Original subtitles

Please welcome Mr.

T.

You make an impressive entrance.

You were so frightening in that movie picture. Well, the character calls to be

hungry. And I've been hungry all my life.

Mr. T is a cultural icon.

You love it when a plan comes together.

He's in the top ten most recognizable people on Earth.

There he is with Batman himself, Mr. T. The earrings, the chains, the mohawk.

I said this guy.

is a real-life superhero.

A slam by Mr. T as Piper goes down.

Mr. T is one of the unique unsung heroes in this country.

But as his popularity rose, everywhere he went.

Say, I pity the fool.

I pity the fool! Isn't that right, Mr. T?

I pity the fool.

I pity the fool.

Either you have to remain in character, or they're going to turn you into a

caricature.

So, yes, he is a superhero.

But at the end of it, at what cost?

Do you have a first name? First name is Mr.

My middle name is the period.

My last name is the T.

Now the hit Sunday game special has become a great new series, Games People

Play. I'll never forget the moment I saw Mr. T.

It was on a bodyguard show where they featured Mr.

T amongst other bodyguards that were competing for the best bodyguard in the

land. And I saw this man, and it changed my life forever.

All right, the bouncer's challenge here. Go break up the fight on the other side

of the club.

Here we go.

I'll never forget him slamming through a door and crushing this door.

The way he looks, the mohawk, man. I was like, who, how,

where did he come from?

I said, is he American?

I didn't even know.

I thought at first when I saw him, I thought it's just an a**hole. African

warrior. Hi, I'm Mr. T, Chicago's Dean Batson.

It's true I was not born Mr. T.

I was born Lawrence T. Rowe.

People know of me, but they don't know me.

They don't know the road I had to travel.

I have seven brothers and four sisters.

We moved to the Robert Taylor Projects.

We just packed poor black people on top of each other.

We was poor financially, but we had each other.

My brother, they would teach me what's required of me as a young brother.

I got to protect my sisters. I got to protect my mother.

You got to be tough. You don't show no pain because you got to be able to hold

your own in the hood.

So me and my brothers do exercise.

Brother, be holding my feet, I'm doing sit-ups.

We would do push-ups.

We would climb trees and pull up on the branch.

By the time I got to high school, they thought I had weights in the house.

If you look at the story of Black America, there's so many people that

come from these situations.

When you're a young kid coming up in that, and you see that generation of non

-mobility, it shapes the way you think.

He was one of the ones who was able to compartmentalize as a young individual

about what he felt it was going to take for him to get out of here.

My mother was a housekeeper. I wanted to take the pressure off of her.

So I moved downtown because I said, I got to be where the money is at. I got

to be where the moving and grooving is at.

I started as a janitor.

I worked hard at it.

Then I got a job at some hotels.

And then get a third job.

I'm working a job on the weekend in security.

I'm saving my money.

Start at the bottom, work your way up.

So I'm living downtown, but my mother is still back in the projects.

Then I got some bad news.

My sister called every brother.

Called me last.

Told me what happened.

My mother, she had got the welfare check, cashed some thugs. They watched

her coming back in.

So one got on the elevator with her on the first floor.

Another guy get on the second floor.

So he's riding up.

Then they had sticked the elevator.

And it stopped.

One of the guys said, give me your money, bitch, or I'll cut your throat.

They shouldn't have done that.

They should not have done that.

I had a pumped shotgun, 12 gauge, put it in my car, drove down there.

Guys were hanging downstairs.

I say, man, my mother got robbed. You know anything about it?

No, man, I don't know nothing.

Bang!

Knocked the guy's teeth out with the butt of the gun.

I said, don't lie to me, MF.

You know something.

I'm going to kill you for not knowing nothing.

Guys got to know we're going to bring the heat.

We coming.

And after a couple days, found him one at a time, you know.

And I had to do what I got to do.

I was like insane, like an out-of-body thing, thinking about my

mother, seeing her shaking there.

You know why I felt real bad?

Because I wasn't there to protect her.

You know, I could be like a magician, make people disappear.

I was born for that moment.

I'm that shield.

