CLEVELAND — Flip between the channels or browse between your streaming options and trend emerges: Some of the most familiar faces in comedy all call Northeast Ohio home.
From Steve Harvey to Arsenio Hall, Yvette Nicole Brown, Kym Whitley, George Wallace and David Arnold, they all found their own in the neighborhood, on-campus and in the comedy clubs of Cleveland and Akron.
As we celebrate Black History Month, News 5 spoke with some of the famous faces that make us laugh. We look back on their upbringing and how Northeast Ohio shaped their careers.
"I am probably the biggest cheerleader for Cleveland," comedic actress Yvette Nicole Brown said.
Brown grew up in East Cleveland and attended Warrensville Heights High School and then the University of Akron before seeing success on shows such as Community, The Odd Couple, and A Black Lady Sketch Show.
"I think some of it is just surviving the tough parts of Cleveland and that is not a disparagement of our town," Brown reminisced. "I am so grateful that it wasn't always easy because nothing in Los Angeles is easy. I learned in Ohio to survive every type of circumstance. There's nothing anyone can say to me that I didn't hear at recess at school. So anyone that thinks that they can say something that's gonna hurt my feelings, I was at Mayfair Elementary [in East Cleveland]. It happened there. So relax."
The tight-knit community of comedy in NEO
While at Warrensville Heights High School, Brown found her inspiration by looking at how another alumnus made a successful career on television.
"Arsenio Hall is in our Hall of Fame," Brown explained. "So every day walking to class, I would walk by his face in the hallway and I would be like, 'One day I wanna do enough to be up there with Arsenio.'"
Hall recently reflected on growing up in Cleveland while presenting an award at the 75th Emmy Awards last month.
"As a kid, I idolized Johnny Carson," Hall said. "When most kids in Cleveland wanted to grow up to be football stars like Jim Brown, I wanted to be an old white guy with a talk show."
And if you haven’t figured it out by now, Cleveland and comedy doesn’t have six degrees of separation, it’s like one or two.
Last year, Yvette Nicole Brown starred on Bounce TV's "Act Your Age," alongside Shaker Heights-native Kym Whitley.
"All writers say when you say 'Cleveland,' it just sounds funny," Whitley said.
Whitley, who has amassed more than a million followers on Instagram, explained to News 5 what it is that makes Northeast Ohio the perfect place to foster comedy.
"We had a place to go and to do comedy," she said. "I really feel like it is all the love and the family and the friends you grow up feeling pretty much free to be who you are. And one thing Cleveland was good for, I don't know if it ever happened to you, but in high school and in grade school you jonesed on people. We had the mama jokes, we talked back and forth."
A cluster of comedy in the 1970s on college campuses
Back in the 1970s, George Wallace was attending the University of Akron while at the same time over at Kent State were Steve Harvey and Arsenio Hall, each one finding their footing and reasons to make people laugh.
"If you can't laugh in Cleveland and Akron, you have to," Wallace said. "Everybody here should be a comedian living here. Are you kidding?"
More than 2,000 miles separate Hollywood and Northeast Ohio, but the smiles of the celebrities prove the laughs here can make it anywhere.
"I think that Clevelanders appreciate comedy," Yvette Nicole Brown said. "They celebrate comedy and they support comedy. If you get a laugh in Cleveland, you're doing something."
