Sure, comedy is good for the soul. But for Justin Hires, it shielded him from the bullies at his Tampa Bay-area high school.
“I developed my humor as a defense mechanism because I’m short,” said Hires, who didn’t hit his growth spurt until his junior year.
He’s 5’6 now.
“When you’re the short kid, you naturally get picked on,” he continued. “So I used comedy as a defense mechanism to get people to stop messing with me and picking on me. I was like, ‘well, I’ll talk about them or I’ll get the bullies on my side.’”
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Hires is CBS Network’s new funny man in their reboot of the Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan Rush Hour feature film trilogy. Set for a March 31 premiere, the TV remake follows slick-talking LAPD detective Carter (Hires) as he tackles crime with a fast-moving Hong Kong police officer – very similar to the films.
“Rush Hour” will air every Thursday at 10 p.m. EST.
“The first episode is a re-do, somewhat of the original Rush Hour film,” Hires told BlackDoctor.org. “But every episode after that is a completely new story that isn’t related to the film franchise. So people will see brand new content, brand new storylines, brand new jokes and brand new action.”
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Hires is honored and excited to follow in Tucker’s footsteps. A few years ago, Tucker was in the audience for one of Hires’s stand-up comedy shows. He stopped his show to tell Tucker how much he loved him.
Imitating Tucker’s voice, Hires’s said Tucker yelled back, “I love you, too, man!”