My job is to protect you from whoever come near to try to do harm.

So despite the ravages of time, our heroes will prevail.

And who knows?

Perhaps we need all of the heroes and all of the villains.

In the real world, you know, it's sometimes difficult to tell who's what.

That's when he hit me.

I'm going to become a bodyguard.

facing the inhumanity that they're given to deal with.

Superheroes create their own survival.

And the origin story of Mr. T set him up to become a superhero.

As a black man growing up in white society, I watched my father being

called boy.

And then I watched my brother, who came back from Vietnam,

Being called boy.

I self-ordained myself Mr.

T. So the first word out of everybody's mouth would be Mr.

That's a sign of respect my father didn't get. So when they addressing me,

Mr. T, you're addressing my father, my uncle, my brothers, and other black men

who came up from the ranks who was disrespected.

If you respect the man, respect the name, you address me as Mr. T.

So I had a business card that read, Mr. T, bodyguard extraordinaire.

Next to God, there's no better protector than I.

Mr. T used to work there. He used to be a bouncer or a doorman, whatever you

prefer. But his job was to scare people and intimidate them, and it worked. He

did the job well.

Dingbats, disco, that was the nightclub that I worked at.

I cut all my hair off.

I started wearing the suits.

Before I had money, I wanted to look like money.

When you come into my establishment, hey, welcome to Dingbats. Come on in.

You come to the right place.

We are jamming. The music jumping. I'm boogying a little bit.

At the same time, a lot of celebrities come to Chicago, perform concerts, and

they needed backstage security.

So word of mouth.

That's how I got to start bodyguard, Michael Jackson.

And now I got a lot of celebrities.

Leon Spinks.

The name almost brings a smile to your face.

The 24-year-old Spinks takes on Bobby Smith and in the fourth round, Dexing.

Leon Spinks qualified for tomorrow's bout with two minutes of explosive

punching in Monte Carlo. There's no question Ali had his eyes on Leon

Spinks. Leon Spinks, with a record of 6-0-1, is set to take on Muhammad Ali

for the heavyweight championship of the world.

The oddsmakers have Ali as the overwhelming favorite.

Muhammad Ali, he was my hero.

I remember when they tried to draft Ali for the army.

You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs, and

you want me to go somewhere and fight, but you won't even stand up for me here

at home.

And the thing that really made Muhammad Ali my hero...

It's when he said, I have no quarrel with the Viet Cong.

They never called me nigger.

It took a man to say that during those times.

I wanted to be like Muhammad Ali, and I liked what he was about.

Then, in February 1978,

Leon Spence beat Muhammad Ali for the title.

So Spinks had a tour, and he came to Chicago.

And they asked me, would you like to bodyguard him? I said, you got it.

I'm like, I'm working for the guy who beat the stuffings out of my hero.

So he had an exhibition against this Italian guy at a big amphitheater on the

south side of Chicago.

Spinks busted the guy's nose, then the people in the audience.

They got mad and started throwing stuff.

My instruction was, Leon can't get hurt. So the trainer said, you got to get him

out of here, D.

So I'm fighting, punching, bang, bang.

I was supposed to be in just short time just to protect him while he's in

Chicago.

But when they saw me in action, Leon said, you with us now.

For those of you who do not know who Mr. T is, he is Leon Spinks' personal

bodyguard. I worked in the security field for a couple years, and the other

guys that I protected, nobody really knew that they was rich except me.

But Leon is a lot different. You know, he's sort of like a politician. He go

out to shake people's hands and things like that. So I got to be careful and

watch who hands he's shaking, what the person have in his hand.

One mission, keep my eyes on the prize.

It's like people come up, if I'm bodyguarding you, somebody come up, hey,

Mr. T.

I said, excuse me, brother, you're blocking my view.

When I said I was serious, I took it. I didn't have no girlfriend at the time.

I didn't want nobody saying, oh, I love you, I love you. That messed up my

psyche.

I don't want nobody to be close to me because I was a loner.

I was born Christmas Eve, 1977.

Phyllis Clark and my dad went to Dunbar High School together.

A couple years later, they had my sister.

