9 Quick Questions for Terry Crews

‘America’s Got Talent’ host has many talents himself

terry crews in tanish suit with purple pocket square, hands clasped together, light purple ombre background

Sami Drasin/NBC

Gayle Jo Carter,

AARP

Published June 29, 2023

Terry Crews, 54, is a true renaissance man. The ex-NFL linebacker is a movie and sitcom star, flutist and artist, and since 2019 has been the host of America’s Got Talent (AGT). He shares with AARP how he maintains his physique, his all-time comedic inspiration and the life-changing lesson an AGT contestant taught him.

What’s your take on the new season of America’s Got Talent?

Wow. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, Season 18 proves all of that is a lie. With Season 18, AGT is all grown up. There are now people who have been raised on AGT. They were 4 or 5 [when they first watched the show] and they’ve been waiting their whole lives to get up here and be on that stage, and they don’t disappoint. It’s been absolutely incredible. I would literally rank this as our best audition period ever.

What have you learned from the contestants you’ve met on AGT?

There was a contestant, Free Ladderman, and he actually fell off the ladder during a performance while he was on AGT, and he failed and he broke his ankle. He came on AGT: The Champions to do the same trick all over again. I was so nervous for him. It looked like he was miles in the air. He was on this ladder all the way up to the top to the rafters. I was like, Oh my God, I hope he doesn't hurt himself. He got on the top of that ladder and he did it. [When he came down] I asked him what the difference was. He said “Terry, I was present.” That hit me really hard. He said the last time he got to the top, he was thinking about all the other things. He actually lost his concentration. He wasn’t there. And he slipped off the ladder. This time, though, he stayed in it. He was present. He wasn’t thinking about anything else except for what he was doing at that moment. I took that as a lesson for my whole life. If you really want to do something well, you have to be present. You can’t do something and your mind be somewhere else and have it go well. That was a beautiful lesson I never, ever forgot.

america's got talent cover showing simon cowell, sofia vergara, heidi klum, howie mandel and terry crews with all their names at top; letters a g t and n b c; words ready for a blockbuster summer

Crews has hosted NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” since 2019.

NBCUniversal

If you were going to audition for the show, what would your act be?

Whatever I would do, it would be shirtless. I’m trying to get the fans — I would draw. I would do sketching — live, shirtless, on a big piece of paper — live art that would be really quick and fast. Make amazing pieces of art very quickly. I think that would be enough to at least send me to the finals.

That seems like a winning combination of your talents, since you earned an art scholarship, along with a football scholarship, to college [Western Michigan University]. Do you draw much these days?

I draw all the time. Actually, last year I drew — if you look on my Instagram — I drew all four of the judges, and it went pretty viral pretty quickly. I was really excited because I had never tried to do my art via Time-lapse. … I just put the Time-lapse feature on my phone and recorded me sketching all the judges and it just went viral. I know people like it. That could be the thing that takes me over the top.

What’s the source of your diverse interests?

When I grew up, my mother was very, very religious and didn’t allow me to dance, to listen to secular music or to go to the movies. Everything I do now, my whole life, I was not allowed to do as a kid. So I had a very vivid imagination. People at school would tell me about movies they saw and I would go home and draw my interpretation of what those movies were. It really helped my creativity, my imagination. I became a teen and realized, Wait a minute, I can do more than that. I don’t have to settle for not doing all this stuff. I started to just take more chances and just do more things. Also, I’m left-handed, right-brained. I think that has something to do with just the way I perceive the world, which is from a very creative lens, a very artistic lens. That’s where I find the most satisfaction. I’ve never, ever done things for money, so to speak. I’ve always done them because of the satisfaction that I get from being an artist. I enjoy the journey much more than I enjoy the destination. That’s an artistic way of thinking, and that’s what I attribute a lot of what I’ve been doing to.

How did football get into the mix?

I loved drawing superheroes, and I always liked the way the superheroes looked. And I said, I want to look like that. I always like sports, but I also just love being fit. I love the feeling of exerting all that energy. When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to play sports either. Once I got the chance to join the team … I really realized much later that I thought I loved football, I thought I loved sports. But the reality was that what I really loved was playing outside all day with my friends. That is the core of my love for sports — being outside, working together, having fun, a common goal. I was on the basketball team. I was on the track team. I was on the football team. It just so happened that I played football well enough to get to the NFL. But at the core of it, I was still playing outside with my buddies.

You still look in football shape. What’s your exercise routine?

I work out probably an hour to two hours every day just for fun. [I focus on] a different body part every other day. … And I run a 40-minute jog every day. I love it. You know what's crazy? I get my best ideas for my day in the last 10 minutes of my run. It happens without fail. I’ll put a problem into my head and I just literally start running and by the end of the run, in the last 10 minutes, I’ve got where I’m going to go and what I’m going to do about that problem or situation.

You’re also a successful comedic actor. Who were your comic inspirations?

You know who my number one comedic inspiration has always been? It’s Carol Burnett. I grew up watching The Carol Burnett Show. I wasn’t allowed to do a lot of things, but the one thing I was allowed to do with my mother and with my whole family — we would watch The Carol Burnett Show together. It was some of the best memories I have of being a little kid. I remember how funny she was, how she never took herself seriously. She’s always been my inspiration, because she acted, she performed on variety [shows], she sang — she’s done all this stuff. To this day I still love her. I actually got a chance to meet her a few years ago and I told her exactly what I’m telling you right now: “You are my inspiration.”

What advice would you give to your younger self?

To not worry. I was a ball of anxious worry. I worried about everything, and I took it to a point where it would be called hypervigilant, where I wasn’t working because I was afraid. There’s two ways to get motivated: You can be inspired or you can be kicked. I used to kick myself, but being inspired is a much healthier way to be.

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Gayle Jo Carter is a former entertainment editor at USA WEEKEND, who during her 30-year reporting and editing career, has worked at USA TODAY, Voice of America and Feature Story News. When not interviewing high-profile people, she’s teaching reformer Pilates classes and doing her best to raise two empathetic, curious, healthy young people to adulthood.