While Entourage was comedic gold in the early 2000s, Jeremy Piven doesn’t think the humor would fly today.
“We’re living in a time where I hope the fear subsides on every level,” Piven, 58, exclusively told Us Weekly at the Sunday, May 5, fundraiser for the Enlight Unite Foundation at Alice + Olivia in Austin, Texas. “I make a lot of jokes on why Entourage couldn’t exist in today’s climate and that’s unfortunate because the reality is, people just want [to] laugh. They want to laugh so badly.”
Piven played Ari Gold on the HBO series for eight seasons alongside Kevin Connolly, Adrian Grenier, Kevin Dillon, Jerry Ferrara and more. In July, Entourage will celebrate its 20th anniversary — but Piven feels like he finished filming the series “yesterday.”
“The irony of that is that every time I step on a stage, they’re screaming out, ‘Let’s hug it out, bitch,’ and they all miss it,” Piven said, referring to his character’s iconic line. “People connected with that show, they still connect with it. During the pandemic, kids in their early 20s were binging it.”
In the series, Piven’s character was a Hollywood super-agent who was sarcastic, arrogant, insensitive, snarky and unapologetic. When Piven signed up to play him, he knew that Ari would be “misunderstood today.”
“That character, I knew from the jump, would be a very interesting anomaly in the way that you thought he was a pig, but he was monogamous,” he explained. “He was abrasive and was he a racist? No, no, no. He’s a motivator, and he’s an equal opportunity offender.”
Piven went on to claim that in today’s climate, comedians can’t perform to their best abilities when there’s a microscope on them.
“You can’t work on your highest level as an artist if you’re second-guessing yourself. If you’re wondering how it’s going to land, how you’re going to be seen,” he told Us. “No matter how good you are, you’re going to be limiting yourself, and the audience doesn’t want to see an artist who’s limited, they want to see them fully present, doing their thing.”
Recently, Piven starred in The Performance, based on the 2002 short story by Arthur Miller. The film, which was directed by his sister Shira, follows a Jewish tap dancer, played by Piven, who is on tour in Europe during Hitler’s reign before the Holocaust.
“It’s doing great at film festivals, getting standing ovations and everyone who sees it loves it. I love it,” Piven gushed to Us about the project. “I’ve done over 80 films and it’s the best film I’ve done in my life, it’s the best work of my life.”
Piven also teamed up with the nonprofit Elight Unite Foundation, which created a platform for students to use their voices to speak out against racism, bullying and hate. At Sunday’s fundraiser at an Alice + Olivia store in Austin, where 20% of proceeds from the sales went to the organization.
With reporting by Jennifer Birn
