Luenell and David Alan Grier Have Entered Their Auntie-and-Uncle Era
Two INYIM favorites, one stage, and enough lived-in Hollywood history to make half the industry pull up a chair. Luenell welcomed David Alan Grier to The Hey Luenell Podcast live from Flappers Comedy Club, and what starts as two old friends clowning around quickly turns into one of those conversations where every ten minutes produces another story somebody should clip immediately.
We already love Grier as the magnificently tired Dr. Ron on NBC’s St. Denis Medical, and watching him with Luenell made something else click: these two have officially reached auntie-and-uncle status in the business. Not “old Hollywood” as in finished. The opposite. They are still working, still funny, still booked — but now they have decades of receipts and absolutely no reason to pretend the road here was neat.
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Auntie Luenell + Uncle David Have Stories
From In Living Color and Boomerang to St. Denis Medical, David Alan Grier has been inside several generations of comedy history — and Luenell knows exactly where to poke.
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The St. Denis Medical Story That Suddenly Makes Grier’s Longevity Hit Different
One of the strongest moments comes when Grier talks about working with Sam Richardson, who played his son on St. Denis Medical. Richardson told him that when he was a kid growing up in Detroit, his parents would drive him past the house where Grier had grown up and point it out as proof of what was possible.
“So those kind of stories… these are moments where it just blows my mind.”
That is the auntie-and-uncle part we mean. You work long enough and suddenly somebody you inspired as a child is standing next to you on a current NBC comedy. Grier says moments like that — along with being selected for the Hollywood Walk of Fame Class of 2027 — remind him that he is still here, still relevant and still doing work he is proud of.
David Alan Grier Auditioned for In Living Color With Martin Lawrence
There is your first ready-made viral headline. While revisiting In Living Color, Grier casually reveals that he and Martin Lawrence auditioned for the series together. Martin did not make that particular cast, which in retrospect is hilarious only because we all know exactly what happened next with his career.
Grier also admits that before comedy fully took over his life, the trained actor in him actually looked down on stand-up — he compared it to “joining the circus.” Then Damon Wayans told him how much money he had just made performing for colleges. Two weeks later? Grier jokes that he was suddenly a comedian.
“I’m a comedian now.”
Funny, yes. But his larger point is better: stand-up gave him a direct line to audiences and enough independence to say no to work he did not want. That is career advice hiding inside a punchline.
Keenen Ivory Wayans Apparently Snuck Grier Off In Living Color to Make Boomerang
Then comes another story built for a clip. Grier says he only learned years later that Keenen Ivory Wayans never actually told Fox that Grier was leaving In Living Color to work on Boomerang. Keenen simply told him to be back when it was time to tape.
According to Grier, when people at Fox came looking, the answer was essentially: David will be back in a minute. Meanwhile, he was off making what became one of the defining Black romantic comedies of the era with Eddie Murphy.
He remembers Eddie already knowing his work from A Soldier’s Story and describes the freedom Murphy gave the cast to improvise. That whole run — A Soldier’s Story, In Living Color, Boomerang — comes across less like a neat career ladder and more like a group of terrifyingly talented people figuring out how to open doors for each other while nobody was looking.
David Alan Grier Wants His Respect While He Is Still Here
The conversation gets unexpectedly tender when Luenell asks how he feels about his upcoming Hollywood Walk of Fame star. Grier says that for much of his career he had trouble receiving love and praise. Being selected for the Walk of Fame hits him as a childhood-level marker that, yes, he really did something.
Later, while talking about the late Adolph Caesar and the importance of longevity, Grier lands on what may be the single most shareable thought of the entire conversation:
“It doesn’t matter if you’re not here to get it… I want to get mine now.”
Exactly. Tell people while they are here. Celebrate them while they can hear it. Put the star down while the person can actually stand on it and complain about where Hollywood placed it.
Comedians Don’t Retire — and Apparently the Aunties and Uncles Start Gardening
Grier has another line that belongs on a social card immediately: “Comedians don’t retire. They pass away.” His preferred exit is basically microphone in hand, which he correctly points out would be excellent press.
But he also admits the nightlife chapter has changed. “I’m a little older now, so I’m gardening,” he says, adding that he does not hang in the clubs like he used to. And there it is: the official progression from comedy menace to somebody’s uncle discussing plants.
Honestly, same energy with Luenell. These are not elders sitting around pretending the past was better because they were younger in it. They are two working comics with enough mileage to understand where the bodies, breakthroughs, bad deals and brilliant people are buried — and enough humor left to tell the stories without turning the whole thing into a lecture.
Richard Pryor, Paul Mooney and the People Who Changed the Game
Grier also gets serious about the people who shaped him. He calls Richard Pryor the gold standard and compares Pryor’s impact on stand-up to Charlie Parker’s impact on music: the kind of artist who changes the form so completely that everybody after them is working in a different landscape.
He speaks just as passionately about Paul Mooney, praising the fact that Mooney stayed true to himself even when people insisted he could have gone further by playing the game differently. Grier’s takeaway is blunt: without artists like Mooney clearing space, there would be no him.
That is what makes this episode bigger than another celebrity sit-down. It is two INYIM favorites sitting in a comedy club and casually tracing decades of Black entertainment history through people they actually knew, rooms they actually worked and careers they are somehow still adding chapters to.
Watch David Alan Grier on The Hey Luenell Podcast Live at Flappers
The full live conversation runs through Grier’s early acting years, In Living Color, Boomerang, Chocolate News, St. Denis Medical, his Hollywood Walk of Fame honor, comedy legends and a lifetime of stories with Luenell.
Source: The Hey Luenell Podcast / HeyLuenell.
