On stage, actor Jeremy Piven excels at roles like Hollywood agent Ari Gold from the smash hit TV series Entourage, which ran for eight seasons on HBO: Tightly wound type-A personalities, never the alpha, always a striving beta. Piven, a gifted comedic actor on screen, also has a strong background in live comedy. He brings his standup tour to Eugene April 26 at the McDonald Theatre.
Besides Entourage, Piven played Harry Selfridge in the popular period series Mr. Selfridge on Britain’s ITV and PBS in America, a semi-fictionalized account of the iconic high-end department store, Selfridges, in Britain that the historical Selfridge founded in 1909 — a part suited to Piven’s knack for portraying unbridled ambition.
As a standup, Piven plays much the same character. With a sharp suit, charming smile and trendy glasses, he tells Hollywood-insider tales and takes shots at himself and his public persona.
In one bit, he points out Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. “Never took an acting class,” Piven says. Is Piven bitter? You guess the answer.
In another bit, Piven reveals “dating while famous” pitfalls when a woman tells him she’s unsure about dating a performer. How will she know he’s genuine?
Piven assures her he’s for real, but his entreaty is derailed when he yells “Line!” He also points out that the female lead in the story is age-appropriate, with a knowing glance at celebrity stereotypes.
Comedy needs to punch up, but it can also punch sideways, aimed for the person delivering the joke, and it’s on that fulcrum where Piven’s material often rests.
Piven studied his craft at, among other places, the New York University Tisch School of the Arts and the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. His parents founded the Piven Theatre Workshop in Illinois, where Piven also trained, honing his improv skills and comedic timing.
All combined, Piven has won three Emmys and a Golden Globe. He’s done well for himself, even if The Rock makes more money.
In a phone call with Eugene Weekly, Piven projects the same hustle, peppering his speech with “brother” as he often does on stage. Like a finance bro or showbiz upstart, talk to Piven: You’d best be grindin’.
He says he doesn’t much like talking about himself, and wonders if the “comedian’s journey” is that interesting.
Still, he says, “With stand up: You’re doing it in clubs, you’re trying new material. You’re always thinking about bits and writing them down or doing a voice note. So, it’s always a work in progress, but it’s my honor and my duty,” he says, to perform on stages like the McDonald Theatre.
Performing live, he hopes to “crush it and make people laugh and give them a sense of who I am. Maybe they think that I’m Ari Gold, or who knows what they think, I’ve been in their living rooms, and they have a reverence for me.”
Referring to stand up, Piven says, “This is a way to show who I am, tell stories about my life, and do impressions. I’m all over the map.”
And he also doesn’t mind if audiences have a preconceived notion about who he is based on his screen work.
He says, “If they think I’m Ari Gold, and they want to yell some stuff out that gives me an opportunity to engage with them and a bit of back and forth that will change the dynamic of the set.”
“I love and respect it so much,” he adds of standup comedy. “All I do is grind to get better.”