Picture-Tracy Morgan, Jay Pharoah and Kevin "Dot Com" Brown for 30 Rock's Live episode

There’s always a healthy rivalry in showbiz, and in the lead-up to last month's Emmy telecast, Kevin “Dotcom” Brown, who plays one half of Tracy Morgan’s posse on “30 Rock,” took it to the streets by challenging “Modern Family’s” Sofia Vergara’s promise to run naked down Sunset Boulevard if her show won best ensemble comedy.

“I’m gonna help Sofia win,” said Brown, in an interview with The Wave, while ensconced in the old-world surroundings of downtown’s Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

“I’m gonna help her run. I wanna see that. That’s a beautiful woman right there,” he said.

As it turned out, “Modern Family” did beat out the competition to take home the statuette, but we’ll have to see if either of Brown’s wishes comes true.

For the moment, the New York native who began his entertainment career as an entrepreneur when he founded Harlem’s Uptown Comedy Club in his twenties, says he is just blessed to be on the fifth season of one of the funniest shows on television.

The comedy club, which he later parlayed into a television series that aired around the same time as “Def Comedy Jam,” was a breeding ground for the likes of Chris Tucker and “30 Rock’s” very own Tracy Morgan, but ironically Brown’s path to the show had nothing to do with their prior relationship.

“I had known Tracy for 18 to 19 years since someone sent him to my club as a young comic and he would attend our New Jack workshops,” recalled Brown. “It was my mom, who had this great eye for talent who first saw him — I was busy handling the business side — and said you need to take a look at this kid, he’s hilarious.

“So we’re getting ready to tape one weekend and Chris [Tucker] misses his flight and my producing partners say we need to find someone funny to fill his spot because all the big names we usually have were unavailable,” he said.

“So I looked into the room and there [were] about 20 or 30 comics and I’m thinking which of these guys are ready. I thought of Tracy — he’s young, wild and funny, even though he’s never done TV. I go up to him and say Trey can you do seven funny minutes like you do in the club?”

Mimicking his friend, Brown continued: “Trey’s like … yo Kev I gotcha man ... and I said you can’t be messin’ up and he’s like … yo I’m ready. And that was that, we put him on and he killed it and he’s been killing it ever since. He went from Uptown to playing Hustle Man on Martin, to SNL, his own show and 30 Rock.”

Brown revealed that he became a victim of his own success when many of the comics who literally did their first joke on the Uptown stage went out to Hollywood, booked TV shows and movies and never looked back.

“So we were literally losing cats,” said Brown. “We’d get them to the point where they were earning seven-figure salaries and we couldn’t afford them anymore. I thought to myself I made these guys out of nothing and I’ll just put that energy into myself because at least then if I blow up I’m taking me with me.”

Thus, for the last eight years Brown has been a working actor and stand up comedian. Then, back in 2006 he got a casting call to be a featured extra in the ‘Un-named Tina Fey Project.’

“Yeah, it didn’t have a title at the time,” explained Brown. “Anyway, I literally turned the casting agent down three times, I said I’m a principal actor I don’t do extra work. Finally, she said Kevin, just come down to the audition; it’s a brand new show you never know what can happen.

“The part was to be a big guy who hangs out with one of the show’s stars. But I’d never really heard of Tina Fey and they didn’t reveal who the star would be. But they picked me for the crew and we’re shooting the pilot.

“It’s a restaurant scene; they’re like Kev you’re gonna be sitting here, Tina there and Tracy over here. I’m like okay. I wasn’t sure who the Tracy was, could have been Tracy Chapman or Tracy McGrady, as an actor you just turn up and do what the director says.

“But then in walks Tracy Morgan and the guys that produce ‘30’ also produce ‘SNL’ so he goes up to them and says hi then sits at the back of room. However, he’s nervous because this is his shot back on TV after his own show was canceled.”

Brown relates the next moment with fondness, again doing a pitch-perfect rendition of Morgan.

“Suddenly, I hear from the back of the room … hold up is that Kev … Kev … yo Kev. He starts screaming and that’s the moment he noticed that we’d been paired up. Then he comes up, [we] have our happy reunion — because we hadn’t seen each other for eight years — and he introduces me to Tina and Lorne [SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels]. He’s like … yo, Tina, Lorne, y’all got my family here. This is my man Dotcom.”

Brown explained that the Dotcom moniker came when he was trying to distinguish himself from other big comics on the circuit.

“Kevin’s a fairly common name, so I went from Big Kev to BigKevDotcom,” he added. “After the show got picked up and we’d maybe shot two episodes, one of the producers came up to me and said the writers like the energy ‘you and Tracy have, we’re gonna write you into the script from time to time.’ I said, ‘Does it mean more money?’ and they said yes. I was like, ‘Cool.’”

Video via The TV Junkie./repost

By OLU ALEMORU, Staff Writer