He might be a little late, but Terry Crews is explaining some thoughts he expressed on social media nearly two years ago.
Crews talked to Trevor Noah on Thursday about controversial tweets he wrote in the summer of 2020 during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. The tweets were perceived as warning of “Black supremacy,” but he said that was not his intention at all.
“What I meant was, if we don’t start this movement with the idea of reconciliation, we are just postponing a greater war,” the actor told the host of “The Daily Show.” “My whole thing is, I didn’t hear a lot of reconciliation. Reconciliation doesn’t mean agreement.”
He continued, invoking the biblical story about the wisdom of King Solomon.
“It doesn’t mean you get the result you want,” he said. “When I look at America, dividing it is killing it. We have to reconcile. Black and white. Male and female. Republican, Democrat. We have to find a way to reconcile or we’re going to kill what we have.”
Crews didn’t kill those controversial tweets, by the way. They still live on his feed.
The actor’s new book, “Tough: My Journey to True Power,” came out earlier this week, and Crews discussed it last weekend at the L.A. Times Festival of Books.
“The way I lived my life was like a revenge flick. It was all about settling scores,” Crews said to the assembled crowd. “The problem that I discovered is you can either have success or revenge — but you can’t have both.”
He was talking about Will Smith and the infamous slap at this year’s Oscars.
“What I witnessed with Will Smith on that stage was an attempt to get revenge in the moment, when success would have been letting it go,” Crews said. “It was a perfect example of what this book is about, because I change the whole definition of what tough was.
“Tough was not being able to throw punches. Tough was the ability to take them.”