‘Crazy, Sexy, Cool,’ the phrase coined by multi-platinum selling R&B group T.L.C., perfectly sums up Jay Ellis’ encounters at the 2013 ESSENCE Festival. Well, in his case it was more like sexy, crazy, and then cool. Ellis explains:
The Sexy
“This girl jumped out a car and literally grabbed me, and ripped my jacket off my suit sleeve. It was the day I presented at the McDonald’s 365 Awards. She literally grabbed my jacket and yelled ‘OMG Blue I love you so much,’ and it ripped. That was probably my first crazy fan moment. I felt for a hot second what Trey [Songz] must go through or what [Justin] Bieber must go through, with people chasing them through the streets. It was that first moment where I was like ‘Oh my god, I have to go, you are scaring me!’
This may not have been sexy for Ellis, but when a fan rips your clothes off, you officially become a sex symbol.
The Crazy
“I leave that and go to this day party, and they move me into this little booth. There was a cat sitting there. He’s probably in his mid-40’s, maybe early 50’s. He was killing some chicken wings. And I mean killing! You know how when you see someone eating chicken and it’s flying when they bite it. He is smashing these wings and he kinda keeps looking at me like ‘Why are you sitting next to me? Why are you in my section?’ So his wife goes ‘OMG, you’re Blue.’ So I introduce myself and say, ‘Yes I’m Jay Ellis, and I play Blue on The Game.’
“So now that the husband realizes that I’m an actor, he goes on to tell me that he’s from Baltimore and how fake [he thinks] The Wire is. And how pissed the people in Baltimore in those projects are about The Wire because nobody from the projects made money off of it, and they should have because [The Wire] featured their real stories. Then, he goes on to tell me that he’s one of the real life characters in the show. So I’m like okay cool that’s what’s up. [The Wire] was a great show. And then he asked me to look him up. I paused and thought ‘wait, what?’ He continued to ask me to look him up. So he grabs my phone with his sticky chicken fingers and Googles himself. There were like thirty articles about this dude.
“I think Idris [Elba] was his character because he kinda looked like him. He then goes on to tell me to look up an article. So I read it, and he tells me to look up another article. He even told me to ask Melo [Carmelo Anthony] about him. “When stuff was going down I would make him go in the house because he was a hooper and we knew he was going to be something.”
At the end of the day, there are certain ‘hood celebrities’ who have been glorified for what they have done. He was one of those dudes who did business in these projects. He scared me when he punked me and took my own phone for me to Google him right in front of him. I never want to see that dude again. He was such a beast.
So I went from being like ‘OMG I’m like Justin Bieber’ to like ‘OMG this dude is about to kill me’ in a matter of not even two hours.”
Mr. Ellis might want to get his own table and section if he plans on hitting up a day party at ESSENCE Festival this year.
The Cool
“My favorite performance was probably Charlie Wilson. My parents would always play music on the weekends, and once we moved to Tulsa we saw how much that city loves him. If you are black in Tulsa, if anybody says The Gap Band, people would point out the houses they grew up in and the high schools they went to. [Charlie WIlson] actually went to a high school I went to. So for me, it was amazing to see him perform because he’s killer when he’s doing what he’s doing. On top of that there was a sense of pride about where I spent a little bit of my life.”
I’m sure you can catch more ‘Crazy, Sexy, Cool’ moments from Jay Ellis via his character Blue on BET’s The Game airing Tuesdays at 10P/9C.