed.”
Hart on comedian Katt William’s criticisms
In a recent three-hour podcast interview that seemed intended to escalate old beef and start new ones, Williams carved out a few minutes to target Kevin Hart (along with Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey, Chris Tucker, and others), attacking his origin story and accusing him of scooping up demeaning movie roles that Williams himself had rejected.
“It’s just that. It’s entertainment,” he says, then pivots. “If that’s what he fuels himself off, God bless him. Good for him. I hope he gets all that he needs and he wants, and I’m here cheering for him from afar. That’s my real energy. I really mean it! That’s how happy and secure I am with my career and my life.”
Hart on addressing his misadventures in activism following George Floyd protests in his recent routine
“The joke came from me realizing, this isn’t what I do,” he says, unpacking the evolution of the routine. During the real-life demonstrations, “there was a moment where I was like, what the f— am I doing? Let me go sit my stupid ass down. These people are out here and fired up. I’m not ready to be on that front line on that level. I want to be supportive but I don’t have that thing. So let me make sure I check myself,” Kevin Hart says, adding that, “when it comes to my culture,” his support plays out in institutional ways, such as funding college scholarships and donating to Philadelphia schools.
Hart on using his comedy to build an empire
“It isn’t just about the ability to tell the joke. It’s about the ability to make the joke lead to the TV, the TV to the movie, the movie to the ownership,” he says, ticking off other parts of his business portfolio before circling back to stand-up.
“The jokes,” he says, “acted as my door to get to the things that I’m really good at.”
Jerry Seinfeld on Hart’s singular ability to maneuver in the business world
Jerry Seinfeld says Kevin Hart’s ability to maneuver in other fields is an anomaly: “Most comedians cannot function outside of comedy. If someone said the word ideation to me, I would just walk out of the room.”
Seinfeld on Kevin Hart’s fundamental humility
Fans root for Hart’s #ComedicRockStarShit because he also humbles himself in his jokes. Seinfeld says, “It’s like when they put a little bit of salt in the pasta or something. You don’t know it’s there but it changes the flavor. So I think that Kevin’s secret ingredient, personally, is that there’s a pinch of humility in everything he does.”
Deborah F. Rutter, Kennedy Center president on Hart
Deborah F. Rutter praised his “iconic characters, inimitable physical comedy, and relatable narratives” when announcing Hart as the recipient. In other words, a master of “American Humor” in the populist sense.
Geof Wills, president of Live Nation Comedy on Hart
“He’s not divisive. He’s not political. Everyone feels good. Everyone has a great time,” says Wills, the Live Nation promoter. “Kevin’s like a great pop record.”
Watch the Kevin Hart interview here
Video by WSJ. Magazine / Photo credit: Bolade Banjo for WSJ. Magazine.
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