J.B. Smoove wants you to Google his wife.
During a free-wheeling conversation with Boston Public Radio’s Jim Braude and Margery Eagan Thursday, the comedian said he likes to draw from his personal life to inspire his performances.
But there are some lines he won’t cross — unlike the salacious womanizer Leon Black, who Smoove portrays on HBO’s “Curb your Enthusiasm” alongside creator Larry David. Black, the character, has never let marital commitments get in the way of a good time during the course of the five seasons he’s acted as David’s ill-informed spiritual adviser and petty criminal conspirator.
“My wife is pretty hard to cheat on, and pretty hard to leave. I gotta say that. My wife fine as hell,” Smoove said. “I got a T-shirt that says, ‘Google my wife.’”
But one trait Smoove does share with his most well-known character is believing in the power of persistence. Smoove, who is performing at the WIlbur Theatre in Boston Friday, Sept. 30, said that philosophy has guided him from his days as a door-to-door fire extinguisher salesman, to writing for “Saturday Night Live,” to starring on “Curb” and touring his stand-up act.
“Persistence. You’ve just gotta be persistent in everything. You can apply your personality or who you are to anything. Just now, do you know how many fire extinguishers I just sold to you guys? I just sold 15 fire extinguishers to you guys. Hey, they’ll be delivered tomorrow,” Smoove said.
Smoove said he’s also a big believer of manifesting your own destiny. When asked about how he ended up on “Curb,” Smoove said he was just a fan of the show when his wife Shahidah Omar told him that one day he would be a part of it.
By chance, or serendipity, Smoove flew to Los Angeles to attend a funeral and met with Larry David that same day to audition for “Curb.” Smoove said he believes he was put there for a reason and made sure he took advantage of it.
“I walked in that room and I gave Larry a verbal ass-whooping,” Smoove said. “I was disrespectful, I was everything, ’cause I wanted to be the character. I walk in the room as the character! I don’t walk in the room as J.B., I walk in the room as the character.”
But in his stand-up tour, Smoove brings his wise side with him on stage.
“I’m therapeutic in a way that you ain’t never heard before,” Smoove said. “I’m gonna soil your outfit. You gonna be soiled with knowledge. And sometimes, people need that!”
He considers himself as somewhat of a therapist and hopes to impart some of that profane wisdom onto his audience during his stand-up tour. Profanity, to him, is like putting the cherry on top of a banana split.
“With or without that damn cherry, I make sense. That banana split makes sense,” he said. “So sometimes, I don’t put a cherry on top. ... Right now, I could give you a completely PG rest of this damn interview, but is that gonna help people? No, that’s not going to help people who feed off the F-bomb ... who don’t believe you unless you use the F-bomb to show that you care about them.”
Smoove’s appearance at the Wilbur is part of his “Physical Therapy” tour, whose theme he describes as tough-love driven by a “verbal ass-whooping of positiveness.”
“This tour has been absolutely spectacular,” he said. “Look, all I need is two warm-up shows. I’mma put my foot in the Wilbur ass tomorrow night.”
Smoove is performing at the WIlbur Theatre Friday, Sept. 30 at 7:30 p.m.
