Ali LeRoi is a strapping man with long dreadlocks that go down his back and a contagious laugh that makes his eyes disappear. So why does the co-creator of "Everybody Hates Chris" and Chris Rock's longtime writing and producing partner insist that he is Dick Van Dyke?
LeRoi grew up in Chicago in the 1960s, the kind of kid who liked to lie at the foot of his mother's bed on Saturday nights to catch "The Carol Burnett Show." He always loved comedy, and another favorite was "The Dick Van Dyke Show" -- the classic sitcom about the head writer of a TV series, his family and his crew -- which LeRoi watched in afternoon reruns. If there was such a thing as a typical black kid in his neighborhood, LeRoi wasn't it.
"I started watching comedy eons ago, and it was all about Harvey Korman and Lyle Waggoner," said LeRoi, referring to two of Burnett's regulars during a recent lunch break in his Paramount lot office. "When everybody was into Richard Pryor, I was into George Carlin."
In 1997 Rock hired LeRoi and his then writing partner, Lance Crouther, to write for "The Chris Rock Show" on HBO. A husband and father of two, LeRoi found himself living out his own version of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" with Rock as Alan Brady, and co-writers Wanda Sykes as Buddy Sorell and Crouther as Sally Rogers.
"And I was Dick Van Dyke," he said. "I had a wife and a couple of kids and we lived in New Jersey at the time and it was a weird thing that happened. I'm actually \o7that\f7 guy."
And he still is, in a way. The man who founded the eccentric and successful Mary Wong sketch group when he was in high school and later toured with Bernie Mac as a stand-up is in charge of one of the fall season's few breakout hits. "Everybody Hates Chris" is loosely autobiographical, but it's not just Rock's story of growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn that the show portrays. There's a lot from LeRoi's life too, from Rochelle, the mother with a special brand of tough love, to young Chris' friendship with a white boy.
LeRoi, 43, has made a life out of telling jokes. One of the most influential African American comedic voices in the country, he has written material for Rock, Mac and Orlando Jones among others, but enjoys staying behind the scenes; his lines are better known than his name.