I feel like things didn't start till I was born, though, so... In the first few

years of my life, my parents, they were seeing each other, but not living

together. My dad really focused on his own career.

Yeah, that's what my dad taught me.

Extreme determination.

Just like Old Man River, Old Man Rocky just seems to keep rolling along.

Even as we speak, millions are battering down box offices across the United

States. About 2,000 Sylvester Stallone diehards waited outside, but when

Stallone arrived, Philadelphia let go a certain kind of love.

At any rate, we'll see Rocky III before too long.

I was looking for a nemesis for Rocky, because you're only as good as the

villain. You know, if you fight a weak villain, then it's no victory.

I thought this time, wouldn't it be interesting to take a real fighter and

bring him into the film and just teach him how to act a little bit?

I had seen him on games people play, and I heard some of these stories about, you

know, this guy and that and whatever, how he was brutal and so on and so

forth. He had this look, and everything started to click.

The casting director called me. Hello.

She told me that they wanted me to audition for Rocky III.

They sent me the script.

I was supposed to have a Jamaican accent from New York.

So I bought some reggae albums. I bought some Harry Belafonte.

Learned how to talk Jamaican.

And she called back, she said, Sylvester Stallone told me to tell you, forget the

accent, forget the Jamaican stuff.

He wants you to be you, Mr. T, Southside Slugger from Chicago.

I said, I got this now.

Then within a couple weeks, they flew me out to audition in Los Angeles.

Well, they came in, and the man was completely at ease.

Very shy, as a matter of fact.

He did the audition. He's the only one who did the audition without the script.

He gave me the script. He said, want to look at it?

I said, I already studied.

I'm ready to roll.

He said, action.

I said, hey, bad boy, you're just like all the other white champions.

You get the title, you don't want to fight no brother.

Matter of fact, I'm tired of waiting on the contract.

Then I grabbed him, hugged him. I still wasn't sure because, you know, this is

Rocky III. I said, it's got to be perfect. So I asked him to ad lib. I

said, just talk about your life. And I said, this character Clubber Lane, it's

like hot coals burning inside of me. I've been Clubber Lane all my life. I

said, stop, stop.

He said, that's it.

I went home that weekend.

She called me Monday morning.

I said, guess what? You got to part.

Sylvester Stallone climbed back into the ring recently in Los Angeles to meet the

press, signaling the start of the filming of Rocky III.

And then he introduced his new adversary for this last in the Rocky films,

Lawrence Tiro, who makes his motion picture debut in this movie as Clubber

Lang. He's immense enough to believe that he could be that kind of world

heavyweight champion. He's instinctual. He gave us far and away the best

readings, even better than professional actors, and that's what sealed it.

I got introduced to Mr. T by my sister.

She used to cast a lot of his movies.

I was his agent for 44, 45 years, somewhere in that neighborhood.

And in Hollywood, having a client that long is almost unheard of.

When I first met Mr. T, he was very quiet.

And you would ask him a question and go, no, yes.

You know, it wasn't the blustery tea that he became.

But you could tell that he had a charisma and something inside that you

can't buy.

So he said, we're going to train for two months.

One, two, three.

go through the choreography of the fight.

Jab, jab, left, right.

Turn my neck, take the punch, all that stuff.

Because the camera's going to be behind us, so when he throw a punch, I got to

be like, snap my neck, make it look like a hit.

It didn't think back.

And I remember when I was in the theater watching Rocky I, Rocky II.

And I was rooting for Rocky to beat Apollo.

Here I am now, they want me to fight Rocky.

And introducing Mr.

T.

Rocky III, an American tradition.

With Rocky III making his premier run in Philadelphia, you could feel the

electricity in the air.

No one believed that Stallone could beat him.

Out of all the Rocky movies, you gotta go, there's no way.

It seemed like the entire world saw the movie over the weekend.

He was able to make it into something that I don't think he could have even

predicted.

His character in Rocky III scared the shit out of white people.

But when he came off screen, they became more afraid of him than they were

watching him on screen because they're like, oh, he's not acting.

Please welcome Mr.

