Jeremy Piven Says Entourage ‘Couldn’t Exist in Today’s Climate’

Even though Entourage was comedic gold in the early 2000s, Jeremy Piven does not assume the humor would fly these days.

“We’re dwelling in a time the place I hope the anxiety subsides on just about every level,” Piven, 58, completely advised Us Weekly at the Sunday, May 5, fundraiser for the Enlight Unite Basis at Alice + Olivia in Austin, Texas. “I make a great deal of jokes on why Entourage couldn’t exist in today’s climate and that’s unlucky simply because the fact is, folks just want [to] snicker. They want to chuckle so terribly.”

Piven performed Ari Gold on the HBO series for eight seasons together with Kevin Connolly, Adrian Grenier, Kevin Dillon, Jerry Ferrara and more. In July, Entourage will celebrate its 20th anniversary — but Piven feels like he finished filming the collection “yesterday.”

“The irony of that is that each and every time I step on a phase, they’re screaming out, ‘Let’s hug it out, bitch,’ and they all skip it,” Piven explained, referring to his character’s legendary line. “People related with that clearly show, they however join with it. Through the pandemic, youngsters in their early 20s ended up binging it.”

In the collection, Piven’s character was a Hollywood super-agent who was sarcastic, arrogant, insensitive, snarky and unapologetic. When Piven signed up to play him, he knew that Ari would be “misunderstood today.”

“That character, I knew from the leap, would be a really appealing anomaly in the way that you considered he was a pig, but he was monogamous,” he explained. “He was abrasive and was he a racist? No, no, no. He’s a motivator, and he’s an equivalent prospect offender.”

Piven went on to declare that in today’s climate, comedians simply cannot conduct to their greatest talents when there is a microscope on them.

“You can not do the job on your greatest level as an artist if you’re next-guessing on your own. If you’re pondering how it’s going to land, how you are going to be seen,” he advised Us. “No make a difference how good you are, you are likely to be limiting yourself, and the audience doesn’t want to see an artist who’s confined, they want to see them thoroughly present, undertaking their factor.”

Lately, Piven starred in The Effectiveness, based mostly on the 2002 small tale by Arthur Miller. The film, which was directed by his sister Shira, follows a Jewish tap dancer, performed by Piven, who is on tour in Europe throughout Hitler’s reign prior to the Holocaust.

“It’s executing fantastic at film festivals, receiving standing ovations and absolutely everyone who sees it enjoys it. I really like it,” Piven gushed to Us about the undertaking. “I’ve done around 80 films and it is the most effective movie I have done in my life, it’s the best get the job done of my life.”

Piven also teamed up with the nonprofit Elight Unite Foundation, which produced a system for college students to use their voices to discuss out versus racism, bullying and loathe. At Sunday’s fundraiser at an Alice + Olivia keep in Austin, in which 20% of proceeds from the profits went to the corporation.

With reporting by Jennifer Birn