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July 30, 2025 12 mins

An instantly recognisable face and name, Jeremy Piven is hitting New Zealand shores for the first time.  

The actor and comedian is best known for the roles of Harry Selfridge and Ari Gold – the latter of which he won a Golden Globe Award and three consecutive Emmys. 

But it’s not film or television that’s brought him here, instead Piven is bringing his stand-up comedy tour to the stage.  

Piven has been performing from a young age, with both his parents being actors in their own right, and practically raising him in a theatre.  

“I've been butchering some of the great writers of all time, I’ve been butchering it since I was eight years old.” 

Piven’s foray into stand-up comedy came from a desire for balance, stretching and developing his performing muscles. 

“I make that transition and get up there and do my thing with that, and then go back to acting, and it makes you a better actor,” he told Hosking. 

“Most actors are sitting idle, they have a lot of rust on them ... with standup, I’m performing all the time.” 

“There’s no rust on me.” 

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ari Gold is in town and in the house our
Gold of entourage. Fame became a thing, of course, but
then so to mister Selfridge, which was sold to well
over one hundred countries. Jeremy Piven played them both. He's
also funny. His stand up is in Auckland tonight, and
we had him a couple of months back and we said,
when you're in town, come on in. So he is.
Jeremy Piven's back with this.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good morning, Good morning to you sir.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Here we are then, Yes, that wasn't a great start
to the internet. When I say good morning, I mean
it's the only thing happening in this room right now. Yeah, well,
I mean you're on your phone. Don't look up and
go oh to.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Be answer with you, I was turning everything off out
of courtesy to you.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Okay, yeah, is it off?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
It is off, and I'm going to turn the whole
thing off. There we go, get better this interview.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
No worries it all. It's going all right. Now. Last
time we talked, you won't remember, but we've talked before.
When we talked, you were leading up to your sixtieth birthday,
which has now happened. How does that feel?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
It feels fantastic. Take it well, other than this lighting
this lighting, No, no, well, it feels like I'm in
an interrogation. And I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
It's pretty it's pretty much. This is what my show is.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
It's pretty much cool.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Let's start with its old, let's be let's begin. I
love it. This is great, you know, it's this is
exactly what I came here for.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, no, but no, it's it's the reason I rise,
is yea, the reason you started with. I turned sixty.
You look at relatively recently, and it was one of
those things. At fifty it became a thing for me. Yeah,
sixty wasn't forty wasn't fifty was sixty wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah? You know, I don't these these are these are
just numbers, you know what I mean? So I don't
it's a great it's agree. You know, I don't know
what to tell you.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Okay, did you have I feel great? Good?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:54):
You're healthy?

Speaker 2 (01:57):
I do all right? I do all right?

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah that doesn't sound overly convincing to me.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
You know, you want me to celebrate my health.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, I don't know that. That's why I asked I
do I do?

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well?

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Oh good, Yeah, okay, fantastic. We talked last time about
mister Selfridge to are you sick of talking about that? No,
not at all, because that I just wonder with a
person of your depth and expanse and the amount of
work you've done, there will be building up over a
period of time certain things you do that you hold
dear and I would like to think that mister Selfridge

(02:31):
was one.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Absolutely, I love that show. That was incredible, A great
experience four years over in the UK doing a show
I'm very proud of, and no one saw it in
the States, but I'm still very proud of it.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Isn't that wiged? Why didn't they see on the States?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Because this show is a station where it's funded by
the people, so they don't have any money. So, unbeknownst
to me, if you don't have any money to advertise,
it's hard to get people to watch a show.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
That's unfortunate. Yeah, because it was sold to over one
hundred countries.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Wasn't it a one hundred and sixty five countries? So
it was a worldwide hit.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
There'll be very few countries in the world you could
walk down without being Robert.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
I don't know if that I don't know if that's true,
but you know I've been watched this organic transition the
reason why I'm here being interrogated with terrible lighting very
early in the morning, and I love it.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Do you know just before the latch? Yes, the new lights,
Oh they love it. No, I love it. I don't. Yeah,
they were worse than this before I got them upgraded.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
No transition is Yes, I'm on tour.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
I'm a stand up comic. Believe it or not, you
never know by this interview, but I am unbelievably funny
and I am at the Sky Theater tonight.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
If you can believe it's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yes, Sky City Theater. And we have one of your own.
I shouldn't say this when we're going to anyway, we
have one of your heroes, Joe Parker, who's going to
show up. Who's it's.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
You? You ran that line last time, and you see
Joe park is going to tune up and.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
You know because I don't, And I say this with love,
I don't know if I like you. Yeah, I really don't.
But what I'm gonna do right now is I'm going
to pull up his text to me because you started
with yeah, because here's the here's the thing. I will
pull up. If you pull that up, I will.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
What's Joe park inside of you?

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Well, he said that he's coming tonight and yeah, and
then he's going to bring some of his boys and yeah,
it's all good. I'm going to pull it up right
now because here's the here's the thing. He's not going
to be in the show.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
He's just there.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
I will do a lot of set up comedy. But
these are these are very well informed questions.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Okay, yeah, so here we go.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
So sew me one second.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, you don't believe I don't believe this. I know
you searching for a nit work because you here we go, brother, Okay,
here we go. Okay, here we go. Jeremy Heaven Auckland,
July thirty one. Honored to get any one of your
peeps and have them let me know I'm in town. Thanks,
smiley face. This one's actually spelling right. Thank you so much. Brother.