T. Mr. T.

Mr. T.

He's not that comfortable black dude.

Oh, I saw a little smile.

Just a little bit. That's enough.

I'm not going to soften my voice. I'm not going to soften my tone.

I'm not going to soften my message to make you understand what I'm saying, how

I'm saying it, what it's supposed to mean.

Before we get started, you were so frightening in that motion picture.

And have you acted before, or was that just you we were watching there?

Well, the character calls...

to be hungry and i've been hungry all my life so what a problem that's why i wear

these combat boots because it's symbolic of my struggle i'm born in the ghetto

and raised on welfare so that's what sort of the character was about can i

ask you about your hairstyle

Right, right. I'm glad you brought that up. The hairstyle is not punk rock. It's

not Mohegan Indians because a lot of people relate to the Mohegan Indians

because that's all they know. There's a tribe in Africa that calls themselves

the Mandinka Warriors.

They wear their hair in this fashion. They wear feathered earrings. They wear

diamond gold.

They wear the finest they is. And I am proud to be a descendant of the people.

And that's the reason why I wear this. And the changes in gold is symbolic of

my struggle because my ancestors, we was brought over here, we was shackled by

our wrists and our necks and ankles.

But now I turn those shackles into gold, and that offends people. People ask me,

say, do that gold get heavy? Nobody ask my ancestors, do those changes get heavy

on their neck?

When we saw Mr.

T be that person without a script in front of him, and I think T spoke

with a sense of authenticity, spoke to you, but spoke for us

in a very similar manner that Ali did.

I saw that letter in an interview. A lot.

I don't get involved in no black exploitation movies, no dope dealing

movies, no pimp roles, things like that.

And I tell them if they want to see me in other movies, give me the type of

roles that you give Charleston Heston. Give me a Moses part in the Red Sea in

the Ten Commandments. Give me a Ben Hur. Because I am talented enough to play

them type of roles.

And I'm like, whoa!

Whoa! I never saw anybody do anything like that.

Because that movie was such a hit, he was sought after by a lot of people.

But I was concerned, you know, where would he fit in Hollywood? What next

would happen?

The president of NBC, Brandon Tartikoff, he says, I want you to create a series

on this guy, Mr.

T, with the mohawk.

Where he's driving a car, a bus, or something.

Then we'll build some other people around them.

Then they brought in Faze Man, Dirk Benedict, Murdoch, Dwight Schultz,

Hannibal, George Pard.

I was the only guy who didn't audition for the A-Team.

Maybe you can hire the A-Team.

We beat up the Fonz. We beat up Magnum.

Don't be a wimp and watch the A-Team Tuesday.

Then we started kicking 60 minutes butts.

We was number one.

Like they say, we love it when a plan comes together.

When a plan comes together.

B.A. Baracus, he's tough, he's strong, very intelligent.

How much time do we have? I'm fixing everything, so I had to be smart.

I think I can rig something up.

Once the A-Team exploded is when the boisterous T just came out more.

Yeah.

Came out on Tuesdays, because on Wednesdays, every boy in my class would

be imitating my dad.

I remember saying, oh, that's my dad. And, like, nobody on planet Earth

believed me.

So... The network, they gave him Saturday morning cartoon show.

He was just the hottest guy on television.

Before Mr. T showed up, there were no black dramas on TV.

None. Everybody loves Webster.

America's purpose for us through the lens of television was, you Negroes are

good for 30 minutes.

What's up, man?

And for jokes.

That's it.

So when you have somebody like a Mr. T as B.A. Baracus,

There's a sense of pride to see a black person in those spaces.

Would you like to be my friend?

I was very, very proud to see him in that show.

To me, nobody else in the show mattered.

It just didn't.

My dad ended up coming up to school once, and, like, the entire school came

outside, taking pictures and stuff like that. That was a moment in my head where

I was like, oh.

This is someone famous.

I still even thought it was a

Chicago thing.

We went to London and we went to all these countries.

We went to Amsterdam and we were in a helicopter and

they couldn't land the helicopter.

We came here to see you. We love to see you.

Leave no Russia to harm us.

