It’s Wayne Brady’s line anyway

When Wayne Brady speaks, you have no choice but to listen and laugh. One of television’s funniest men, Brady arrests your attention because he has a voice as smooth as honey.

And, he insists on calling you ‘ma’am’ because “where I come from, that is how we address people.”

In India recently on a five-city tour as part of Black Dog Comedy Evenings, Brady’s performed with Jonathan Mangum, his co-host on the American game show Let’s Make A Deal, and the duo got standing ovations from the audiences.

In India, Brady may be best known as the guy with the golden voice and smooth moves from the hit improv comedy show Whose Line is it Anyway? “The show is the reason I can walk on to any stage in any part of the world and have the audience recognise me,” he says.

Minutes into the conversation, it becomes obvious that family strikes a deep chord with Brady, particularly his eight-year-old daughter Maile and his 80-year-old grandmum Valerie Peterson. Brady was brought up by his paternal grandmother Peterson whom he calls ‘mum’.

Brady has come a long way from being the boy with a stutter who was always picked on and who shied away from public attention. Brady was born Wayne Alphonso Brady in Columbus in 1972 and by age six was writing his own commercials, plays and songs. He started out doing street theatre, musical dramas inspired largely by big screen idols like Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye and largely Bill Cosby.

“The most important lesson I learnt from Bill Cosby was how to keep comedy clean,” he says. Brady makes sure he doesn’t push the line between a simple wink and a nudge, and crass humour. Brady is also speaking from the perspective of being a father; Maile can generally be found laughing along with the audience at her father’s shows.

It was on Whose Line that Brady discovered that he could combine his singing, which is largely rap and R n’ B, with comedy. The stint got him his own show, The Wayne Brady Show which ran for two seasons and won him four Emmy awards. Given his success as an improv artist it comes as a surprise to hear him say that doing improv was never his scene.

“I never thought of improv as my destination. But I happened to be at the right place at the right time doing the right thing,” he says. Brady has starred in sitcoms like 30 Rock, How I met Your Mother; acted in the Broadway revival of Chicago and released two music albums, A Long Time Coming and Radio Wayne.

On any given day, be it while hosting a show or touring the world, it is always the audience that has the last laugh. On whose line? Wayne Brady’s of course.