(05:12):
We'll give you a message. Appreciate it. Grateful. Joseph Parker. Yeah,
I'm also doing press tomorrow. I'm on the Mike Hosking
Breakfast Show. The Mike Hosking Breakfast Show is one of
the most popular shows in the country. Yeah, that's right.
Who else you got in your phone? You're famous in
your phone.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
I just have a lot of because we're so old now,
I have a lot of practologists and just mostly just
you know guys that do yeah, various things, a lot
of butt doctors. Yes, mostly, but I can show you
all their attacks. They do a nice show.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Now, now, talk to me about the Piven Theater. What
was it like when you were growing up? You know,
just explain that your parents in the Piven Theater.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Explain what theater is.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
I'm sorry, the Pivot Theater.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
It is a theater where the you know, my my parents.
My mother died a few months ago, and she was
my acting teacher from the time I was about eight
years old and I jumped up on stage with my family.
And most of the kids are on scholarship, so we
don't really know. When people are like, oh, you're in
the business, it's like, I'm not in any business. We're

(06:17):
just actors, were stage performers, and we didn't understand the
business act as aspect of it, which is kind of
ironic because I you know, I played a character Ari
Gold for over a decade that was this businessman. So
everyone thinks that I understand the business, and I'm just
a stage actor from Chicago. The kids are on scholarship.

(06:37):
Any age you can go in there and study. They
put on, you know, whatever they feel like putting on
at the time, whether.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
It be.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
You know, check off. I've been butchering some of the
great writers of all time. I've been butchering it since
I was eight years old. So you know, Shakespeare, Kurt Vonnegut.
You know, we do about four shows a year there,
and you know, every every night there are acting classes
there and it's still thriving.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Was it a thing? Was what I was interested in?
When you're a kid, No one else has got a theater?
Was that a thing? Was that exciting to be or
did it? Was it? Just what? It was?

Speaker 2 (07:18):
It it? I thought that every kid had a theater
that they grew up in. But I was horribly mistaken.
So I thought it was just like the norm. You
get up on stage, you have a great time. Your
parents empowered you with the ideology that you're enough, and
so you feel very comfortable to perform and kind of

(07:41):
operate on your highest vibration. Unbeknownst to me, not every
kid had that.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
So what do you believe in that sense, if you
hang out at the theater and your parents are into
the theater, you can perform or is performance God given?

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Oh that's a great question. I I do feel that
that we are all given gifts to a lesser and
greater extent, and then you know how you how you
navigate that is something different. And that's probably the difference
between being good and great. And I think a lot
of people have been given gifts and they don't stay

(08:19):
after it. But I I've I've been on stage, you know,
for for my entire life, and I need a little
more balance in my life. So that's that's a whole
other thing. But the yeah, I think that you know, listen,
both my parents are actors and and I think I
chose them. And I know that sounds cliched or strange

(08:41):
or whatever, but I think I did pick them. And
so I think because of them, I was given something.
And and getting up on stage as a child and
having never stopped doing that, you know, you develop certain
muscles and I was a little bit of a late
bloomer to stand up and so I make that transition

(09:01):
and get up there and do my thing with that
and then go back to acting, and it makes you
a better actor just because most actors are sitting idle.
They have a lot of rust on them because you know,
they have to get a lot of people to okay
the film, get the money, the studio has to sign
off on you whatever or an indie film or whatever.

(09:24):
And then with stand up, I'm performing all the time,
and then when I go back to acting, there's no
rust on me.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Fantastic, great answer. They also say, you're doing two two
hundred and fifty shows a year, is that right? Yeah,
that's pretty much well most days.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, I mean well five day shows a week because
you're doing two shows a night, but with theaters like
I'm doing now the Sky Theater tonight at eight o'clock.
Just throwing that in there.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
With Joe Parker.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
With Joe Parker who is going to be opening for me,
He's gonna be tight twelve minutes. He's incredibly funny, Joe Parker.
There are other people that are have threatened to come
and we'll see if they're I can't name them, but
it's gonna be a little bit of a you know. Yeah,
there are certain UFC fighters that are that are great?

(10:15):
You know?

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Is this a sporting of Intel record?

Speaker 2 (10:18):
On? His first name rhymes with missy?

Speaker 1 (10:23):
I don't know what other nine rhymes with missy? Is he? Oh?
Is he a sign? Yeah? Does? Is he rhyme with missy?

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Now?

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah? It does? Israelsgna. He's bigger than you think you
made him.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
He's about six three big.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
He's bigger than you think. He's a big boy. This
is this a fight or a comedy? Shine?

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Uh, it's it's it's hard to say right now. It
feel like it would be a fight, but uh, yeah,
it's you know, I when I'm in town, I like
to reach out to people that i've I've watched and
who have inspired me, and I just give it a shot.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
I just you know, he's fantastic in terms in terms
of determination and getting where you want to go. That
guy's legiend, mind you say, is Joe Parker.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah. They're both very, very very inspiring. They've you know,
you can have greatness like they both had and then
you can rest on it and go that's enough. And
both of them have been down and figured out a
way to extract their ego and just get after it.
And they're very inspiring, fantastic.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
I've thoroughly enjoyed this, by the way, thank you. I
think your enjoyment level rose as the interview went on.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
You know anyway, when you're next in town, Yeah, come
by and see us.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Oh my god, I'm going to put it on my.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Calendar hopefully the lighting of we Oh.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
No, no, it's all good. I love this.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Jeremy, thank you, guys, nice to see Nice to see you,
Jeremy Piven, This guys City to Night along with is
He and Joe Allegedly. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks. It'd be from six am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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