Staying Fit
Steve Harvey tells AARP why he's about to have a blissfully happy new year and also about his TV show Fox's New Year's Eve With Steve Harvey: Live From Times Square.
You're 62, older than most hosts of year-end shows — yet ratings soared 98 percent when you started hosting Fox's New Year's Eve show. Does this prove the power of grownups in showbiz?
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You can get a younger guy, but God has given me enormous talents. I'm pretty seasoned, and I can satisfy all the age groups. We've got Maria Menounos, the NFL's Rob Gronkowski, LL Cool J, Gordon Ramsay, Will Arnett, and the Village People trying to set a record for the world's biggest “YMCA” dance. If you can deliver people a good time that evening, I mean, why not tune into them?
Maria got married on live TV on last New Year's show. Will she marry someone else this year?
No, I think Maria might be done. I know I'm not marrying anybody else.
What lesson did you learn in the past decade?
I'm probably at the apex of my career right now. Ten years ago, I started Family Feud, wrote the book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Then the movie came out. Seven years ago, I started the talk show, I retired from stand-up, I've added Miss Universe to the arsenal, and it's my third year doing Fox's New Year's Eve. So I've just learned how to always just keep reinventing myself. Never get stuck in one place!
What are you looking forward to in the next decade?
I think this next chapter my life — what I'm calling the second half of my life — I'm looking for a more global presence. I'm in Africa right now. Tomorrow one of my dreams came true: I got the international rights to do Family Feud in Africa, so I'm shooting in Johannesburg, Family Feud South Africa, and I'm going back in January to do Ghana. My popularity over here seems to be a little bit more nuts than I thought it was. I just bought the AXS TV network with Mark Cuban — we might be doing something with the NBA this year — and my talk show that was taken off NBC is back in an unprecedented deal on Facebook Watch. So the next two years, I'm looking pretty good.
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What's your own New Year's resolution?