I’ve always been voted most unlikely,” Tracy Morgan says as he lies in bed a day before the release of his autobiography, “I Am the New Black.” “Now that I’m making it, everybody’s paying attention to everything I say.”
And there’s a lot he wants to get off his chest.
Along with a slew of shout-outs (to Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels, among others), a bit of score-settling (with fellow “Saturday Night Live” alums Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri) and the predictably unpredictable philosophizing and aphorizing the world has come to relish from the 40-year-old, Emmy-nominated “30 Rock” star, the book details the ultimate hard-knock life growing up in the ghettos of New York.
The child of a heroin-addicted Vietnam vet and a gambling-addicted mother, Morgan writes candidly about the anger, pain and sadness that fuel his nothing-to-lose wild-man comedy.
“Somewhere along my way, I lost my innocence,” he tells The Post, three weeks before his Carnegie Hall debut as part of the New York Comedy Festival.
Indeed, his youth reads like a social worker’s worst nightmare.
He lost his virginity at age 8 to a 14-year-old baby sitter. (She also had sex with his disabled 10-year-old brother.) In the middle of a family fight, Morgan wished his father dead, and later that day Dad told him, “You got your wish,” and proceeded to tell his son he was dying from AIDS, which he’d contracted from a dirty needle. Dropping out of high school, he became a crack dealer.
Live from New York, it’s . . . the worst childhood ever.
As dark as many of the revelations are, the book contains so much of his humor that it’s far from your typical Hollywood pity party. Part of the enjoyment of “I Am the New Black” is that it reads exactly the way Morgan talks, such as when he showers love on Michaels, “SNL” senior producer Marci Klein and Fey — the “30 Rock” creator he calls his “sister,” the woman who knows his voice better than anyone, the lady he says he loves closer than a blood relative.
“Look at me, Tina Fey!” he gushes in the book. “I have to say it now and I’ll say it again: I LOVE YOU, GIRL.”
He has harsher words for other “SNL” cast members, saying Kattan and Oteri treated him like he was “invisible” and never put him in their sketches. Today, he jokes bitterly that they can’t even get arrested.
When pressed about what they did, though, he says, “I didn’t mean to hurt them, and I wish them the best in their careers.” Then he rants that the only reason anyone focuses on the feuds is because everyone is looking at the “Kanye West aspect of life and something shocking happening.”
Of course, just about everyone joined in the Kanye-hating train last month — largely through Twitter.
After a viral campaign to get him to join the micro-blogging service, Morgan recently signed up and now boasts 50,000 followers. And what does
@realtracymorgan think of life in 140 characters or less so far?
“Yes, I’m Twittering,” he says. “I know how to use it. I’m not a Neanderthal or anything like that. You know when I’m doing something interesting, I put it on Twitter. If I’m not, I don’t. I don’t walk around Twittering all day. You got to be a retard to walk around Twittering all day. Come on, man, who does that?”
His response has just enough ridiculous edge that it’s a carryover from his hilarious caricature of a character on “30 Rock”: Tracy Jordan. So how much of Jordan is actually the real Tracy Morgan? In the book, he explains, “Tracy Jordan is based on everybody that ever wigged out, myself included.”
But his true alter-ego, he explains, is a character he calls “Chico Divine,” the unpredictable party monster that makes an appearance after about three drinks. “When Chico came out,” he writes, “somebody might get hurt, and there was a good chance someone’s sister might get pregnant, too.”
Talking about Chico, you understand that for all the antic joking, Morgan’s experiences have taken a toll. Although the one-time dealer “never used any type of narcotic in my life,” Morgan was a champion drinker. “My drug of choice was a mai tai,” he says. An anklet he had to wear — due to two DUI arrests — led to complications from diabetes and the threat of having his foot amputated. Morgan hasn’t had a drink in a year and eight months — and Chico’s now firmly ensconced in his act, nowhere else.
A changed man, Morgan says being so close to the edge turned his entire attitude around.
“I don’t think I have a lot of the anger in me,” he reflects, as his girlfriend, Taneisha Hall, joins him in the room. (Morgan and his ex-wife split a year ago after 21 years but remain best friends.) “Yeah, I may perform out of anger, but Michael Jackson danced out of anger. So did Fred Astaire.”
Morgan says he’s now coming to terms with a lifetime of hardship, inflicted on him and that he inflicted on others. The book, which comes out today, was a way to exorcise his demons.
“It’s like in ‘The Color Purple,’ after she left her mean husband and she’s on the back of the train and the little girl her is running after the train and she takes the golden candies and throws them off the train,” he says. “She was saying ‘Goodbye’ to that little girl, and ‘I love you.’ ”
mstadtmiller@nypost.com
Tracy’s little ‘Black’ book
Tracy Morgan shocks and awes in “I Am the New Black.” As he told the world at last year’s Golden Globes: Deal with it, Cate Blanchett.
On “SNL” culture shock:
“I had my finger on the pulse
of urban comedy, but when I brought my act to ‘SNL,’ those motherf – – – ers just felt bad for me. None of the cast I came up with saw this future for me. No, sir. All I have to say about that is, where’s Chris Kattan now? Where’s Cheri Oteri now? That
b – – – – can’t even get arrested.”
On Lorne Michaels: “They say that every Jewish man has got to love one
n – – – er in his life. I’m glad Lorne Michaels chose me.”
On taking “SNL” actors to an after-hours strip club where two girls started having sex: “All the grips and crew guys from ‘SNL’ were standing around and loving it, but my castmates took one look at that, turned right around, and rushed out of there. They were all a bunch of Ivy League fa – – – ts and we’d taken it to the streets.” But the next day Morgan got a call that one person had stayed and wouldn’t leave: Horatio Sanz.
On his first DUI: “They brought that [Breathalyzer] over to me, and I blew on it and sparks flew out the motherf – – – er. That’s how drunk I was.”
On his alter-ego Chico Divine, who comes out when he gets drunk:
“Chico was that crazy dude you see hanging from the rafters at the club on, like, Wednesday at 6 o’clock in the morning . . . One time Chico got so drunk, he threw up in the club Suede in New York, right there in his booth — I think that one made Page Six . . . the best or worst part of that story was that Chico threw up right on the foot of the lady who was the William Morris Agency’s publicity director. There she was, this tall, well-dressed white lady, and Chico just threw up right on her shoes.”
On a party at Clive Davis’ place in 2004: “Chaka Khan tried to tongue-kiss me. I’m serious — Chaka just leaned in and went for it, and her breath smelled like Bacardi and franks.”
On his sweet spot for Salma Hayek: “I’m telling you whenever Salma came around, it was just me and her. She is my baby. If she gave me just a little time, I would make her the Octomom.”