Originally posted Thursday, November 22, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Finesse Mitchell, a proud product of Frederick Douglass High School, is coming home later this month to do his first stand-up shows in Atlanta in five years.
He'll do six shows November 29 through December 1 at the Atlanta Comedy Theater in Norcross. (Buy tickets here.)
Mitchell, who has lived in Los Angeles for the past seven years, came into public notice for his time on "Saturday Night Live" from 2003 to 2006, entering the same time as fellow Atlantan Kenan Thompson, now the longest-running cast member on the show in history.
Since leaving "SNL," he has written a relationship book and appeared on a Disney show "A.N.T. Farm" for three seasons as well as a handful of films. He has never had that huge break in scripted TV, noting he has been on numerous pilots of shows that didn't get picked up. (The most recent? ABC passed this week on a "The Middle" spinoff but it's being shopped around to other networks.)
Mitchell has continued to do stand up through the years to ensure steady income. Following a run on the short-lived Cameron Crowe drama "Roadies" on Showtime, the network bestowed him a comedy special that aired last month called "The Spirit Told Me To Tell You." (Subscribers can watch it here.)
The buzz from the special landed him appearances on syndicated talk shows "The Real" and "The Wendy Williams Show." He also appeared on the syndicated Breakfast Club show and "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon."
“For me, it’s just a reward for the hard work I had done once I moved back to L.A. and started to refocus on my career,” he said.
Mitchell, now 46, looks at least 10 years younger. “Black don’t crack,” he noted, “unless you smoke it.”
He said his wife Adris DeBarge (daughter of El DeBarge) has him on a great diet and they work a lot. "She's got me drinking smoothies all the damn time," he said. In his special, he noted how younger folks at clubs can smell an older person a mile away no matter how young they look. "Maybe it's the cologne," he said.
He said he sees 21 year olds now and think they look 16. “I feel like we looked a little older when we were that age,” he said. “Then again, it’s all in my mind!”
Mitchell is now a daddy with a three year old girl Elle and a four-month-old infant Eva. "It really settles you down," he said. "I think my career started to build up once I became a father. It's like in that movie 'Fast and Furious' where you push that little button that provides a little extra juice in the engine. It motivated me. I leveraged the relationships I built over the years and really called on people when I had something to talk about."
He also gets along well with his wife’s famous dad. “El DeBarge is doing amazing,” Mitchell said. “He loves me to death!”
COMEDY PREVIEW
Finesse Mitchell
Thursday, November 29, 8:30 p.m.
Friday, November 30, 8:30 p.m., 10:30 p.m.
Saturday, December 1, 10 p.m., 11:30 p.m.
$25
Atlanta Comedy Theater
4650 Jimmy Carter Boulevard
#114b, Norcross
