Last May, Dave Chappelle sat down with Joe Rogan to spend several hours talking about everything and nothing, as guests of The Joe Rogan Experience tend to do. At one point, the topic turned to their early days as working comedians, and The Chappelle Show star revealed that back before The Wire made Idris Elba a household name—and long before he was being nominated for Emmys, BAFTAs, or Golden Globe Awards—the future MCU star used to sell him weed.
It’s been nearly a year since Chappelle first dropped that fun little nugget, and now Elba has finally responded—and confirmed that, yep, it’s all true. As Entertainment Weekly reported, Elba recently paid a visit to The Jess Cagle Show, where the London-born actor talked about his early struggles trying to make it as an actor. The way the Luther star tells it, his acting career “fell flat on its face very quickly for about four years” when he first moved to New York City. “I did a lot of things,” Elba said of how he made ends meet, “some things I’m not proud of.”
Cagle, likely knowing where the story was going, pressed for further details, and Elba supplied them:
“I used to sell weed. Can I say that on the show? I did that for a little bit just to, you know, help pay the way. I DJ’ed quite a bit. I was a doorman. I was a doorman at Carolines comedy club, which is fascinating now, when I meet the comedians that you kind of remember the English guy. Tall English guy with the funny accent and the little hair.”
And yes, Elba acknowledged that Chappelle was indeed one of those comedians. “David Chappelle remembers me ’cause he used to buy weed from me,” Elba confirmed. “Anyway, moving on. Yeah, I did all kinds of things to be honest, all kinds of things.”
Ultimately, Elba’s entrepreneurial spirit only serves as further proof that he was perfectly cast in the role of The Wire’s Stringer Bell, who never stopped raising the bar on his goals. After all, as String would say: “There’s games beyond the f***ing game.”
(Via Entertainment Weekly)