It was absolutely nuts.

I'm pumped up. I'm pumped up.

WrestleMania is taking place right now.

There he is. The Incredible Hulk Hogan with Batman himself, Mr.

T. Me and Hulk Hogan, we met each other doing Rocky III.

I'm coming after you, Falcoa.

He was thunder lips.

I met Mr. T on the set of Rocky.

During that time, we bonded and became friends.

And that kind of parlayed into all the appearances on the A-Team, which kind of

led us into dragging him into the wrestling ring.

This is my first WrestleMania.

The electricity in the garden was off the chain.

He knew that I was a wrestling champ in high school, but that's different than

the stuff on the thing.

Mr. T giving a welcome here to the multitudes.

From being ex-athlete turned celebrity, it was really cool to see Mr.

T finding his roots again.

Mr. T looks in great shape. Hogan looks in great shape. You can hear the fans

chanting Ali, Ali.

whom I consider the greatest heavyweight champion in the world. Then they held

Muhammad Ali there.

That was something, man.

The fans are chanting, T-T-T.

Oh!

Piper goes behind quickly, takes him down to the canvas.

Oh, nice fireman's carry.

As Mr.

T hoists up Piper. What's he going to do with him?

Oh, drops him like yesterday's newspaper.

Unbelievable. Panda moving here in the garden.

The crowd. loves Hulk Hogan and Mr. T.

He's saying, we're number one, and you betcha you are.

Mr. T.

Oh, how are you? How are you? Good, good, good. And what happens when you

team up Mrs. Reagan and Mr. T?

You get the A couple, of course.

And that's what happened at the White House today.

So Nancy Reagan hear about me, she said, wow, I want to kick off my new program.

Just say no, and Mr. T will be good for that. Say no to drugs.

and say yes to life.

So I call home to my mother.

I'm like talking low. I said, mother, I'm here in the White House. I meet the

president tomorrow.

And my mother said, a sweet self, she said, you be good now. You hear?

Well, I'd like to thank you, too, for coming to the second annual White House

Tennis Tournament. I'm sure you all know how much it means to me.

What I'm saying, what's special, hear this kid from the hood, Robert Taylor

Projects, who they said wouldn't be nothing.

Well, sir, you've been playing tennis.

Thank you.

Man, what an honor.

That was special.

Now, as Mr. T shifted... Now you got the picture? Take it from him to get the

best start. From a branding standpoint, Mr. T sold Mr.

T to America.

More beef?

Better taste?

Okay, fool, it's good.

Yes, he is a superhero, and people need to hear and understand his story and his

struggle, but at the end of it, at what cost?

In his stardom, he did expect to be treated...

better and better.

When he became extremely famous, if he had an appearance, I only will go if

they send me a white stretch limo.

I want bottles of Calgon Bouquet by the bath.

It's like no other bath experience.

Calgon, lose yourself in luxury.

And if it wasn't the right way, it would be disrespectful to him.

During those years, I would say my dad was out of town a lot.

We either were visiting him out there or he'd come back home.

But we didn't want a job to pay his bills.

My dad wanted to be rich.

I like to shop sometimes. When you have money, that's very important.

Don't never go shopping without no money.

There have been projects which I think were certainly worth doing that he had

blown the deal over monies are not enough.

Yeah, I think he does sabotage.

They hollered about Mr. T now. Then a couple, maybe less than a year ago, they

would see me and say, look at that wild-looking, funny haircut with that

junk around his neck.

Don't ask me, hey, Mr. T, how about going to lunch? I can buy the whole

restaurant now. When I needed a lunch, they wouldn't take me.

I believe season one and two, everyone was getting along. It was called the A

-Team. They were really a team.

But George Pappard was always jealous of T because of the fame.

T and I are certainly brothers in some very real spiritual sense.

And that was the third or fourth season when George was very insulting to him.

Should it ever occur that he was somebody else with that body of his,

then I would use a gun on him.

And T wanted off the show.

T was very unique, and I think...

Right time, right place, right everything fueled the fire to make him

hot. And then the fire kind of dwindled.

I like what I became these past few weeks, and I ain't never going back to

being what I was before.

