EXCLUSIVE: Veteran comic Bruce Bruce has taped a new special, I Ain’t Playin’, which will premiere on Netflix on March 3.
Filmed at the Old Vic Theater in Chicago, the hour is Bruce Bruce’s first for Netflix, and first for any platform in 14 years. Full of anecdotes and observations on the craziness of people and our world in which he ‘ain’t playin,’ it comes on the heels of his hours Losin’ It (2011) and Bruce Bruce Live (2003).
“Millennials mad, Gen Z confused, Gen Alpha running the house… and I’m standing in the middle watching it all,” Bruce Bruce told us. “‘I Ain’t Playin’ is me calling it how I see it.”
Born as Bruce Church, Bruce Bruce is a Atlanta native whose impetus to explore a stand-up career came unexpectedly from a job as a Frito Lay salesman. He made everyone around him in that job laugh, was hired to do stand-up comedy sets at their corporate meetings, and from there, a career spanning decades was born. Bruce broke out with a 1993 appearance on HBO’s Def Comedy Jam before going on to appear on Showtime at the Apollo. He has toured nationwide with the likes of Mike Epps, Martin Lawrence, and Bert Kreisher, hosted BET’s Comic View and Coming to the Stage, and appeared in films like Top Five with Chris Rock, Ice Cube’s xXx: State of the Union, Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, and Undercover Brother 2.
Watch on Deadline
Bruce Bruce published the memoir Baby James Brown with Penguin Publishing. He is repped by manager Adam Williamson and UTA.
This story originated as part of Deadline’s Comedy Means Business newsletter. Sign up here.