Roy Wood Jr. and Jalen Rose discuss struggling before fame

nypost.com:

giving a hearty roast at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He’s also had roles on huge TV hits such as “Only Murders in the Building” and “Better Call Saul.”Roy’s spectacular journey to the limelight is a core example of why you should never let the mistakes of your youth dictate your future path.He was blessed with the gift of gab from an early age.

Roy told me on “Renaissance Man” that he honed his craft by heckling opposing teams at youth sports events as a “benchwarmer” — or a position he preferred to call “team psychologist.”The potential for success was limitless as Roy enrolled in journalism school at Florida A&M University, but a horrible mistake was set to alter the trajectory of the young man’s life.“I got arrested for stealing clothes,” Roy said. “I was 19 years old and I was told, ‘Yeah, you’re going to go to prison.

You’ll probably do a year, but they’re going to give you five.’ ”Roy quickly understood his actions were misguided — in his own words he realized he wasn’t “cool” for it.

While awaiting his fate, he looked to break into a better lifestyle and future. “That’s where guts came in to [start doing] the open mikes … a sense of hopelessness and the presumption that my life was over,” Roy said. “The truth was that was just the rock bottom, ground zero reason that I needed to get me back on the path.”That road to redemption started off with trips on a Greyhound bus to nearly every comedy club in the southeast, but there was still one more problem he had to deal with.“I didn’t want my mom to know I was in town doing mikes.