Never!

There were a couple movie projects that he did that, in retrospect... Maybe he

shouldn't have done it. We here because of the money. I'm not here for the art.

I'm here for the money. I need money. My children need money. They need new

shoes. My mama need a fur coat.

I can say to the world, hey, this is me.

I am woman.

He was great up until the point at which he bailed out on our set four days

before he was done shooting.

I'm like, T, what are you doing? He's like, I'm done. I'm done.

I'm like, but no, you're not done. We actually, it's like another week of

shooting. I don't think we'd ever want to believe that Mr. T was a great actor.

Mr. T was a personality.

I got a new show on NBC, and it's called The A-Team. And you better watch it,

because if you don't, I'm going to come over your house and make you watch it

live with your mama.

As his popularity rose, everywhere he went. Say, I pity the fool. Say, I pity

the fool. Make that tagline. Make that tagline.

I pity the fool.

I pity the fool.

And when it comes to that tagline, comes money.

You should be drinking Mr. and Mrs. T bloody maramakes.

I pity the fool that doesn't drink it. I pity the fool.

What would happen if E.T. and Mr. T had a baby?

You have to make a choice when you're a black individual, especially when you're

dealing with a certain amount of fame and popularity.

Either you have to remain in character, or

they're going to turn you into a caricature.

for us as black individuals we feel the brother that came into this game

representing us and we feel the brother we lost in the course of doing this mr t

do you want to stay an actor no i am i am this is uh like i said god is using

me this is a channel for me to reach people people need inspiration a guy

like me strong and defiant so i am loved and hated by the same people for the

same reasons and then there was squabbling and i think there was just

jealousies about money

He, I guess, would have hoped that they were one big happy family, and those

relationships took different manifestations, you know, along that

path. Well, he had some dough, but the rumor that I heard is that he owed a lot

of money in taxes.

Oh, really?

Well, I know there were a couple of guys trying to sue him.

And then it came time to, okay, we're looking for work.

And then it stopped.

and if you've seen the film, you know that he isn't an easy guy to forget.

If you haven't, you'll soon see why. Please welcome Mr.

T.

I'm not just some phony fake, you know, celebrity or whatever, some fictitious

hero. I'm real life.

Real life. And it took me a while to understand who I really am.

1995.

Had a little, like, pimple or something on my ear.

And then about six months later, just some bumps broke out on my back.

So I went to the doctor.

And about a week later, told me, you have cancer.

He said, it's in the blood. It's a rare form of cancer.

T-cell lymphoma.

And I started the chemotherapy.

I remember when I would go to hospitals and I would tell the kids, don't give

up. It's okay to be a little frightened.

I don't want to lie to you and I say, okay, because I believe in God,

everything is good.

That's a lie.

What kind of stuff? Put everything in perspective.

Because if I ever made an impact, all I am is just an old entertainer.

Like the old minstrel show.

You just good for entertainment.

What impact have I made on society?

That's what it's all about.

He always had an inherent drive to be something and to do something.

I had heard of Pastor Hardy on the radio.

Saturday morning back in the 70s.

I said, who is this minister? I like what he's saying.

Bless you, bless you, bless you.

What's up, T?

Pastor Hardy, Pastor Hardy. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

When T joined the Cosmopolitan Community Church, he was cool in his way.

He didn't have the kind of superheroic dynamics of Mr.

T that we know now.

He got out of the inner city, but once he became successful, he

never forgot where he came from.

My calling is more than being on TV.

God has blessed me.

For what? To make more money than buy material stuff?

No.

He asked me to be a blessing to others.

Every kind of movie or iconic role is represented here this weekend for Fan

Expo Dallas.

Fan Expo Dallas is a pop culture celebration between the fans and their

heroes. The cast of Back to the Future is going to be with us. Mr. T from the A

-Team is going to be here, very rare appearance.

For many years, I was hesitant in signing autographs because I don't want

to get...

complacent. I don't want to get cocky. I don't want to think that I'm all that in

a bag of chips.

How y'all doing? God bless you.

God bless you.

It's not just a run of the mill. I'm just going through, shake hands, and

make money.

Let me give somebody some inspiration.

Give somebody some motivation.

Some are going to want to hear, Mr. T, could you just give me a quick little

prayer? Let me know God loves me.

I'm getting emotional now.

I've got to stop.

Thank you, brother.

Thank you, man.

Thank you, man. Thank you, brother.

Oh, bless you.

Bless you.

Bless you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

It's therapeutic for me and them.

I pity the man who don't cry and let it out. Because men, because I'm tough, I

don't cry.

That's a fool.

That's a fool.

Let me hug you, brother. Thank you. Bless you, man. Bless you. God is good.

It took me 20 years to finally meet you. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. And

I'll do my very best to never let you down.

Thank you. Thank you, man, for the love. Man, this is the man.

That's my son right there. Oh, is it? Yeah, yeah. Can you tell?

Yeah, I have some ears.

I've seen it like this. Yeah.

I've seen it.

I'm still praying. I'm still trying to do the right thing. You stole him after

what you went through? Yes, exactly.

It was a test.

It was a test of our faith.

I remember I was in class and I was looking out the window.

I drew a picture of my father, my brothers, and I drew my mother.

It was her in the rocking chair because she'd been working so hard scrubbing

floors.

I came running home.

I said, Mother, Mother, look what I've done.

I said, Mama, one of these days I'm going to be big and strong.

I'm going to buy you a beautiful house, Mama.

And I'm about you pretty dresses.

And she hugged me and said, if that's the Lord's willing.

I never dreamed of being a movie actor or somebody famous.

Now I'm here.

Now I got to do what I promised my mother. I'm in position now.

Because you remember, she come from Alabama.

My mother's a little girl. They used to pick cotton.

Now her son able to do this here.

so he can't do nothing but cry.

Lake Forest, in the suburbs, where my mother used to scrub floors, I bought

the big mansion.

Had rooms in there for the family. Everybody could come in.

I said, Mama, we got an account. When money need to be drawn to pay something,

it's done. You just enjoy.

Then she just cried.

Cried. Said, wow, I can't believe it.

Just promise me, son, you keep believing in God.

Mr.

T.

It's important that I come back, and it's my turn to take care of my family.

It's my turn to give money back to the community. It's my turn to feed hungry

people.

i am here all right you know what i want because i have four thighs and two legs

ali aretha probably wondering why my picture not here didn't want to give

one i don't need one because the people they know i'm here you know so people in

the neighborhood that's why i love this place being back home with my people

you don't become great just for yourself but you become great to enhance and

advance in the lives of others growing up on the welfare system in the ghetto

people always been telling me that you can't make it whatever your situation is

today don't let nobody tell you what you can't be tomorrow

when he had the public eye and he

had all the attention

There was a message. There was something great that you could learn.

He used his power for good.

But it's like people always want to know what it was like growing up with Mr. T

as a dad. Even though he probably wanted me to stay at home, he influenced me to

go for this.

This was before the A-Team. There was no money involved, right?

To me, my dad's legacy is that anything is possible.

One day you can be a bouncer at a nightclub and the next day you could be

on a number one rated TV show.

I love my dad for that.

I love him for making dreams believable.

Truthfully, if we go by my resume, I wouldn't be here.

I said, shucks, I've only done two, three movies.

Bust you up. Did Rocky and DC Cal. If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to

get these kids away from you. The A-Team and a little cartoon and a couple of

commercials.

This is down 1-800-CLICK.

And if you get in now.

One guy said, Mr. T can't act. And I jokingly told him, I said, I know I

can't act. You know I can't act. Don't tell everybody.

But what really have I done?

I can't be satisfied with this here.

Thank you for the love, man. You know we love it when the plan come together.

Thank you, man. Thank you so much.

I'm honest.

Thank you. That's why I paid it for.

I'll continue with my own mission.

Teach us to love one another like you love us.

Teach us to forgive one another just like you forgave us.

Happy Easter, everybody.

Happy Easter.

Mr. T is the son of God.

Mr. T is a determined man.

Mr. T is a good brother.